#the urge/inclination towards violence to people who did wrong to me is a villainous act

[v-arbellanaris]

i think the problem (?) is that the only kind of (fictional?) love that interests me is the kind of love that changes the world. the kind of love that derails the narrative, the kind of love that changes everything -- not necessarily by how special or unique the love is but by the very mundanity of it. the love that grows, not in spite of the barren lovelessness of Before, but out of it. i think that's why I'm always so invested in ships that are two people diametrically opposed to each other, or enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, or two people on separate sides of the morality issue coin, because i love it when love... not that it changes a person but it allows the person to Become. the space, the grace, to change. to love the monster, to love the unlovable and the intolerable, is to make it something other than a monster, than unlovable, than intolerable. i love it when being loved at your worst, ugliest, most horrible self is what makes you want to be someone worth loving. like is this ANYTHING to anyone or

[ipraygreywords]

Slayers Week 2 Day 2: Villains

But is he really? 

 “I am both better and worse than you thought” (Sylvia Plath). 

Of all the many characters for whom I have written, none is more difficult to pinpoint than Rezo, in this particular regard.  This is the man who heals stray kittens for little boys when nobody is looking, who devoted 150 years of life to traveling nonstop and healing hundreds of thousands of people of illness, but also steals another preteen boy’s body for the chance to cure his own blindness.  See what I mean?

My ultimate conclusion is that Rezo is a good person who has had to compensate for personal impediments using opportunistic means, and because Rezo was never fully in control of Rezo’s own judgment or Rezo’s own choices, these actions became increasingly abhorrent in the two to three years before his death: but he still did a great deal of good in his life, and, were he to live free of that influence, he would be unequivocally good. That is WHY he was chosen to be corrupted.  Bad people attack symbols of goodness to demoralize their enemies.  But let me back up. Because woosh. This is a complex topic.  

Sussing out Rezo’s moral alignment is difficult because Rezo, as we see him in canon, never does anything without the powerful, corrupting presence of a ma-oh (the strongest tier of demon in all his world, one of only four in the universe, who are eclipsed by only one other being) which was affixed to his soul from birth.  This ma-oh (the mouthful name of “Ruby-Eyed Shabranigdu”) chose Rezo intentionally as a vessel, from which he hoped to eventually be resurrected (in the process, killing Rezo–a fact which alone is intriguing, because Shabranigdu has done this before to other humans, who survived his resurrected and far more comfortably cohabited with him).  So when one analyzes Rezo’s actions as a human being, one always has to try and separate out Shabranigdu’s manipulations from Rezo’s natural inclinations. Let’s get a couple (overly simplistic, imho) anti arguments out of the way first:

–People who dislike Rezo often point out that Shabranigdu picked Rezo because he saw vulnerabilities that he could exploit to the point of serious moral corruption.  That means it was possible to break Rezo: but I–and Lina Inverse, the chief protagonist of the Slayers series–believe that still doesn’t condemn Rezo as a “bad” or “weak” person. It just means that Shabranigdu, who is a master manipulator, could find a strategy with which to erode Rezo’s will. I also believe that because Rezo was born with a famously powerful capacity for white/healing magic, and a demonstrable urge to serve others in ways that could not possibly benefit him, Shabranigdu thought it would be perversely hilarious to target a cleric: a person in whom people placed their trust, to have their best interests at heart, and to make them well. (Shabranigdu’s main goal is to wreak despair and violence on the world, and return it to a state of chaos, so why not take down a few more people beyond Rezo, ruin their faith in the benevolence of their healers, while he’s at it? But I’ll get to this more later.)

–People who dislike Rezo also often assume that Shabranigdu was the cause of Rezo’s eyes being sealed shut, causing him “blindness,” from birth. Why is this important to your question? Because when we analyze the series more closely, it becomes clear that Rezo’s eyes are a protective seal AGAINST Shabranigdu’s resurrection, which means that the ma-oh cannot complete his resurrection unless Rezo opens his eyes (we see this both in Slayers Season One and in Slayers Evolution-R).  When Rezo was born, his eyes acted as a failsafe shielding the world FROM Shabranigdu.  Shabranigdu had to act against that failsafe to be reborn.  So Shabranigdu turned the VIRTUE of the sealed-shut eyes into a HANDICAP which embarrassed, discouraged, and isolated Rezo, because he could cure everyone else with his amazing healing skills, but not himself (and even a saint must eventually feel jealousy and resentment from that)–such that EVEN THE THING THAT MADE HIM FAMOUS, AND GOOD, AND LOVED BY OTHERS, BECAME A SYMBOL OF “BUT NOT YOU: YOU DON’T GET TO BE HAPPY LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. NEVER YOU.”  A person who is depressed and angry and alone is much easier to break.  See below.  

–People who dislike Rezo almost always cite what he did to his own grandson Zelgadis as the most condemnation-worthy “evidence” that he is rotten to the core. While there is NO EXCUSING WHAT HE DID, and I will NEVER think what he did is okay, I could not disagree with these individuals more.  Rezo is capable of forming and maintaining loving attachments; in the end, Shabranigdu USES precisely those loving attachments to isolate Rezo, by perverting their purity, and breaking his loved ones WITH HIS OWN HANDS. What better way to demoralize a good person than to make them SEEM to choose being a monster?  There are actual contemporary scientific studies that prove that one of the best ways to torture prisoners of war is to make them torture others. It dehumanizes them, renders them weapons, and lowers their resolve to fight back. This is what happened when Rezo took Zelgadis’s words “we need to do small evils for great good, and get stronger” and twisted them into an excuse to make Zelgadis a chimera–effectively alienating Zelgadis from the world just as Shabrranigdu had Rezo–as part of his research to cure his own eyes.   (People reading this who have the “but he knew Zel could never be cured, and Evo-R proves that!” rebuttal, let me know, because I have a whole separate meta theory on that, which does not exonerate Rezo, but does cast serious doubt on the allegation that the chimera process can never be reversed).   –Rezo does terrible evils (the other big whoppers are creating and experimenting on a clone of himself, and deliberately spreading a disease to an isolated kingdom to take advantage of its ill as test subjects).  But, and while this isn’t a make it or break it thing, he lso more than once shows genuine contrition for the evil he has done, when it will benefit him in no way to do so. This is rare, and sometimes it is on the tail end of a lot of emotionally manipulative bargaining and self-justification (borne primarily of pride), but he has either apologized or openly acknowledged that his choices were evil and unconscionable, on both the occasions that he was confronted by the heroes for his choices. –People who dislike Rezo like to say “he only started his white magical career to try and heal his own eyes!” to which I answer: yes, and? The subsequent entire life he spent healing people while continuing to master other magics to heal himself were not mandatory. No one was forcing Rezo to share his findings with others.  That was an act of selflessness.   –Both times that Shabranigdu is reborn out of Rezo (which…rips apart his body, fun times) and he realizes it, he helps the heroes kill Shabranigdu, and without him they would have failed to do so.  Which. You know. BIG INDICATION that he’s not, at heart, a bad guy lol. –Rezo plans ahead to try to do damage control for potential collateral, when he does selfish and reckless things.  It’s usually not enough, and he puts new meaning to the word “quixotic.”  But it still matters for the purposes of your question. For instance, when he finally breaks down and chooses to resurrect Shabranigdu, he plans to create an arguably evenly-matched creature called a “Zanaffar” with which to kill the demon the moment he gains vision.  He also creates laboratories deep underground so that explosions can be contained and do less damage to the surrounding area.  He also thinks (wrongly) that he can heal all the people in Taforashia before they die, once he can see.    Rezo’s fatal flaw in all these cases is to assume, out of desperation, that he is capable of more than any one human being ever could be.  

Which is not good or evil, really, but HUMAN: pulling us back toward a consistent, perennial theme of Slayers, that humans are flawed but redeemable creatures, neither gods nor demons, who exist to maintain the *balance* of the cosmos (the true plan, according to Xelloss, of the most powerful of all beings, referred to as LoN).  

–People expect too much of Rezo, which I think was a genuine, conscious point the Slayers writers wanted to make.  

It doesn’t excuse anything he did that was evil.  At the same time, there are two ways to dehumanize a person. One is to vilify them.

The other is to idolize them.   Zelgadis idolized Rezo. Eris idolized Rezo.  Pokota idolized Rezo.  And Rezo took advantage of that, and that’s wrong. But think about that for a moment. It is wrong, on a moral level, to idolize a living person, and expect god-tier ethical purity at all times and under all forms of pressure.  It is wrong, and it is hurtful.  Sometimes it’s done out of naivety, sometimes emotional codependence, but in any case, it is wrong. I speak here from painful experience on the receiving end of idolization. It exerts impossible pressure on a person. And it is scary.  

Hundreds of thousands of sick and disabled people idolized Rezo. They built statues and made paintings of him. They installed him as one of the “Five Great Sages”–literally the most revered of magical users/scholars of ALL RECORDED HISTORY.  They threw so much money at him that he owned “several” mansions by the time of his death.  Rezo was good at maintaining the facade of authoritative serenity. But my God, was it ever that: a facade.  He was tired, angry, and afraid: so afraid that he once told his servant Ozel, in strictest confidence, knowing she would tell no one else, and in a tone of deep depression,  “Sometimes I lose my sense of what it is to be a person.”  

And don’t we all know the feeling, when we too are at a crossroads?  Isn’t that HUMAN?

I genuinely believe the Slayers writers wanted the audience to sort of meta-replicate the feelings of Rezo’s disciples, and expect Rezo to be a saint, and then be horrified and angry when his worst actions proved seriously otherwise. And then by the end of the story, I think they were meant to realize, this was just a guy. This was just a guy who had the rough equivalent of Satan possessing his body and soul, a guy who was meant to be a healer but had his whole life rendered a farce because of his own soul’s attempt to keep a monster sealed inside.  Rezo became a living prison for a demon, and he could not contain it. No one, in fact, who has served as the vessel of Shabranigdu has been able, ultimately, to resist him.  

[snakeandravenreviews-blog]

An Ember in the Ashes - Raven Speaks **DNF Review**

So, yes. I DNF’d one of the most hyped series of 2017/2018. And I’m not even mad about it. (Also, to be fair, I read well over half of the book before stopping. So it’s not as if I read 20 pages and decided all of these things.) I will preface this review and make a ~disclaimer~ to note that this entire review is my own opinion. I don’t mean to offend anyone with my thoughts and I don’t mean to completely demean Sabaa Tahir and her work; I was not a fan of this book for several reasons and I want to make sure they come across as valid and not just nit-picky, annoyances. If you do not agree, that’s fine and I am glad that the book worked for you! **This review will contain some spoilers**

I will start by saying I have nothing against Sabaa Tahir, I just didn’t like her book. I already posted a review on my goodreads which can be found here if you are so inclined to read my very dysfunctional initial review. But I wanted to sit down and sort my thoughts out a little more gracefully and structurally so that I can understand why I didn’t like what I read, and how I can accurately display those feelings without being a jumbled mess. I have my thoughts split into sections and they will be bolded with the sub-points underneath.

Firstly, the book is just simply overhyped. At best, it is an okay book with mediocre word building, lazy characterizations that offer no growth or depth for the reader to latch onto, and a world that is haphazardly thrown onto the page with no real descriptions that allow the readers to be fully immersed in the setting. The book has a lot of potential, but sadly that potential was greater and more positive than the actual execution. 

The word building was nothing special. I saw people on youtube and even goodreads RAVING about Tahir’s superb word building, and I was expecting a lot more than I got. “The silence of the catacombs is as vast as a moonless night, and as eerie.” Like, it’s nice but that’s about it. There are little pockets like this moment where I’m like, “oh, wow, yeah that’s cool,” but then the rest is so bland that it doesn’t even matter. “His tracks zigzag like a struck deer in the dust of Serra’s catacombs.” It’s trying, it really is, but it’s not working.

The characterizations I will go into greater detail when I talk about the characters themselves, but overall they were just lacking the depth and growth that not only most characters have, but most (all) people have as well. They were just stock, 2D characters that stayed the same throughout the novel, and overall came across as bland and unlikeable. 

The world is what really made me disappointed with this book. The premise is interesting and the entire world and the way it was structured, in theory, had all the potential to be the greatest series of the year as it was hyped to be. But the reality is that the world only gave a surface level immersion that left me unsatisfied. I will go into greater detail on this soon.

We have so many unfinished topics and characteristics of the world that it makes for more questions than satisfaction: Who are the Augurs, really? How did they come into being? How are they able to overthrow the emperor, but then allow him to also retaliate? How do they have magical powers? Why is the emperor being overthrown because he has “no male issue,” but Helene is in the running to become emperor?

What does the Empire export? What do the people make? What is the currency? How do they pay for things? Is the world more city or rural based? Why do the “trials” focus more on violence and ability to kill than they do on how to successfully run an Empire - if the trials are to find a new emperor? 

Who are the Scholars? Why can they no longer read and write, but are still belittled and oppressed for that very reason (being able to read and write)? What was Darin doing for the Resistance/not for the Resistance that was bad enough for him to be caught? Why were Laia and Darin’s parents and sister get caught and killed? 

Why does Laia constantly talk down to herself about “leaving Darin” when he told her to run so she would not be captured as well?

Secondly, serious topics were given half-assed execution. Tahir had several weighty topics that she introduced in the book, but had some of the worst execution in the addressing of those topics. Most specifically, she constantly mentions rape and the threat of rape in the book, but there’s such a lackluster implementation of that situation that causes it to lose its severity and importance as an issue. She also depicts violence as commonplace in the world, but is very inconsistent with how it is rendered.

Rape seems to be something that Tahir doesn’t fully understand. There are several times where Laia, the lead female character, is told that she will probably be raped by the students at the school (because they are known for doing that constantly to slaves/anyone) because she is “so beautiful,” and rape doesn’t really have anything to do with looks. Yes, looks do factor into why men and women are raped, but overall it is because the rapist is seeking dominance, control and power over the victim. They target people who seem or appear weak/easily manipulated so that they can take this power and control that much easier, but many do enjoy when their victim “puts up a fight” (as Marcus does when he attempts to rape Laia). Tahir constantly having both male and female characters use Laia’s beauty as the reason she will be raped also completely ignores the realities of wartime rape that happened in historical time periods such as this world that Tahir is basing her novel off of, as well as current war culture. Again, it all centers around dominance, power and control and equating rape only to looking beautiful takes away from the harsh reality that rape presents. It’s honestly uncomfortable to read, over and over again, rape being threatened and promised as a commonplace occurrence, and then for the actual occurrence to be halfway approached as if the author is afraid or hesitant to write such an action. The times that Tahir did have the characters physically act on the threats, it was really lacking any sort of stable or credible threat that these characters really meant what they “promised.”

Violence was a big theme within this book/world, but was also existing in unnecessary ways and sometimes only mentioned for effect. Where Tahir is shy on sexual assault, she is overly confident on physical violence and gruesome acts. In the beginning, a young boy has deserted the Blackcliffs school and is whipped to death in front of the entire student population and it is quite gruesome. This scene primarily served to remind Elias what will happen to him should he decide to desert the school as he wishes to do (something he constantly battles with the entire book), and also gives the reader a look at how the world operates with regards to power structure. The beating itself was just unnecessarily grotesque and so clearly written out; Elias “cannot look away” for the fear that those watching him will find him disloyal, so the reader is forced to see, vividly, the death of this 11-year-old boy as he’s whipped by the Commandant. The Scholars are also slaves and are, again, said to be raped often and abused by the Martial class and the “Masks” (the position that Elias is training for). The Commandant’s treatment of her slaves seemed a little extreme, over the top and was written, in detail, so often that it lost its importance. She, the Commandant, was so violent and abusive towards her slaves/servants and was constantly either branding them or disfiguring them sheerly for the pleasure and control it gave her over them. It got to be a bit too much, the slapping, the skin carving, the rough-handling, and got more annoying to be read than it did serve as a sympathetic piece for Laia and the other slaves.

Thirdly, the characters were absolutely awful. Every single one was more annoying than relatable. The villains were almost hyperbolic in nature and had no depth or backstory that described how or why they were so evil. Laia, Elias and Helene were very basic, 2D characters that had no growth or depth either, and became frustrating. 

The villains in the story were just awful. The Commandant was a bitch for no reason. Literally. She has no reason for being so awful to her servants, her son (Elias), to her students. To anyone. She just “is that way” (as many things in the story are) with no event, situation or life experience that contributed to it. And it makes her almost comical because she’s just...bad. Both figuratively and literally. Marcus is also similar in that same he’s “just that way” nature. He’s sexually and physically barbaric and constantly assaults and harasses the students and the slaves of the school just for fun. Or because he wants to feel that control and dominance over people he finds weaker than him. He’s also just annoying and more “needing therapy” than he is an impactful villain.

Oh, my god. So, firstly, Elias. He’s a typical beefcake soldier that thinks with his dick more than his brain. He does have his moments where he recognizes the oppression of the Scholars and how it’s wrong, even mentioning that he wants to change it and can and will once he’s emperor (if he’s emperor). The problem is that he doesn’t even want to be emperor; he wants to desert and leave because he hates the school and what the Masks do (he’s not wrong). He also constantly thinks of Laia and Helene with his dick. When he’s with Helene he constantly talks about how “beautiful” she looks in her armor (it fits her “so differently” than everyone else), and how he would “love to feel her hair between his fingers,” but then the next second they’re “too great of friends” to act on any of that. He almost kisses her, acting on those “urges,” but then essentially turns her down when he finds out she’s in love with him. He also has “lust at first sight” with Laia and constantly thinks of her sexually as well. There’s no contemplation of who she is as a person and only that she’s gorgeous. 

Laia is so whiny, naive and simplistic. She’s a weak heroine that stays that way the entire novel. She’s naive to the clear and obvious red flags when dealing with the Resistance and Mazen, but goes on to be a slave for the Commandant to “prove herself” (???) to the Resistance so that they will help her get her brother out of jail, even though the Commandant has either killed her last few slaves, or they have killed themselves. Seems legit. She also ignores the clear lies and manipulation from Mazen as none of his stories or “reports” line up and it’s clear he’s using her to take over the school. She whines constantly about the suffering she goes through, constantly reminding herself to do this “for Darin” after getting herself into the most reckless, stupid situations. She constantly needs saving and, honestly, Izzi is braver and stronger than Laia will ever be. I also never got why she beat herself up over “leaving” Darin when he told her to run. 

Helene is just annoying and is only there to serve as part of one of the love triangles. 

Lastly, the love triangles are so unnecessary. The romance itself is really out of place in the book, but having Laia be interested in both Keenan and Elias, and Elias interested in both Helene and Laia only serves to add unnecessary side-angst to the story that it doesn’t need. 

Laia and Keenan. It’s a “hate-to-love” scenario for Keenan in his feelings for Laia. It’s kind of a creepy insta love situation too because he starts to fall for her, but is so removed and emotionally distant that there doesn’t seem to be time for a real love to be able to bloom between them to even be a realistic “romance”. Laia is also just ignorant and “admires” Keenan, but also does the same for Elias. She’s had more time to get “close” to Keenan, but it’s still such a detached attraction it feels more awkward and forced than anything.

Helene and Elias. Oh, my god. Annoying, unnecessary, petty. Helene is in love with Elias, gets jealous when he helps the “slave-girl” and threatens to tell the Commandant that she snuck out, gets mad and doesn’t talk to Elias for a week because he was going to tell of Helene’s completely random ability of magic (seriously wtf was that and why was it only mentioned in passing?). It was all just a mess of angst that was so unnecessary. Elias only lusts after Helene because she’s there, she’s convenient and she’s beautiful. Not much else is there for him.

Laia and Elias. I don’t even understand how that romance even happened when their meetings were so awkward. It’s, again, only lust for Elias and Laia knows that he finds her attractive, but doesn’t do anything about it. She’s all whiny whenever he helps her and still can’t seem to get over that he’s a Mask and might *gasp* actually help her. She thinks Elias is going to screw her over more than the Resistance/Mazen will, when Elias shows her nothing but kindness and help. Really pointless romance.

Overall, the book was a 2/5 star read. I stopped caring about the outcomes of the characters and the overall world and its future. Again, it also had more potential than it did actual execution which is sad. I can see why other people liked it and enjoyed it, unfortunately I just wasn’t one of them. I was so disappointed because I was really looking forward to loving it as well. Let me know what you thought!