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nabrizoya · 3 years ago

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honestly would LOVE to hear your thoughts on the nikolai duology because i really only see blanket praise or blanket hate for it whereas I see a lot of wasted potential. Bardugo's actual writing was beautiful as ever for the most part, but the choice of the plot/beats feels baffling to me. I love Nina, but her parts felt so separate from the rest of the book until the very end, and even that felt off. I liked the first 2/3 of KoS enough, dealing with the monster, political tensions, 1/2

and even the cult of the starless saint was at least interesting because dealing with people trying to rewrite the narrative of their greatest enemy (who hurt these young leaders in deeply PERSONAL ways) was really compelling (making him literally come back was. a choice) but I feel like somewhere in the last third, KoS went in a wholly differeent direction, and RoW has this vibe of feeling like she definitely wrote it after reading the show scripts or even seeing some footage. idk. 2/2

I will try to be brief (1/12)

Hey anon! Thank you so much for asking this even though it took 38756588247834 years to answer this I’m so sorry !! The Nikolai duology was good—wonderful too maybe because of the myriad of themes and topics it discussed and explored, all in addition to how beloved these characters are. For me, it’s the end of KoS as it is for you, and the entirety of RoW in particular that irk me the most.

I have very little issue with KoS, and I agree with everything you’ve said. The political tensions, the sort of urgency in trying to secure a country at the cost of personal reservations, preparing for a war that seems unforgivably near the door, etc. was all thrilling. After all, it is the first installment in the duology, and it’s supposed to set the course for the upcoming books.

KoS managed to introduce the stakes and the circumstances, lay the rails for what the characters will face and what it might mean to a vast set of entities connected to the events. And it’s hardly out of sense to expect Rule of Wolves to pick up where the previous book left off and carry forward the themes and plot points introduced in the first book.

Except, RoW failed spectacularly in that aspect.

Rule of Wolves: the second book, and the supposed finale to the Grishaverse and the Nikolai duology; it fails to continue the other number of threads that KoS set up for it, effectively compromising the characters, their characterizations, the themes and other political tensions and stakes. The due importance that should be given to the heavy set of topics that get brought up in the povs are not through, nor are the small details that Leigh added to the conversations evolve into something worth talking about, which are the actual points that could have been given some more page time to explore than just making them facts or points of nostalgia for the characters.

If you take a step back and analyze the whole timeline, events, characterization, objectives of the arcs and the plot points etc. etc., all the way from Crooked Kingdom to Rule of Wolves, there’s so much that is left out and tied in, quite haphazardly, which leads me to believe that Leigh wanted to attempt writing a duology that is more plot-driven than it is character driven. And we know that Leigh writes character driven stories brilliantly, and SoC, CK and TLoT are testament to the same. Heck, even TGT has more consistency than whatever TND has.

So, objectively? Plot possibilities? Characterization? Potential? Personal goals? Addressing the very serious themes it brought up, in little or major light, but give no proper elaboration about them?

The lost potential readily compromised the characterizations of many characters, and it all amounted to their arcs being very underwhelming.

I’m dividing this into four parts and here’s the basic outline.

Writing and Plotting

The Plot, Possibilities and Potential.

Characters, Characterization, Character Potential.

Remedy (what I think would've worked better to tie this all up)

This can get very looong, so be forewarned.

I. Writing & Plotting

Now, Leigh Bardugo’s writing is exceptional, no doubt. The sentences are short and flowy, and convey the tone, psyche, environment and the setting and its effects on the pov character marvellously. It's also immersive. It’s the same in Rule of Wolves, except, a little or a lot weaker.

The two main parts of this is that one, that Leigh slightly overdid showing a lot more than telling, and two, that the RoW (and perhaps KoS too), was more plot driven than character driven, the latter of which is actually Leigh’s strength.

In Rule of Wolves, Leigh’s writing seemed very choppy and snappish. The descriptions were lacking, or maybe that’s just me wishing for more internal conflict and dilemma, and going back and forth in one's own head for a bit. It felt like she showed more than she told.

Example being how Zoya ‘snaps’, ‘drawls’, ‘scoffs’, or ‘scowls’ less, and even if that’s supposed to be show Zoya beginning to be a little less unpleasant than she usually is, the tone in those chapters was not strong enough to distinguish how and why the character was acting a certain way. Nor pinpoint an explanation on what brought that change about. (And there were many instances like this with many other characters), which resulted in the characters themselves feeling so off to me.

Leigh’s characters are important to the story. They carry tremendous weight and actively contribute to the plot. Except, by focusing a lot more on the plot, some parts of these characters’ relevance was not up to the mark. It is greatly due to how weak the plotting and pacing of the book was, tbh, more than just her writing.

Consider: Mayu Kir Kaat. She is integral to the story, but she is thrust into responsibilities, and that doesn’t give us much time to see her as a person, and then as a person with a duty, like we see with most other characters. Whatever parts of her we did see were very circumstantial and timed, which is probably the reason why not many we’re unable to appreciate Mayu as much as we should. (Maybe fandom racism also plays a part, so, well,,,).

Like, we know from Six of Crows and with The Language of Thorns, how great care went into describing the characters’ state of mind, which further heavily influenced their choices and decisions. This time though, I think she wanted it to be more plot driven, hence the whole crowded feeling of the book and general worry about oh my god too much is happening, how will all this be solved and all that.

And this, I think, greatly hampered Leigh's writing, leading to unsettling and rather unsatisfying character arcs. Not to mention that there was quite little space given for the characters to develop or let them grow in a satisfying way which touches on most of the elements and themes that get brought up with regard to their powers and potential,,, and when it was indeed brought up, it was all in vain since they were never followed through.

That's one of the biggest problems for me in RoW: Plot points brought up in KoS were not brought forward in RoW.

II. The Plot, Possibilities and Potential.

Phew. Truly buckle up because this train has too many coaches. And to discuss them all, let’s keep the starting point as Crooked Kingdom.

a) Parem

Now, by the end of Crooked Kingdom, we know some important things about the parem.

It's dangerous asf for the Grisha who have to sacrifice their will and capabilities for a short time superpower high that they didn’t even ask for

Which means they are more often than not forced to consume the drug

Shu Han is the creator of the Parem and are also creating a new kind of soldiers called Khergud (who additionally require Ruthenium, but we’ll talk abt that later)

Fjerda snatched the formula after kidnapping Bo Yul-Bayur, keeping him away in the Ice Court and in their possession, and used the Parem to further their own heedlessly heinous agenda

I think it’s easy to understand how KoS started off on the right track, considering that Kuwei Yul Bo is mentioned, the antidote and jurda is brought up and so come the political tensions alongside it (what with the impending war, the demon, the lack of funds in the coffers and security and peace for the country alongside safety for the Grisha).

The point is, parem is a character of its own. CK was its inception, and its fate was decreed along with its lifespan and its doom. Ideally, by the end of RoW, parem should have been vanquished while addressing its nature as a deadly drug, the addiction and aftermath, and the key person who will guide the plot: Kuwei Yul Bo.

Parem is a political tool that pitted countries against each other, making one another their allies or enemies. (Though parem is not the only one factor). Ravka doesn’t yet know about Kerch’s neutrality. The Shu made their move to assassinate in the end, just as Fjerda cleared the air about their goals.

Point is, parem is weapon, a new kind of warfare that keeps getting alluded to in KoS. The first book gave a glimpse of how the Shu and Fjerda are using parem, thereby exploiting, prejudicing etc. the Grisha in their countries. Khergud whose humanity is washed away with parem + ruthenium, and the Fjerdan Grisha (are targeted) drugged and exploited while be subjected to torture, training and imminent death, parametres of these outcomes being severely gendered.

Ravka too wanted to weaponize it and create a usable strain that would still give the Grisha their powers but at a minimal cost, until Nikolai’s conversation with Grigori convinces him out of it and to use only the antidote for the Grisha.

And when are the contents of this conversation brought up again?

Never.

Another aspect of parem (that the conversation also covers) is this: that what was once merzost, parem is its strange cousin. Parem parallels breaking the bounds of Grisha norms unnaturally, while merzost takes it a step further to break the bounds of nature itself, which comes with a heavy price. They're both the same with little differences. Amplifiers are in tune with this discussion, hence the conversation between Zoya and Nikolai about how, and whether or not the abomination in him, the parem, and the amplifiers are tied together. This gets brought up again in the conversation with Grigori.

Parem parallels the superpowers, something that Zoya too manages to achieve once the corruption of the amplifier business is resolved, which makes her realize how in tune with nature the Grisha must be, and how limited the Grisha powers until then had been. And why the amplifiers were a corrupted piece of magic.

Zoya was supposed to be the conduit in that sense that she reversed the Grisha norms and understood the importance and nature of small science. This is alongisde parem getting abolished or resolved in the least, be given a redressal.

Yet instead in RoW, we barely see any of Zoya’s powers, nor even her experimentation and hunger for power which would give her protection. We don't see how she begins to realize that while power was indeed protection, it was also a responsibility. Not clearly, anyway.

So like, not only is this entire discussion thrown away in Rule of Wolves, but no matters are resolved either. Parem did not reach its end like it was supposed to. Merzost with regard to parem would have been an excellent thing to address, with or without the Darkling being present, because the blight is there. But that doesn’t happen.

What happens instead? We get one chapter of Grisha getting the antidote during the face off at the start of the book, the women in Fjerda are not brought up again and instead we jump to Shu Han. Kuwei is also conveniently forgotten because hey, the Zemeni are here so it’s all sorted!

RoW could have (should have actually) sought to address both the political and medical (?) aftermath and implications. Maybe it did succeed in showing the political side of it, with regard to Mayu, Ehri, Makhi and Tamar’s storylines. But that’s only in Shu Han, whose state of affairs we had NO idea of until RoW. No idea, so much that it was completely out of the blue.

And what we did know (get to know about in KoS) is Fjerda and the affairs there remained… unsolved.

(...sorry).

b) Grisha Powers

Re: From the conversation between Nikolai and Grigori, and Juris and Zoya, about how parem and the amplifiers are parallel to each other in terms of being abominations, a corruption of Grisha powers. Now the theory of it is not entirely explained, but we do know that the parem and whatever Zoya learnt from Juris was meant to move along in the same direction.

But we don't see another mention of it, except maybe we could dig a little deeper and realize that it all adds up because Zoya is the Grisha Queen of Ravka, Summoner, Soldier, Saint, all of it rushed and unnecessarily magical in a war so dire and realistic in RoW.

Welp.

c) Spy business

Just… genuinely what even was Nina up to in RoW? A spy, sure, but only to garner information on the pretender?

Why couldn’t there have been two responsibilities for her to uncover: the lies or truths about the pretender while the Apparat causes hindrances, and Nina trying to seek out more documents of the locations and labs where the Grisha women are being tormented and the other Grisha being weaponized? It could have been a leverage to discredit Fjerda in front of everybody in the Os Kervo scene. Imagine if Nina whipped out the documents of Grisha labs and brought the truth of the exploitation and killing and kidnapping etc. in front of the convention of all nations. All of it together would have upped the political tensions by quite the notch.

Even then, there’s a possibility that it wouldn’t matter either because the Grisha aren’t exactly valuable to all the nations. But killing and exploiting is still wrong so maybe it might have worked? Or see, even if it wouldn’t have, the slow and sluggish realization of Mila’s identity by Brum, and alongside writing it as a tragedy where Nina’s efforts seem to have gone to waste, or where Nina is telling Zoya about not accounting for Prince Rasmus’ word and she informs her about the documents she has snatched? Something could have been done here?

The point is, KoS focused on Fjerda and its unraveling, and it wasn’t continued with and through in Rule of Wolves. Instead it sought to find the problem in a whole new country, Shu Han, and fixed it within the same book leaving the other country as it is.

d) Ruthenium and the Blight

Ruthenium, the metal that is an alloy of regular metal and Grisha made steel, could have been utilized more significantly in the books.

I mention it in association with the blight because while on one hand it is true that the blight is an area full of nothingness, ruthenium as a metal could have been utilized to show the effects of rushed industrialization that is leading to the ground losing its essence. This is supposed to be advanced warfare after all. Besides, Makhi loses someone very dear to her. Perhaps ruthenium is more dangerous in Shu Han because the Shu use it to create the khergud, so the constant manufacturing of it has been leading to the metal leeching the lands of their fertility, along with the blight.

And so also to broker peace, Ravka could have provided aid in some ways. :

1) The Darkling sacrificed himself, as a result of which the blight vanishes. While the blight took away her niece, the possibility of a blight persisting despite the ending of RoW could be attributed to ruthenium.

2) Ravka could provide the reversing effect to the alloy of ruthenium and metal using Grisha and otkazt’sya engineering and ingenuity to replenish the lands.

All in addition to whatever will be Shu Han’s policies to bring lushness to their lands.

e) Women and War:

Holy fucking Shit, where do I start with this?

Whatever we saw in Fjerda was haunting, and we see it from Nina’s chapters. There’s literally no resolution for it, nor is it ever brought up again, at all. In Zoya’s chapters, we see through her eyes the brunt that Grisha faced with the war, and in a country that has refused to recognize Grisha as the citizens and considers them expendable.

Add to it her own narrative of how the women are never mentioned, let alone the ones that she has lost or has known to suffer, at the hands of the war, at the Darkling's torture and powers. The description of these women suffering, often being forgotten and thrown aside as mere casualties… where or when was it ever going to be brought up again?

Like, switching between such horrifying things happening in Fjerda to whatever was happening with Zoya and Nikolai and Isaak is such a contrast, horrifyingly demeaning and insulting, even more so when it failed to align with the importance of parem and offer a solution to both these problems.

Now switch to Rule of Wolves, where the Tavgahard women immolate themselves on Queen Makhi’s orders. Not only is that such a cheap and insensitive thing to do, it gets treated a simple fucking plot point in the book, and it barely gets addressed afterwards. Women in Asia have a vastly complex and complicated history with fire, and this is a serious criticism that culturally affects readers in personal ways. And what gets done about it? Fine, Zoya feels baaaad, sorry oops why would the women do that?!?!?

Where is the adequate sensitivity to the topic? Where is the continuation of the pain Zoya feels for many people, despite them being the enemy? How does she honour them? Where is all that dilemma and pain? Why does she not think of them or just get a line or two to talk about them?

Where is the due importance for this suffering given? Structurally and culturally?

f) Soldier, Summoner, Saint / Yaromir the Great

We never really get any explanation for why Zoya deserves to be the Queen, and why she is the best. But we do get to see why Nikolai isn’t the one supposed to be on the throne, and it’s not just because of his parentage but also because of his failings and doubts and the need for acceptance with the secrets he carried.

Here's the thing though; it’s not just about her showing mercy. It’s very subtle, and in good sense, should actually have been given a little bit more importance that be loosely brought up at random times.

Keeping aside the fact that Zoya is representative of Ravka—a woman, a Grisha, a Suli girl who changed the course of war and who knew what it was like living in poverty, being as an underprivileged person of the society in addition to the trauma from then and the state of living at her aunt’s place—which is meant to be covertly apparent, the other reason tracks back to Yaromir the First, who with the help of Sankt Feliks of the Apple Boughs—the one who raised the thornwood—lead Ravka at that time into the age of peace.

The Darkling testified that in his POVs, that while Feliks and Yaromir worked in tandem for Ravka, Aleksander worked for safeguarding the Grisha. In one sense, Zoya is supposed to reflect that moment in history in the present moment, except she is Queen and Sankta, and Grisha, all three at once.

It is brought up in one of the Darkling’s POVs and once in the conversation with Yuri in KoS. Other than that, we never actually get any more hints of this explanation in the text, which is the reason why the entire ending felt so so rushed, and like a fever dream, that even if it was a plot twist, it was kinda very baseless when it should have been more ohhhhh sort of a thing.

g) The Starless Cult and Saint Worship

This cult had immense potential to blossom into many things, some of which were indeed touched upon in KoS when Zoya says that she saw a bit of herself in Yuri, and brings up time and again how easily she’d been led and had not been aware enough of what’s right and wrong, just as she supposes Yuri is too. And to some extent, there is truth there, because in the Lives of Saints, we do see why Yrui comes about to hail the Darkling and how it parallels Zoya’s, of being helpless and ten being saved by a different power/ their own power, respectively.

That’s where it forks, that Zoya is older and realizes the path that Yuri has chosen and understands that it won't happen until he realizes it himself because the Darkling’s crimes are so obvious.

Even then, there’s still more potential: This cult could have been the mirror that would make Zoya reflect on the questionable methods of the Darkling, and the ways in which she might be mirroring them, despite or not it is the necessity because of the war. How she is training soldiers too, just as the Darkling did, and while the need to take children away from their homes just as soon as they were discovered Grisha was abolished, it was war, and they needed soldiers.

So like, there’s quite a big narrative going on here, how mere children are pushed into one path of becoming a soldier and the whole system that was that the Darkling followed to train the Grisha and all of that. All of this in addition to the juxtaposition to the Grisha being seen as elite despite them being hunted, and the people who are not Grisha frowning upon them. This is also the work of the Darkling, which actually paves the way to see how there can be a world where the Grisha are not feared or seen as abnormal, despite or not they are given a Saint-like narrative.

This cult could also have been the segue to discussing Yuri and his brainwashing, and the sort of cult-ish behaviour of believing in something firm when you couldn’t believe in yourself, or not seeing the magnitude of the crimes of their supposed Saint, alongside always staying focused on becoming a soldier only and never actually thinking beyond what is told.

Some of these are very subtle and some are brought up, but never given too much of an explanation.

Genya brings up another good point in the funeral chapter, about how Fjerda seemingly taking into the whole Saints thing could mean that if the Darkling moved there, he could very well sprawl his influence there to bring in supporters. Which leads to another discussion that gets brought up towards the end of the book: about Nina telling about the Ravkan Saints to Hanne and therefore to the Fjerdans,,, which doesn’t exactly sit right with me. It’s still a very nascent topic, and I think SoC3 will explore this path of faith and personal beliefs etc. but leaving it just there, while talking so much about Saints in both the countries,,, don’t exactly know how to put it into thoughts here.

But regardless, the cult of the Starless had different potential to talk of (blind) worshipping of an ideal without critically examining why the person must be put on the pedestal in the first place (and if it is simply power, then there is actually a narrative right there, which RoW gets right, about the people valuing the power still, as a result of which the monarchy still persists at the end of RoW. Even then, there’s more discussion awaiting there).

Not sure if any of this makes sense, but I’ll leave it at this here for now.

edit: 05/07/2021 | I think what I was trying to say here is that we do not have any kind of narrative evidence to seeing how and why it seems right that the Fjerdans will worship Ravkan Saints; is it merely because they are all Grisha? Or is it because of the segue explore this path of faith and personal beliefs and all of that, of the talk of the monastery and the Grisha there being of all identities, that a monastery is in Shu Han, that it has Djel's sacred Ash tree so far away from Fjerda... much to think about.

III. Characters, Characterization, Character Potential.

Mostly going to be about Nina and Zoya, but I’ll bunch up the rest of them at the end.

a) Nina

*head in hands*

I severely mourned how poorly Zoya was written in RoW, but then I realized that more than Zoya, it’s Nina whose potential was severely undermined and wasted. On one hand, I’m glad she uses her powers and quick thinking,observation and her own tactics to analyze the population and opt for the best way to make them see the truth she wants to show them (eg: making Leoni and Adrik and Zoya saints and also showing that the Grisha are the children of Djel via people’s belief to Joran and Rasmus’s mother).

But then, it’s like you said; her parts were so offbeat and outpaced and completely disjointed, when in fact, Nina is the thread that ties all the characters, their plotlines and potential, together. Nina is connected to Zoya and Hanne, two equally important characters and main characters of the duology. Whatever scope Nina has, they are greatly in parallel to Zoya and Hanne. And it’s all literally there, in the text! What a waste.

Though keeping aside these parallels, Nina’s own journey from Ketterdam to Ravka to Fjerda, while is spoken about, doesn’t touch some other parts that I see potential in. Or this is just meta.

Nina has grief not just from Matthias’ death but also from the loss of her powers as Heartrender. So much of the Second Army was built on being a soldier, and perhaps the Darkling was not outright disdainful of racial differences in his army, yet he still stripped every part of the children away until they weren’t children anymore in his view. They’re all soldiers… (albeit his soldiers, preparing them to do his bidding because hey, give and take right?). Nina was a soldier, and she is a soldier still under Zoya’s role as a General, but an ‘other’ of a soldier. That’s her only identity, and the loss of her powers means that she’s a different kind of soldier.

I imagine that this entire time, some small part of Nina longed for normalcy, or whatever settled as normal for a life like hers. In the sense that she wants to go back, but what is back and where exactly did she want to go back to? What was the before and after and where did things go wrong or change? There’s tragedy in the realization that whatever you were before what you became is not a place you can return to, and that’s a different kind of loss that she has to bear, and all by herself. She has powers over the dead now, a strange power she learns to grow to, but all the places she has been, all the lives she has led and people she had been, everything might seem like they’ve all been locked away in some strange place leaving her barren and indisposable.

She’s off to Fjerda as someone she isn’t, figuratively and literally. In KoS, Nina brings up many times how odd she feels as Mila and in some capacity longs to be Nina Zenik again. This ties in with the previous point of returning to somewhere, but where?, but is also a segue towards body dysmorphia, the thing that Nina and Hanne’s storylines parallel and connect too with in a small way. It’s a great line to follow to discuss what her discomfort with her body means to herself while it means something entirely different to Hanne, who is also not entirely comfortable being who they are. (This discomfort further which leads to gender dysphoria, while for Nina, it will be about learning to accept her powers. I’ll add on to this in a bit,).

I'm mourning the lost potential of that experience being a parallel to Hanne’s own feelings, of a discussion between people being uncomfortable with their bodies, something that can mean multitudes to each person and on their own accord.

In parallel to Zoya, I like to draw it from the fact about Nina wanting to go back to who she was, while Zoya actively tries to lock her past away and drown it somewhere or throw it to the storm, never to hear of it again. She has no identity other than being a soldier, and that’s enough for Zoya, because who she was before she was a soldier is not pleasant. But moving from being just another expendable shell of soldier under the Darkling’s rule, Zoya becomes the one third of the Triumvirate, and then the King’s general, all of which bring self-awareness of Zoya’s capabilities and challenges that are bound to excite her. But all of these also compel Zoya to be many other people to others as she slowly grows to realize that power is not just protection but also a responsibility, and it will inadvertently mean confronting her past of her lost identity, realizing the how of the Darkling, and how harmful it was. As Genya puts it perfectly in Rule of Wolves, that they were all taken away when they were young kids, not even barely children, and then thrust into responsibilities that didn’t allow them to be anything else other than what the Darkling told them to be.

Back to Nina; a few other great parts about Nina’s arc could have been about her connection to languages, as language being a mode of strengthening identity, in addition to growing to her powers. In RoW, there’s this line that goes ‘how sweet it was to speak her language [Ravkan] again’, and the feeling of homesickness. Like, Nina is trying to connect to Ravka through what she knows best—language, and then stories. In that, Nina realizes a part of her identity, which could also act as a segue to Zoya reclaiming her own heritage and ethnicity. Not only that but Zoya and Nina’s stories are literally so intertwined that it’s hard not to see how their choices and line of thought affect one another’s arcs, in the grief they have and how they choose to treat it, and also show why Zoya is particularly protective of Nina (and keeps wishing that she doesn’t become the monster Zoya had become, in the sense that Nina is more mature in handling her grief than Zoya was and the entire mercy plotline ties Nina, Zoya and even Genya together. More meta, haH).

And that’s why the ending doesn’t make sense. Even though the part about her not being comfortable as Mila is not brought up many times in the continuing chapters (and that’s why perhaps naming Nina’s discomfort as body dysmorphia may be wrong), there’s still the part of Nina readily accepting to be who she was a Mila and remain in Fjerda that seems iffy to me. Especially when Nina and Hanne literally a few chapters ago think about running away (it may be just another alternative they might be fantasizing about, but I think it still means that they both want to be their true selves without hiding any parts of it away). So her staying as Mila… well, it doesn’t exactly add up.

I’d also add the part of Nina’s story mirroring Leoni’s, and how she is from Novyi Zem and being a part of the Second Army meant that she had little to no connection with her past, her culture etc. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part that Leigh went for that arc.

edit: 05/07/2021 | I don't agree with my point anymore about Nina not having the kind of ending I assumed she might have, considering that it is very well possible for Nina to treat her identity as Mila as a fresh start, as a Grisha with a command over the the dead and begin a new normal that is suited for her. You can read more here.

b) Zoya

For one, white passing Zoya is not canon to me. I simply pretend I do not see it.

See, her race was handled very badly. Making her half-Suli was supposed to show the struggles and the trauma that the ridiculing of her identity by other people has caused to her. Except, not enough time nor text is given to thoroughly discuss it. Not to forget how problematic of a narrative in itself it is to make Zoya white passing.

It would have made more sense to make her dark skinned and predominantly Suli-looking than whatever yt bs she was put through. Her not being white-passing would have led to conversations about tokenization, or people caring little about her and not giving her any respect because she is Suli. Or being called beautiful to the face and praised just for it or a harmless tumble in their point of view.

So like, instead of making the ‘mistake’ of seeking for acceptance, seeking appreciation and love, from her mother at first and then the Darkling, Zoya instead makes herself someone to be feared, if respect was not what she deserved. The iciness is a part of her and has always been, but all of it soon became a shield, an armour that she vowed to harden her heart with. Just the sheer impact of this narrative and her reluctance, and seeing Nikolai love her for beyond who she thinks she is… if all of this was canon, I’m pretty sure I’d have built a shrine for this duology.

Let’s now talk about her grief, and...

…

Okay it’s not for me to point fingers at how Leigh chose to write about grief because there’s no one way or one proper approach to go through that pain, and if that’s how she chose to write about grief for Zoya, fine! But I really wish we’d have gotten a little more into her head to see how the trauma has affected her thoughts and how she struggles against why and what exactly it is that Juris wants her to do. That enough time and text was dedicated to Zoya’s feelings and the mayhem it caused her, as a result of which the dragon’s eye took its cue and made things more unbearable to her because she was the only one to bear them all.

Like, I feel like Zoya was overwhelmed throughout the book and in between she had some skyhigh responsibilities to discharge and it’s all so inconsistent and poorly woven,,, it completely dissolved her character from KoS and made it 10000000x more miserable for me to read her POVs. And honestly, what even were her assignments that the Kirkus review mentioned? Never an inch of text in RoW is given to decipher her complications of her mind, the muddled sense of hopelessness and fear that grips her time and again. Why overwhelm her so much that you fail to do her mental state and capacity any justice?

I’m not going to be harsh about how much David’s death bothered me-- no actually fuck that; what’s the point? Fine, he died. All because you wanted to make his death a plot device to make Zoya reconcile with loss and deal with it? Where was Genya’s grief? Literally no point of having a death in the book at all, and it didn’t even achieve anything. (I’m still trying to wrap my head around why David’s death was important and maybe if I find some straws, I’ll consider…)

There were so many other ways around it; could have brought back Lada and killed her off, or have the Darkling piss her off so badly or just. Something. Instead of whatever happened with David. I think this is too harsh and insensitive of me to say about Leigh, but still… there’s a myriad of other ways to have gone about it. Helping Zoya deal with her grief with Nikolai at her side, to understand that the rage that was fueled from her loneliness, like it had been in the past, could now be a weight that Nikolai was willing to carry with her… Helping someone with their grief, staying and choosing is also a love language you know?

So in that regard, I won’t regret saying how flat the garden scene was to me. Zoya’s lines, though tinged with grief, were so out of what I would expect KoS Zoya to say. Maybe it’s also because of how bitter I was reading about David's death, despite that part being spoiled for me.

The cost shouldn’t have been David’s death, especially not when his death too wasn’t properly handled at all, and Genya’s grief was never spared a second thought beyond bringing Titanium.

Now let’s talk about how Out of Character Zoya was throughout the book. Her punchy attitude was missing, and even if she was warming up to her friends, we see little of the iciness she continues to retain. Another part of this is about exploring her relationships, particularly with Nikolai and her growing feelings for him. I wish we’d have seen them grapple with more of their confusion and propriety, if only for the yearning™. Besides, no matter how cute their scenes were, they were mostly (like maybe some. 70%) awful to read them, simply because it felt so odd to see Zoya be so open with Nikolai, all of a sudden.

A part of this definitely has to be the fact that we don’t know just how much time has passed between the end of KoS and the start of RoW, and we never, never see any description of they regarded their feelings for each other and how they understood it themselves. I don’t actually know how exactly I can put this into words in a manner that will make sense, but the only scenes where I appreciated Zoyalai were in the Ketterdam chapters, ONLY. The rest was… bleh lmao. Their scenes were so cute and brilliant, and if only we’d seen more of the internal conflict and had given some more time for them to practically approach their feelings but still end up in the puddle of it. If only.

Their scenes apart were the good ones, because that’s where we finally see Nikolai feeling the loss, no matter how temporary (on the verge of being permanent since it’s the war), of not having Zoya with him, of not being there with Zoya because who else would it be if it wasn’t her? Zoyalai had good scenes but they barely lived up to the mark lol. Their feelings are never thoroughly explored, nor their mental capacities.

While we’re talking about Zoyalai, let’s also talk about how lame it was for Zoya to say that Nikolai was the golden spirited hero all along, from the very start, when canonically we know Zoya had little to do with him in the earlier books, that she may have only been physically attracted to him and never saw him as more than just some guy with a responsibility to manage, and had sooooooo much distrust about him. And that it was only in the next few years of working with him and alongside did she grow to recognize his efforts and relish in the hope that he was building for Ravka, inadvertently making Zoya hopeful too.

Nope. Instead, we’ll just throw in some destiny bs that he was the one all along rather than show that the beauty of their relationship did not stem what they perceived of each other, but was instead built on strong respect and admiration for one another and their capabilities. 100% destroyed their relationship for me.

Some good parts about Zoya’s arc in RoW was how she acknowledged her past mistakes, and the nuance that was touched upon in seeing sense in becoming a soldier from the start, that offered her a chance to be anything other than a bride. That some part of her was grateful for the Darkling for teaching her how to fight, while still keeping Genya’s words in mind about how they were mere kids, children who had only one path to traverse because the Darkling (who wanted their acceptance and loyalty) nor the Kings of the country let the Grisha be anything else other than pawns of the war. That she recognizes her mistakes as a teen and how self centred she was, that her being snotty had at times cost some peoples’ lives too. And she doesn’t take the blame all up on herself, because it’s not hers alone to bear. Super good.

Also, the way Zoya comes to view power as responsibility instead of merely as protection was something cool to read about. It’s not clear in the books, but Zoya actively tried to not be the Darkling while still continuing to build an army for the war out of necessity, and actually sharing some parts of the dream that the Darkling had for the Grisha. I can’t articulate this so perfectly, but the point is, Zoya trying to avoid becoming a tyrant like the Darkling was an active process that she was constantly trying to change, and where Zoya could not recognize her own feelings and inherent thoughts about warfare that in some ways did mirror the Darkling’s, by the end of book, Zoya is much more self-aware and conscious of herself and her power than she was at the start of the book. And this was well done.

Now, what is up with YA and making people turn into giants or animals lol wtf. Why couldn’t we have seen Zoya use her dragon powers in a way that symbolizes the conditions of her dragon amplifier and the power of the knowledge she obtained from Juris? She is a Saint, and we’ve seen that their powers allowed them to cause ‘miracles’ and such, as we see at the start of KoS and at the end.

Why couldn’t we have seen Zoya dabble with her newfound powers and completely lose her shit in anger during the wae, only to rein back in mercy, just as someone from Fjerda begs for forgiveness since they see her then as a Saint? Adrik and Leoni used their powers in Fjerda, so having Zoya bring about a conundrum of all orders and do something about it would also have been cool, wouldn’t it? In the funeral scene we see her turn water into ice, thereby making a path for Genya. Why couldn’t we have had more exploration of the importance of the dragon’s eye and the general nausea of being overly empathetic every. damn. time? Why didn’t we get to see her powers? Why couldn’t we have seen her fail in them and realize that the reason she was not perfect was because she was trying to be strong on her own and was not relying on others and joint effort?

Her turning into a dragon was genuinely the most baffling part bc here’s a war that’s so serious and dire with metals and bombs, and then here’s this magic that will solve all of it entirely. Like I’m not saying it was bad, (I am actually saying just that) but I also don’t know what I am saying, except that the ending felt like a fever dream.

…?

Not sure if I’ve managed to convey it properly, but well. Zoya felt out of character throughout RoW, and that the only place I saw KoS Zoya was in the final Os Kervo scene where Zoya finally agrees to be the queen.

c) Nikolai

Nikolai’s arc was very satisfying and brilliant to read about in RoW. In KoS, he seemed very much like a passive character, one of the reasons why his stunt with the Shu in RoW was appreciable, no matter how ill-timed of a plot turn it was. His journey throughout this book was also introspective to see why others deemed him unfit as the King, and even if they were his enemies who thought that in want to dispose him from the throne, Nikolai realizes that him being on the throne is not of much value and that this book was entirely about him seeing his privilege and making decisions to counter and correct the mistakes he’s made. That was nice. Oh, also his father not being an antagonist was a pleasant surprise.

I don’t have many complaints about him, except perhaps wanting some more internal conflict and elaboration about his feelings for Zoya. Them being apart was where it was satisfying, and then in the Ketterdam chapters. His arc could have been better in KoS, but that’s to blame the plot for the characterization.

d) Hanne

Now, from the very start, their arc was super good and it only got better and better until… the ending. Except it’s so odd that Hanne, a poc, has to now live as white person, while feeling comfortable in their transmasc identity. Icky, no? That you need to eliminate one part of your identity in order to feel safe and comfortable about another? Add to this the whole white-passing Zoya thing,,, doesn't exactly send off the right message.

Together with Nina, the ending seems uncharacteristic for both of them. Them coming to accept their powers and knowing to use their powers on their own accord was brilliant, though the entire husband business felt very,,, eh to me, even if it did make sense. The ending about their name and their new identity was too vague.

e) Genya, Leoni and Adrik, Kuwei, Mayu,

Genya is the one who faced the most disservice along with David. While there were exceptional parts to both of their plotlines, it's still sad that even if David's death was necessary, we don't get to see the entirety of her grief and the possible anger, and that her kindness is simply used as the justification for lack of portrayal of grief.

It really did take me by surprise, mostly because I wasn't a fan of the original Shadow and Bone book, but seeing David's conscience and self-awareness, along with Genya's (and Zoya thinking of how she wouldn't let any harm come to them, which shows a bit of her development towards her character development), was plenty refreshing. David and Genya were genuinely the highlights of the book and to kill David off was just. doesn't sit right with me.

Leoni and Adrik deserved more page time. They’re saints and immensely capable (no wonder they’re now the Triumvirate), but a few more pages for them to shine would not only have been nice, but also a necessity.

And now, Kuwei...

....

I mean,,, parem should have been the plot, alongside the entire weaponry and the discussion of making a city killer. But uh… that didn’t happen.

There's not much I have to say about Mayu, Tamar and Ehri, except that their plot was superb, only very badly timed.

There's more to talk about them in the remedy tho.

IV. Remedy

Here’s the deal. Before KoS release, there should have been a Nina novella.

Nina is a very important character. All of her potential, alongside many other parts of her personality--from dealing with grief, to accustoming to her powers, to growing stronger--there could be so much to do with her as a protagonist, alongside another character: Mayu.

A whole book dedicated to Nina in Fjerda with Hanne? Brilliant. Show Stopping. Mind blowing. It gives SO much page time to explore not just Nina and Mayu, Hanne, but also Zoya, Leoni and Inej. All together.

How?

Nina’s plotline carries the entire medical effects of the use of parem, just as Mayu’s will carry the pain she feels about her brother being a part of the khergud program. The novella will give ample time to flesh them out as characters and protagonists, each dealing with plot problems and problems of their own--like the loss of ones powers and newfound responsibilities, and the shared loss of a beloved person in parallel, even if neither Nina or Mayu interact on page.

Fjerda and Shu Han could be tied together with one chapter as a POV from Zoya (or maybe two), who, along with the Triumvirate and Nikolai, are completely at loss with the political scenario in the country, and are debating over what should be the course of action. Zoya receives news from the scouts, and missives from Nina, and Tamar takes care of the information she garners from the rest of the network, including Shu Han.

Like, the entire surprise of finding a Zoya POV, from a character whom until CK we’ve known as cold hearted and stern and not giving a fuck about anything or anyone, be humanized in that one chapter, thereby building up the anticipation for her arc,,, the very potential,,, *chef's kiss*.

And by the end of book, we could have an POV--or maybe a cameo if not a POV--of Inej meeting Nina on one of her travels of slave hunting. Inej could help take care that the women that Nina has rescued (as Nina does in KoS) reach the Ravkan shorelines safely. But, for a price.

The entire parallels between Leoni and Hanne and Nina could be set up, while also building up the narrative for the Saints’ plotline with Adrik's, Leoni's and Nina’s powers (like it was at the end of KoS). KoS and RoW would thereby continue it by tackling the weaponization and the antidote, Sainthood and the rest of the politics of it all.

Coming to Shu Han: one key aspect that I’d love to have explored would be the importance of art, during or despite the war. Of how war or pain chips away culture, while detailing on the ill effects of it from the commoners' perspectives, from the soldiers etc. Art is integral to Shu Han and could be portrayed by Mayu’s pain finding balm in poetry, of seeing glimpses of Ehri poring over poetry also mayri ftw, of politics that Makhi is weaving against Ravka, etc.

Or also add some more length to Zoya’s POV and explore a bit of Tamar and Tolya and Kuwei’s interactions and perspective added to it, of missing a home that they seemed to not know, or know; of discussing culture and differences on the basis of where they’re from (maybe the twins are from the borders, while Kuwei grew up near the capital or somewhere distant from the borders etc.), all while directly pointing at Zoya’s heritage and how it ebbs at her conscience, no matter how much she wants to bury it.

POTENTIAL !!!

Like,,, Nina novella would have been too powerful. It would have been perfect. I think I’d excuse bringing back the Darkling too if this was the case. (Or maybe not).

But welp.

Hey, thanks for reading! Not sure if you could make it this far, but if you have, you honestly deserve a medal for sitting through this all. I can’t imagine how tiring it must be to read through this, considering it seemed to take it more than month to compile this there’s also me procrastinating on it too so i’,mbhbdhshfsdn

Drop an ask if you want to talk more about this!

Sincerely, thank you!!!

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arcadianambivalence · 3 years ago

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My (Exhaustive) Thoughts on the 2021 West Side Story Adaptation - 1/3

Well, it’s finally here! I saw the movie opening weekend, and it’s taken me weeks to get the words out right. To sum up my reaction: I loved this movie. Loved, loved, loved this movie!

From the way it was shot (the camera moves with the action) to the way it looks (the gorgeous puddle shot is seared into my brain) to the way it sounds, I love it to pieces—pieces I want to share with you.

So if you saw the film or haven’t seen it, here is part one of my thoughts (part review, part analysis) on the new West Side Story adaptation of the classic 1957 stage musical.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

The movie begins with a derelict, half torn-down condemned city street, cluing in the audience that this will be the story of a doomed neighborhood. A sign informs us that the neighborhood is condemned to demolition. We swing past a wrecking ball as the music reaches a crescendo—then the ground opens up, revealing a boy in a cellar. He tosses up buckets of paint to his friends, a group of rag-tag boys that could give the Outsiders a run for their money. (If I’m going to be honest, I can’t tell the Jets apart. They’re all pale brunets in ragged denim. I think I can pick out Baby John and Diesel by the end, but that’s it.)

It’s unclear what they’re up to, but if the “Men At Work” sign they kick over is any indication, it’s business. More young men join in. Soon, the entire Jet gang is striding to a mural of the Puerto Rican flag. Anybodys runs up like he’s the one who reported it, but the gang brushes right past him.

They begin to vandalize the mural before the Sharks, acting as a local vigilante group, arrives. A chase sequence ensues that is at times comical (combat via falling watermelons) and brutal (the poor Shark who takes a paint can to the head and is bloody for the rest of the scene).

When police lieutenant Schrank and the officers break up the fight, Bernardo starts to leave quietly, but when he notices that his neighbors are watching, he sings “La Borinqueña” (with the original lyrics by Lola Rodríguez de Tió), and the rest of the Sharks join him as the neighbors applaud. They walk off like heroes.

No one would call Jets heroes but the Jets.

Historical Context

From the very beginning, this movie has a specific time and place: San Juan Hill on the eve of its demolition.

The gangs are two houses alike in personal dignity, but not in the way they are treated…or in the way they treat others. The Jets largely seem to consist of boys who grew up on the streets of Manhattan and did not have idyllic childhoods. The only family most appear to have is each other.

This film chooses to highlight the alienation the Jets feel (as second and third-generation immigrants) by highlighting class. Schrank attributes their poverty to their lack of ambition and their parents’ personal follies. They are, as he puts it “the last of the can’t-make-it-Caucasians.” To put it simply, he believes that poverty (for white Americans) is a choice…a racist bootstrap theory.

Compare this to the way Schrank and the Jets view the Puerto Rican community. The Puerto Rican characters we meet follow the traditional immigrant narrative: hard-working families deeply connected to their homeland’s culture...who face xenophobia and racism from “more American” Americans. In general, the Sharks seem older (or at least more mature) than the Jets. Most clearly have jobs (some are still wearing their work aprons) and throughout the movie, they appear more put-together than their Jet counterparts.

But the lives the Sharks and Jets have built for themselves will eventually be destroyed, their homes torn down, and their neighborhood flattened to make room for fancy new apartments and Lincoln Center. Some of the destruction has already begun, as shown in the opening scene. But in the meantime, San Juan Hill is bustling with life and so, so many people.

The inclusion of more people in this adaptation really makes it feel like a musical set in a real neighborhood. (Filming on location instead of on a set doesn’t hurt, either!) The opening scene sends Jets and Sharks racing through busy streets, running in front of honking cars, and stealing from corner shops. Later, “America” is teeming with extras in every shot. Even the dance at the gym is so crowded, the dancers constantly bump into each other, fighting for space. This is a densely populated movie...and on the outskirts of all this are Tony and Maria.

The Characters

I’m going to make a bold statement and say that this adaptation of the musical does not significantly change much of the story. It does, however, expand on ideas in the original stage production. Yes, Tony and Maria are still Romeo and Juliet. Yes, they’re still the romantic center of the story. These points are integral to the characters, but Kushner’s screenplay tries to give the two lovers as much room for personality and history as possible without significantly altering the plot.

What makes the characters in this version different from the stage musical and the 1961 film is that these characters have histories and want different futures. In essence: backstory and motivation.

For instance, Maria doesn’t work as a seamstress, but as a cleaner at Gimble’s department store, giving her a look at the glamorous trappings of life. In her first scene, she comments that “the dresses at Gimbles fit me,” dresses she most certainly can’t afford. Maria is working at what is likely her first job (at least in America), and she doesn’t have definite plans for the future. She mentions that she could go to a local college (“like Rosalia’s cousin Virginia”) …anything but settle down with Bernardo’s friend Chino. (I’ll discuss how this adaptation characterizes Chino later.)

Meanwhile, Anita is the seamstress, and she plans to open her own shop once she has saved enough money (The American Dream). I like this change because it separates Anita and Maria both in their line of work and their experiences. Anita is optimistic, but she’s also practical. The apartment is full of cloth, which we now see is for Anita’s work. She’s even the one who adds the iconic red belt to Maria’s dress. In a sense, the clothing and the decor make the apartment seem like more of her place than Bernardo’s and Maria’s, even though the movie implies the three of them pool their incomes (boxing, cleaning, and sewing) to pay the rent.

The movie also implies that Bernardo and Maria’s parents are dead. It seems to me that Bernardo left Puerto Rico long before Maria did, established a life for himself, then was able to bring Maria to Manhattan. In the meantime, Maria must have lived with at least her father, as she says "I looked after Papi since I was six.” So Bernardo could have left when she was six years old. No wonder he treats her like a kid!

On the other side of the spectrum, there’s Tony. Unlike Maria and Bernardo, he has no surname (a poster on the door to Bernardo’s door gives them the surname Vasquez), though we do learn that his first name is Antone and that he’s Polish. There is also no mention of his parents, but if the way Tony talks about family is anything to go by, I’m going to assume they are long out of the picture. In fact, Valentina is the closest he has to a parental figure. She’s known him at least since he was “an angry little boy” with hope and promise.

Somewhere along the line, he met Riff and started the Jets with him. (They must have been fairly young if the coolest name they could think of was the Jets…) By the time we meet Tony, his days with the Jets look like they’re through. After spending a year in prison and several months on parole, he’s trying to be a better person, one who doesn’t need the Jets to survive.

Riff, on the other hand, is as deep in the gang life as any version of him, but there’s more of an edge to him in this adaptation than in the 1961 movie. He jokes that he’s “born to die young” and makes rash decisions that seem to be due to a lack of concern for his own well-being. And the core of his identity is that he’s the leader of the Jets, the sole leader now that Tony’s given up the life. So like with Bernardo and Maria, the relationship between Riff and Tony has a growing tension now that Maria and Tony no longer share the priorities of the gang leaders.

I could turn this into a long post on how what is acceptable for characters today is different from in the past, how the various iterations of Romeo and Juliet and Tony and Maria say something about the style of writing of the times they were written in, and how the little nuances given to the archetypal doomed lovers adds a new flavor to every iteration, but I’ll save that for another day.

Romeo and Juliet

Suffice it to say that in this version, the two lovers don’t happen to simultaneously meet each other’s eyes from across the room. Here, Tony sees Maria first, and only after she realizes that he’s watching her does she firmly return his gaze. As if reading each other’s thoughts, the two retreat to a more secluded location, but they aren’t entirely in synch yet. Starting off a running theme in their relationship, Maria begins the classic cha-cha, and Tony attempts to mirror her.

Their first conversation is one of the places where the new screenplay really shines. How do you adapt Romeo and Juliet in the 50’s for a modern audience? Have the young lovers joke about each other’s heights and make out behind the bleachers. It’s also cute that their first kiss is Maria quite literally falling onto his lips because she’s spent half the conversation on her tip-toes while he’s bending down so they can be eye-to-eye. Then they smile shyly and decide to try again.

Also, did anyone else catch the Romeo and Juliet nod? When Maria accidentally kisses him, Tony says: “You just...caught me by surprise, is all. I’m a by-the-book type.” It’s a 1950-something version of the conceit that Romeo and Juliet use to show off their wit (and compatibility) where Romeo compares himself to a pilgrim at prayer and Juliet to the saint he venerates with a kiss, after which she says, “You kiss by the book.” (The Bible.)

But alas, the moment is cut short by a friend (Luz) calling for Maria. When his sister emerges from beneath the bleachers with Tony, Bernardo sees red. The Sharks and Jets join in, and a brawl nearly starts before everyone remembers they’re surrounded by officers.

The lead Jet and Sharks meet in the men’s room (which you’d think would be monitored by the police) to discuss a rumble. Riff tries to get Tony to join, but Tony nopes out of the gym to look for Maria. In the bathroom, the top Sharks and Jets set a date and location for the rumble. This fight has now become especially personal for Bernardo, who looks forward to settling things with Tony (which he says while tapping his chest in a rather inauspicious spot…).

When the Jets bring up the salt shack, Bernardo asks one of the Sharks where that is. Riff reveals he gets the jist of the question by responding de donde estar.

Spanish and Subtitles

Here’s a good a place as any to discuss the language barrier. Negative comments about this film tend to involve the lack of subtitles when characters speak Puerto-Rican Spanish. I could be snide and say that real life doesn’t come with subtitles (useful as that would be), but I think the decision to not provide subtitles ties into the themes of the movie.

Unsubtitled Spanish is used like the 50′s slang—it immerses the viewer in the texture of the setting. Maria, Bernardo, and Anita speak Spanish at home because that is their native language. When they flip to English, ostensibly for “practice,” it’s really to help the non-Spanish-speaking audience members understand information that cannot be conveyed through emotion or cognates. For instance, when Maria and Anita are preparing for the dance, Maria complains about Bernardo dictating her life (the word she uses sounds like dictador). But if you can’t catch the details in the language, you can understand the meaning when a young woman mentions her brother with a huff of annoyance and dons red lipstick—lipstick she hastily removes when her brother arrives.

The effect the unsubtitled Spanish can have on non-Spanish speakers is also commented on within the movie itself. Tony is visibly confused when Maria speaks in Spanish and asks for clarification. He learns romantic phrases from Valentina so the audience and Tony get the benefit of a Spanish lesson before he vows quiero estar contigo para siempre. The vows in “One Hand, One Heart” highlight how language isn’t a barrier to emotional connection. When Maria kneels down in a cloister and makes a vow to love him before God, her meaning is clear through her emotion and the situation.

(That said, when this movie is released for streaming and on DVD, I wonder if an English translation will be provided in the subtitles or if the subtitles will simply say [speaking Puerto-Rican Spanish] in response to the pushback.)

Notes

I’ll go deeper into the plot in the next part.

#west side story 2021 #west side story #wss #my meta

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thepageofhopes · 3 years ago

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Undertale Multiverse Classpects Part 1/??

It’s inevitable once I get super into something that I do this.

I will most likely do more characters but for now I started with just some of the biggest characters of the multiverse/underverse specifically.

Explanations will be under the cut. Long, long, explanations. (Almost 3k words!)

Error: Bard of Time Ink: Rogue of Space Nightmare: Knight of Doom Dream: Page of Life Cross: Witch of Blood XChara: Prince of Heart XGaster: Thief of Light

Most of this was done using the theories of 0pacfica, whose amazing classpect theory posts can be found on Ao3 here:

https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960270

Though this was also cross referenced with bladekindeyewear’s older theories (particularly on the roles of the classes and active/passive pairs) and a sprinkling of the extended zodiac.

So this is another classpect where it’s actually easier to do in pairs for a lot of the characters due to how intertwined they are.

Error: Bard of Time

Ink: Rogue of Space

When starting with these two, it really was a giant debate between me and my friends about whether Ink and Error were time and space or hope and rage. It was very hard to move away from Hope/Rage when it represents unchecked creation and destruction which...is pretty much the entire backbone of underverse, but after lots of back and forth we found Time and Space fit better overall.

It’s useful to think of Space as Beginnings and Time as Endings. Ultimately what Ink does is facilitate a bunch of new beginnings. Ink is also all about the growth of the multiverse, which is the closest analogue we really have to Skaia. Hope may be creation, but it is creation as counter to the greater narrative, and often counter to Skaia and the reproduction of the universe. On the flip side, Rage, while being destruction, is generally destruction of anything non-fundamental. Error, by contrast, does not care what is being destroyed. His goal is ultimately the end to the multiverse itself; the end of the narrative. Time and Space are also the main building blocks of the universe and without them sessions become void. Ink and Error ultimately represent the core of the multiverse and are also key in most of the big multiverse spanning stories. As well, there’s really no escaping how similar Error and Caliborn act in both personality and actions.

Finally, looking at the extended zodiac, even their personalities fit decently well, though mostly Ink and Space. While classpect is actually much more about narrative arcs and roles than personalities, it’s still useful to look at the most personality based descriptions of the extended zodiac. Space has the description ‘They are patient, masters of the art of 'wait-and-see', and are inclined to take things as they come. That isn't to say that they're pushovers or willing to let injustice lie-they just choose their battles wisely, understanding that sometimes you have to let something burn to the ground in order to build it back better and stronger than before. To this effect, they tend to be innovators, concerned with creation and redemption.‘ and if that doesn’t describe Ink in underverse at least, then nothing else does. Time is a little less fitting personality wise for Error, but these few bits are pertinent: ‘Their lives are often marked by struggle, not so much because fate has it in for them, but because they are fundamentally incapable of just accepting things as they come.’ ‘At their worst they are ruthless, defensive, and impulsive.‘

So now that Aspect is out of the way, I can explain classes. Let’s start with the easy one first. There’s no way we could have Error as anything other than a destroyer class, so Bard or Prince had to be one of the titles. Then from there it comes down to whether Error is active or passive. While it may be easy to say ‘well he actively destroys things’ it’s useful to remember someone's powers can look very similar even if active or passive. My go to for this is Roxy who despite being a passive void class, ultimately can still actively steal nothingness from concepts.

And I have to ask- does Error really actively use his aspect? Because I don’t think so. There’s a popular fan concept of Error as a ‘Forced god of Destruction’ that I think really cements this. Time as an aspect tends to also represent Fate, and if there’s a character who has been actively fucked over by Fate, it’s Error. Even from his time as Genos, Error has been the butt monkey of terrible circumstances. 0pacifica talks about ‘Student’ classes (Thieves, Seers, and Bards) as one where the aspect changes the player, and if that doesn’t describe Error just.

Also it gives Error a codpiece and isn’t that just fucking perfect.

So onto the harder class to explain- Ink being a Rogue. Unlike the Destroyer class, there’s no ‘Creator’ class to nicely fit Ink into (although some suspect that the Heal class of Sylph and most likely Maid class can double as both Heal and Create) but even then, Ink doesn’t really actively create. Rather he tends to try and inspire creators to create. For Ink it made more sense to use 0pacifica’s chart to lower down the class, and then make sure the powers still fit from there.

To start with, there’s no way Ink is anything but a mutualist class. Both Ink and the multiverse benefit from Ink’s role in the multiverse. But even more telling that Ink is a mutualist class is the line in the flowchart ‘The story is not complete until I have accomplished what I have set out to do or found another way to satisfy my initial impulse.’ From the start of Underverse at least to now (though I also suspect to the end of Underverse) the story has been driven by Ink’s actions and motivations. There wouldn’t be a story without him, for good or ill.

From there using the chart, it was easy to lower it down to Rogue or Knight. Ink really isn’t changed or used by their aspect, unlike Error. So it really comes down to does Ink use his aspect or change his aspect. From here I really like 0pacifica’s one sentence descriptions. Rogue is ‘I change my aspect to a more useful form’ while Knight is ‘I use my aspect like a tool’. Eventually we decided on Rogue because Ink doesn’t really actively use his aspect- he’s much more about inspiration- allowing others to steal his ideas, if you will ;P. He ultimately changes other beginnings in service both to the multiverse and himself- squeezing them for paint so he can keep feeling.

Also Rogue just kind of fits Ink’s aesthetic with that cute little bandit mask

What’s really cool is these two classes are also on opposite ends of the ‘Reinvent/Change’ segment of the class chart.

Hopefully this is the longest segment..

Nightmare: Knight of Doom

Dream: Page of Life

Here’s another pair we really had to decide between Hope/Rage for and Doom/Life. But honestly there wasn’t actually a lot of debate. If Doom is Stasis and Inertia, then that fits Nightmare’s ultimate goal to a T. If Nightmare gets his way, the entire multiverse will be plunged into negativity, and with no contrast, everything would just be mired in the same. In contrast to both Nightmare and in particular, Ink, Dream is all about growth and making things better. Joku has specifically stated that Dream and Ink had a falling out due to this- Dream doesn’t care about creator intentions or their story. If there is someone suffering, Dream wants to fix it.

Another way these two fit is in something 0pacifica observes regarding Doom and Life players- Life players come from ‘the top of the pile’ with every advantage behind them, while Doom players come from the ‘bottom of the heap’ with everything working against them. From their beginnings Dream has always been put upon a pedestal, with the love and adoration of the villagers surrounding them, while Nightmare was always hated, always considered as a problem before he has any type of sway over negativity. In actuality, they were born equal, but the circumstances of which side they happened to represent tilted them in their respective directions.

For the extended zodiac, since Nightmare is such a terrible person, even more so than Error in a lot of ways, means that it’s not as useful. The descriptions ar emeant for people to identify with after all, and no one is gonna self-identify with being told they are a monster. There is a bit of the extended zodiac we can use though, and that’s Nightmare as a commiserator. In underverse he gains Cross’s trust by empathizing (in a way) with his negativity, and he surrounds himself with crew that have been in as bad circumstances as he has been. Life however, has a great section that fits Dream perfectly: ‘ Those bound to the aspect of Life are the universe's healers. They are concerned with the betterment of themselves and those around them, as well as the onward march of positive progress. Deeply empathetic, they have an intuitive understanding of other's suffering and the best way of righting those wrongs.’

When looking at classes, we considered the Commensalist sections for both Dream and Nightmare for a while. But we ultimately decided against that specifically with the line that ‘my accomplishments and failings are purviews of the fringes of the narrative’ which just can’t be true for two beings so fundamental to the multiverse. Indeed, you’ll actually see none of the characters in this post fall under this side specifically because I started with the most ‘important’ characters. We ultimately decided on mutualist for Nightmare- despite his ‘bottom of the heap’ status, he ultimately tends to take control of the narrative, and much of underverse and even a lot of fan works are centered around his actions, much like Ink. Dream, by contrast, is constantly fighting an uphill battle and for most of underverse is more a pawn than any true figure of movement in the story. Parasitic fits quite well for poor Dream who no matter what ending of Joku’s story you go by, always dies.

There really is no other character who quite wields their aspect and powers to their advantage like Nightmare. I really can’t find a lot to add here, it was a pretty unambiguous choice and had very little debate in our classpect talk. All his manipulations are steeped in death and decay and well, negativity, all which fall under Doom. Knight is theorized to be the active Exploit class which fits nicely into 0pacifica’s class descriptions. So, for Dream, looking under parasitism, Dream doesn’t really change his aspect, he’s pretty much defined by Life. This lowered it down to Prince and Page. Dream, unlike Nightmare, isn’t really an active manipulator of his aspect and of his positivity. It’s more a part of him, and thus Page, who in the flowchart literally uses the line ‘I am defined by my aspect’ seemed to be the perfect fit.

Like Ink and Error, these two are also opposites on the ‘manifest’ side of classes, and even better, Knight is the active Exploit class while Page is the passive exploit class.

Thank god this section was actually shorter

Cross: Witch of Blood

XChara: Prince of Heart

While these two characters aren’t opposites in aspect or class, it’s useful to talk about both of these two at once both because of how closely they are tied together, but also because how similar their goals and narrative journeys are in general.

Basically with aspect it came down to Blood and Heart for both of them. The more material aspects really have nothing to do with either of them, both of them are much more focused on narrative meaning. Light/Void is out of the question as when it comes down to it, through all their posturing, they ultimately are much more focused on themselves than any kind of big picture or big over-arching questions on the nature of reality. This also phases out Mind for both of them. And finally, this sentence on Breath is about as anti Cross/XChara as it comes: ‘what’s meaningful and important is discovering something new, expanding that perspective, broadening the meaning-horizon and rising above the mere material of the world until ‘tradition’ is a speck of dust on a marble’.

Ultimately we went with Blood for Cross over Heart. Cross is primarily motivated by the past in a way XChara really isn’t. Hell, one of the main reasons Cross decided to fight against Frisk and XChara in Timeline X was because the timeline they were currently in was a happy place for him and the rest of the monsters. Cross is also shown to utilize bonds- it’s a vision of Cross that stops XChara in his fight against Swap/Blue. XChara, on the other hand, is much more focused on the idea of control and being in control, because they know what’s best better than anyone else. Heart is appropriately labeled as ‘egoism’ in 0pacifica’s chart and if there’s one thing XChara has, it’s an ego. There’s also the line ‘Heart is the reading into and reading out of, the situating of what’s been read in the personal and the familiar, the reshaping and reinterpreting of the text outside of the author’s hands.’ If we see XGaster as an author, then what better describe’s XChara’s role?

Honestly the extended zodiac isn’t really great for these two, once again due to the fact they are largely negative and corrupted characters. Most of what’s there isn’t truly yet in the text but implied in the opening to Underverse Season 2 (Cross being a leader through inspiration) or something that I’ve basically already covered (Heart being self-obsessed). This is long enough already so lets just move on.

There’s no way either of them are anything other than a parasitic class. ‘I could beat myself bloody against the bars of the narrative and still get no closer to the form of success I personally desire’ describes both of their experiences in XTale and Season 1 perfectly. (’All my efforts were for nothing..’) As well, for how much these characters were corrupted and damaged throughout the course of Underverse, what changed them was much more outside forces than anything having to do with their aspect- they both tend to own their aspect.

XChara is pretty definitively a Prince- He is incredibly talented at utilizing his own personal potential and even his own ego to advance his own agenda, even as it actively fucks him over. And how do his overwrite powers manifest? A complete domination of others personalities and identity. He destroys others identities and personal narratives. Cross is a tough one because most of what we’ve seen of his powers and actions have been actively manipulated by XChara whose very aspect dominates identity. But one thing that we very much see in Underverse is how Cross actively forces other people to team up and form bonds to stop him. This forwards the narrative while being actively detrimental to Cross himself. And finally, one of the last moments we see with the new Cross at the end of season 1 is him actively changing his bond/deal with Nightmare to save Dream, which gives Dream the determination and ability to escape to the Omega Timeline with the other survivors. Unfortunately most of what is in the actual text isn’t super concrete but there is enough foreshadowing and implications of where Cross’s character is going to go that Witch just ‘feels’ like the right fit.

Whew I was afraid this was somehow going to be as long/longer than the first segment

XGaster: Thief of Light

This one should hopefully be fairly short as if there was a classpect title there was the least amount of debate and back and forth on, XGaster was it.

There’s no way XGaster isn’t Light. The literal second I saw the sentence of Light that says ‘There is one answer’ there was no way he could be anything else. XGaster’s entire storyline is about finding/creating the one true perfect universe. Essentially, in classpect and narrative terms, his entire narrative is about the Search for truth and meaning. Which is literally the sentence used to describe Light in 0pacifica’s writeup.

In the interest of wrapping. this. shit. up. I’m just gonna post this section from the Light part of the extended zodiac. It feels fairly self explanatory. ‘The Light-bound will go after knowledge with a fierce intensity that others may find distasteful. They aren't overly concerned with laws or norms, either. They often take rules as simple suggestions, instead searching for loopholes or work-arounds.’

Class is where I will probably actually have to explain a little more. I don’t think mutualist is anything I really need to extensively justify- the narrative of Underverse bends to accommodate the goals of Ink and XGaster, basically everything I said about Ink also works with XGaster with how closely they are tied.��

The fundamental shift of XGaster’s narrative arc and even personality is all based around knowledge. He learns from Ink that other multiverses exist and in that instant it sets him on a new path. Thieves are all about acquiring more of their aspect to change and benefit themselves, and XGaster literally gathers ideas and knowledge from other universes to create and enrich his own. I know it’s cheeky to not have just one but two canon titles, but they undeniably fit.

Also he sure does have all the irons in the fire *shot*

Aaaaaaaaaaand we’re done! Look how fast that last segment went.

#undertale #utmv #underverse #homestuck #undertale multiverse

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himbeaux-on-ice · 4 years ago

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Can I just say that Habs “fans” who act like Carey Price’s contract is somehow patient zero of all this team’s problems drive me absolutely fucking insane? Seriously. Buckle up. This is about to be a rant.

Now. First things first. Is it ideal that the $10 million goalie is currently uh, not doing very good? Fucking NO! I am disappointed as shit with that and I don’t like seeing him struggle. I know he can be better. He has to be better. Obviously.

However. That being said.

Do I think it’s an incredibly stupid look to spend several tweets complaining about all the issues Habs defence have been having, and then also griping that they haven’t started Jake Allen enough for how he’s performing, only to then for some inexplicable reason state that the FIRST THING, the first thing that needs to be dealt with after the new coaching staff have had ONE GAME (and zero practices) to work on things, is somehow “well, the ten million dollar man in net is weighing them down, that contract has gotta go!”?

Yes! That’s stupid!!

I think that’s a very ice cold small-brain take, and not just because Price is my favourite of favourites for as long as I’ve been a hockey fan! I have reasons, dammit!! I put THOUGHT into this!!

Here, dear ppl of Habs twitter who will never read this, are some reasons why this narrative you’re concocting is dumb, and why management/coaching are unlikely to think of trying to ditch Price mid-season to fix the current problems:

1: Time. It has been one (1) game under Ducharme. He has been able to run zero (0) full practices on off days with the team. We just changed up a major piece on the Habs chess board — why don’t you give it a minute to see what fresh eyes and minds can do with this roster before you decide we are fucked? This season is fast-moving, sure, but there is time for us to ride out some little bumps here and still make a playoff spot in this Canadian division. Have patience. Do you remember what patience is? Dom is a new head coach, not a wish-granting fairy godmother. Chill. Do you remember chill?

(rest of this under a cut because I actually LIKE Habs Tumblr, and I want to be nice to you all by not making you scroll past all of it if you don’t want to)

2: Jake Allen exists. There are a couple of things I like for what this means for the Habs. Firstly, for basically the first time in his NHL career, we are not in a situation where if Carey Price is in a slump, we have to go “Ah, shit, so now our options are let his stats tank while he tries to get the groove back in net, OR throw whoever the poor backup is out there to get murdered while we plummet through the standings.... 😬” We don’t have that problem right now, because the backup is... actually good? Oh my god, the backup is actually good! Thank fuck! We’re not doomed. If I’m Ducharme, I put Allen in net for a few consecutive starts to put a solid backstop behind all my fun experiments I’m probably planning with the skating roster (to catch their slip-ups, while also giving Carey lots of time and rest with which to work hard on sorting out whatever his issue is along with the goalie coaches).

2b: Jake Allen exists and is competition. Hell, if I’m Ducharme, maybe I even play a little hardball and say “Look, Carey, I don’t want you to be an expensive benchwarmer, but if things don’t pick up soon I am going to start whoever is doing best and you will have to compete for that net.” Related to my last point, when was the last time Carey Price had to push himself to compete for net time against anything other than his own injuries, and wasn’t simply always the default starter? Has that EVER been a thing? Honestly as much as I love the idea of him being The Goalie for the Habs, I also kinda like this idea a lot because I think it could really push him to a higher standard of performance. Maybe that kind of high-pressure situation (given how much he thrives in the pressure-cooker of the playoffs) could be what he NEEDS in order to Be Carey Price again. Worst comes to worst, he doesn’t respond to that challenge, and I am very sad but the Habs have a good goalie in net anyway, because Hallelujah, Jake Allen exists! God, isn’t it nice to have Jake Allen? Bless him.

3: Money. Guys, this league is so broke right now. Seriously. Seriously. Nobody has any fucking money. The Habs probably have more money than most teams, and that does not help when it comes to offloading large contracts. Trades are a NIGHTMARE both because of the flat cap but also because travel is complicated (especially cross-border) but also nobody wants to trade within their division if possible because all your games are against them. Who in the name of fuck do you think is jumping at the idea of taking the $10 million per through 20-lots-and-lots-of-years-from-now contract of a goalie who is currently struggling, impressive past record aside? What kind of astral plane of fantasy hockey are you on to think there’s a trade out there for that within this season. Shut up. And no, don’t bring up the expansion draft, this post is a rebuttal SPECIFICALLY to the people who think that Price and his contract are the biggest problem that needs to be dealt with RIGHT NOW and first on the list of ways to immediately remedy the team’s struggles.

4: Spite. Specifically to piss you off, bud. You personally.

5: Knowing how to troubleshoot properly. Fellas, if my computer is running slowly and freezing up a lot, do I immediately decide the first step to fixing it is to crack open the chassis, remove the hard drive, and try to sell that hard drive to someone to see if I can enough money back to somehow get a better hard drive for less? No, dipshit. That’s not how troubleshooting a complex system works works. It’s the same with hockey teams. Ah, my star goalie is not performing great. This situation is deeply less than ideal. If you’re actually good at troubleshooting, the first thing you do is not “WELL. I GUESS WE’LL HAVE TO THROW THE WHOLE GOALIE OUT. HE’S TOAST.” The first thing you do, if you’re a smart coach, is you say “Okay, what are my defence doing in front of him? What are they doing to reduce the amount and quality of our opponents’ scoring chances? Oh. Oh, they’re taking a lot of penalties, and... oh, uh, some of this is very not great. Yikes.” And then you start your work by trying to make the defence actually work instead of running the same Pairs That Everyone Is Very Much Over And Tired Of, because your goalie is actually supposed to be your Last Line of Defence. And maybe during that time you give more starts to Goalie Who Is Absolutely Slaying It, so that when you start trying new D-pairs and they inevitably have some mistakes, it doesn’t immediately turn into an Oh God Holy Fuck moment every time, because that last line of defence backstopping them is solid. The reason you need to deal with defense first is because a) You know you have a reliable goalie (Allen) in your pocket right now if you need him. What you don’t have is a whole-ass proven and tested and practiced Backup D-Core you can swap into the roster in front of your goalies to make their lives easier. Fix your defense and it WILL improve your goalies, even marginally. Defrag the hard drive before you ask why it’s not working. and b) If you need to go looking for any new D-men to solve the issues, those are WAY easier and cheaper to find than top-tier goalies, and you always want to start any troubleshooting process with trying the simplest solutions first to hopefully save time and money. The better that D-core is, the less it fucks your team over if the goalie isn’t feeling themselves, because the D is going to stop more of those pucks before they ever even become the goalie’s problem. FIX. DEFENCE. FIRST. Then try to train your goalie back into top form. THEN explore your other options.

6: The vicious cycle. Guys. We literally do this once every year or second year. EVERY time Carey Price has a slump, this fanbase gets into a tizzy like the Bell Centre is burning down and he was the one with the matches. And what ALWAYS happens literally within the year, every single time? He gets his mojo back like he did last summer in the bubble and goes on a heater and everybody goes “JESUS PRICE!!!! 🙌” and is ready to name their firstborn kid after him. Until eventually that performance becomes unsustainable, and he becomes mortal again, and suddenly he’s The Real Problem With This Franchise once again. I know he’s the guy they chose to build the team around instead of a superstar forward, but oh my god folks. You’d think he was the only player on the team. Guys, I feel like fucking Sisyphus pushing a blue blanc et rouge boulder up Mont Royal once a year with this shit. This man’s entire career has been a constant seesaw narrative between “Carey Price is our saviour!” and “Carey Price should be exiled to Nome!!!!” from parts of this fanbase, I swear. Look, slumps suck, but for once we are actually lucky enough to be in a position where this team, for the first time in YEARS, does not solelylive or die by the inscrutable magical cycles of Carey Price’s goalie powers — because when he has to step back and work to get back into his groove, there is FINALLY a SECOND GUY who is GREAT. Honestly, given that the state of this team for so long has been “they will go as far as Carey Price can take them” and he has put in a pretty fucking decent job of it despite all of the team’s other struggles, I feel like it is owed it to the guy to be like “Okay, well, we have somebody else solid to fill the net right now, and a chance to really figure out our defence and special teams with this new coach. Why don’t you take a step back and work your ass off at trying to get back into the form I know you can still perform at, and we’ll go from there?”

Anyway. Some parts of this fanbase have been waiting for a fresh excuse to claim Price is overrated, washed-up, and to blame for all of this team’s flaws and ills ever since he signed that contract, if not since the start of his NHL career. Just unreal how nasty some of this fanbase is willing to be about a player who is ON. YOUR. TEAM.

Am I saying he is beyond critique of his play and can do no wrong and his contract is perfect? No! I want this team to have the best goaltending it can get, and I want them to kick ass and take names. The difference is, I still believe Carey Price is a part of that winning formula, and I also think Twitter is overflowing with idiots who just repeat what everybody else says. He’s still a better goalie than your ass would be if I stuck you out there to stop shots from Mark Schieffle, for crap’s sake.

“The first thing that has to go is Carey Price’s contract 🤪”. Shut the fuck up. You are actively making other people stupider by talking. Go eat sand. Good day.

#It’s Time For My Opinion #I put so much time into this I hope it’s coherent lol #habs #Carey price #montreal canadiens #long post

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brujahinaskirt · 4 years ago

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@missn11 says:

Ask and ye shall receive, fellow neonate! <3 Bear with me, because I’m about to hammer out 2000 words very quickly...

This massive rant by its topic nature is sort of Nines-critical, so lemme start by saying that, in my own way, I love Rodriguez. (I was partially self-burning in the shitpost that ignited this rant because I SEVERELY exaggerated Nines’s canonical shadiness levels in my ancient fanfiction, and for no other reason than because I was a teenage edgelord. I am appropriately embarrassed, but only by my excess and melodrama, not by Troika’s characterization. I think the writing behind VTMB’s Nines is superb.)

When it comes to Bloodlines, I think he’s one of the most psychologically interesting profiles in the game. In fact, I could never get into LA by Night because they so de-toothed Troika’s vision of him. Not to say LA by Night’s Nines was a poorly-developed character in his own right, ‘cause he wasn’t at all, but “my” Nines will always be unapologetically and only Troika’s: boiling angry, viciously pragmatic, a survivor who doesn’t let anyone too close lest they see through him, whose over-the-top confident façade cracks a little more every time his back’s against the wall. Troika’s Nines is the epitome of greater VTM’s “fallen rebel” archetype, and even though we don’t get to see it on all playthoughs, that makes it even better and more believable.

But as with all characterization in Bloodlines, we have to read between the lines and between our own play styles a bit to piece the truth of the puzzle together...

Besides the direct evidence Troika gives us—i.e. the music cues, which are a bit overbearing if I’m honest (sorry, Troika! ilu); the absence of Nines in Rosa’s prophecy re: people you can trust; and the overt warnings Camarilla-aligned characters give us about him—the biggest red flag about Rodriguez, imo? It’s twofold:

the way the characters he surrounds himself with talk about him and the type of vampire he chooses to fill his den. Namely: Nines exclusively recruits angry, spurned, mistreated people who are younger and far less experienced than he is

those messy, ugly, fleeting moments where you see his toughguy everyman personality crack

So! Starting with point one:

THE PERSONALITY CULT ITSELF

We can’t deny that Nines does not surround himself with peers. He surrounds himself with followers—people who don’t challenge him in any way, who are fanatically loyal, who openly profess their worship of him and their conviction he could never/would never do anything wrong. If you listen to how Damsel and Skelter talk about him, it’s with frightening adulation, often repeating Nines’s lines word-for-word without truly understanding the argumentation behind them. (Damsel’s the main offender here with her “IT’S A PYRAMID SCHEME… it just makes sense, you know? It just makes sense!” And then, of course, she gets pissed and refuses to speak to you when you push her into elaborating.)

Nines has clearly made himself much more than just a friend-figure or a Sire-figure to them. He’s utterly and completely mythologized by the LA Anarchs, held up next to other politically mythologized names like George Washington and Ho Chi Minh. His followers love him… but there’s a pecking order, and like good body shields, they believe their lives don’t matter as much as he matters. And they love that, too. They want to die for Nines. They’re not just willing to or resigned to it; they’re eager to die. Damsel will volunteer this information the first time you meet her. She just can’t wait to prove herself by taking a bullet for goddamn Nines Rodriguez. It’s literally how she introduces herself to new people.

And yet Nines deliberately withholds his attention and time from his followers. He uses his attention as a reward, as incentive. He rations some care and reassurance and help—makes you feel good and gives you reason to crave his attention—and then he pushes you away, back into his adoring ranks until the next “two minutes” you earn from him in which you’re special enough for such an exceptional, important, cool guy to talk to. That’s a classic manipulation tactic, and a classic personality cult tell.

And Troika is so damn fuckin’ brilliant about it because they don’t stop at showing us that an Anarch-aligned fledgling might feel this way—no, they make the PLAYER also feel this way. On our first playthrough of Bloodlines, we’re desperate to talk to Nines. We want the reward. “Let me finish the plaguebearer quests… let me run to the Elizabeth Dane… I hope Nines talks to me again now! Quick, to the Last Round! Maybe if I say the right thing to make him like me, he’ll give me another free EXPERIENCE POINT!” (iirc he’s one of two characters who will do so, and the only one who gives multiple points.)

But at the end of the day, Nines is indisputably the leader of the Anarchs, and even fledgling figures that out. (“Sounds like you’re the Prince of the Anarchs.”) He’s very much the Baron of Downtown LA, even if he won’t use that language. As for the grating day-to-day management and leadership stuff that might make him somewhat unpopular among the Anarchs, though? He fobs all that stuff off on Damsel!

Damsel, his Minion No. 1—whom a lot of players will hate on their early playthroughs, because she assigns tough missions with little to no reward. Damsel, who has no real power role in the Anarchs and functions only to serve Nines. You help Damsel, and you do Nines’s work—i.e. you do the work of the Barony of LA—and he doesn’t even have to take the admiration hit by having to ask you himself.

There’s only one non-follower of note around Nines. It’s Jack, and by his own words, he’s not one of Nines’s people; he disparages them, in fact. And we’ll notice that Jack—who is stronger, older, and wiser than Nines—very much doesn’t talk about Nines the same way Nines’s followers do. While Jack doesn’t directly insult him and occasionally defends him, Jack also has a downright shocking response to the announcement of the Blood Hunt. When fledgling desperately asks what they can do to help Nines—Jack says, word-for-word: I could give a damn.

Something ain’t quite right about this place.

Moving right along:

NINES IS A FAKE ALPHA MALE WHO KNOWS HE’S GOING TO DIE

Part of why Nines is so attractive to someone scared and weak like our fledgling (or Skelter or Damsel) is that he seems utterly fucking untouchable—like nothing scares him, and that must be reassuring when two of your age-old enemies are moving into town. But Nines’s tough, cool, Devil-may-care persona outs itself as a protective shell, too… and this is another thing I think Troika handled so subtly and so well.

You’ll notice that even Nines’s voice is dramatically different in a couple different situations: when Ming Xiao is borrowing his body, when he’s afraid, and when he’s distracted or deeply disturbed. (A successful Malkavian mind read will really slam a crack in his coolguy persona. For a second, the nonchalance shatters and he childishly screams SHUT UP!)

But whether you Malk him or not: In those isolated moments, the Coolguy Nines Rodriguez we normally see frays. Physically, even! His accent loses its burr (that ballsy rural American everyman accent), shoots up to a higher register—and reveals a much softer voice than the one he uses in front of other people. No wonder; part of Nines’s charisma comes from his performance of masculine confidence, and even if it’s not a toxically patriarchal masculinity in the way we often picture it, the fact this performance cracks at all shows it’s not his genuine self. He’s acting. In the way a lot of toughguy men do—but for Nines, whose survival depends upon attraction now, he’s acting toughguy for his very life.

I think those little fray-under-pressure moments are the “real” Nines, or as close as we’re going to get: scared, desperate, worn-down, and very aware of his doom.

Now, all that said…

BLATANT FALLEN REBEL CONCEPT APOLOGISM

I don’t think we can quite throw Rodriguez into the same Mean Monster Morality Dungeon for Evil Vampires as other Big Bads in LA. This is where motivation comes into play, at least for me. We know Nines can be merciless and violent, and he doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice his own soldiers (namely, um, US!) to protect his holdings. But he does seem to have a twinge of genuine anger over injustices wrought upon “little people” (look no further than Nocturne)—one that seems like it stems from a sense of right v. wrong rather than sheer pragmatism. This stands in stark opposition to the rationed pacificism of characters like LaCroix, who simply doesn’t want the headache of cleaning up a pile of dead humans on his nightly to-do list.

Nines also, of course, just doesn’t have the same kind of disaster reach other Bloodlines Big Bads do in how much harm he can cause. When LaCroix gets up to some bullshit, he crashes the national economy. Nines, like, crashes a car into a corporate office window or takes over a street or something. Can’t really compare the two when it comes to the scale of damage done.

And even Nines Rodriguez is, for all his strategy, still an honestly angry person. Not all of him is fake—what’s troubling about him is what he’s willing to sacrifice and do to satiate his anger-passion. It’s the standard Brujah emotional-moral struggle. Even though I agree with much of what he says about bloodsucking late capitalist vampires (tbh he seems to hate vampires in general!), one wonders if it’s not partially the anger-passion that’s warped him into the façade of a noble leader he’s become. It’s not a pure anger anymore; he’s weaponized it in selfish, unhealthy, destructive ways.

But if he’s a fallen rebel—and since he is still apparently capable of some genuine anger and sadness—then we can infer he wasn’t always like this. He fell, and narratively, that’s key to understanding Clan Brujah. Maybe he fell in a way all of us angry rebel-types risk falling if we let our hatred of the bloodsuckers in real life outgrow and consume our care for the real-world little people.

I think we also have to appreciate that—as far as we know—the shady shit Nines does, he primarily does to prolong his power. But for a threatened Anarch like Nines, power doesn’t mean expansion or accumulation as it might for an ascending Ventrue; it primarily means survival. The Camarilla and Kuei-jin incursions into LA have numbered his days, and he can’t possibly have any delusions about this, no matter how much he swaggers. So he does what he can do with the skills and limited resources he has. He corrupts vulnerable, angry, abused people by giving them the appearance of friendship, family, and hope they can become stronger—much like effective gang leaders do.

If he’s morally nastier than other power-players like LaCroix in some way, imo, it’s here. It’s the intimacy with which he manipulates the people around him. LaCroix may lie to you; Strauss may withhold information from you; Ming Xiao may double-cross you. But none of them ask that you love them. That’s not their goal; that’s not how they operate. None of them expect or encourage anyone to happily die for them of their own free will. If they get you killed, you’ll die resenting them—resenting that you had to die, at all.

But when you die for people like Nines Rodriguez, you do it willingly, if only because you believed he cared somehow and that he’d fight tooth-and-nail for you, too. You believed that you were a member of his little outcast family—or that you would be, if you just proved yourself a little bit more. If you just fought a little harder. If you were just a little happier about having the chance to die for the cause. Maybe if you die for Nines, then Nines will love you, too.

I don’t think he does. I don’t think he will. If he’s a true fallen rebel archetype, I don’t know if he can anymore.

That’s enough Anarchs for now! I’m gonna peace out with some copy/pasted lyrics from the theme song of Nines’s den: the ballad of the charming and vengeful Lecher Bitch. Stay sharp, my little Bloodlines fanatics!

Tell me your story Don't worry, I've been there Crown me your savior Don't worry, I'll be there

[Chorus] I said hey You're coming all the way I've got some hell to pay I'm diggin' all the way All the way down I said hey You're coming all the way I've got some hell to pay Gonna rip you every way On the way down again [Bridge] Don't belong lording above me Won't be hard to pull you underground It won't be long 'til you love me And I'll be coming at your back To break it down

#vtmb #vampire the masquerade bloodlines #nines rodriguez #tune in next week for my 5 page essay on why Wong Ho is the only nice person in Bloodlines!#not really #but maybe really #in conclusion nines ain't shit [drops mic]#[is mauled by damsel]

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jeanandthedreamofhorses · 5 years ago

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The Aesthetics of Heroism

What is morality but a pretty picture?

Yelena fabricated her past to make herself look special in the annals of history. Through this conscious deceit she makes explicit what the other members of the alliance have been doing on an unconscious level. The morality of nearly everyone in this series has been based on gaining approval from others.

In other words, to look good. In other words, aesthetics.

The panels focus on Connie, Reiner and Gabi because they are the ones who have had to face the fragile foundations of their beliefs most painfully.

Connie joined the military to make his village appreciate him, and eventually came to understand that the kind of person his mother wanted him to be is more important than any praise he might receive from her.

Reiner wanted to become a hero so his mother would be proud of him, his father would accept him, and, after being humiliated repeatedly in the Cadets, everyone would respect him.

Upon realising the weight of his crimes, he becomes suicidal with guilt that he committed genocide for such childish reasons.

Gabi joined the Cadets so she could make a performative act of redemption and be accepted in her society, but became penitent when she realised the consequences of her actions.

The others, however, are not free of this sin: they simply have not looked it in the eye.

Yelena might argue that:

Mikasa felt valuable only in her ability to care for Eren, and this was her reason for joining the Corps. The source of her value rested in him.

Armin’s desire to see the outside world was not a matter of seeking approval, but then, that was never his moral calling. The moral calling that made him join the Corps was to prove to Eren and Mikasa that he’s not just a burden.

Jean joined the Corps to live up to Marco’s evaluation of him, i.e. to gain his posthumous approval. Likewise, he is now driven to act by Marco’s judging eyes.

Levi’s primary motivation is to carry out the wishes of the fallen in their stead. The reason he places this burden on himself? Guilt that humanity’s strongest soldier couldn’t protect them. He wants to redeem himself in their dead eyes.

Hange is similarly acting under the pressure of their dead comrades, even while they would rather run away from it all.

Annie became dedicated to the Warrior cause for the sake of returning to her father, the person whose approval she cherishes the most.

Pieck became dedicated to the Warrior cause because of how deeply she values the bonds between comrades.

As for Magath, we don’t know enough about him to decisively judge. However, based on this:

I would suggest that Magath and Marleyans on the whole feel compelled by their dead ancestors to despise the race who persecuted them.

Falco’s case is especially interesting, but we shall get to that later. For now, what’s worth noting is that the value systems followed by these characters have all been fuelled by that recognisable, pathetic and all-too-human drive for one’s life to mean something in the eyes of others. The latest push of these characters to save the world is, in Yelena’s eyes, just another way to seek approval from an abstract audience: to be justified in the eyes of history, like she wanted, whether in the generations of the future or in the ghosts of the past.

If traditional morality is built off such a pleading basis, then its adherents are merely slaves to others. It is very fitting, then, that the character they have all allied against is the one who hates slaves above all else.

Eren was once such a slave. He realised how much he wanted to be acknowledged as special in the Uprising Arc, laughed at and underestimated as he was as a child, lonely as he was after losing his parents.

It is an illusion he thoroughly discarded. Freeing himself from those bonds, he can now follow the course of his own will unfettered by concern for others’ approval - unfettered by morality. He is willing to be the villain.

Yet in the eyes of many citizens of Paradis, Eren is a hero.

This, however, is largely incidental for Eren. He has made it very clear that his comrades in the 104th matter more to him than anyone else - if it were approval he were looking for, he would never trade theirs for the likes of Floch’s.

Rather, Eren has come to realise how fragile, aesthetic and ultimately meaningless morality is. If one follows the course of their will one is bound to be called hero by some and villain by others. Eren thus strives beyond good and evil into a new realm of his freedom - willing to be despised and never forgiven even by the people he loves most.

It is at this point we can return to Falco. Eren sees himself in Falco during his stay in Marley.

Falco is willing to earn Gabi’s hatred in order to protect her by stealing the thing she wants most. In this way, even though it is for the sake of another person, he is still following his own will and is not acting out of the desire for approval.

Just so does Eren act for his friends’ sake because he loves them, and not because he wants them to view him in a certain light.

If what we have discovered so far is true, then Yelena’s analysis is accurate. This alliance is not a demonstration of humanity’s nobility, but its vulnerability: a collection of broken people hopelessly thirsting for validation. For that, and that alone, seems to be the fundamental basis of morality.

Here, the metafictional aspect comes to light. The coming together of enemies to defeat a common, greater enemy is a classic trope in uplifting stories about mankind’s capacity to understand one another. Yelena exposes how the alliance are simply telling themselves this sweet story to regain a sense of worth; to believe everything up to now has been worth it; to believe they can be redeemed.

But the real story that they’re in has always been sceptical of this trope - at least in the eyes of Eren, who disdains the morals of subservience.

This kind of storytelling-based morality is apparent in our own experience of the series.

Who we deem good and evil at the start is based entirely on the narrative established by the Paradisians, as we are only allowed access into their heads. But when we come round to the start of the Marley Arc, we are presented with a very different picture of things: our heroes are the spunky Gabi and the cautious Falco, fighting against Eldian devils to redeem the sins of their people.

Nothing has changed except the perspective. When morality is this subjective, how can it make any claim to truth? How can we make any decisions based on such a shaky, unsubstantiated premise?

Yet despite all this, it is Eren’s amoral actions which will lead to the annihilation of the vast majority of humanity. Morality may therefore be a necessary yoke. Only, this conclusion is problematised by the fact that everything that has happened since the collapse of the Eldian Empire - that is to say, everything that pushed Eren into this situation - were decisions based on moral judgements.

Now we enter into the series’ most testing paradox: that the world which was doomed by moral decisions can only be saved by moral decisions.

Whither shall we fly? Outside of morality, or back into it? Is it our shelter or our prison, our curse or our salvation? Or perhaps the paradox means that this entire discussion is essentially meaningless - for humanity’s good or ill, there is no escaping morality. We ineluctably return to it, begging for the antidote for its own venom; and so the cycle of historical mistakes continues to revolve, unbroken.

Who, then, can say that we are free?

#shingeki no kyojin #snk meta #snk 127 #yelena #snk spoilers #aot spoilers

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transhawks · 5 years ago

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I would love to hear your thoughts about the recent chapter!! All day I’ve been wondering how much of what Hawks said to Twice was the truth, why he was thinking about Endeavor during their conversation and where his mission will go from here. I’m really curious about your take on it all if you don’t mind!

I. What Just Happened?

Hawks betrayed the League using Twice. Not will betray. Betrayed. Now, he was already listening out for a hospital; remember that text? But Twice, admitting it was very poor judgment of him, told him Shigaraki is in Kyoto. He admitted it with the bugs on so Skeptic absolutely knows Hawks knows where Shigaraki is. In a sense, this could very well be a trap; Twice could have been told to test Hawks.Either way, Hawks won’t know for certain - he spilled, clearly. The students are evacuating the mountain where Shigaraki’s current hospital is located because the Heroes are making the first move. This is a preemptive strike, and Hawks even acknowledges that unless they make it, they’re doomed when the League acts.

This also means Hawks is pretty much exposed, if I’m reading correctly. This was his betrayal, his ultimate reveal, I hope. He has lived up to the prophecy in his name.

II. The Truthteller

I love, for someone whose first name can be translated “truthteller”, since his first appearance Hawks has made us doubt the verity of his words. Not only us, but basically everyone in the story. It’s a permanent part of him; the double-meanings, the questions of ‘is he serious’ or ‘is he being truthful’. How much is a mask? How much is real?

The thing is, I don’t think Hawks has lied at all. His truths are just complicated things. He can think Twice is a good person and yet betray his trust because Hawks doesn’t think of himself as a good person. Or a kind-hearted person. He isn’t allowed to be and why be kind-hearted.

Hawks himself recognizes one truth; you don’t have to be good to do good, and just because he is a hero doesn’t mean he is a good person. In fact, being a good person is a liability to him. A good person would have refused to kill Jeanist for the mission. A good person would have put up a fight about such an infiltration in the first place.

Twice is a good person, let’s ignore that he has killed people for a moment. The narrative makes him a very clear victim of society, traumatized and marginalized for it. He is a victim of his circumstances but is hopeful, uncynical, and full of love and acceptance. He might not understand things but want to do well; he wanted to inspire his unit even if Twice didn’t really get what would inspire.

To people like Hawks, Twice’s goodness makes him weak. I know that sounds monstrous, damning even, but it’s one of Hawks’s flaws. People are there to be used. He feels guilt over it, and that’s a good sign. He felt guilt over using Enji, clearly over Jeanist, and now Twice. However that’s not enough - he was raised to ignore these things. Twice’s openness was a weakness to be exploited and Hawks is natural exploiter. In some ways this is a conscious decision and on the other, I don’t think he can function otherwise.

The commission raised him to be like this.

III. What is ‘Free’?

And yet… the guilt remains. And other things, no matter what, Hawks’s life-defining moment had been the rescue as a child. He is, by all of our narrative, the hero that wants to save. Heroism is saving to him. People like Twice are ‘weak’, but when Hawks isn’t using weakness, he feels obligated to protect and save the weak.

What this means is he doesn’t feel good about it. He feels trapped by this pull to respond humanely to this person who trusts him, who is so loving against all reason, and giving his heart on his sleeve, and knowing he’s expected to rip that heart to shreds. He does it all in favor of the hero system BUT! BUT! Look at how much he’s learning about the resentment. The PLF has dozens of thousands of people; these aren’t just a few disgruntled people. There’s a huge fatal flaw here.

Now, even before this Hawks felt trapped by his duties, by his life as a hero. He feels beholden to his rank, to his organization, to his abilities, to help others and yet now runs into this idea that maybe he might be hurting more than helping.

What this means is that the pieces are there for Hawks to change his thinking. He’s notice the resentment, he knows he wants to fly free but doesn’t think he can (yet) because there’s so much more he wants to do, and is currently on a path of doing terrible things (by his own admission) because he’s been told that it is right thing to do.

So what happens when he starts thinking that the right thing to do in the wrong way…isn’t right? What happens when his main reason for not flying free dissipates?

IV. Tipping Point | False Idols

As much as in trouble Hawks is right now, with the League, I highly doubt this is the end of him. I think he’s about to get his foundations shattered.

Endeavor is Hawks’s driving force for heroism. There are many reasons as to why he is - one is admiration of the kind of masculine power fantasy of strength and safety that Endeavor projects, one is the fact the man doesn’t quit striving to be better and is determined with a sort of feeling that Hawks doesn’t have.

Another guess would be that Endeavor, more than anything, always projected a picture of having it all. He was intensely private about his life but the top searches for him in manga do involve his children. He was so close to the top, but where All Might remained a symbol, Endeavor’s fatal flaw was that he seems human and flawed to Japan.And yet Hawks desires that most of all. The freedom to have a life, the freedom to be human and not a hero, or maybe be both, like Endeavor. Knowing nothing about what happened in the Todoroki household, it’s probably goals to Hawks. “This man is tireless, has the most completed cases, and yet still has a family. A wife, kids.”

Hawks doesn’t have a family from what we can guess. As of 258, the reason we have a thief named Takami arrested by Endeavor is unclear. It’s likely this is a relative. Personally, I’ve always maintained Hawks seeing Endeavor as father figure in his youth, mostly due not having one or being failed by his own. Maybe to a young Hawks, Endeavor looked like the perfect father.

Hawks is an adult now, and can look at Endeavor critically, but it doesn’t mean those feelings faded. That old admiration and yearning to be like him, even if he knows he isn’t meant to, is still there (just like Hawks can’t fully discard the part of him that *uses* Enji and thinks less of him for allowing himself to be used).

What this means is that so much of Hawks’s desires tie in with a lot of childhood dreams of what Endeavor might have meant to him. And we, as readers, know how much of that built is on a lie. Endeavor gave up immediately, he did horrible inhumane things to a woman and his children for decades, all in the name of being ‘better than’, not even a better hero.

Hawks doesn’t know. Maybe he has guesses but I don’t think Hawks knows about his family life.

I think the reveal will be deeply shocking, enough to put those pieces into place. The resentment to his own circumstances, the resentment of the public to heroism, the commission wanting to keep the status quo and Hawks having to choose if the status quo is worth defending at all.

We’re in a crossroads with him. Hawks’s time as a victim with no autonomy is up - he has to start making decisions about where he’s going to go. I can’t say anything is for certain, but I do think he’s headed for moral revelations. I just hope it’s not too late to right his current wrongs.

#hawks #takami keigo #bnha 258 #meta #bnha #my meta

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pollylynn · 4 years ago

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Title: Formulaic WC: 900

“So you got a story to explain all of this?” — Kate Beckett, Cuffed (4 x 10)

This is a soap opera scenario if he’s ever seen one. They have woken up in an apparently compromising position, in an almost literal dungeon with one filthy mattress and a mysterious freeze that weighs a million pounds, handcuffs and needle marks and an Act II hatch, high up in the ceiling. It’s pure soap opera. In fact, he’s not sure that his mother hadn’t lived through this exact scenario—possibility multiple times—back during her Temptation Lane days.

It’s fairly unnerving, which is strange. He would have thought that the camp of the genre—its warm familiarity, given its association with his first novel—would lighten the mood a little, but no. He knows the dramatic beats a little too well and though he kicks around the idea of playing Criswell every Halloween, he does not, in the real world as it turns out, enjoy knowing that the freezer, once they finally get it open, will yield something disturbing. He does not enjoy knowing with absolute certainty that the hatch will promise escape at least an act too early for there not to be a nasty surprise on the other side of it.

But he does know these things, beat by beat, and like clockwork, the freezer yields chains and manacles and bloody knives. Like clockwork— after a required-by-law comic relief interlude where various parts of her body are all in his face, and each and every one really ought to require that she buy him dinner first—some bald, creepy tough is cackling wordlessly down at them. He can practically hear the cackles superimposed on one another, the creepy tough and the old woman in the cage, who by soap opera law must absolutely be in on whatever plot this.

That twist, which surely won’t be revealed until the very end of the episode at the very soonest, is the end of his prognosticatory road. He’s sort of out of dramatic beats by the time the hatch slams shut with deadly finality and the two of them land with a squawk and a thump on their backs on the filthy mattress. With the wind knocked out of him and his spine calling its lawyer preparatory to suing hm for everything he is worth, he can’t think what the next complication will be.

He can’t think, but of course he doesn’t have to. The next complication is obvious. This is a soap opera scenario. The two of them are handcuffed to one another, and they are facing all-but certain death. What’s more, they’ve been bickering incessantly as though driven to it by an unseen narrative spirit. They are the duo who loathed one another at first sight. They are the exes who have been in a bitter feud since they split.

They are the bitter enemies who radiate sexual tension, and they are doomed—absolutely doomed—to a passionate kiss and who knows what else on that filthy mattress in that almost literal dungeon. They are doomed to sultry saxophones punctuating this turn of events as the station cuts to a commercial break.

All of this becomes clear to him as he waits for the breath re-entering his body to stop being made entirely of knives. He is, to say the least, not averse to this inevitable turn In their one-hundred per cent opera drama, though he’d prefer a mattress of the non-filthy variety and cuffs that lean to the more recreational end of the spectrum. He’d prefer a nice sturdy bed post, his or hers, he’s not at all picky.

He would strongly prefer to be staring deeply into her eyes, knife-free breath heaving in his chest, getting ready for his close-up. He would very much prefer not to be contemplating the awkward logistics of a cashmere turtleneck and a button-down shirt bunching between their wrists and dangling from one sleeve.

He’d like to inhabit fully the mind and soul of that soap opera leading man right now. He’d like to know the freedom that comes with not wondering what terrible dramatic beat will put an end to the kiss and all that follows. He would like to—right now—kiss her hard enough that his mind blanks out, and hers does too.

But he’s not a soap opera leading man, and actually they are not sworn enemies, the bitter exes, the hate-at-first-sight duo—except, okay, maybe she likes to pretend that she hated him at first sight, but she was charmed. Even Baby Beckett with her scowl and her chopped-short hair was charmed.

There’s a moment when he rolls toward her on the mattress and he smiles so wide that it makes her frown. It makes her voice do that gravely thing that’s dead sexy, and this is pretty confusing. He is very much in favor of making out—filthy mattress not withstanding—but it brightens up this almost-literal dungeon considerably to think that the reason they’re not making out under soap opera law.

The reason she’s not about to pull back from the kiss, slap him hard, then launch herself at him again is because she likes him too much. He likes her, and who cares if they’ve been bickering the whole time? She likes him. He loves her. And soap opera law, for good or for ill, has no power here.

A/N: Meta fiction. Not a thing. Nope. Not.

images via homeofthenutty

#Castle #Caskett #Castle: Season 4 #Castle: Cuffed #Kate Beckett #Richard Castle #Fic #Fanfic #Fanfiction #Fan Fic #Fan Fiction #Writiing #interrogatives?

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star-anise · 5 years ago

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why would your social environment affect if you identify as a woman or nb?

I don’t know if you meant it to be, but this is a delightful question. I am going to be a complete nerd for 2k+ words at you.

“Gender” is distinct from “sex” because it’s not a body’s physical characteristics, it’s how society classifies and interprets that body. Sex is “That person has a vagina.” Gender is “This is a blend of society’s expectations about what bodies with vaginas are like, social expectations of how people with vaginas do or might or should act, behave, and feel, the actual lived experiences of people with vaginas, and a twist of lemon for zest.” Concepts of gender and what is “manly” and “womanly” can vary a lot. They’re social values, like “normal” or “legal” or “beautiful”, and they vary all the time. How well you fit your gender role depends a lot on how “gender” is defined.

800 years ago in Europe the general perception was that women were sinful, sensual, lustful people who required frequent sex and liked watching bloodsport. 200 years ago, the British aristocracy thought women were pure, innocent beings of moral purity with no sexual desire who fainted at the sight of blood. These days, we think differently in entirely new directions.

But this gets even more complicated, in part because human experience is really diverse and society’s narratives have to account for that. So 200 years ago, those beliefs about femininity being delicate and dainty and frail only really applied to women with aristocratic lineages, and “the lower classes” of women were believed to be vulgar, coarse, sexual, and earthy, which “explained” why they performed hard physical labor or worked as prostitutes.

Being trans or nonbinary isn’t just or even primarily about what characteristics you want your body to have. It’s about how you want to define yourself and be interpreted and interacted with by other people.

The writer Sylvia Plath lived 1932-1963, and she said:

“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars–to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording–all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery.”

She was from upper-middle-class Massachusetts, the child of a university professor. A lot of those things she was “prohibited” from doing weren’t things each and every woman was prohibited from doing; they were things women of her class weren’t allowed to do. The daughters and sisters and wives of sailors and soldiers, women who worked in hotels and ran rooming houses, barmaids and sex workers, got to anonymously and invisibly observe those men, after all. They just couldn’t do it at the same time they tried to meet the standards educated Bostonians of the 1950s had for nice young women.

Failure to understand how diverse womanhood is has always been one of feminism’s biggest weaknesses. The Second Wave of feminism was started mostly by prosperous university-educated white women, since they were the people with the time and money and resources to write and read books and attend conferences about “women’s issues”. And they assumed that their issues were female issues. That they were the default of femaleness, and could assume every woman had roughly the same experience as them.

So, for example, middle-class white women in post-WWII USA were expected to stay home all the time and look after their children. Feminists concluded that this was isolating and oppressive, and they’d like the freedom to pursue lives, careers, and interests outside of the home. They vigorously pursued the right to be freed from their domestic and maternal duties.

But in their society, these experiences were not generally shared by Black and/or poor women, who, like their mothers, did not have the luxury of spending copious amounts of leisure time with their children; they had to work to earn enough money to survive on, which meant working on farms, in factories, or as cooks, maids, or nannies for rich white women who wanted the freedom to pursue lives outside the home. They tended to feel that they would like to have the option of staying home and playing with their babies all day.

This is not to say none of the first group enjoyed domestic lives, or that none of the second group wanted non-domestic careers; it’s just that the first group formed the face and the basic assumptions of feminism, and the second group struggled to get a seat at the table.

There’s this phenomenon called “cultural feminism” that’s an attitude that crops up among feminists from time to time (or grows on them, like fungus) that holds that women have a “feminine essence”, a quasi-spiritual “nature” that is deeply distinct from the “masculine essence” of men. This is one of the concepts powering lesbian separatism: the idea that because women are so fundamentally different from men, a society of all women will be fundamentally different in nature from a society that includes men.

But, well, the problem cultural feminism generally has is with how it achieves its definition of “female nature”. The view tends to be that women are kinder, more moral, more collectivist, more community-minded, and less prone to violence.

And cultural feminists tend to HATE people who believe in the social construction of gender, because we tend to cross our arms and go, “Nah, sis, that’s a frappe of misused statistics and The Angel In the House with some wishful thinking as a garnish. That’s how you feel about what womanhood is. It’s fair enough for you, but you’re trying to apply it to the entire human species. That’s got less intellectual rigor and sociological validity than my morning oatmeal.” Hence the radfem insistence that gender theorists like me SHUT UP and gender quite flatly DOESN’T EXIST. It’s a MADE-UP TERM, and people should STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. (And go back to taking about immutable, naturally-occuring phenomena, one supposes, like the banking system and Western literary canon.)

Because seriously, when you look at real actual women, you will see that some of us can be very selfish, while others are altruistic; some think being a woman means abhorring all violence forever, and others think being a woman means being willing to fight and die to protect the people you love. As groups men and women have different average levels of certain qualities, but it’s not like we don’t share a lot in common. The distribution of “male” and “female” traits doesn’t tend to mean two completely separate sets of characteristics; they tend to be more like two overlapping bell curves.

So, like I said, I grew up largely in rural, working-class Western Canadian society. My relatives tend to be tradesmen like carpenters, welders, or plumbers, or else ranchers and farmers. I was raised by a mother who came of age during the big push for Women’s Lib. So in the culture in which I was raised, it was very normal and in some ways rewarded (though in other ways punished) for women to have short hair, wear flannel and jeans, drive a big truck, play rough contact sports, use power tools, pitch in with farmwork, use guns, and drink beer. “Traditional femininity” was a fascinating foreign culture my grandmother aspired to, and I loved nonsense like polishing the silver (it’s a very satisfying pastime) but that was just another one of my weird hobbies, like sewing fairy clothes out of flower petals and collecting toy horses.

Within the standards of the society I was raised in, I am a decently feminine woman. I’m obviously not a “girly girl”, someone who wears makeup and dresses in ways that privilege beauty over practicality, but I have a long ponytail of hair and when I go to Mark’s Work Wearhouse, I shop in the women’s section. We know what “butch” is and I ain’t it.

But through my friendships and my career, I’ve gotten experiences among cultures you wouldn’t think would be too different–we’re all still white North Americans!–but which felt bizarre and alien, and ate away at the sense of self I’d grown up in. In the USA’s northeast, the people I met had the kind of access to communities with social clout, intellectual resources, and political power I hadn’t quite believed existed before I saw them. There really were people who knew politicians and potential employers socially before they ever had to apply to a job or ask for political assistance; there were people who really did propose projects to influential businessmen or academics at cocktail parties; they really did things like fundraise tens of thousands of dollars for a charity by asking fifty of their friends to donate, or start a business with a $2mil personal loan from a relative.

And in those societies, femininity was so different and so foreign. I’d grown up seeing femininity as a way of assigning tasks to get the work done; in these new circles, it was performative in a way that was entirely unique and astounding to me. A boss really would offer you a starting salary $10k higher than they might have if you wore high heels instead of flats. You really would be more likely to get a job if you wore makeup. And your ability to curate social connections in the halls of power really was influenced by how nice of a Christmas party you could throw. These women I met were being held, daily, to a standard of femininity higher than that performed by anyone in my 100 most immediate relatives.

So when girls from Seven Sisters schools talked about how for them, dressing how I dressed every day (jeans, boots, tee, button-up shirt, no makeup, no hair product) was “bucking gendered expectations” and “being unfeminine”, I began to feel totally unmoored. When I realized that I, who absolutely know only 5% as much about power tools and construction as my relatives in the trades, was more suited to take a hammer and wade in there than not just the “empowered” women but the self-professed “handy” men there, I didn’t know how to understand it. I felt like I was… a woman who knew how to do carpentry projects, not “totally butch” the way some people (approvingly) called me.

And, well, at home in Alberta I was generally seen as a sweet and gentle girl with an occasional stubborn streak or precocious moment, but apparently by the standards of Southern states like Georgia and Alabama I am like, 100x more blunt, assertive, and inconsiderate of men’s feelings than women typically feel they have to be.

And this is still all just US/Canadian white women.

And like I said, after years of this, I came home (from BC, where I encountered MORE OTHER weird and alien social constructs, though generally more around class and politics than gender) to Alberta, and I went to what is, for Alberta, a super hippy liberal church, and I helped prepare the after-service tea among women with unstyled hair and no makeup who wore jeans and sensible shoes, and listened to them talk about their work in municipal water management and ICU nursing, and it felt like something inside my chest slid back into place, because I understood myself as a woman again, and not some alien thing floating outside the expectations of the society I was in with a chestful of opinions no one around me would understand, suddenly all made sense again.

I mean, that’s by no means an endorsement for aspirational middle class rural Alberta as the ideal gender utopia. (Alberta is the Texas of Canada.) I just felt comfortable inside because it’s the culture where I found a definition of myself and my gender I could live with, because its boundaries of what’s considered “female” were broad enough to hold all the parts of me I felt like I needed to express. I have a lot of friends who grew up here, or in families like mine, and don’t feel at all happy with its gender boundaries. And even as I’m comfortable being a woman here, I still want to push and transform it, to make it even more feminist and politically left and decolonized.

TERFs try to claim that trans and nonbinary people reinforce the gender identity, but in my experience, it’s feminists who claim male and female are immutable and incompatible do that. It’s trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people who, simply by performing their genders in public, make people realize just how bullshit innate theories of gender are.. Society is going to want to gender them in certain ways and involve them in certain dynamics (”Hey ladies, those fellas, amirite?”) and they’re going, “Nope. Not me. Cut it out.” I’ve seen a lot of cis people who will quietly admit they do think men and women are different because that’s just reality, watch someone they know transition, and suddenly go, “Oh my god, I get it now.”

Like yes, this is me being coldly political and thinking about people as examples to make a political point. Everyone’s valid and can do what they want, but some things are just easier for potential converts to wrap their minds around.. “I’m sorting through toys to give to Shelly’s baby. He probably won’t want a princess crown, huh?” “I actually know several people who were considered boys when they were babies and never got one, and are making up for all their lost princess crown time now as adults. You never know what he’ll be into when he grows up.” “…Okay, point. I’ll throw it in there.” Trans and enby people disrupt gender in a really powerful back-of-the-brain way where people suddenly see how much leeway there is between gender and sex.

I honestly believe supporting trans and enby people and queering gender until it’s a macrame project instead of a spectrum are how we’ll get to a gender-free utopia. I think cultural feminism is just the same old shit, inverted. (Confession: in my head, I pronounce “cultural” with emphasis on the “cult” part.)

I think feminism is like a lot of emergency response groups: Our job is to put ourselves out of a job. It’s not a good thing if gender discrimination is still prevalent and harmful 200 years from now! Obviously we’re not there yet and calls to pack it in and go home are overrated, but as the problem disappears into its solution, we have to accept that our old ways of looking at the world have to shift.

#staranise original #lgbt discourse

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nicollekidman · 5 years ago

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abby can you talk on how deancas and tenrose are the same?

okay so i need to preface this with the usual…. cannot believe i am enlightened enough to be seriously discussing this in the year 2020, but i’m happy for my teen self. also there is about to be a lot of unhinged earnestness to follow, so if you’re easily succebtable to cringe… don’t read on. ALSO RIP I WROTE 1800 WORDS about just the most general and nonspecific concepts…… brb k wording myself

first off i think it’s so funny that i just went back and looked and i typed cas/ten as a one and dean/rose as a six completely independently so… that’s where my head is at.

i think the meat of the issue is the way that tenrose and deancas function both in relation to the overall narrative and each other. there are many differences of course, but at the end of the day, both relationships are positioned as the ultimate working example of what their shows are trying to be About.

i could write an entirely separate essay on the intersections between cas and the doctor, but essentially…… these are figures introduced to the audience as Beyond Human Understanding. they exist as celestial beings unconstrained by the rules of space and time, more closely connected to god than humanity. we meet the doctor farther along in his journey than castiel, but both of their character arcs are rooted in a Godlike Creature observing humanity and becoming enamored with it/driven to protect and care for it. by the time the doctor meets rose, it is well established that he has a soft spot for humanity, she’s not the one who teaches him that. but she is the one he reaches out to and leans on for support and healing post-time war, and she is the one who influences ten’s regeneration so deeply that he is made in her image/for her. castiel rebuilds dean atom by atom is hell, and upon rescuing him from the pit, finds himself similarly irrevocably altered. it is revealed to us that castiel also has had a long affection for humanity, but nothing swayed him from his ultimate duty before he met dean. and just as the doctor finds himself with a family for the first time after gallifrey with rose and her mother on the estate, castiel finds himself cut off from his family/realm, but with a new family, team free will. they lose everything, their attachment to the heavens, and find a new family and a new reason to continue, in these humans.

dean and rose also are the ultimate Human Credentials. we all know this term to be indicative of someone who confers humanity onto the other, someone who, by mere accompaniment, allows their beloved to more safely/easily navigate life. and it’s true in this sense. rose is constantly reminding ten how to Be Human (”am i being rude?”) in both big and small ways, just as dean more or less badgers castiel in the same way ( “dude. we talked about this”). neither cas nor ten would be as intimately connected with their “human sides” with their partners. but dean and rose are also Human Credentials in a broader sense, in that….. they act as character references for the rest of humanity, and by virtue of their own selves/their partner’s attachment to them, guarantee investment in the rest of the human race. castiel is more-or-less content to watch from heaven and take orders until he rescues dean and becomes involved with his life (”the moment castiel laid a hand on you in hell he was lost”). his love and affection for dean and his willingness to bend everything to keep him safe means that castiel learns to defy heaven for the good of humanity. ten has always loved humans, but he loves rose a little differently. The Doctor Needs Someone, and we see rose’s power as his human credential most strongly when she’s gone. Without rose, ten is more willing to put himself/others in danger, to make choices that will result in death, to be callous and reckless and thoughtless. rose’s presence is a constant reminder that humanity is Worth the Trouble, that he’s never met anyone who wasn’t important.

for rose and dean…. these are two, completely Normal, Average People. or so they think anyways. the burdens they carry and their inner lives are very different, but in very simple ways, they both would’ve continued their lives believing there was nothing special about them, getting up to Do Their Duty, never asking for anything special. both view themselves are caretakers, although this manifests differently bc rose is a bratty 19 year old and dean never got the opportunity to be a teenager. but both Feel Deeply in ways/levels that others don’t. each has an extremely open heart and a need to protect/provide for the little people. what ten and cas give them is an entirely new perspective, whereupon it starts to be possible to believe that even the smallest person can affect the world for better, and that they, specifically Deserve More.

THEN we have the ideas of religion/free will/fate that intertwine both shows. rtd’s doctor who was explicitly and obviously written with the intent to show an atheist universe where the human spirit and mind are enough on their own to be holy, to determine right and wrong, and to decide the events of the universe. obviously ten is often situated in christ-like positions, but he learns from humanity as much as they teach him. supernatural is a little more complicated, with an alternate vision of accepted figures of christianity, but both shows heavily emphasize the power of human kindness, passion, empathy, and individual choice. ten may not live within the confines of space and time, but apocalypses in doctor who often hinge on one small person doing The Next Right Thing, just as supernatural’s base credo is We’re Writing a New Chapter. castiel bursts onto the scene and is literally taught the importance of free will by dean, and perhaps even the importance of his own desires/needs by dean. both core relationships exemplify what it means to make choices outside the realm of fate (even whilst allowing for the existence of soulmates). yes, castiel was ordered to raise dean from perdition, but their human connection is what allows the winchesters to subvert God and move outside the printed narrative - love for a human is what makes an angel CHOOSE to fall from heaven. and ten…. well ten knows that rose is going to die. ten understands from the moment he allows himself to care for her above all others, that he is dooming himself to pain and regret and loss. but he decides to do it anyways, because isn’t the best thing an otherwordly being in love with humanity can do is to eperience love and loss on a human level? both cas and ten understand that there is no love without pain, that they will be the ones to watch their beloveds leave them, but that the Choice to love out of free will is worth it.

there’s also the element of Expression/Repression. here is where the underlying emotion remains similar but the freedom of how exactly to illustrate these feelings could not be more different. tenrose is a heterosexual relationship at the end of the day, and their storylines require them to be alone in each other’s presence nearly 100% of the time. thus, we get LOTS of familiar touching, lots of body language and casual intimacy and teasing. dean and cas…. lol. not so much. instead of physicality, we get looks, both because of dean’s own upbringing/sexuality and because they exist on the show that they do. deancas deals in the unspoken - the acts of service, the grace healings, the tense moments of battle, the lack of personal space. the expression is different, but the emotion is the same. ten and dean hold themselves back from the more Obvious open-book partners, for their own personal reasons. the end effect being that everyone on screen understands/insinuates what’s happening, and their relationship is so thick with subtext its a wonder no one suffocates. Words are seen as the ultimate step, once which cannot be overcome in normal life. both pairs use death/separation as the final step towards full transparency, but even then we are never granted the ultimate catharsis of an I Love You. castiel couches his confessions in generalizations towards groups, and dean swallows his truth even in prayer. rose says the words through a veil of uncrossable distance, but she doesn’t get to hear them back. they can Know, and we can Understand, but we cannot hear it.

lastly (for now)…. and perhaps as an ultimate summation…….. death and parallel universes and fate cannot stop them, those who are drawn to each other through heaven and hell, through time and realities. it is to be understood that will all four individuals fight to ensure that each human being is safe, protected, and able to make their own choices they are soulmates. they are soulmates who are bound to each other to be sure, but they’re not Fated in a way that takes away their free will. they’re fated by the series of choices they make, over and over again, to prioritize each other, to traverse time and space and dimension and hell to get back to one another. god cannot see castiel in his plans for the world, and yet castiel has evaded death again and again, to give dean a win. nothing could tear rose away from her doctor, and even while trapped in another dimmension, she hears his voice, she runs to him, and she finds a way to get back to him. each and every choice they make brings them back to one another, regardless of the ultimate ending. we don’t know yet if we will ever hear castiel and dean get their doomsday moment, but we do know that in order for castiel to leave dean’s side, an entirely new dimmension (the empty) will have to be in play to keep them apart.

ultimately, castiel and ten are both celestial beings with self-worth issues but a burning and true desire to see humanity thrive, directly and indirectly because of their attachment to dean and rose. dean and rose make castiel and ten more human, all while exemplifying why human is a good thing to be. dean and rose become more themselves under cas and ten’s influence, both are given more opportunity to bloom into who they are meant to be. all four become More in the presence of each other, and save the world while doing it. ultimately there is a heavy dose of tragedy in both - whether or not dean and cas get their moment is yet to be seen, but these are still Soulmates with differing relationships to mortality. but is there anything sweeter than defying god’s and fate and our own doubts to grab love with both hands, even when we know there will be pain?

#JESUS MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST #the way i could write an additional 2k words on any one of these sections/elements #anyways happy high holy day #deancas #tenrose #dw #spn #meta #Anonymous #LMAOOOOOO

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twentiethcenturymoviesandtv · 4 years ago

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The Wizard of Oz: A Product of the Times

1939 was a tough year.

America was in the middle of the Great Depression, and spirits (and funds) were low. World War II was on the horizon, with news every month about frightening developments in Europe. The movies were full of Sharp-Dressed Men, Simple, yet Opulent costumes, Screwball Comedies and Slapstick. Smoking was Glamorous, Shirley Temple was popular, and swashbuckling stories of action heroes used swords in Errol Flynn-esque fight scenes.

In short, the movies were glamour and glitz, used to forget about how hard life was at the time. People didn’t need another reminder about how dark life could be, they had to live with it every day. They were scared and uneasy, and the movies were full of optimistic, carefree noise to make up for it.

Now, you may be wondering why I’m telling you all this.

The answer is simple: to help us understand and contextualize The Wizard of Oz.

See, no film is an island. Every movie ever made exists as the product of the people who created it, all with different experiences and ways of thinking that are all influenced by one thing: the culture. Every movie, every book, tv show and song, is a product of people living in the times, therefore, a product of the times itself, even a so-called ‘timeless’ classic like The Wizard of Oz.

Every movie, no matter how far removed from the culture by location or time, carries the ideas, designs, acting style, archetypes, stories and special effects of the time of its creation. Whether it’s the screwball comedies of the ‘30s, the spy movies of the ‘60s, or the crime and drama films of the ‘90s. Some things hold up, and stand the test of time reasonably well, and some don’t, and today, we’re seeing which category The Wizard of Oz lands in.

It’s clear to see in the film itself where The Wizard of Oz shows its age. The acting comes across as somewhat stilted to modern viewers, the jokes a little lame, and the backgrounds and special effects necessary for a fantasy-land definitely remind us that it’s an old movie. Some comments made within the film can sound a little odd to modern ears as well, such as Glinda’s line: ‘only bad witches are ugly!’. Even the film’s central message, ‘there’s no place like home’, has long fell out of fashion in the movies, with more and more ‘coming of age’ stories dedicated to moving out on one’s own.

On top of that, elements were changed from the source itself to make it more palatable to the audiences of the time. Besides adding the ‘dream ending’ due to the unheard-of idea of a fantasy movie, the executives were worried that the Wicked Witch of the West would be too frightening, and cut down the scare factor of their main antagonist. (For example, the original message in the sky: Surrender Dorothy or Die being cut down to simply Surrender Dorothy) The action is far more PG on screen than it was even in the fairytale children’s book, and the film in general can come across as a cheesy old movie.

Despite this, there are several elements in The Wizard of Oz that speak to how progressive it was. The production of a fantasy movie in the 1930s was automatically considered doomed to failure, and as stated above, executives insisted on the ‘dream’ ending’ due to fears that the audience wouldn’t take a ‘fantasy world’ seriously, something that later films would have no problem doing. In another bold move, all three main characters, hero, villain and mentor, are all women, something that is never pointed out or treated as different within the narrative. These components might have been considered a little odd at the time, but fit in with modern tastes and sensibilities.

So here’s the inquiry of the day: Is The Wizard of Oz heavily dated, or is it timeless?

Interesting question. To answer it, let’s look at the definition of both of those words.

The word ‘timeless’ is described as ‘not affected by the passage of time or changes in fashion’. This word carries the implication that, applied to film, a ‘timeless’ movie would be one totally understandable and relatable years after the culture has changed. Carried further, the ideal ‘timeless’ movie would be one with no cultural identity of its own.

By contrast, the word ‘dated’ is ‘marked with a date’, or ‘old-fashioned’. This word’s connotation is that, (once again, applied to film) a ‘dated’ film is one that is discernably set in a certain time, and less understandable by those looking from outside that particular culture. This would be a film that hasn’t ‘aged well’, and the criteria could be anything from hairstyles to slang of the era.

So, now that we’ve got our definitions, what’s the decision?

Here’s the thing: it’s more complicated than a simple yes-or-no.

Being one of the first of fantasy on film, The Wizard of Oz didn’t have to portray a lot of 1930s culture, which gave it a little more leeway with plot and characters that could afford to be less grounded in the times. It pioneered a genre with a fun and innovative way of telling a story, it created plenty of memorable scenes and lines, and it gave us timeless characters that we can enjoy years after, yet The Wizard of Oz remains very much a product of 1939.

I’d say we were at a draw, if I didn’t have a Theory.

My thought? Being ‘old’ (and discernably so) doesn’t make a movie dated.

It doesn’t matter if Luke Skywalker has ‘70s hair. It doesn’t have anything to do with the plot itself that E.T. is set in the ‘80s. Does the fact that Psycho is in black-and-white or contain styles of the ‘60s change anything about the story? No.

So what does matter?

My theory is this: By the dictionary definition, its connotation that is often used in the world of film debate, no film is truly timeless. Like I said previously, every single film is a product of the times. The spaceship sequences of The Last Starfighter look like they’re from the ‘80s because they are. The hair and clothes of Charlie’s Angels looks like the ‘70s because it is. The performances on Star Trek seem very much like the ‘60s because that’s when the show was made. These are all products of the times they are from, but they are not defined by them.

To me, a film is not ‘dated’ by using the methods of filmmaking (special effects, acting, costuming and beyond) of the time. A film is not ‘dated’ (not in the negative sense) because a movie is discernably from a certain era. Like I said: we consider a film ‘dated’ if it is less understandable looking back on it. We can easily look past special effects, costumes, and acting.

So what does date a movie?

Ideas.

In my opinion, the ideas of a film, the themes of it, how certain issues or character types are viewed, is what truly dates it, more than any outdated slang term or hairstyle.

It does not change our enjoyment of Goldfinger (or any Connery Bond movie, for that matter) to note that spy movies were big in the ‘60s, or that everyone is driving ‘60s cars and wearing ‘60s clothes. What does change our enjoyment is the copious amount of disposable, objectified women, ethnic stereotypes, and…..aggressive courtship of many of the ‘Bond women’ of the times. Those things, while normal in Hollywood of the 1960s, are wildly out-of-date and problematic when looking back on them with modern sensibilities and understanding. The character and stories of James Bond are far more defined by the times and sensibilities than the examples above, and in that, they are dated.

Here’s another question: Is being ‘dated’ necessarily a bad thing?

If we are set in only watching what is new, what is contemporary, what is ‘not dated’, we reduce ourselves to consuming a very tiny slice of the culture, be it film, television, books, or music. We miss out on our society’s history as portrayed through media, and we don’t learn the sensitivities, the concerns, and the ways that people told stories and expressed their ideas.

We’re also missing out on several movies that are good except for certain problematic elements- lots of films that were ‘fair for its day’. Some things, especially sensibilities, can make us cringe looking back on it from a modern standpoint, but that does not make the film as a whole necessarily bad. I’d even argue that it’s important to watch older films so that we can understand where we’ve come from, and recognize the problem. (For me, the exception is films that are rooted in a problematic idea or concept, which is something we shall address in more depth in a later article. In fact, a lot of this will probably be addressed in more depth in later articles.)

Looking at the context in which a film was created can help us to appreciate it, and even enjoy it a little better. It can help us figure out why decisions were made, understand how the culture has changed. By looking at where we’ve been (culture-wise), we can understand better where we are now. We can look back at older films, and instead of judging them for being different than what we’ve come to expect now, we can recognize what doesn’t hold up and what is considerably Not Okay, without ignoring what does hold up.

Back to our original question: Is The Wizard of Oz timeless, or dated?

I’d have to say, based on my use of the word ‘dated’, it’s definitely timeless.

Don’t get me wrong, like I’ve said previously, it’s clearly a movie from the ‘30s. The Wizard of Oz comes across as old because, quite frankly, it is. Eighty years is a long time in this fast-moving and developing world that we have now, and it makes sense that looking back, we see how much things have changed, even in something such as how movies look to us now. But as I’ve said, there’s a difference between being deeply rooted in changing ideas, and simply showing its age.

Does showing its age make it bad? No.

The Wizard of Oz is a charming, heartwarming, somewhat cheesy story that has remained steadfast this long because people love the story and characters. In my opinion, a movie is timeless not based on whether or not you can tell what decade it was made in, but by how well it has endured, on how well people can enjoy the story and characters after the culture has changed. If you can watch this story and love Dorothy, or the Wicked Witch, or the Scarecrow, or even Toto, or just genuinely like the story that they’re telling you, it doesn’t matter that the backgrounds look fake, or that the jokes are Vaudeville material. What matters is that, made in 1939 or not, it is still a good film. A film’s quality, or enjoyability, has little to do with how easily we can tell what time the film was made in, and a lot to do with the story, characters, and ideas that the film is about.

The Wizard of Oz has lasted this long because no matter if its 1939, 1999, or even 2019, people will be able to understand it, enjoy it, and relate to the characters and themes. And that’s the reason it will continue to endure. Eighty years since its release, Dorothy Gale and her friends, and the message of the film, has been unchanged from what they originally were, just like it will be eighty years from now.

In short: The Wizard of Oz is very clearly a product of the times it was made in, but that makes it no less an enjoyable classic. It was influenced by the styles of film and filmmaking just as much as it would go on to influence, and this does not make it either a good or a bad movie in and of itself. It just goes to show us that filmmaking, just like society, is always changing.

In the 1930s, The Wizard of Oz was a cheerful, uplifting story with fun, memorable characters and visuals, exactly the same as it is today, and exactly the same as it will continue to be.

Thanks so much for reading! Don’t forget to use that ask box if you have your own ideas or thoughts that you’d like to share. Join us next week when we’ll be looking at something a little less difficult (or at least, more contained): the visual and audio storytelling of The Wizard of Oz. I hope to see you there!

#The Wizard of Oz #The Wizard of Oz 1939 #1939 #30s #Film #Movies #PG #Fantasy #Adventure #Judy Garland #Margaret Hamilton #Frank Morgan #Ray Bolger #Jack Haley #Bert Lahr #Billie Burke #Victor Fleming

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laughingpinecone · 4 years ago

Text

Yuletide letter

I am laughingpineapple on AO3

Hello dear author! I hope you’ll have fun with our match. Feel free to draw from general or fandom-specific likes, past letters, and/or follow your heart.

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic (when in doubt, tell me what’s happening to them five, ten, twenty years in the future!), hurt/comfort, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, tropey plots that are already close enough to characters/canon, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploring the ~deep lore, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played entirely straight, sensory details, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships), emphasis on inhuman traits of characters who were human once and have sort of shed it all behind

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, unrequested characters popping up.

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay!), canon retellings, consent issues, actual covid (fantasy plagues are okay)

Les Cités Obscures: any

This is a very general “please, anything in the style of canon, just maybe with less thoughtless sexism” request. I want to lose myself in these cities again, and in the strange lands that connect them. I’d be happy to follow any of the known characters and/or OCs, or eschew characters altogether and write about the cities themselves. What caught your imagination in Brüsel, Xhystos, Taxandria, Alaxis...? The history of some cool building that was only marginally featured in one of the stories? Or an OC city! If you’ve got a favourite European city that doesn’t already have its obscure counterpart, please tell me all about it! Go big, go wild! What strange and classically surrealist happenings take place within its walls? Or even... outside Europe... Nerding out about architecture is of course very welcome. I would also love to read a story based on any Schuiten illustration, contextualizing it as if it were part of this ‘verse. Here’s a bunch of them, for example!

Ghost Trick: Cabanela

You know.. him. Dazzlingly OTT, untiring, rock-solid self-esteem, loyal to a fault, following a rhythm of his own, flawless intuition until it fails and it all burns down… him. I just want to see more of him doing stuff! The way he’s chill and open toward new people (like Sissel and Missile in ch15) makes him perfect to throw at most other characters and see how they react to the sparkles… I’d love some focus on how ridiculous his aesthetic is, half Saturday Night Fever half hardboiled detective half bubbly preteen (for a total of 150%) and yet he makes it work. Or how ruthless he can be, possibly for the sake of the people he cares for. The quote “The intimacy of big parties”. Him and Alma in the new timeline bonding over knowing (once Jowd has spilled the beans) but not remembering that terrible timeline. Some tropey scenario on the job. Snark-offs with Pigeon Man, by which I mean PM snarks and it bounces off him like water off a spotless white goose’s back.

Ship-wise it’s only Cabanela/Jowd whenever it’s not infidelity, Cabanela/Alma in what-ifs also if it’s not infidelity and Cabanela/Alma/Jowd for me (and Lynne/Memry and Yomiel/fianSissel on the side). There are a bunch of shippy prompts in all my past letters - I would however reiterate here that Jowd. is. the worst tease. always. Like, just saying, but assume he’s pining big time and Jowd and Alma figure it out - they’d make a national sport out of excruciatingly protracted teasing.

Conversely, Cabanela/Lynne and Cabanela/Yomiel are NOTPs especially from Cabanela’s side. So while I appreciate the thick tension of a good Yomiel VS Cabanela confrontation like everyone and their cat, and also really appreciate a roughed-up Cabanela, and I do love Yomiel in his own right… I don’t want Cabanela being into it. Adrenaline junkie he may be but this hurts and his coat’s a mess and there’s no perfect winning scenario so he hates every second of it. (JOWD being super into Cabanela being roughed up is another matter altogether and he should probably mind his own business. ...incompatible kinks, truly tragic. they’ll have to find some other common ground. they’re smart, resourceful, playful fellows, I’m sure they’ll manage)

Kentucky Route Zero: Donald kentuckyroutezero

I love everyone in the cast, all acts and interludes, and I am extremely into all the themes this incredible work of art ended up exploring. Agreeing with the overall doom and gloom up to Act IV, I was blown away by Act V’s strong affirmation of the importance of the arts and of the bonds we make and of carving up spaces for ourselves in capitalism’s wake. Donald was, indeed, not a part of any of that. Even the final interlude updates us on Lula and mentions Joseph, but the big guy is nowhere to be seen. So, you know, there’s fanfiction! He’s so static, defeated. I am fascinated by the chain of metaphysical spaces that goes surface -> Zero -> Echo -> Dogwood and even within that framework, the hall of the mountain king is like a hopeless dead end. Dude’s terminally stuck. So - once again, in the spirit of transformative works, how could he get... you know... unstuck? Did Lula’s momentous appearance in Act III shake him? Having a functioning Xanadu again, perhaps? How could he interrogate that oracle, what recursive wonders would it show him? If he decides to leave, what does it feel to be on the surface again after so long, or on the river perhaps? Maybe he is forced to leave by the flood, if not this one, the next... Having him meet any other character would be amazing. Past or future time spent with Weaver... seeing Conway again, changed... programmer guy chatting up musician androids... did he know Carrington from his college days or was Carrington only a friend of Lula’s?

As for Lula herself and Joseph too: “Flipping through the pages, Conway is able to gather that it’s a story about three characters: Joseph, Donald, and Lula. It’s something like a tragic love triangle, but much more complex. Some kind of tangled, painfully concave love polygon.” 😔 I ship them as a full triad, if you can nudge them in that direction, good. But I’m very open to non-romantic resolutions as well, going past their messy feelings to find each other as friends after so many years maybe. Or... a start. idk.

I’d be interested in fic that leans on the game’s adjacent genres: wanna go full-on American Gothic? Dip into surrealism? Take a leaf from Twin Peaks with tulpa / split narratives to explore the characters’ issues? I’m also open to AUs, real or through Xanadu. This also feels like a good place to stress that I really, really like caves.

And now for something completely different: FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense is in the tagset this year. I’d say that the crossover with the snake portion of Here and there along the Echo writes itself, but it would not be correct, as in fact I would like you to write it for me. Feel free to not feature Donald if you focus on this crossover instead!

Uru would be a fun crossover too, for Donald specifically. He’s very DRC-shaped in how he tilts at doomed projects which just so happen to be deep underground.

Pyre: Volfred Sandalwood

This is a Volfred solo, Volfred&literally anyone or Volfred/Tariq, /Oralech or /Tariq/Oralech request. I adore everyone in that Blackwagon+Dalbert+Celeste, so if you want to add a Nightwing or two to any prompt, please do! I also love all the Scribes and find Erisa a compelling tragic figure, while out of the other triumvirates, I’m “love to hate them” for Manley, Brighton, Udmildhe and Deluge and would not like to see them featured in sympathetic roles. fwiw I also enjoy Jodi/Celeste and Bertrude/Pamitha a lot!

I feel deeply for all of Pyre’s main themes - literacy, degrees of freedom, the fragile time that is the end of a historical cycle, nobodies rising up to the occasion, building a better society, and of course found family, “distance cannot separate our spirits” and all that jazz, and Volfred is squarely rooted at the center of all of them. I really really love everything he stands for, even if he’s overbearingly smug in standing for it. Just please tell me things about my fave. His relationship to the Scribes (as a historian, a some kind of vision, via *ae or once he’s a star himself)? A ‘forced vacay’ Downside ending where he looks at the Union from afar and keeps living in this strange transformational place? Life in a cramped Blackwagon that was meant for like 5 people tops and is currently eight Nightwings, a herald and an orb? Since he picked him for the job to begin with, does he respect and cherish Hedwyn as he dang well should? What does it feel like to try and Read a herald? Was he ever in danger, in the Commonwealth or in the Downside? What daring act of resistance did he and Bertrude pull off at some point in their past? It’d be cool if one of his old pamphlets came up at some point. Does he puff up as prime minister because he’s nervous, and who can see past his hyper-professionalism and lend a hand? Please roast him big time about the votes he assigns to the various Nightwings in his planner? What’s his attitude toward the flame’s purification (what with being a tree but mostly like, as a general concept. He did nothing wrong!) (well he definitely said some things wrong and sometimes oftentimes the ego jumps out, but his intentions did nothing wrong)? When did his calculating approach fail him? Something with Pamitha along the lines of that edit that goes “Can we talk, one ten to another?“/"I am an eleven, my girl, but continue”? Dude could easily be voted sexiest voice in the Downside - how much is he aware of it? Does he sing? I love how he bears his ‘reader’ brand proudly. And speaking of scars, I have to wonder, looking at Manley for comparison, if the shape of his head, with that massive crack, isn’t also due to injuries.

As a refrain from my general likes: emphatically yes xeno to both shippy interactions at all ratings and to gen explorations of what a Sap is like… I’d love to read all your headcanons.

Ship-wise, I enjoy him with Tariq as this kind of esoteric connection of minds, guarded words full of secret meanings, long contemplative walks together (is any external pov watching...?), Volfred’s Reader powers brushing against Tariq’s mind and getting weak in the knees at the starlit expanse he finds there, so unlike mortal thoughts. Tariq finds his individuality learning from him; Volfred presumably gets a transcendent glimpse of the Scribes. And I enjoy him with Oralech as pretty much the opposite of that, Oralech is so very mortal compared to him, such a precious, fleeting, burning life especially after his fall. Oralech’s idealism is very dear to me, it was their plan, their shared revolutionary spirit, I find it deeply moving. And I am very interested in seeing them rebuild their connection now that Oralech is back, changed, and in some ways he can learn to let go of his misconceptions and slowly open himself to Volfred’s love again, but in other ways that’s who he is now, with this deep-set anger, and what does it even feel to realize that you’re the symbol of the end of an era (the end of the Rites, the fading of the Scribes). I’m interested in both topside and downside endings for all of them, as long as they end up on the same side, the revolution was peaceful and they don’t angst too much about the side they ended in. Tariq can ‘find his way home’ in the near post-canon somehow or even be summoned again, as a different aspect of the same ‘moonlit vision’ that once inspired Soliam Murr.

Strandbeest: any

https://www.strandbeest.com/

I would just like words to go with these, please and thank you so very much. Worldbuild to your heart’s content! Specifically: I’m fascinated by the premise that the strandbeest are living creatures that evolve and adapt to their ecosystem. A world where life is just wind stomachs and sandy joints, and the tide that can catch you unaware. I would like a story that feels distinctly inorganic. The wonder that is the existence of these creatures. Their unique struggles. Weird and experimental if you like. With a mechanical focus, maybe?

I nominated four critters as a selection of the different cool things they can do - Percipiere Excelsus is huge and has the hammer mechanism, Suspendisse’s tail senses the hardness of the sand, Uminami is my fave caterpillar and the caterpillars overall feel like a new paradigm after a mass extinction event, Ader straight-up flies... but they’re all wonderful. If you want to focus on different strandbeest, please do!

Twin Peaks: Lucy Moran

Case fic but they don’t find out jack shit, someone disappears, David Bowie was there, it’s complicated. Fragmented, shifted, mirrored identities. New Lodge spaces. The risks of staring into the void for too long. Gentle illusions. Transcendence. The moon. Static buzzing. Any title from the s3 ethereal whooshing compilation used as a prompt, actually. Whatever goes on on Blue Pine mountain or the even more mysterious things that go on on White Tail mountain where exactly zero canon locations are found. Twin Peaks is all about the mystery to me, the awe of mystery and unknowability and the human drive to look beyond and the risks of getting a peek, and about shared consciousness and trauma taking physical form in an uncaring world. Go wild with the ethereal whooshing! But I also love the human warmth at the heart of it all, and sometimes it’s enough to anchor these characters and let them have a nice day. A fic entirely focused on some instance of coziness against the cold chaotic background of canon would be great too.

For Lucy specifically, a big draw for me is how canon (...s2 need not apply) empathizes with her way of processing the world. Not just Peaks, but On the Air’s protag who is basically a Lucy expy also gets the narrative completely on her side and that’s great. And I love how in s3, her focus on the small things around her is always echoed by bigger, climactic events beyond her horizon (bunnies / Jack Rabbit’s palace, chair order / Garland’s chair, her first scene talking about the two sheriffs / doubles everywhere...). It feels to me like some kind of off-kilter mindfulness and I love it. She’s also got a loving husband and an amazing son, which, in this economy and also this canon? Damn. The one functional family, imagine that. I am not interested in focus on family dynamics, but singularly, either Lucy/Andy or Lucy&Wally are great - in particular, I’m interested in how strange they are and yet they make it work. With the ruthless critique of traditional family structure that’s all over canon, maybe they make it work specifically because they’re not doing any of that. A bit like the Addams family... but... not goth...? Anyway. I’d love to see Lucy interact with and maybe strike a friendship with any character she’s never shared a scene with in canon! In the tagset, there’s Diane for some secretaries bonding, Audrey because??? why not?, Albert because it’d be an epic enemies to friends slowburn, some version of Laura in the future, if we’re feeling really daring maybe even some version of Coop in the future, still fragmented... or anyone you want! Outside the tagset I’d be curious about Hawk, Margaret and maybe Doris in particular, I think, and Phil, and Nadine and the Invitation to Love fandom in general (Frost says it still airs - did it get as weird as TP s3 did?), but if you have an idea with someone else, absolutely go for it!

Canon-specific DNWs: any singular Dreamer being the ‘source’ of canon, BOB (let alone Judy) being forever defeated in the finale, Judy being an active malevolent presence in the characters’ lives, clear explanations for canonical ambiguities, ‘Odessaverse’ being the reality layer, the Fireman’s House by the Sea being the White Lodge, whatever Twin Perfect’s on about, Cooper/Audrey, Cooper/Laura

#letter

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