#the self-fulfilling prophecy of her name. the tragedy that could only ever be a tragedy. lucy gray who haunts snow for years to come.

[malinaa]

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins CHAPTER 26 / CHAPTER 27 / EPILOGUE

[hyperfixationtimego]

which is your favorite ship of each Danganronpa?

HAHA OH WHAT AN ASK

I yearn so much,,,,,,,too much perhaps

Because of this, my ships make no sense <3 yes I will be attempting to explain, but no they will not be coherent in the slightest <3

Trigger Happy Havoc

Favorite Ship: Makuwata (Makoto Naegi/Leon Kuwata)

OKAY SO-

When I first began playing danganronpa, Leon was INSTANTLY my favorite character. Call it the punk aesthetic, or the voice, or the bright colors, or the emotionally-driven personality; I just thought he was neat ❤️

Because the first interaction he has is with Makoto, it sort of solidified in my heart during his introduction! Introvert x extrovert ship dynamic my beloved,,,,,,

And I just think that Leon calling Makoto his “soulmate” is pretty poggers. Like the man really did have to consciously choose that word!!!!! And he did!!!!! + Makoto being patient with him and the whole “still, I think it’s impossible for me to hate him” just makes me [flappy hands] because god I kin that punk dumbass SO MUCH so I simply would like for Makoto to givb him a little kissy. just a little smooch on the cheek :)

Goodbye Despair

Favorite Ship: Komahina (Nagito Komaeda/Hajime Hinata)

I will be honest, the fact that I like this ship at all is mind-boggling to me. It is literally the ONLY protag/antag ship that I enjoy!!!

But, see, I think the main reason I like it is because Nagito never seems actively malicious during the main game (aside from chapter 4, but even then, he’s not being actively malicious towards Hinata. A lot of people misconstrue his behavior, I think, as being harsh and cruel, when in reality what’s happening is that he simply isn’t worshipping Hinata anymore. He’s being actively cruel towards the rest of the Ultimates, but we actually see him talk about how he and Hinata are pretty similar.

He’s not being a jerk during chapter 4. He’s been genuinely shaken to his core because of the horrific discovery of the fact that these people he cares about, these people he’s spent so much time with, these people he considers his friends, even if they don’t like him, are, in actuality, the personification of the only thing in this world he truly, and utterly, DESPISES.)

Nagito my beloved,,,,,,,ugh he is so Mentally ill™️ ❤️ (I SAY THIS AS A MENTALLY ILL PERSON ASKJDMSDN DON’T KILL ME) There’s also so much queercoding!!!! Of his character!!!!!! They really had him say the romantic I love you to Hajime,,,,,,,they really gave him and Mikan the solidarity during chapter 3!!!!!

And don’t even get me started on the fucking tragedy of him existing at all!!! It fucking hurts!!!! He’s so ashamed of everything about himself!!! He hides the fact that he’s sick and lonely!!! He’s afraid of dying alone!! He’s afraid of people not caring about him, but it’s essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy because of how hard he tries to push people away!

So long story short I just think Hinata would see this man and go “I could fix him. But first I’m gonna kick his teeth in.”

Ultra Despair Girls

Favorite Ship: Tokomaru/Syomaru (Toko Fukawa/Komaru Naegi/Genocide Jill)

YES I know this one is a bit of a cheat out, but I wanted to include them anyway!!!! Toko getting the love and appreciation she deserves???? Toko recovering from being continuously abused and ignored????? Her and Jill as a system being given the respect they BOTH deserve???? FUCK ME UP UGH

Blease,,,,,,Toko and Jill choosing Komaru over Togami,,,,,like canonically??? I’M OBSESSED

And Komaru’s little “Thank God I met Toko!” Voice line fucks ❤️

Also Toko 🤝 Jill

getting their girlfriend’s name wrong on purpose solidarity

Killing Harmony

Favorite Ship: I HAVE TWO FOR THIS GAME BECAUSE IT SLAPS SO HARD!!!! They’re Saimota (Shuichi Saihara/Kaito Momota) and Gontaguuji (Gonta Gokuhara/Korekiyo Shinguuji)

My explanation for saimota is literally just the canon game ❤️

ALSJSLSJD I’M JOKING BUT THEY’RE LITERALLY SO FRUITY /POS

and the love hotel scene,,,,,,,oh my god. “Nobody has ever made me want to stay in one place for so long.” said no straight man ever and “I understand, Kaito. I hold the key to your heart, but…” and also HOW SHUICHI LITERALLY FORGETS WHERE HE IS WHEN KAITO CLOSES THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THEM. HE TALKS ABOUT HOW KAITO IS SO CLOSE AND LOWKEY PANICS BECAUSE OF IT. TRY AND TELL ME THESE FUCKERS ARE STRAIGHT I DARE YOU. I DARE YOU.

personally,,,,,I believe they are underrated ❤️ another extrovert x introvert masterpiece, this time with the added benefit of best friends to lovers!!!!!!! PLEASE I love them so much oh my GOD

As for Gontaguuji,,,,,,,,heheh

traumatized bastard x traumatized sweetheart

They complement each other SO WELL and the fact that they have basically no canon interactions aside from Hair-Raising Panic is fucking CRIMINAL ❤️

Gonta having been raised by wolves is a rare anthropological opportunity for Kiyo!! Of COURSE Kiyo would go out of their way to interact with him and learn more!!!

Gonta is also a huge softie!!! Just a big ol’ affectionate lug!!! Literally everything that Korekiyo has never experienced before; straight up just a man that would put Kiyo’s well-being before anything else 😭

And Kiyo is extremely intelligent, literate, and patient! Like straight up please just imagine Gonta going up to Kiyo because he’s one of the smartest people Gonta knows and being like 🥺👉👈 “can Kiyo teach Gonta how to be smart? Gonta not want to be idiot….” And Kiyo sitting with him and explaining that he’s not stupid, it’s just that he’s a product of a society that is too impatient to appreciate the ways in which Gonta is actually able to express his intelligence.

THINK ABOUT THAT FOR TWO SECONDS AND TELL ME YOU DON’T THINK THEY’D BE GOOD FOR ONE ANOTHER

[magicaththedemigod]

an extensive analysis of “the song of achilles” by madeline miller

Or: things I noticed and couldn't keep to myself.

Because I just finished reading it and have many feelings about it, I've decided to compile all of them into a very lengthy Tumblr post.

This will be broken up into three parts:

1. Foreshadowing

2. Dramatic (and regular) Irony

3. Fatal Flaws

1. Foreshadowing

Miller does such a delightful job with foreshadowing. The number of quotes I could be spitting at you right now... but I digress. The main job of foreshadowing, especially in a tragedy like "The Song of Achilles," is to set the characters up for their tragedy.

What I like most about how Miller goes about it in this book is that she doesn't attempt to pull a shocking twist out of nowhere; instead, she takes an approach which allows the reader to fully marinate in their despair.

For example, this quote:

Achilles shook his head, impatiently. "But this was a greater punishment for her. It was not fair of them." "There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles," Chiron said. "And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?"

Let's take a moment and unpack some of this. For context, this is a conversation between Patroclus, Achilles, and their mentor Chiron. They're discussing the tale of Heracles, who's driven to madness and ends up killing his own wife and kids.

From reading the book, (SPOILER ALERT) you know that Achilles' own pride and honor end up forcing Patroclus to impersonate him in order to save the Greek army, and in doing so is killed by Hector. The fact that Chiron directs this question, "And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?" to Achilles, who is left behind after Patroclus' death is such delightful foreshadowing that I almost threw the book across the room when I first read it.

Achilles slumps into such a depression after Patroclus dies (really, after he kills Patroclus with his own fatal flaw), that he even loses the ability to care about his fame or honor anymore. He feels the greater grief, so to speak.

Even after he dies, Patroclus is left behind, unable to rest properly because they never put his name on the tomb. In that sense, Patroclus is then the one left behind, experiencing loneliness and grief.

The book is full of little hints like this, and that's part of why it's almost torture to read as someone who knows how the Iliad goes. As I said before: the foreshadowing in this book is meant to have the reader in pain from the beginning because you know nothing is going to work out in the end.

2. Dramatic (and regular) Irony

Yes, that's right. I'm about to rip into your soul.

Probably one of the biggest parts of classical Greek myths is dramatic irony (the audience knowing something the characters don't). In plays, the ending is almost always announced before the play begins. In fact, the audience most likely already knows the story from previous tellings or just general knowledge. It makes sense that it would be one of the biggest players in "The Song of Achilles."

As usual, let's start with a quote:

His eyes opened. "Name one hero who was happy." I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back. "You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward. "I can't." "I know. They never let you be famous and happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret." "Tell me." I loved it when he was like this. "I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it." "Why me?" "Because you're the reason. Swear it." "I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes. "I swear it," he echoed. We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned. "I feel like I could eat the world raw."

First of all: cute. Second of all: wow, so much pain.

As you know, Achilles is the opposite of happy at the end of the book (well, maybe after they die, but we'll get to that later). Though he swears it here with Patroclus, the two of them make decisions that ultimately lead to their downfall: Achilles decides to abandon the Greeks after they slighted his honor, Patroclus decides to help them even if it means risking his life, and Achilles lets him do it.

So let's talk about dramatic irony. The irony here is that you know, maybe just from this exchange alone, that Achilles isn't going to be the first happy hero. You know there is a war coming, know that Achilles and his famous heel will get himself killed. You might also know at this point that Patroclus will die first and send Achilles spiraling into grief before that happens.

It's painful, truly. Achilles spends his last days in utter agony, wanting to die but unable to kill himself, and Patroclus can only watch on as a ghost (spirit?). Even when Achilles does die and his ashes are put into their urn (seriously, how did any scholar ever think they weren't lovers?), they still have to wait to be reunited.

But there's still more. Consider these lines:

Hector's eyes are wide, but he will run no longer. He says, "Grant me this. Give my body to my family, when you have killed me." Achilles makes a sound like choking. "There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw."

Sound familiar? That's right: "I will kill you and eat you raw" sounds an awful lot like "I feel like I could eat the world raw," doesn't it? Another parallel from Miller: one from a time of happiness, the other from a time of extreme grief. However painful it is, I really live for connections like that.

And I've got one more for you:

Achilles shook his head. "Never. He is brave and strong, but that is all. He would break against Hector like water on a rock. So. It is me, or no one." "You will not do it." I tried not to let it sound like begging. "No." He was quiet a moment. "But I can see it. That's the strange thing. Like in a dream. I can see myself throwing the spear, see him fall. I walk up to the body and stand over it." Dread rose in my chest. I took a breath, forced it away. "And then what?" "That's the strangest of all. I look down at his blood and know my death is coming. But in the dream I do not mind. What I feel, most of all, is relief." "Do you think it can be prophecy?" The questions seemed to make him self-conscious. He shook his head. "No. I think it is nothing at all. A daydream." I forced my voice to match his in lightness. "I'm sure you're right. After all, Hector hasn't done anything to you."

See where I'm going with this? I don't think I need to explain this one.

3. Fatal Flaws

That's right, one of the most essential pieces for a tragedy: hamartia. For those who might not know, hamartia is the fatal flaw that ultimately leads to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine. In every single piece of classical greek writing, if the story is a tragedy, the main character will have a fatal flaw that makes it so.

Take Achilles:

I looked at the stone of his face, and despaired. “If you love me-”

“No!” His face was stiff with tension. “I cannot! If I yield, Agamemnon can dishonor me whenever he wishes. The kings will not respect me, nor the men!” He was breathless, as though he had run far. “Do you think I wish them all to die? But I cannot. I cannot! I will not let them take this from me!”

You probably already know what his fatal flaw is: pride. He needs the fame, needs the glorious memory of his deeds to live on forever, so badly that he is willing to sacrifice his life and what might’ve been a fulfilling and long life with Patroclus out of the limelight. His fatal flaw is what spurs each of his actions in the later half of the book, including the moment where he decides to leave the Greeks to their deaths for slandering him.

Even Patroclus has a fatal flaw: his love for Achilles.

That night I lay in bed beside Achilles. His face is innocent, sleep-smoothed and sweetly boyish. I love to see it. This is his truest self, earnest and guileless, full of mischief but without malice. He is lost in Agamemnon and Odysseus’ wily double meanings, their lies and games of power. They have confounded him, tied him to a stake and baited him. I stroke the soft skin of his forehead. I would untie him if I could. If he would let me.

Though riding into the center of the fighting, especially dressed as Achilles, will make Patroclus the prime target, he decides to do it anyway. And not out of fear for Achilles’s life; he knows how important his pride and reputation is to him, and out of desperation will do anything to keep Achilles from being devastated when it doesn’t work out for him.

(Honestly, this is the part where I start to hate Achilles for doing this to Patroclus... it’s like he doesn’t even consider Patroclus his equal and does everything without consulting him.)

Of course, Agamemnon has a fatal flaw as well. He is like the mirror image of Achilles, so proud and stubborn, righteous and arrogant. However, he is the darker image, the one that revels in taking things by force and, of course, raping women like Briseis. He serves as a poignant foil for Achilles, highlighting all the ways the traits they share can easily become corrupted. It’s part of why this novel works so well.

I hope you all enjoyed this book as much as I did. Truthfully, I did have a few problems with it, but I wanted to trying picking it apart anyway. And if you haven’t read the song of achilles... what are you doing reading these spoilers?? 

[ariainstars]

Congratulations, We Fell for Another Love Bombing or Thank You, Disney, You Did It Again

Sigh. Luke Skywalker is back. And Din Djarin and his child had to say goodbye. I never thought I would curse and say “Oh no!” when Luke appeared in that fateful corridor. 

I wonder why the Disney studios are doing this - trying to "make up” for the oh-so criticized sequels, I suppose?

The Jedi have made their time. It was shown and proven over and over again that their attitude is wrong and needs to change, and Luke was the last of the old school Jedi. Again, a Force-sensitive child is all but kidnapped by a Jedi: he obviously did not like to go. Mando is no longer the hero of the story, he was stripped of his agency and all of his personal choices were questioned and valued for null and void. But the Dark Saber is in his hands now, so he’s the heir to the throne of Mandalore I guess. Like he ever wanted that.

This show, which grew to be so well-beloved in only a few episodes, now is not “The Mandalorian” any more. Its new title is “Luke’s Skywalker’s Comeback”. Hardcore fans may be out of their minds with joy, but for us, who admired Mando both as a badass hero and as a father figure and loved the dynamics between him and Grogu, the whole purpose of the show is destroyed. And here I naively had thought The Rise of Skywalker was bad enough to teach the studios not to repeat its mistakes.

~~~ more under the cut ~~~

Star Wars ought to be a fairy tale. It is and always was one. I can understand that the prequels had to end in a tragedy, we all knew that from the start, but why the sequels? And now, why must this generally acclaimed and beloved tv show again appease hardcore fans of old with Luke coming to save the day, cancelling in a matter of minutes what the story had built up within two entire seasons - the relationship of the two protagonists, heart and core of the narrative, as it had been with Rey and Ben Solo? And when both of them had their relationship just getting started - Rey and Ben kissing, Din calling Grogu by his name and the latter seeing him and touching his face? Why make Rey a queen without her king, and Din a father without a son? 

Again, a Force-user is denied having a home: „Jedi training” matters more. By Luke of all people, the guy who never was trained in the first place (only very briefly), who except for a few lessons with Obi-Wan and Yoda was self-taught in the Force, and never understood that his strength lay with his compassion and his connection with other people, not with his alleged „superpowers”.

Think back to how Anakin, Luke and Rey were before they met the Jedi: unaware of their powers, compassionate, idealistic, brave. The Jedi mindset tainted their characters and lives, making them believing that they are (or have to be) untouchable and invincible, compelling them to live for duty instead of love, condemning them to a lifetime of loneliness. Will the Jedi never learn?

Though I practically grew up with the classic movies, I loved The Last Jedi; I can accept that Luke failed, and also that Han and Leia did. Nobody is perfect, and the Jedi mindset as well as the universally accepted idea that „Jedi” is a synonym for infallible saint-like hero was wrong in the first place, else the Empire never would have risen. Making Luke not the cavalry who came to save the day - until the battle on Crait, that is - but a man who failed and picked himself up again was much more meaningful, and I know not a few fans who felt inspired by this. Luke had saved his father choosing love over power, not the contrary. Some fans just never get it. To appease them, why not simply give him a new storyline of his own, instead of making him intrude in other Star Wars related shows? Why stop the new stories in their tracks just to bring him back?

Instead of seeing Luke as the grand kickass hero in a tv show that never had anything to do with him until now, it would have been more to the purpose to finally shed light on the thirty years between his father’s and his nephew’s death, to explain us where the Jedi and the Skywalker-Organa-Solo family failed to make such an outcome possible - the granddaughter of Palpatine taking over with their own blessing. There must have been a huge build-up between the end of the original saga and the fateful night at the temple when Luke briefly panicked looking into his nephew’s mind. Many fans still are convinced that „Kylo Ren just chose to be bad” because we hardly know how the relationship between these two was in the first place. (A very easy plot twist would e.g. have been Snoke warning Ben that his uncle sooner or later would turn on him, frightened by his power. The fulfilment of that prophecy would have made the night at the temple much more impactful.) 

I understand that the studios want to tease us, to make us watch the other shows, too. But honestly, I’m getting tired of feeling duped. Tired of getting attached to new heroes to have their purpose smashed just so the Star Wars dudebro fans can sleep quietly at night because „some Jedi will take care of it”. First the characters from the sequels, now the ones from The Mandalorian. You get to love the new characters, you root for them to find happiness or at least some closure, and then, at the last moment, poof!, the hero of old comes back and the story development stops right there. 

It is not right and it never was for the Jedi to take Force-sensitive children away from home, to enforce „you have to become a Jedi, like it or not” on them, to teach them not to have attachments, to make them focus on the Light Side thereby bringing the Force out of its much-needed balance. While Ahsoka saw that Grogu has formed a strong attachment to Din Djarin, Luke obviously did not, or he did not care. The irony is that he always wanted a father, and knows the pain of losing a father you’ve just found.

The Mandalorian felt like a consolation after Episode IX, a blessing for the fans for whom heart and soul are more interesting than nostalgia and „Jedi superheroes”. Now it’s just another kick in the guts. It’s painful and embarrassing to get to love characters so much, to get invested in their story so deeply, and then to realize again that they seem to mean nothing in the shade of the heroes of old. Ben Solo died young and miserable and Din Djarin and Grogu can now, I suppose, be miserable too. Can someone please explain to me why after the classics, no Star Wars film or show had an uplifting ending any more? With the possible exception of Solo, which was a nice filler but not a really important storyline. (I do not count Episodes I and II, they officially had a happy ending but it was tainted by the knowledge of what was to come.) 

Fans are not blind. We saw the parallels between Darth Vader and Din Djarin as well as the differences - both being cool and tough but the latter not disdaining to be a caring father at the same time. The entire show lived from the dynamics between the gruff but kind bounty hunter and the innocent-looking powerful child, ever from the first episode. Two years of build-up for nothing, as it was with the four years of the sequels. Mando has to relinquish Grogu, Rey loses Ben. What was all that for? Both Mando and Rey are fighters, they have done nothing else their entire lives. What is to become of them now that they have nothing to fight for any more, nor anyone to live for? Except staying on a planet that is foreign to them and, for all they know, inhabitable or at least inhospitable? 

With Rey and Ben Solo, the situation was different: she had proven good intentions but bad attitude (arrogance, violence, judgement) over and over, unable to deny her heritage, and even impaled her „antagonist” once while he was only defending himself. He had been the head of a criminal organization for years, and had committed patricide. Of course there are nuances to these characters and I still believe that they would have deserved another chance; I understand however that would have been unfitting to let the sequels end giving them a happy ending.

But in the case of Din Djarin, a man of honor, who has made friends and brought peace wherever he went throughout the galaxy? Grogu, the last surviving padawan of the old Jedi temple, who saved both his and Greef Karga’s life despite the danger for himself? What did they do to deserve being ripped apart like that? 

So, all I can say: thank you, you did it again. And, once more, just before Christmas. I wish at least these depressing endings would be released at some other time. 

I would dearly want to see a galaxy that finally learned from its faults, where family and attachments and Balance and free choice are not contrary to being a Jedi. I am in my late forties and I’m beginning to give up hope that I will live to see it. By now I am wondering whether George Lucas himself will live to see it. 

I always loved Luke. He is one of my favorite heroes. But now he’s become an insensitive know-it-all who suffered from his own daddy issues to the point that he almost died crying out to his father for help, yet did not learn not to separate fathers from children and vice versa and, on the contrary, is doing it over and over again. He did not even tell Mando his name, or where he could reach him. We don’t have a clue as to if, when and how the Clan of Two will meet again. 

I get it that since this show is set five years Return of the Jedi, it would have been difficult to ignore Luke’s existence altogether. And of course, we can rest assured that Luke will do his best for Grogu. But still: he has made his time. I wanted to see the new heroes going their own way, not hanging on the sleeves of the former generation. Mando is a man of honor, he had promised to bring Grogu to his own kind and he relinquished him despite his own wishes. (Not to mention that technically, since he identifies as a Mandalorian, by being a Jedi Luke is his enemy.) Why did Luke have to take the child away? His greatest strength always was that he was first and foremost himself and only in the second place a Jedi. What became of his trademark compassion? 

Before The Mandalorian, we have never seen a healthy and working father-son relationship in the saga. It was incredibly refreshing and heart-warming to see these two traveling through the galaxy and living through adventures together; also, contrarily to Yoda, Grogu saw a lot of the bad things happening in the galaxy with his own eyes, which certainly was good for his character development.

But in the end, both he and his „father” did not go anywhere. Like Rey in Episode IX, they found a) power and b) a surrogate place, but neither got what was actually his heart’s wish - a home. I can’t understand why. Deliberate cruelty? We never knew whether Han and Leia and Ben felt how painful it was to break up their little family for the sake of „Jedi training”. You bet Din and Grogu did feel that pain and loss.

Both as a person with a heart and a brain and an almost lifelong Star Wars fan I am sickened by the readiness of the studios to end all that this well-made show had built up, for the appeasement of Jedi worshippers who just don’t want to see that the Jedi mindset needs urgently to change. It can’t be that difficult to renew them for the better; there is no necessity to erase the Jedi completely and there is nothing bad with making them grow wiser and stronger by finally understanding and accepting the importance of attachments and family ties. Yes, I realize that being a father also means learning how to let go; but here we are speaking of a literal child, not of a young adult who chose his own way in life.

I thought that George Lucas knew why he sold his franchise to the Disney studios, given their tradition in telling stories about family and friendship. This development is not a triumph, it is unworthy both of the studios and of the entire Star Wars saga. I’m tired of producers bowing down before fans who see every shred of the saga through „Jedi are always right”-tinted glasses respectively who value coolness over compassion even though it always was the saga’s central message. 

Whatever happens in Season 3, countless fans will only be watching it asking, „Where’s Luke?” If Grogu should choose to join Mando again, everybody will be like, „But how can he want to leave Luke Skywalker of all people?” Some already see Grogu die prematurely, killed by the oh-so-bad guy Kylo Ren, for no other reason than to just to further prove how evil he is. In which case both Ben Solo and Grogu will have lived and died for nothing except for leaving a lot of heartbreak behind. 

There must be another and better way to honor the legacy of both Luke Skywalker and the original trilogy than to think up new heroes and then destroy their purpose for the sake of old times’ glory. Lucas himself had said that Star Wars is basically for twelve-year-olds. It seems not: it’s for the fans who were twelve years old forty years ago, when the first movies hit theatres. 

There are enough voices crying out for the sequels to be erased from canon. Who knows? This may be the next step into the past instead of the future. The sequels were hinting at a better future (Balance), Grogu was, too (family). But the grand past is so reassuring. The sequels tried to tell the audience to grow up and learn to do without their heroes, to see that even they were flawed and that the new heroes could grow beyond them. Fie on them, said the hardcore fans. Now it’s the turn of the younger generation, who got to know and love the saga with the sequels or The Mandalorian, to be like „WTF”. 

Rogue One also had been a huge disappointment to me. Not that I found it badly made, but I went into a depressive mood for three days for the same reason: I did not like that I had grown so attached to all of these characters only to see all of them die. The infamous Darth Vader scenes and the design with the huge hints at the classic movies were no consolation. Nostalgia does not make me happy. Heart does. Rogue One, the sequels and The Mandalorian were all, in the end, deprived of all human feeling except loss and regret and many, many thoughts about what might have been. 

The Mandalorian was an excellent story on its own. It did not need Luke Skywalker. It is and ought to be Din Djarin’s story, who lost or gave up everything because he was afraid to lose the child: and now he did. It’s not comforting that he lost him to the alleged Good Guy. Luke of course won’t turn a hair on Grogu’s head, but he can’t offer him a home, we already know that. Ahsoka saw the attachment between the two and she knows the dangers of it; Luke does not know what drove his father to his terrible fate. If the sequels remain canon, then we already know that Luke will not allow his pupils having and keeping healthy attachments. And that does not promise well for the child’s future.

Unless the studios commit the madness of officially erasing the sequels and starting the saga anew, we can only hope that the child will not stay with Luke for long since it’s a good five years before he will start his own Jedi temple. Maybe he will die of a broken heart, poor little guy. And Din Djarin might become the new ruler of Mandalore, though sad and alone. But who cares: Luke is back. Please: I did not subscribe to Disney+ wanting to see Schwarzenegger movies. The lonesome hero can ride into the sunset for all I care, out of sight and of mind. Star Wars’ greatest strength always was its heart. 

My own take was that Grogu is meant to be a healer, and since Luke is not, there is no way he can teach him this particular skill in the Force. Anakin was a pilot and a mechanic, Luke and Ben also were pilots. None of them were Jedi by choice. Grogu is older than Luke and he was already trained at the old Jedi temple: he’s more likely to be a teacher to Luke than the other way around. Grogu as the first Force-user who values attachment and family over power and Jedi training, that would indeed have been a new hope. This backpedaling is shallow and useless. Even if Luke sends Grogu back to Din Djarin, this won’t teach him not to take a child away from its home, since only a few years later he will do the same thing to his nephew. (Although it would admittedly be an interesting plot point to see a small Ben Solo interacting with Grogu for a while.) 

Please give us back The Mandalorian the way it was, with its characters and dynamics. The themes and messages of The Last Jedi already were almost all aborted in The Rise of Skywalker; we didn’t sign up on Disney+ to see the exact same thing happen with The Mandalorian. I for my part am fed up with this kind of love bombing followed by a quick and coldblooded let-down. Star Wars may be a cult, but it need not be the kind of cult where you get hooked and then unwittingly follow a carrot hanging before your eyes. I thought the exaggerated Jedi cult was mostly made by the fans: the studios did not need to jump on this ship. This is not the Way. 

Now everything I feared is flaring up again - fans jubilating because “the Jedi are taking matters in hand” instead of accepting the failure of the Jedi mindset at last; and even insisting that since things are going so well, all Disney needs to do is to cancel the sequels from canon and everybody can be happy again. 

Please, please, give this tormented galaxy a chance to heal at last. We don’t need Luke Skywalker to save the day by killing all the bad guys. We don’t need the oh-so-powerful and perfect Jedi. We need faith in the Force. We need a home. Don’t take it away from us again. Thank you.

 P.S. If we see Luke again in Season 3, at least give the role to a live actor. That digital ��rejuvenation” made him look wooden. Luke’s best trait, apart from his compassion, always was his smile.

P.P.S. What’s with Boba Fett claiming Jabba’s throne? I thought Jabba had a son. What in the galaxy happened to him?

P.P.P.S. I don’t mind kickass women, but honestly, I’m getting somehow tired of them. What became of the ladies of Star Wars, the diplomats, the good queens, the loving mothers, the accurate librarians, who contribute to the galaxy without killing (or hurting) anyone? I’m feeling kind of underrepresented here...

[jaimetheexplorer]

Oh, let’s go back to the start

WARNING: negative review ahead! 

Game of Thrones is over, and it’s never coming back.

I think many viewers all over the world thought that once this day came, they would wish they could do it all over again because boy, what a great journey it was. Or they would be eager to rewatch the whole show and look out for all the little clues they missed and revisit characters and storylines they might not have previously paid attention to.

Instead, most of us are left with a bitter taste in our mouth, and many of us are left wondering why we even bothered investing our time and emotional energy (not to mention money) in the first place. This is because the final season of Game of Thrones did not make fans wish they could go back to the start and do it all again, but, rather, took many of the plots and characters people knew and loved back to their start, at best, if not to an even worse place.

Game of Thrones changed television as we know it, but this has never been a flawless show. Plot holes and questionable adaptations had been criticized for many years. Book readers in particular have been very vocal about the quality (or lack thereof) of the show’s writing. Yet I feel people kept coming back to see how it all would end, because, surely, the endgame would still be worth the investment. 

Season 8 then came. Much criticism can be raised to the first half of season 8 for having wrapped up the Night King/fantasy storyline too quickly and with almost nothing in the way of explanation. While I understood and shared some of that grievance, I also thought that it was perhaps not that overwhelmingly disappointing, and that it could make some sense from a narrative and logistic perspective. Little did I know, however, as the credits rolled on the third episode of the season, that that instalment was symptomatic of a much more dangerous problem that was just around the corner, which would butcher most of what people loved about this story that had been built up so slowly across years (i.e. its characters), at lightning speed, in the remaining episodes.

From a character perspective, at least the deaths in the battle of Winterfell were mostly well earned and actually wrapped up their characters’ arcs in a meaningful way. Jorah died protecting his Khaleesi. Theon died protecting the home he helped destroy, fulfilling his redemption. Lyanna died taking down a giant. Melisandre died after having fulfilled her purpose. Edd died to protect one of his best friends. Beric died to protect Arya so she could save humanity. While Jon and Dany were not the saviours of mankind, like everyone expected them to be, they were still instrumental in helping humans to victory; Jon having done all the work to bring together almost the entire continent to fight the threat and Dany providing valuable help with her dragons and armies. Underwhelming, perhaps, but it didn’t damage any character. 

I never expected things to go smoothly afterwards. I enjoyed the political tensions between Jon, Dany and Sansa and was looking forward to seeing Dany become greyer as she struggled in a different continent and with competition. I knew Jaime was going to be in King’s Landing again at some point, to wrap up his storyline, and wouldn’t just shack up in bliss with Brienne for the entire rest of the season. I knew beloved characters would probably die (even though I had hopes for several, not just mine). But I did not expect that, from episode 4, the story would begin spiralling into a cruel, sadistic and nihilistic mess that would continue until the very end and spare almost no character that wasn’t named Stark. Nearly all the evolution, all the progress, all the journeys that people kept coming back for, year after year, were invalidated in the span of three episodes, bringing them back to square one, if not worse.

Jon, assassinating his aunt/lover, broken by the fight and taking a black for which we don’t even understand the need for anymore. Dany, her long journey to Westeros ending with being murdered by her nephew/lover for having gone from grey to Mad Queen in the space of two episodes. Jaime, apparently accepting that all these years have only taught him that his true self is a hateful man, obsessed only with his sister to the point of destroying anything that is good, pure and innocent and does not deserve to be caught up in their mess. Brienne, essentially ends up right back where she started, serving in a celibate order after learning that love is not not meant to last for women like her and failing to prevent the death of the man she loved (and having to write her rejection down, to add insult to injury). Cersei, trying to pass off Jaime’s child as someone else’s, her prophecy discarded completely and facing no comeuppance for her actions. Missandei, freed from chains to end up executed in chains. Sandor, dying in the fire that traumatized him his entire life. And even the ones who did not face bitter endings did not move much from where they either started or had been for a long time: Tyrion (who lost much of his charm and intelligence this season just to watch the world burn around him) and Davos ended up in the same sort of advisory position they were in all along. 

The ending was advertised as a bittersweet, Lord of the Rings type ending, but there was a lot more bitterness than there was sweetness in this. Especially when it comes to romance. Rarely is life so cruel to couples, and the only sweetness was reserved for Sam and Gilly, who everyone knew had been safe for years and who, let’s face it, never elicited particularly strong emotional investment from anybody to qualify as a payoff. 

Sansa came out perhaps the strongest in the end, which is well deserved. But this was not just the Sansa story. There were a dozen other plots and characters people cared about, and they almost all were served a fate that made you feel like there had been no point in their journeys all along. And for a show that wanted to subvert expectations (!!!1!1!), it ended ticking the most predictable boxes in terms of characters fates: all the bad guys are dead (and the one “good guy” that died broke bad in order to justify her assassination), all the redemptive characters are dead too, and only the good guys are left.

So here we are, at the end of the biggest show of all time, with an ending that retroactively ruined most of what made it so big in the first place and left little room for excitement, if any. 

The sad thing is that all of this was easily avoidable. When people say that delivering an ending that satisfies everyone is impossible, that is very true, especially for a show with such high expectations. But delivering an ending that disappoints nearly everyone, is actually equally as hard, if not harder, and yet... they managed to achieve it. 

Finishing a story is never easy, but I think the important thing to keep in mind is that what makes people stick with a series is the journey they are taken on (especially when they are asked to invest years of their lives into a story). If the journey starts to suck, that’s when you lose numbers. So if you have a good enough journey, with all the ups and downs and angst and drama you like, which makes people stick with it for years, you’ve accomplished 90% of the task. The ending is just the icing on the cake and it needs to provide a payoff that is consistent with that journey and does not make the audience feel like they never want to eat what’s underneath that icing ever again. 

This does not mean handing out fanservice left and right. But there’s a difference between succumbing to fanservice and destroying literally everything that made people come back for more and that the story had been building up towards. There’s a difference between fanservice and delivering an ending that is unpredictable not because it emerged from a subtle thread woven within the story that was always present if only people paid attention, but because it came out of nowhere and/or had little to no buildup within the story, and/or went in the completely opposite direction to where the buildup was pointing towards. 

I see some complaints about the criticism this season is receiving saying people are too emotional about it and therefore not being objective. And yes! Of course people get emotional about stories! What kind of writer doesn’t want people to become emotionally invested in their story, and just see it as a giant, sterile, plot-driven spectacle? This is why humans are attracted to stories in the first place! And this is particularly true of a story like ASOIAF which is entirely built upon the concept of character perspective. This is why, while slow, the first two episodes were still highly rated: they were character-driven. This is why, despite The Long Night being criticized for an underwhelming conclusion to the WWs storyline, it was not even remotely near the huge dealbreaker the last three episodes were for the audience. That is because The Long Night disappointed in wrapping up the plot, while the rest of the season crashed the characters. I feel like D&D’s never really understood how crucial character-driven perspective was (they didn’t even remember Sam was a major POV character!) and so wrote the show as a sterile, shocking, plot-driven spectacle that eventually made people sick due to the total lack of care with which the characters they know and love were handled. 

And let’s stop pretend that misery and nihilism at all costs is “adult storytelling” while hope and a sense of fulfilment is for children. Adults need hope too, perhaps more than children, because we know just how tough life can be, whereas children often don’t. Dramas can be great tools to show how people face and overcome tragedies and conflict, find the silver linings and some comfort in the chaos, even if things ultimately don’t end the way they expected they would at the start. All Game of Thrones has shown us, in the end, is how people fail and how little changes. No matter how hard the journey, no matter the effort, no matter the loss, most of these beloved characters might as well never have set off on their journeys at all, given the results. 

While this kind of storytelling can work and be compelling for a single season, or a single book, or a single movie, once you ask people to invest years of their lives, you will never land the ending with this last minute, bait-and-switch approach. 

So who wants go back to the start, now, and rewatch the story of these characters once again, knowing most of them end back to square one? Who thinks that it was worth the journey, if we end up exactly where we started? I certainly don’t. 

[shanastoryteller]

How would you describe Oedipus? I've been asking around and most people either give a generic description or "motherf*king" jokes so I was wondering how you'd describe his story? I see it as tragic but I just can't seem to paint the story from my mind to my mouth. I'm clumsy with words but I admire yours. You have this way with powerful, lingering stories, haunting tells and perfect endings. So.. how would describe the tragic hero named Oedipus?

oh, it’s a tragedy, of course it’s a tragedy, how can it beanything else?

but i think the tragedy is not in his actions, not in thefather he killed nor the mother he wed nor the children he sired. no, it’s notin what he did, it’s in who he was, the tragedy here is that oedipus was a good man and a good king and unlike so many mythical figures, he did not reap whathe sowed

the tragedy here is not that he was human and erred and suffereddue to his errors.

it’s that he did not err, and suffered, it’s that the sinsof our fathers are our sins too and we cannot escape them

the oracle of delphi gave a prophecy that foretold that any sonof king laius would kill his father and marry his mother. so when his wife andqueen jocasta bore him a son, he had the baby’s ankles nailed together andordered him to be left to die.

laius erred. laius planned to kill his son of blood, who had committed no crime, who was in perfect health,  who had done nothing but be born. it is laiuswho committed the sin of infanticide, and through this sin all other suchevents transpired

a shepherd spirits the infant away instead of leaving him todie, and he is eventually brought to the house of king polybus and queen merope, wherehe is adopted. laius and jocasta have no more children, even though this leaveslaius heirless. since we know jocasta will later bear four more children, weknow it is not her whom is the issue here. after laius commits this grievouscrime, he is left sterile, and this, here, is where i believe the curse trulybegins.

the curse over thebes does not begin with oedipus’s rule,with his supposed transgressions. it begins with his father’s sin.

oedipus grows up a devoted and loving son. he eventually hearsrumors about his strange birth and consults the same oracle his birth fatherhad, and is told the same prophecy. not knowing he’s adopted, he think theprophecy refers to polybus and merope, and he flees his home, horrified at thethought that he could ever harm his beloved parents in such a way.

he’s traveling, and upon a crossroads he meets his birthfather, laius. they do not know or recognize eachother. they quarrel about who may precedefirst. it’s important to note that laius is the one who attacks first, who’s sooffended that this unknown man will not move for a king that he tries to killhim, unknowingly attempting to murder his son a second time.

oedipus kills laius, not knowing he’s a king or his father, ratherthan let himself be killed, and fulfills the first part of the prophecy. onceagain, it is laius’s actions that are the incendiary actions here. if he had notattempted to kill oedipus, perhaps he wouldn’t have died. if he hadn’t thrownhis son away, oedipus never would have killed him, since he was so aghast atthe possibility of harming his adopted parents that he ran from his home andhis life rather than risk it.

oedipus acts in self defense. even if he hadn’t, laius hadalready tried to kill him once, although neither of them had been aware of it.a trial by combat would be the least of what oedipus would be owed. he breaksno laws, does not act in hate or malice or fear. oedipus kills laius, kills hisfather, but no great sin is committed. patricide is a sin, but defendingyourself is not, refusing to die is not a sin.

so he travels, and lands upon thebes, where a sphinx hastaken residence, eating anyone who attempts to enter the city and cannot answerit’s riddle, effectively cutting off all trade to thebes and trapping all itsresidents inside, lest they leave and never be able to return. was the sphinxhere when laius left? we do not know. it doesn’t say.

but if it was – did laius leave his city to die? was thissphinx just another piece of the curse laius had brought down upon thebes byattempting kill his freshly born son?

oedipus, a cleverer man than any who have yet tried to enterthebes, answers the sphinx’s riddle, and the creature leaves, having beendefeated by this man’s intellect.

oedipus is a man who has shown himself to be strong enoughto kill a king, and clever enough to defeat a sphinx. he has not harmed any whodid not first try to harm him, was so against committing harm against those hecared about that he simply left them behind. oedipus so far has shown no fatalflaw, no poor judgement, nothing damning or ruinous.

jocasta’s brother, creon, had said any man who could ridthebes of the sphinx would be named king, and given his sister’s hand in marriage.oedipus had not known about this before arriving. he had not come to thebeswith the intention of becoming king.

but king he becomes.

he is given jocasta’s hand in marriage, and the finalportion of the prophecy is complete. he weds and bed and fathers children withhis birth mother.

notice, however, that this only happens in the first placebecause of how honorable and kind oedipus is to begin with.

jocasta is in her forties, at least. she may be a beautifulwoman, but she’s not a young woman. yet there are no accounts of oedipus beingunfaithful, or cruel. jocasta bears him four children, two sons and twodaughters, when during those long years after oedipus she had not had anotherchild with laius. if oedipus had rejected this widowed queen, said her age madeher unsuitable, had taken mistresses, had kept her as a wife in name only –then perhaps so much pain could have been spared.

but he didn’t do that. oedipus took a wife twice his age, atbest, took a woman who was not a virgin, who had been the wife of this land’sformer king, and he dedicates himself to her. he is faithful and attentive, andshe must be fond of him, because she later tries to shield him from the truthwhen she uncovers it.

which part of his actions can we take account with? yes,jocasta was his mother, and it is incest – but he didn’t know that. he didn’twant that. to do otherwise than what he did, to cast aside his gifted bride,could only be considered cruelty. and oedipus was not cruel.

many years after this marriage, a plague strikes thebes. whyis not clear, because if it were truly due to oedipus’s actions, to the godstaking offense at this incestuous union between mother and father-killer,surely it would not have taken years to come to fruition?

but a plague comes, and the oracle says that the only way tolift it is to see that laius’s killer is brought to justice.

(is it laius, yet again, bringing sorrow upon his city? isit his restless spirit which curses all of thebes? it is a strange coincidencethat the infertility which he was cursed with after trying to kill his infantson is the same plight that now faces all of thebes.)

and of course, ofcourse, honorable and kind oedipus vows to bring the killer to justice,says that this killer will be exiled for his crime of murdering the king.

exiled, not killed, what a peculiar punishment, what a merciful punishment for a king killer,what a merciful judgement from a merciful man.

but things unravel, as they do. he tells creon to bring himthe blind prophet tiresias, who tells oedipus that he must stop digging intothis matter. but the good of his city is at stake, so he can’t, of course he can’t,and tiresias calls him false for not knowing his true parentage. he and creonquarrel, and slowly, oh so slowly, the truth comes out.

a messenger comes, saying that his adopted father has died,and oedipus is relieved. not for any malicious reasons, but because it means hewon’t fulfill his prophecy of murdering him. he refuses to go home becausemerope is still there, refuses to take up the title of king that is surely hisby right, because he fears harming his mother. when the messenger says thatoedipus is adopted, and there’s no reasons for him not to go home, jocasta finallyrealizes that oedipus is her son. she begs him to stop his search for laius’s killer, desperate tokeep the truth from him.

jocasta knows, and tries to protect oedipus. she mustbelieve he’s worthy of being on the throne, he must have showed her kindness andaffection if she’s so desperate to protect him from the truth, even at theexpense of the well being of thebes.

but oedipus does not listen. he leaves, and finds the shepherdwho gave him to his adopted parents so long ago, and discovers the truth.

he is the son of lauis and jocasta. lauis is the man hekilled at the crossroads. he has killed his fathe and married his mother, allthem each unaware of each other.

after this, there are differing accounts of what happenednext.

sophocles’s account is most popular. he returns to find hiswife and mother jocasta has killed herself, and he takes the pins from herbroach and blinds himself, unable to stand the sight of her. he is then exiled,as he said laius’s killer would be, and his daughter antigone guides him untilhe dies soon after.

in euripides’s version, jocasta does not kill herself.oedipus is blinded by a servant of laius, and so justice is still served to laius’skiller, and he continues to rule thebes. i like to think jocasta rules withhim, alive and well, because she no more deserved death than oedipus deservedblindness.

the tragedy here is not in oedipus. it is in lauis, theclear villain of this story, the one who damned and hurt and cursed all aroundhim. he who caused so much strife, and then left it all for his son to fix, forhis son to struggle with.

but he did fix it.

oedipus was a fair and just ruler of thebes, a kind husbandto jocasta, a good father to his children, from all accounts, since antigone wasso devoted to him, and he was disappointed in his sons for their selfishness because that’s not how he raised them.

perhaps oedipus is a story of how our fathers, ourpredecessors, those who come before us will curse us and damn us and leave usmore problems than solutions can be found

perhaps oedipus is a cautionary tale, and our tragic figureis not oedipuis, but laius, who made his own ruin, who’s spiteful hands leftscars on all they touched.

oedipus is a tragedy, but only because it reminds us thatour own undoing, our own unhappy endings, aren’t necessarily within ourcontrol. our own tragedies may not be our fault, may not be due to ourmistakes, maybe we didn’t earn our unhappiness.

it’s not fair.

it’s not fair, and that’s the true tragedy of oedipus. thatgood, kind, clever, merciful people can do their absolute best, can showkindness and sacrifice and love, and in the end it won’t be able to save themfrom the mistakes other people have made.

oedipus was a good man, and a good king, and it may not havesaved him – but it saved all those in thebes.

yes, oedipus was blinded. yes, jocasta died.

but the spinx was gone, their line continued, and thebesthrived.

the tragedy of oedipus is the idea that we’re not in controlof our own destiny.

the triumph of oedipus is the idea that we need not controlit in order to have a destiny worth remembering.

[theclaravoyant]

i've got a prompt for you! if you're taking prompts that is XD since bobbi-ann now has powers, how about a fic with may reacting to the news? (considering bahrain/katya)

AN ~ I don’t think this is quite what you had in mind but I decided to take the opportunity for a little moment of healing between Daisy and May over that kind of thing which is always good. Sending my best wishes to you

Read on AO3 (~1400wd)

-

Sounds Like a Song - Ch.11

After Bobbi Ann went to bed, Daisy hid herself on the Zephyr. She’d gone up under the guise of a late-night online meeting with some Inhumans in Australia, but when she got there, pulled out her laptop and curled up on one of the chairs like old times. What to do, she wondered. Jump on some hacktivist platforms? That might take her mind off things. Work on that game she’d started months back? Or… watch that video of when Bobbi Ann had first learned to walk?

Chubby little toddler legs, and her dad’s straw-blond hair. Daisy twisted her lip between her fingers, watching her younger and considerably more bedraggled self lead the tiny Bobbi Ann across the carpet. These were not her first steps; it was somebody from playgroup a few weeks later, filming them at Daisy’s request. Bobbi-Ann’s tiny little fists clutched at Daisy’s fingers and they walked. Slowly. Unsteadily. Rewatching, Daisy realised that somewhere along the line she’d let herself believe that she’d be able to lead Bobbi through her whole life like that. Protecting her, guiding her… micromanaging her, even. But the world was a chaotic place. Once, Daisy had loved that about it, but now that her little girl had been swept up in its current it was hard not to fear. Hard not to be angry, though she knew everyone meant well.

“You okay?”

Daisy looked up toward the voice to find May, in all her unreadable insightfulness, standing in the doorway. Daisy tried and failed to flash a smile, so May stepped further into the room.

“FitzSimmons are sorry,” she offered.

“I know,” Daisy agreed, shaking her head as she closed her laptop. “I’ll get over it eventually. It’s just – she’s my little girl, that’s all. I feel so…”

“Helpless?”

“I guess that’s it,” Daisy agreed. “I can’t decide what to feel. I’m – unprepared. I wish it hadn’t happened now. I wish Bobbi Ann had got to choose when she went through Terragenesis. I mean, I guess she kind of did, but I mean… It’s just so much. I wish I could have seen it coming.”

“Knowing the future is no small thing,” May pointed out. “You more than anyone should know that. Except maybe Raina.”

Daisy, who’d suffered so much in the name of prophecy. Raina, who’d been killed for what she knew. A chill ran down her spine.

“It was a figure of speech,” Daisy pointed out, but she saw May’s point. No scenario would have ever been ideal and hindsight just shone on all the bad parts of what had been. What if she’d waited until Bobbi-Ann was in her twenties and Bobbi felt she’d been denied part of her identity? What if Bobbi had gone through Terragenesis during puberty or some other emotionally volatile time, wouldn’t that be harder to control? What if she’d been kidnapped and forced through it? As much as Daisy hated to think of it, knowing their lives, such a possibility was not entirely out of the picture. So maybe, in some ways, this was for the best. Besides, Bobbi didn’t seem so traumatized – in fact, just before bed she had been enjoying testing her Uncle Fitz’s room full of circuit-breakers a little too much. Almost as much as Fitz himself had been, Daisy guessed.

The thought brought a tiny smile to her face, and she knew there was no way May missed that, so she let it spread with a little chagrin.

“How do you do that?” she wondered.

“You already know what you know,” May said with a shrug. “Sometimes you just need a little nudge.”

Daisy snorted. “What I need is a drink.”

“I can do that too. Come on.”

May nodded them through to the Zephyr’s bar, and Daisy smiled as she poured each of them two fingers of whiskey. Daisy took a grateful sip, soothed by the familiar burn, and let out a heavy sigh full of the day’s anxieties. If she was not mistaken, May sighed too.

“So. Bobbi-Ann has powers, huh?”

“Yup,” Daisy confirmed. “Same powers as her dad, it looks like. Which…”

She rapped her fingers against her glass, trying to find the words. She’d moved on so long ago, and yet somehow not at all. It was not as raw and painful as it once had been, which in a way made it worse. She could remember the day he’d first smiled at her as easily as the day he’d gone away.

“Which what?” May pressed gently. Daisy rolled her eyes – who was May to demand explanation? – but maybe she knew that talking helped. Putting a name to a thing gave it less power.

“It hurts,” Daisy whispered. She cleared her throat, embracing the courage of confession to soldier through it. “Yeah. It hurts. It’s just – Lincoln had this thing, you know. He thought every Inhuman had their particular powers for a reason. A specific purpose in life. I think he honestly believed at the end there that… he’d always been destined to die, or something. To save me, just because he could turn the plane off. Not like any of us could have done that? Strapped a brick to the accelerator?”

She laughed, and wiped away a tear that slipped down her cheek.

“I don’t know. I never believed that part of it. But now it feels like I’m – I’m being proven right, in a way. If Bobbi Ann has Lincoln’s powers, that means his purpose was never fulfilled. Which means he didn’t have to die for me, which… hurts.”

May nodded, empathising. “Sometimes it hurts, being right.”

“Mhmm.” Daisy clinked her glass against May’s and took a swig. May, meanwhile, took only a sip. She watched Daisy with concerned eyes, and unspoken words behind her lips. She wondered if now was the time to speak them: after all, she and Daisy had clashed over this before, and the last thing she wanted was to cause more pain while Daisy was in such a vulnerable emotional state. Then again, it was precisely because they’d clashed over this before that it was worth mentioning, and it was precisely because of the events of the day that had put Daisy in such a state, that it was worth mentioning now. So May took a deep breath and spoke.

“Nobody’s purpose is ever to die, Daisy,” she pointed out gently. “And losing Lincoln was a tragedy, so I for one am glad that he’s left part of his legacy with us. Bobbi’s a wonderful girl and I’m sure she’ll use her powers for good.”

Daisy looked up then, and in her eyes May saw a little of that fear she was trying to hide; that fear of harm, but also of rejection. The fear that what she had faced, even from her close friends and family, her daughter would face too.

Not so.

“I want you to know that she’s safe with me,” May promised. “As safe as I can make her. And I think I speak for everyone out there, too. We’ve learnt from our mistakes, and we’re going to do better this time. All of us are. But… especially me.”

When Daisy didn’t immediately respond, May dropped her eyes. She remembered all too well Daisy’s burning fury when she’d found out about Bahrain. In all honesty, she did not think Daisy had yet forgiven her for that – and maybe she never would – but still she found herself hoping that it was not destined to always be an open wound between them. That she would protect Bobbi Ann with her life stood on its own, of course, but it’d be a lie to say that no great weight would lift from her shoulders if Daisy saw this as an opportunity to close the gap.

Despite her hopes, though, it still came as a surprise when Daisy slid her glass onto the bench and folded May into her arms with the wordless yet all-expressing love of a child. After a moment, May patted her back softly. Daisy smiled.

“Thank you,” she murmured gratefully. “It’s nice to know she’s in good hands.”

[aion-rsa]

Raised by Wolves Review (Spoiler-Free)

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This review covers the first six episodes (of eight) of Raised by Wolves and contains no spoilers. 

HBO Max’s new science fiction series Raised by Wolves does itself something of a disservice with the misnomer of a title. If you watch the trailers, in which the android Mother (Amanda Collin) tells her pack of human children the story of The Three Little Pigs, the punchline is that she herself is the Big Bad Wolf: both nurturing the future of the human race on a distant planet, yet willing to kill anyone who would threaten their makeshift family—including, potentially, any runts of the litter.

Yet the crux of Aaron Guzikowski’s (Prisoners, The Red Road) and Ridley Scott’s (Alien, Blade Runner, The Martian) series is not futuristic fairy tale retellings, but the much loftier notion of belief—as the foundation of a people, but also the impetus for so many of humanity’s conflicts. To wit, the reason that androids Mother and Father (Abubakar Salim) wind up on Kepler-22b with a dozen frozen embryos is to escape a war between the Mithraic zealots (space Crusaders who worship their god Sol) and the atheist resistance, which will irreparably destroy 2145-era Earth. Though androids are deemed soulless, they are nonetheless among the ranks of the religious… unless they are reprogrammed for a new purpose, in the case of Mother and Father. The Mithraic contingent is sending an Ark—named, of course, Heaven—with carefully-selected colonists to the same habitable planet. But the atheists get there ten years ahead of them, plenty of time to rear a passel of kiddos, in whom they have seeded the greatest weapon of all: allegiance to no god.

“Belief in the unreal can comfort the human mind, but it also weakens it,” Mother explains in her many moments of quasi-home-schooling. “The civilization we’re seeding here will be built on humanity’s belief in itself, not an imagined deity.” A fascinating thesis, even as the arrival of the Ark’s children challenges Kepler-born Campion’s (Winta McGrath) brutal self-reliance and tempts him toward their faith (when usually these narratives involve being tempted away), and when two Mithraic parents seek to rescue their son from the jaws of Mother’s strict and often deadly parentage.

Unfortunately, any incisive debate over the usefulness of belief is overshadowed by attempts to be clever and reskin old myths and legends. The series is more concerned with looking stunning than in actually stunning its viewers with new takes on what is by now admittedly a pretty archetypal premise.

With that said, there is plenty for the eye to take in. The opening credits, with a haunting song written and performed by Mariam Wallentin and Ben Frost, feature concept art so beautiful that it’s no wonder that Scott was compelled to sign on as producer and director. The series’ vision of Kepler-22b, while oxygen-rich, is nonetheless a bleak landscape that brings to mind the Elephant Graveyard in The Lion King, studded with the intact skeletons of long-dead alien beasts. The atheists’ new home may be uncolonized, but something clearly lived there before androids and humans landed. Survival is harsh, the world unforgiving to its new residents, especially tiny, defenseless children who are about as vulnerable as young’uns in a Grimm’s fairy tale. But Raised by Wolves riffs on the nature-versus-nurture debate by constantly questioning whether Mother poses an equal threat to her young, or if their fates were always out of her hands.

Because before she was Mother, she was a necromancer—a special breed of android that sheds its skin for a bronze chassis and flies through war zones in a crucifix pose, screaming sonic blasts that explode humans into pulpy smears. Her own creator, a human and Campion’s namesake, overwrote her murderous programming to make her a nurturer instead… but he didn’t take away that killer instinct, and it would seem that some wires are getting crossed.

Flashbacks to Earth’s war and the Ark’s digital simulation for the minds of its colonists while they’re cryogenically frozen—it’s Heaven, get it?—will surely engage sci-fi fans. (A warning for any viewers with epilepsy: Multiple episodes feature strobing sequences.) But for all that the show has style, the substance is not up to par.

While the series repeatedly plays up the tension of whether Mother will succumb to her necromantic programming and destroy her children, the character is so shrill and manic that she rarely comes across as sympathetic. Collin is acting the hell out of this unlikeable maternal figure, but the late-stage addition of a “humanizing” backstory does little to retcon the character’s brutality. Mother’s ideals of parenthood and civilization are so rigidly ingrained that she is unwilling to compromise on them, nor take seriously Father’s contributions. Would that there had been more of this dynamic, as he is a standard service android, low-ranking on the food chain and therefore dismissed by Mother as not able to protect their children. Salim winningly plays Father’s frustration with not being taken seriously by his quasi-partner nor by his children, ineffectually making the robot equivalent of dad jokes while slowly challenging his own programming limitations.

Despite the fact that Mother and Father’s flight from Earth toward a better future drives the series’ premise, it’s difficult to ever fully sympathize with them—and this reviewer never thought she’d have a tough time rooting for the atheists and the androids! But while the Mithraic faith is clearly corrupt, built on violence and coercion, its members are sympathetically flawed and questioning of their system. In particular, soldier Marcus (Travis Fimmel) and doctor Sue (Niamh Algar), partners first and later parents, come to challenge their sect’s insistence toward burning up in Sol’s light rather “selfishly” loving their son Paul (Felix Jamieson), which goes against the Mithraic faith’s abhorrence of attachments. Their mission to rescue him provides the real beating heart of the series.

Again, viewers must wade through a lot of noise to get to these poignant moments of character growth. A lot of that noise is retreading of gender-specific and therefore predictable plotlines that, frankly, feel outdated for a supposedly futuristic series.

Raised by Wolves is a thought experiment in big ideas and unprecedented leaps of faith, yet it lands in the same spots as its predecessors. The female-presenting android is reprogrammed to be maternal, yet despite the fact that she must be remade on a cellular level, there is never a consideration to do so with her male counterpart instead. (Part of that relates to Mother’s identity as a necromancer and the oh-so-clever tension between her killer instincts and her new motherly persona, which is an exhausting binary that the series never transcends.)

It’s the same among the children, even despite their differences in being raised by “wolves” versus the Ark: Campion is perceived as the Mithraic prophet, fulfilling a vague Pentagonal Prophecy about how “an orphan boy in a strange land will lead us to a city of peace” despite the layers of chance that contributed to his survival. By contrast, Mithraic teen Tempest (Jordan Loughran) gets impregnated, not by any immaculate conception, but because she’s raped by a high-ranking officer on the Ark while in cryogenic sleep. The boy gets leadership and destiny foisted upon him, while the girl struggles with a violent and violating pregnancy, in a world that doesn’t even have the ability to debate pro-choice versus pro-life.

It’s frustrating to see the same binary gender roles directing both parties’ forays on what is repeatedly referred to as a virgin planet—literally, it’s a blank slate where anything could happen, and they revert to old, problematic, limiting ways. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be a commentary on humanity’s inability to change in the future, but instead an unconscious reflection of our contemporary biases.

And that’s a shame, because this reductive storytelling bogs down the series’ most powerful point—that trying to control humans’ beliefs, no matter from a religious or atheist side, will only lead to tragedy. Perhaps the final two episodes resolve that better, but (as with bad parenting) by then the damage is done. Raised by Wolves would have been better served by retelling parables than fairy tales.

Raised by Wolves premieres its first three episodes September 3 on HBO Max.

The post Raised by Wolves Review (Spoiler-Free) appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[ikagrp]

Welcome Chloe! You’ve been accepted as your first choice of Emily Browning as Nancy Banks. Please send in your account within the next 24 hours. Also, please follow these tags: ikag starter , Ikag social, ikaghh , ikag important , ikag task ,  ikagfollow ,  ikagunfollow and  ikag event.

OC INFORMATION

NAME (AND PRONOUNS) /AGE/TIMEZONE:

it’s me, Chloe, who left a week ago and got sad about it. I’m back and I’m bad (and I’m 21 in GMT she/her)

ACTIVITY

I think my problem last time was that I was just drifting all the time and I had my phone at my desk at work so I was just scrolling and lurking for the heck of it… I have a work phone now and don’t take my smartphone in so no distractions, when I’m home I’m really content with the fact that I have concentrated at work all day and I’m just managing my time so much better (what a difference a week makes, eh?) anyway, I should be on a little every evening I should think. 

RP EXPERIENCE

5 years eh

IC INFORMATION

WHO IS THE CHARACTER?

PLEASE KEEP THIS LAYOUT FOR US. SO THAT IT IS EASIER FOR US TO UPDATE EVERYTHING.

NAME: Nancy Banks

AGE: 26

LOCATION: Hackney, England

FACECLAIM: Emily Browning

BIRTHDAYS: November 11th, 1990

(Here is a list of current birthdays, try not to use one already taken!)

BIOGRAPHY:

Nancy never had much of a chance in life, and for a while she begged to differ. For her, to admit that she wasn’t going to accomplish anything in her unfortunate life, was to set a self fulfilling prophecy. She had always wanted to try her best, always wanted to make something of herself and succeed, no matter how many curve balls life threw at her. But some weren’t so easily dodged, and as Nancy grew, the lines on her palm mapped out tragedy, should a psychic have inspected.

The Banks Family in this story, to our dismay, were not kite-flying well-to-do’s with pleasant manners and good fortune. A dingy block of flats in Hackney is where we set our scene, and behind the peeling green door of number 9 lived two children, Nancy and Alfie, and their father. Mr Banks was a nasty man - a drunk who abused the system and his children just as belligerently. Mrs Banks had recently fled, ran away shortly before her youngest child Alfie’s 3rd birthday. Life at number 9 certainly was not a spoonful of sugar. It fell upon 7 Year Old Nancy to care for her little brother, and feed both him and her disgrace of a father, who’s temper was as short as his infant son. She had a strict routine for a little girl, day to day; get Alfie up, give him breakfast, get him ready, get herself ready, walk Alfie to nursery, walk to school, pick Alfie up from Nursery, do tea, put Alfie to bed, do homework, get as much sleep as possible. Every now and then her Dad would add a few things into the schedule, such as walk Alfie ‘round the block while a lady came over, or pick up a 4 pack from the corner shop. It didn’t take neighbours or teachers awfully long to notice an unhappy child, thankfully. Absences at school and bruise decorated skin, like cracked porcelain, caused concern. Aged 9 and 5, Nancy and Alfie were whisked into the Foster Care System. It wasn’t pleasant - they went through 5 homes, and it was only the 5th that treated them like the innocence they were, with the world potentially at their feet. It was after 8 years in the system that they were at last given a small chance. The carers recognized Nancy’s potential - her thick skin, determination and application to education. How she had been such a brave little soldier, and through it all, stuck to her ambitions. Nancy was desperate to go to university, and it was her fifth foster carer, a kind lady called Susan, that gave her the chance she had begged for her entire life. Nancy got a place on an Anthropology course at a prestigious London university, and at 18 years old, life finally began.

With the misfortune of her childhood spearing her determination to do well, Nancy was not easily distracted. However, it was in her first year at college that she first met a girl that, unbeknownst to her, changed Miss Banks’ perspective for the better. Eve was wonderful, and Nancy thought the world of her, but being the first friend she had ever really had, perhaps might have been considered just a little bit clingy. But how could she ever risk loosing this angel that had blessed her tragic life? Nancy’s heart was enormous, and so desperate for love that she never knew what to do with it. Suppressing her feelings for Eve was easy enough; she had such a desperation to keep her around that she learned to manifest her emotions into a further tool for determination. Getting her degree was the most important thing, and she was destined to be a high flyer, she just believed she had to earn it the hard way. Being so naturally clever meant she could spend plenty of time socializing, and despite being incredibly fragile and insecure, she over time expanded her social network as far as the four corners of London. She started to translate her sorrow into soul music when she was 19, and wrote her own songs that she performed regularly at the infamous Ronnie Scotts open mic night. It took a lot of guts to come out of her shell, but the latter parts of her adolescence saw her flourishing quite magnificently.

When Eve introduced Nancy to Colette, once more, she discovered a new portion of her heart that swelled just as fiercely as the section belonging to Eve. She fell so easily, that seeing the two friends she held so dear begin a relationship was something of a relief. She didn’t have to get herself worked up so ridiculously about how to channel her feelings for each of them; she didn’t have to meticulously separate each grain of sand that accounted for the endless beaches worth of sentiments for the two girls from the reckless eraser that was the tide. All she really cared about was each of them to be happy; she had her budding musical career, soaring grades, and unsuspected popularity to keep her from souring. She did not predict her heart getting the better of her. She would never have put herself down as the kind of girl to perform a reckless, brash act of jealousy, such as the one she eventually found herself in the midst of one night when she and Colette were watching a film together, and the sincerity of the romantic notions on screen swayed Nancy to spill her forbidden heart tugs. She didn’t mean to kiss Colette, her actions were purely instinctive and wrapped with curbed passion, and when she witnessed Eve’s harsh sentence on her fiance, a crushing guilt caused Nancy to spiral into a venomous self loathing. She left Colette be, but couldn’t walk away from Eve. To regain her trust was all she wanted, and after doing all she could, a portion of Eveleen’s heart was her own for the keeping. They dated for around a year, until life took Eve to alternative directions and Nancy couldn’t bear to leave her city of London behind. It was amicable, but due to Nancy’s lack of interest in modern technology and social media, contact was difficult to maintain. 

Since the three’s parting of ways, Nancy has tried her hardest to continue her Jazz career, though never succeeding much greater than a regular spot at Ronnie Scott’s with the in house band. Her degree, despite excellent grades, never amounted to an awful lot of good, and the sorrowful songbird, until her arrival at the mansion, worked as a barmaid in a pub in Peckham alongside her equally unfortunate brother. Though her social life is plentiful, and she is superficially rich in admiration, a hole has always remained in her heart for the two women she both lost and loved. 

PARA SAMPLE

POOF!

ANYTHING ELSE

Nancy is a connection of both Eve and Colette. Even though she is returning, she is essentially a revamped new model, so would not have been on the show the first time around, only joined when it moved to London. She was friends with Colette, and the reason her and Eve split up, and then managed to plant a seed in Eve’s heart, and dated her for a year. As discussed. love you thank you