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#barring cruel summer since i planned most of it out back in 2019
a-hundred-jewels · 3 years
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the penderwicks are trans. every single one of them. end post.
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jonismitchell · 4 years
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Love dies in the city; or the romanticism v. modernism conflict on folklore
In my humble opinion, Taylor Swift’s 2020 album folklore is about the conflict between romanticism and modernism. It sets up the natural as a place of freedom and unrestrained love, contrasting this with the city (presumably New York) as a place of hiding and secrecy that ultimately dooms the integral relationship. In the end, Swift expresses her deepest desires to return to the natural world, to restart the timeline that began with her move to New York, something I will elaborate on when discussing “hoax” and “the lakes.” This storyline is the crux of the album, and the motif I’ve used to classify its songs into six distinct sections, which follow a vague plot that is not represented in the track list order.
the natural (seven, invisible string, betty) I would argue that “seven” represents the heart of folklore, containing what seems to be the album’s mission statement (“passed down like folk songs / our love lasts so long”) and describing the earliest point in Swift’s timeline. This song is the one most directly linked to nature, describing a childhood friendship that takes place in the woods. One lyric, “before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously / any time I wanted,” implies that Swift found freedom in nature, when her secrets were mere promises to friends instead of the pain she had since hinged her life on. In addition, this song is pure romanticism. The interest in childhood is implied, we can reasonably assume both main characters to be seven years old. To support this, the song states “although I can’t recall your face, I still got love for you,” implying that much time has passed since the events. There is awe of nature (the “beautiful things” are the creek and the trees), emphasis on the importance of imagination (your dad is mad because the house is haunted), and a celebration of the individual (“just like a folk song, our love will be passed on,” where the love is the individual she speaks of). This is the dream that Swift wants to return to, and yet her characters already face conflict (the keeping of secrets, hiding in the closet, an angry father). She romanticizes her past into something she can escape into, creating a sort of mythos around an upset childhood.
Our next nature-intensive song is “invisible string.” She again makes a callback to childhood, citing a park where she used to read in Nashville. It would not be incorrect to categorize this as a love song, perhaps the most lighthearted one on the album. Swift emphasizes time and fate, both recurring themes in her discography. Like “seven,” “invisible string” draws attention to nature as a freeing and healing space, which sets the stage for her romance. Lines such as “gold were the leaves when I showed you around Centennial Park” draw attention to the ‘invisible’ connection the song depicts. In the bridge, she notes that there was “a string that pulled me / out of all the wrong arms, right into that dive bar,” implying a protection from the dangers of interpersonal conflict. Throughout the verses, mentions of any city stay tangential (“your first trip to LA… an American singer”) while the focus lies on her freedom. It is a dreamlike song, which implies that the city can be glimpsed but not detrimental, and showcases an utter belief in things working out. 
It is, then, rather ironic that the final song with unique ties to the environment highlights an unanswered apology after the foundations of romance have been shocked. “betty” is ostensibly narrated by a teenager, James, who plans to make up for her mistake in a garden. This perspective ties into the album’s greater focus on time, in this instance equating innocence (“I don’t know anything”) with a natural setting (the garden, which is explicitly removed from society). At first, James wonders if Betty will allow an apology, but wants it to happen without anyone watching (“if I showed up at your party… would you lead me to the garden”). She then casts this hope aside, dreaming about being able to broadcast her love to the world without fear of judgement (“will you kiss me on the porch in front of all your stupid friends”). It is also, then, relevant that the relationship is ruined when scrutinized (“rumours from Inez”). When considering how themes of secrecy and hiding come into the picture once the narrative travels to the city, it is interesting to look at how the hope of an public relationship prevails here. But in the end, James still dreams of going back to any relationship with Betty, no matter how private (“kissing in my car again”). Of course, Taylor Swift herself is James, and James is Swift, so we know that the secrecy dooms the relationship in the end.
the romance (august, illicit affairs) “august” describes a doomed relationship, perhaps meant to be the affair James has that prompts her apology to Betty. However, the story of a love that was never built to last has been referenced multiple times in Swift’s discography (“Wildest Dreams” and “Getaway Car”) and even expressly linked to summer on 2019’s “Cruel Summer.” These songs show distinct lyrical similarities to “august.” Hence, I feel comfortable describing this song in the context of those, rather than within the storyline of Swift’s fictitious love triangle. (Which is flimsy as it stands, but that’s for another analysis.) While there is no set location, this song describes one kind of coming-of-age (“whispers of are you sure”) and delves into the hope associated with a short-lived romance. Here, there is no secrecy to speak of, but a fear of what will come when a return to society comes (“will you call when you’re back at school”). My contrast for this song is saying it is “Cruel Summer” without the ‘happy’ ending. There is a privacy here (“meet me behind the mall”) but it is the instability of the romance that dooms it (“you weren’t mine to lose”). “august” is a time capsule, a reflection on the love that always would’ve ended regardless of the locale.
The next song, “illicit affairs,” is another one that ‘visits’ the city (for lack of a better term) but places the primary conflict in a largely undetermined setting. In fact, there seems to be a rejection of the urban (“take the road less traveled by”). In the sorting of tracks as they relate to different sub-themes, “illicit affairs” is the first song that says, without preamble, that secrecy is the death of love. While the word ‘illicit’ simply means forbidden, the verses describe sneaking around in a way that has been attributed to cheating since album release. There is virtually no acknowledgement of another character outside of the two lovers, save for the ‘him’ referenced in the perfume line. But it is not this person that the narrator seeks to hide from, it seems to be almost everyone. It could be construed as a song about adultery, but taken in the context of the rest of the album it reads as a lament for having to hide a relationship (most likely a romantic one between two women, but this is extrapolation).
the city (the last great american dynasty, mirrorball, mad woman) Now we approach the slew of songs that deal with the actual location of the city. The first song is “the last great american dynasty,” which seems the most removed from Taylor’s viewpoint and yet involves her directly (“and then it was bought by me”). We get an actual move to the ‘city’ (“Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train”) which is reminiscent of Swift’s own move to New York in 2014. Rebekah is immediately disliked by the people around her, blamed for her husband’s death to the extent where she flies in “bitch pack friends.” (1) Keeping with the theme of folklore’s similarity to a time capsule, one could see this song as Swift retelling her own purchase of Holiday House (and by extension much of the events from 2014/2015) through the lens of someone else’s life. Indeed, part of this theory is directly corroborated by the song through the lines “then it was bought by me” and “I had a marvellous time ruining everything.” In relation to the conflict between secrecy and survival of love, “the last great american dynasty” does not offer much insight. However, it effectively sets the scene for songs to come.
(1): I don’t know anything about Rebekah Harkness’ life, this is just how I interpreted the song. 
After the initial move, “mirrorball” establishes the new dynamic between the lovers. In turn, it introduces the performative nature of romance in the city (which is referred to and combatted with the line “all these people think love’s for show / but I would die for you in secret” from “peace”). Swift expresses interest in a lover who is “not like the regulars,” who wants more than to watch her turmoil. Still, this song finds her drawn into the nature of performing, consistently showcasing her tragedy to let others see themselves to the extent where she cannot even let her guard down when “no one is around.” Even after the circus has been called off, she seems to have entirely integrated with the role of the mirrorball. This provides some introspection on her viewpoint: digging into insecurities under the viewpoint of desperately trying to save a sinking ship. Almost as a counterpart to “seven,” the lyrics to “mirrorball” show some characteristics of modernism. Individualism is represented through the focus on the person who is the mirrorball, while unrelated characters do not warrant much elaboration. In terms of formalism and experimentation, the format and structure of the song deviate from Swift’s usual manner. The concept of a person being a mirrorball (shown in the music video as a disco ball) is both a symbol and verges into the absurd. All the imagery in this track is based in large crowds; featuring a disco, a circus, and masquerade revelers. It both establishes the setting where love dies and assures that the relationship will end (“the end is near”). 
“mad woman” is the final song which establishes setting more than storyline. It proves the city as a angry and dangerous place, one that is not sympathetic to “people like” Swift. We find her contemplating revenge on someone who has done her a great wrong, which is less attached to the general storyline but serves to depict the setting as actively hostile and worthy of contempt. When compared with other tracks, certain lyrics imply that the narrator is hell-bent on getting the last word (“they say move on but you know I won’t” / “you know I left a part of me back in New York”). There isn’t much else notable about this song in terms of what we are talking about, but it does frame several absurdist tendencies in the context of a destructive setting. 
the death (cardigan, exile, my tears ricochet, epiphany)  In “cardigan,” Swift reminisces on a long-past relationship, which has been interpreted to be James and Betty’s teenage melodrama. This is the first of many breakup songs, which idolize what has passed and mourn the loss. We observe many signs of the city (“chasing shadows in the grocery line”) and individualism (“I knew everything when I was young”). As referenced in “betty,” the cardigan becomes a symbol for the relationship at large. Moreso, the idea that the relationship was cursed to end as it begun is elaborated on here (“I knew you tried to change the ending”) even if it is not ascribed to secrecy yet. In reflecting on Swift’s past work, we see many signs of her being accustomed to this thought (“I can see the end as it begins” from Wildest Dreams and “I knew (...) we were cursed” from Getaway Car), but “cardigan” comes across with deeper pain regarding the whole affair. In tying different lyrics together (“back when I was living for the hope of it all” from “august” and “I hope I never lose you” from Cornelia Street), we begin to paint a picture of the true narrative behind the love triangle. Swift knew her greatest love would end—desperately hoped it wouldn’t, prayed they could ‘get away with it’—and finally channels her anger and sorrow into this retrospective. She almost accepts it: love dies in the city.
Another reflection on a past relationship is folklore’s only duet; “exile.” This song discusses an inability to communicate, the concept of determined endings (“I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending”), and plenty of ‘hiding in the city’ imagery. This sees one narrator (Swift) faking a relationship (“just your understudy”) to hide her true lover (in this context, Iver). Both agree on various facets that caused fallout (“didn't even hear me out... never learned to read your mind… couldn’t turn things around”) until the final disagreement (“you never gave a warning sign / I gave so many signs”). So while the song is fundamentally about a miscommunication, it is evident that much of the misunderstanding comes from ways of signalling the secret relationship. Presence of the city is acknowledged through lyrics such as “I’m leaving out the side door,” “out here in the hall,” implying that the narrators share an apartment. Nature also gets a brief mention here (“breaking branches”), but this usage explains that the freedom of the narrators is fading, just like their connection to the natural. 
Most do not connect “my tears ricochet” to romantic fallout, but there is no denying that the song hinges around prominent death metaphors. Many metaphors used imply that the narrator has broken up with their lover, but still haunts the hope of what could’ve been. In the line “we gather stones, some to throw, some to make a diamond ring,” a connection to marriage is implied, divorcing the meaning from the loss of Swift’s masters. A crowd of people is repeatedly referenced (the ones in a sunlit room, for instance) and the lover must “save face” in front of them. This external pressure contributes to the greater theme of death of love in the city, which Swift equates to her own death. She describes herself as a recalcitrant ghost (“you know I didn’t want to have to haunt you”) but one her lover must have around (“when you can’t sleep at night, you hear my stolen lullabies”). This song is another one that recognizes Taylor Swift the writer within the lyrics; within this interpretation the “stolen lullabies” are the songs that the ex-lover inspired, work she can no longer look proudly on. While no explicit connections to the city are formed, it is obvious that some external pressure resulted in a damning betrayal, which was painful enough to describe as death. 
The final song in this death theme is “epiphany,” which does not discuss the romantic timeline at all. Instead, “epiphany” is the culmination of two sub-motifs on folklore: water and war. In nature, water gains a passing mention in “seven,” but does not truly become relevant in this organization until “the last great american dynasty.” In “epiphany,” the water reference is “crawling up the beaches now,” which serves to distance it from the overall storyline. The song also deals with the war motif (evident in most of the songs, but “ease your rifle” is very literal) and contrasts soldiers at war to doctors during the pandemic. All of this builds on this section’s burgeoning theme of death. It fits in with the album theme, but does not display obvious modernist or romanticist hallmarks.
the chance (the 1, this is me trying, peace) Opening the album is “the 1,” a frequently disliked song but a very telling one. It is similar to “cardigan” in that it reminisces on a past relationship, but the narrator feigns contentment with her current situation. If all of folklore can be considered a time capsule, “the 1” perhaps describes the headspace of the narrator before they begin reminiscing: convinced they are alright, but not holding up very well. This song involves much city imagery (“I hit the Sunday matinee,” “I thought I saw you at the bus stop”) and deals with the aftermath of many events in the album. It is interesting that this song was one of the last written, as one can imagine the narrator went directly from “it would’ve been fun” to “don’t want no other shade of blue but you” (as described in hoax). The love has died here; but there’s a desperate hope to return (“if one thing had been different, would everything be different”). 
Much like “betty,” “this is me trying” is another last-ditch attempt to save a failed relationship. Both songs find Swift in a doorway, ready to apologize, but “this is me trying” bears the weight of experience and less expectation that they will have a second chance. The increased maturity finds acknowledgement of faults without excuse (“my words shoot to kill when I’m mad / I have a lot of regrets about that”) and an attempt to come to terms with the death of the relationship despite pain. This, of course, breaks apart in the bridge (“all I want is you”) but, as Swift consoles herself, at least she’s trying. Setting-wise, this seems to be in a smaller locale (“the one screen in my town”) which calls to mind the “the only thing we share is this small town” from “Death By A Thousand Cuts.” There is also what appears to be a bar (“pouring my heart out to a stranger / but I didn’t pour the whiskey”) and an influx of people (“it’s hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound”). It is not necessarily the city, but rather a recovery period that does not go well. 
If the painful instruction of “illicit affairs” acts as a foil to 2014’s “How You Get The Girl,” then the anxiety of “peace” complements 2017’s “Delicate.” While “Delicate” expresses the sufferance of an early, undefined relationship (“is it cool that I said all that”), “peace” begs the lover to reconsider the end one last time. As “hoax” makes undoubtedly clear, it wasn’t enough. We see the dangers of outside influence (“I’d sit with you in the trenches”) and the strength of the romance (“the silence that only comes when two people understand each other”). It is a final plea for someone to stay, a list of the success and a fatal acknowledgement of the worst. There is a declaration that sums up much of the album: “all these people think love’s for show / but I would die for you in secret.” As we’ve seen from other songs, it is the secrecy and the hiding that has doomed them. Swift sees this, she briefly suggests a return to the free and safe woods (“give you my wild”) but is ultimately stuck on the question of peace, which she wishes she could give her partner. 
the return (hoax, the lakes) The original album closer, “hoax,” finds Swift leaving a part of herself in the destructive city that has become home. She makes an attempt to return to her home, only to find that it is not the way she’s left it (“my barren land”). With her lover, she has gone through a journey that changed her too much to return to innocence (“I can go anywhere I want, just not home” from “my tears ricochet” contrasted with “you’re not my homeland anymore” from “exile,” where the lover becomes the homeland). She turns to a bleak setting, using sparse lyricism and simple constructs to describe her pain and betrayal. While Lover highlights themes of likening one’s love to a religion, the Swift we see on “hoax” has given up on any sort of healing coming from her romance. All she acknowledges is that the circumstances of her love have “broken her down” and “frozen the ground” (from which she hopes a “red rose” will emerge in “the lakes”). 
In “the lakes,” Swift tries to move forward but still sets her sights on the natural world, citing a deep desire to escape the scrutiny that destroyed her romance completely. This is a call to action for her former lover, a final request for shared freedom that reminds the listener of the lyric “would you run away with me?” from 2017’s “Call It What You Want.” Swift continues to call on aspects of romanticism she’s referenced on reputation and Lover to make her point. It then tracks that she has been inspired by this muse all along, and is finally asking for a return; both to the early romanticism her albums are built on and to her lover’s “homeland.” Her desire for a new home is evident, her conviction that her former lover should join her too great to be overcome.
The response of the muse to this, of course, is unclear. 
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popculturebuffet · 3 years
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New X-Men Xtrospective Part 3: Imperial (NXM #121-126)
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To me all you happy people! And welcome back to my X-Citing look at Morrison’s Masterwork on Marvel’s Merry Mutants!  Part One is HERE, Part Two is HERE if you feel like it. 
If not... to catch you up on last time....
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All Caught up? Good. Join me under the cut as our heroes head into this old woman’s hedd to see what’s wrong and fight off an alien army while horribly ill. 
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Silent, Psychic Rescue in Process:
So we pick up not long after we left off: Thanks to Beast waking up from his bat induced coma, the X-Men now know Charles is trapped in Cassandra’s body and she pulled a Freaky Friday on him, with marginally less bullets. 
And thus we get this issue. This one was part of Nuff Said, an incredibly clever theme month by Marvel and one I wish they’d try and do again at some point in some form. 
The gimmick was simple but amazing: Every issue would be mostly silent, with at most some dialouge at the start and finish to bookend it. So far i’ve only read two issues of this, this one and the X-Statix one, but it is a genuinely great idea. I do think forcing it on the entire line was a bit much, but as I said I do wish they’d do this again just make it optional: have some books opt in or do some annuals with the theme. It’s just a fun break from the usual and with this issue resulted in one of the best single issues of x-men period. 
Naturally given the name, which is cleverly displayed on a sign the x-men have because of course they do, it’s exaclty that: Emma and Jean after readying themselves (Jean kisses Scott goodbye and Emma downs a bottle of jack because why not do an alchol before doing delecate mental surgery), head in. 
Inside they find horrific old lady head doors, stone ol dlady heads around a tower that shoot lasers, and said doors also bite and puke weird goop because it’s Grant Morrison. This is his chance to just go full balls out weird.. and given last time involved skin flake golemns.. and this isn’t even the weirdest he’s done. As mentioned last time he once had a supervillian run for president using a super LSD Bike that made everyone high. 
And just to prove he can reach that level of weirndess we find charles alone, naked and with an overenlarged brain.. before he transitions Jean to a field of sperm. 
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Yeah... but this DOES have a point.. as it turns out it’s a meaphorical transition into his gestation as a baby.. and how he had a twin. Yeah turns out Cassandra was not lying he did try to kill her.. but as you can probably tell by the fact she’s a genocidal sociopath, she lied by omission to screw with Hank: In the womb she tried strangling Charles to death with his own umbilical cord..only for him to use baby’s first psonic blast to send her reeling and his mom tumbling down the stairs and well.. you can probably guess the rest. Yeah.. Cassandra’s entire origin story is concentrated 
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And I love it. The sheer audacity is nice and everything but what makes it really work for me is the simple concept: An evil version of charles, one almost born at the same time whose every bit as evil as he is good.. granted there’s a TON of Morally Grey in Charles Xavier ESPECIALLY post decimation and even more so now with Krakoa. But he’s sitll at his heart a well meaning person, while Cassandra at her heart is a racist genocidal nightmare. She is pure evil, with enough personality to not make her boring.. and more importanlty all the power charles has but NONE of his restraint. Part of what makes Charles noble is he only uses his powers when necessary. Cassandra.. has no such restraint and will happily mentally snap necks all day. 
So with this our heroine’s leave and we end on the iconic line “Professor Xavier killed his twin sister in the womb. We Really ought to talk. 
This issue is an utter classic. It finally explains Cassandra a bit while still leaving a ton of questions, Frank Quitely is at his best here, and he and morrison are incrediby good at non verbal storyteling. The result is surreal, unsettling and awesome. Check it out. Seriously seek this one out it’s worth the trip. It’s so famous it was homaged with a spirtual sequel in the recent Giant Size X-Men one shots. It’s excellent stuff
Imperial:
So with our first issue we open with things going terrible on that flag ship Cassandra took off on with Lilandra, empress of the Shiar and Xavier’s space wife. She’s revealed herself, is ravaging the ship and mind rapes a the helmsman into crashing it, so with no other options Lilandra sends Smasher, not the one from the avengers run earlier version, to earth to send a warning to the X-Men. 
At the School things are actually going well for a second. In an intresting move the school is changing things up with no officla timetable.. which I think means there’s no rigid class schedule and you can just do them as you please or as necessary for your power. The plan’s the same, they just want to learn from each other in building mutant society and the future. It’s ideas like this that are the bedrock of the current run and were sadly never fully realized here.. but I don’t blame this run for that. Morrison had 2-3 years and it was cut short early, leading to a rather disapointing ending we’ll get to. They never had a chance to really dig in because they were kicked out by morons and then their whole grand design was undone until Hickman un-undid it in 2019. And even then some of this like the idea of mutant culture and what not hasn’t been picked up on yet. I do mean YET, as given the sheer NUMBER of x books touching on all sorts of subjects, it’s only a matter of if not when. 
As for who’s behind this it’s a combination of Jean and Charles: Jean is using charles notes and is going at full tilt. Scott is concerned though.. both about her since she went Phoenix and Logan told him about it and because these plans may alarm the humans. ON the former Jean just brushes him off which is not right.. given what happened with the phoenix force copy of jean, which granted had her personality, memories and powers and Jean later got a set of her memories so it might as well of been and only MAYBE the genocide is something Jean wouldn’t of done under the same circumstances, he’s understandably concerned. He lost her to it last time and it did weird shit to poor Rachel, who hif you don’t know is their daughter from an alternate timeline... because the Summer’s family tree is a WAKING NIGHTMARE. Thankfully I don’t have to untangle it because there’s a handy chart right here to do it for me that was recently released in X-Men Legends, a new series featuring legendary x creators telling stories in the cracks... and given we’re getitng storys by the simosons and peter motherfucking david, yeah good stuff.
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And why yes there are more than one clone in this tree and several alternate timelines. , not to mention several clones and a sexy cat lady, it’s complicated is understnading it and i’m not sure what properly states it honestly. Also if your wondering about Adam there he’s the genetic son of Cyclops mom and the ma Shiar empreror who killed her for not sleeping with him through. Again it’s complicate REALLY feels like understatement. 
Point is he DOES have a right to be worried about the thing that lead to her being cocooned for a while and left their daughter in the future at the time of this... just in case you needed a reminder after that wonderful clusterfuck of a chart up above athe x-men are really fucking weird. 
So Jean brushing that off is not okay. She does however call him out on the second one and rightfully so: This isn’t some dominate the humans manifesto: this is simply changing the course of the future and how they teach their students to create a better one instead of adhering to human norms to try and appease “the republicans’, as jean puts it.. which has only gotten MORE RELEVANT, 20 years on: Attempts to appease the norms of society and things “just because that’s how it’s been” have never been a good thing. It’s why the very writer of this comic took several decades to properly identify themselves as non binary because people were too stuck int heir ways to try and see if there really were just two genders. Fighting against the grain, finding new ways to express things that have always been there... it’s what humanity needs to do and certainly what comes after us would need to do. i’ts how we get better as a race. If something’s not working we change it, quickly or slowly. And given Scott’s huge amount of emotoinal repression lately.. I can see why she’d see the former complaint as just him being a dick as opposed to the genuine concern it is. 
Short Version: Jean Grey is fucking awesome and while he’d be the last to write her for decades, no one did it better than Grant and no one has since.  Hopefully Gerry Duggan can clear that bar. 
After this fight we get a fuller verson of what happened both at the end of issue 120 and in the big reveal last issue: Turns out Hank awoke because Charles piloted his body like a truck and needed it revealed fast. Hank’s regained control of his body and facilities by now, but in a twist of irony he helpfully points out, had Cassandra not gone a needlessly cruel and sociopathic tangent and had Beak beat Beast into a coma, Charles wouldn’t of had a body. 
As for Charles in cass’ body he’s now in a tub of goo created by it. 
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It acts as a shield as well as melding him with Cerebra so he can talk to jean telepathically as his thoughts are very weak.
Thanks to this and her psychic Jaunt, Jean now knows just what the hell cassandra is: She really is Charles twin sister. As for how the hell she surivied outside of the womb and how Charles never knew, she created herself a clone body using his cells and didn’t fully manifest till now. And while she has plenty of intellegence, at an emotional level she’s fully convinced, much like an infant that only she and charles are real and thus destroying him means gaining domance over her world. So in short she’s both utterly insane and now has an interstellar empire at her fingertips. 
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And the news SOMEHOW get sworse: She booby trapped her body and charles only has days before he’s vegatable, having put every psychological disease possible in there, and she’s probably responsible for their colds and the u-men. So in short their pretty scrwed but at the very least Charles plans to try to flip things, use the fact their now public (a clear tactic to weaken them) to share his manefesto, his last will and testiment if you would. 
Scott meanwhile figures since their sick a healer might be a good idea and goes solo to fetch Xorn... who just sorta disappeared after the annual and didn’t return till his arc. 
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We get an utterly touching scene after this: With Logan staying on his hobbit like toes in case of another attack, Jean goes to talk to hank. Hank is still throughly traumatized from the attack, fearing Cassandra is right and he’ll just keep devlovling until he ends up in a metamoprhisis type situation. I mean it’s not ALL bad hank,.. I mean going through that guarantees a musical about you. 
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But Jean reassures him: It’s okay to be afraid of her, they all are.. but as she puts it...
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It’s a really powerful inspiring scene... and really afirms how well Morrison writes Jean from the previous arc onward. She’s confident, powerful.. but also caring and compassionate. Here hank’s at his lowest, disparing that this might get worse.. and she reaffirms that htis evolution is an upgrade.. he may not be the same.. but that’s okay. He’s better. It really speaks to the core message of the X-Men as a whole and why they’ve stuck around all this time: It’s not just okay your diffrent.. it’s WONDERFUL. Your wonderful for being you. Whatever meataphor you read into it, it’s at it’s core a message that no matter who hunts you or trys to shame you for what you are, they are wrong and you are wonderful. And you are not alone... your people are out there.. and they will go through hell to protect you. It’s moments like this that remind me despite the bad parts, the accidnetal transphobic metaphor last time, a subplot with Hank coming up, the affair storyline and Planet X, just.. Planet X.. this run is special to me for a reason. It has heart, character and truly gets how the x-men should work, what makes them great... while making something NEW AND FRESH from it’s bones. Pushing envelopes, chanigng things for good and shaking things the hell up after far too much stagnation. It’s just pure good comicy goodness and i’m proud to finally be talking about it after having always wanted to. 
So as we end the issue Scott grabs Xorn, whose been at a budist temple all this time, and Smasher arrives to warn earth... but his warning missed his intended target. 
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Well at least he got to Hellcow’s coven.. maybe she can call in Man Eating Cow and the Chick Fill A Super Cows.. thought hey might not help. Their parent company IS pretty homophobic.. I doubt their high on mutants either. 
Testament Emma and Jean talk over things how i’ts going etc, with Emma unsuprisingly annoyed with most of the students and Jean optimsitc.
But Emma soon has bigger issues to deal with: TEEN ANGST!
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Yeah 4/5 of the Cuckoos are upset Esme has a boyfriend. Their concerns in part are because without her their apparently powerless.. which given one will die and another will leave and they’ll be left with three is just factually not true, and either Morrison changed his mind later, or more likely their simply exagerating like teens do. Emma points out it’s pointless to fight this...
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So... their in a domestically abusive relationship rife with sexual tension? Are you sure your not htinking of Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel, Garfiled and Odie perhaps?
Meanwhile Angel’s sulking in a tree talking about how all the kids are stupid and she dosen’t fit in. That sort of thing. Wolverine naturally has a tactful and understandable response to this:
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It’s here Angel goes from understandable, a bit hard edged and obnoxious becuase of a very rough life.. and just becomes annoying.  I do get what Grant was trying to do: he was trying to play with Wolverine’s habit of taking sassy teens under his wing by giving him a more hardscrabble one with a harder life pre-xaviers.. not that Jubilee’s was easy, but I get what he was going for.. he just dosen’t succeed. Instead of a realistic version of a teen sidekick she just comes off as an obnoxious brat whose rude to everyone including her one friend Logan and her later boyfriend.  It dosen’t help that ONCE AGAIN, Morrison flew directly into unfortunate implications without meaning to, by having the only major POC character (Bishop guest stars later and there are two significant characters during the Riot at Xaviers arc but both aren’t relevant before or after), be an abused teen with gross fly based powers and a teen pregnancy subplot. Seriously this isn’t even the LAST time Morrison shoves their foot in their mouth like this in this run. While I do like this run a lot, it’s still 20 years old and it’s still going to have a bunch of bits that have aged like harvarti left on a sidewalk, and handing out unfortnuate implications like their candy is tied for the biggest with their handling of Magneto when he finally shows up in person. It’s THAT bad a take on the character that it’s up there with accidental racisim and transphobia. 
So moving on from.. that we get Jean comforting the professor before meeting the press, giving a throughly lovely speech about how Charles got his powers 30 years ago and despite seeing the worst in humanity, used his telepathy to allow him to see past it and see deep down just how scared and alone we all felt. So she takes them into a psychic conference room and we get a very interesting exchange. 
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It’s an interesting parallel to how real world disinfranchised groups, how it takes time.. but soon being a POC or LBGTQ+ goes from unrightfully perscuted to celebrated. How a group starts with hates whipsers on the fringe of things but grows to be accepted, like it always SHOULD have been. Take representation of Trans people in the media. It started with Trans people being almost entirely punchlines and sources of fucking horendous “DID DEY USED TO BE A MAN.” storylines and hurtful jabs at people who had transitioned, treating them as a sideshow instead of you know as fucking human beings. But now coming out as what you always were ont he inside is celebrated. Sure the right are dicks about it but they always will be: but most media gladly celebrates when someone comes out as trans. Same with being gay, or bi or pan or polamorus or nonbinary.  Hell I admire grant for showing i’ts not even 100% perfect once you are popular: you still have to grapple both with people wanting to copot your culture and those who still don’t understand you trying to speak for you. 
She also gets the standard question calling the X-Men an army, shoots it down with the normal global peacekeeping operation stuff.. then we get this bitch. 
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Who quickly realizes she’s outclassed by Emma Frost, professional that bitch. And while Jean is understandbly going to have to erase that.. I can’t blame her for snapping her.
Just to tear this shit down.: The privacy thing is not something she’s doing. All she’s doing is spcyhic teleconfrencing, you harpy. They fight greek gods and monsters to protect your sorry ass and the last one.. just makes me absolutely livid and feels so much like a real world comment i’m suprised there isn’t a fox news logo next to her bigoted head. 
Trouble follows them everywhere they go.. because their mutants. They can’t help it. A LOT of shit like the demons, aliens, and gods and what not, I do not know if they actually did fight the greek gods but i’m not going to say for sure they did not, the norse gods defintely, not sure on greek. But the point is allt his stuff HAPPENS TO THEM half the time, or is a consequence of trying to PROTECT PEOPLE. I’m so nettled by this because this is how the marvel unvierse acts all the fucking time towards ALL super powered peoples. Mutants esepcailly but they blame the heroes and what not for being chased and harassed by guys in costumes or alien invasions or all the stuff they FIGHT. Sure sometimes they caused it but it’s either because of a monsterous person with a grudge or just because their powerful and some douche took an intrest. I’m just.. so fucking tired of asshole civlians in comics. It’s realisitc I know but it’s just hard to stomach after so many have turned their back on so many for such DUMB reasons. 
Jean recovers well pointing out the genocide and how 16 million people, 16 million possible einsteinss or mozarts are just GONE, and that their trying to focus on the future. She also brings up autistic savants who can talk to atoms and while I don’t like the use of the savant thing, as it brings to mind stuff like rainman I very badly want to see this autistic kid who can talk to atoms as someone on the spectrum myself. Also I just want the crew of HIckma’ns books in general to pour over this because there are a lot of intresting powers and personalities only MENTIONED we never saw proper that could be great characters. Just saying. 
Jean cocludes her speech to the world, including Logan whose wisely getting hammered at anearbye bar.. while Hank finds out what’s going on with their sickness.. nanonscopic sentnels in the blood. 
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But while the press confrence ends well with Jean having won over the press.. things go sideways as not only is it clear Esme’s boyfriend is in fact something sinister.. but Jean falls over due to the nano snetinels, and senses Scott being taken in tibet, taken down by a group of the Shiar’s imperial guard.. picutre the legion of superheroes but blindly loyal to the goverment and far more likely to get killed. And the rest are preparing to attacking including Gladiator who if you don’t know him, has all the powers of superman as long as he retains his confidence. 
And it turns out Esme’s boyfriend is an advanced Scout, the shapeshifting amoeba blob thing Stuff, a new addition by morrison and good on him. And the Imperial Guard are here but with one goal
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 Superdestroyer
On the Ship we find out both wha’ts going on with Scott and Xorn, they’ve been taken and why the shiar are attempting mutant genocide: Cassandra is puppeting ALL of them, has convinced them the mutants are infected and since Lilandra is a puppet, Scott’s words fall on deaf ears. 
Meanwhile Wolverine ambushes one of the squads, kiling one named Dinosaurer via claw to the brain, while Emma has had a dome thing put over her head and isn’t transforming into diamond to counter it because...
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But the Cuckoos fight back, taking out oracle before easily handling stuff since his brain is fairly simple.. and given he’s racist against solid people and unlike the others reveling in the genocide just a tad.. yeah what he deserves. So now with a living weapon the Cuckoos make peace with Angel as they need all the help they can get. 
Jean ushers the press into the panic room, not happy about it but not having anothe roption for their saftey. Hank tells her to self distruct crebra if cassandra get sclose and goes off to join the fight and let off some steam over the situation. Hank easily routes two of them, and one , Manta tries to just fly right ot jtean wince their TK proof. How does that go?
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Jean gets to saftey after that, not that she needs it and hank is quickly taken down by a batch of Superguardians.. only for Wolverine to arrive in the Sknitt of time and chop them up.. oh and as one of the puts it...
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Bad. Ass. I also like the addition of the flight patch, a nod to the Legion, who the Imperial Guard were based on as those kids used flight rings. 
But while Logan and Hank easily tag team these assholes...
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The SHiar call in the big guns.. Gladiator.. and I wasn’t kidding abotu the superman thing. While Logan TRIES to talk him out of it, the murders only confirm Cassandra’s bullshit and Gladiator breaks into the panic room throwing hank and wolverin’e before them having utterly decimated them off panel. I mean Wolvie is a badass.. but even he has limits. I also like recontecullizing the guard as a whole here.. showing just how TERRIFYING they SHOULD be as enimies to the x-men. Yes our heroes did win.. but barely and only till Gladiator showed up. In most cases thier clearly holding back out of affection but here hteir just at errifying unstoppable force, and also apparently used to doing genocides like this. It takes what was a cheesy shout out to David Cockrums other big artistic work, and makes it horrifying and it is AWESOME. I admit to not having liked this arc as much for the longest time but this reread, the sheer teror and hopleessness as an interstellar superman easily cuts through our mighty mutants like tissue... it’s awesome. 
Thankfully one of the Guard found smasher.. and thus the truth comes out so our heroes are given a stay of execution with Gladiator clearly horrified at what he almost did and our heroes now so sick they can barely move and Hank can’t think them out of this. 
Thankfully he dosen’t has to as back in space, Cyclops tires of it and points out something Xorn, not being as experinced nor having delt with the guard ahd thought of: G-Type, the glowly guy about to execute them, is made of solar energy.. and xorn can manipulate that thanks to his star brain. He does, they take out the rest.. and prepare to go save the day.
Losers: PIcking up shortly before where we left off we see Cassandra murder Lilandra’s advisor who figured out what she was just as our heroes escape.. and as Cassandra is having Lilnadra order all of the shiar ships to immolate themselves. 
WIth Lilandra not being any use, Cass tries to psychically force her to commit sucidie but jumping off a space ledge but Xorn saves her. Cass tries another turn at mentally breaking an x-man, pointing out all scott’s recent flaws, his increased repression his faling marriage and while it gets him to stop it dosen’t quite work as well as it did on hank, likely because at his heart Hank is simply a more emotive person. Though his REAL reason for stalling is he can’t kill charles.. which he muses just as the ship blows up real good. 
Meanwhile back at Campus the kids initaiate their plan, having Angel break in and take a dna sample. She also finds beak naked in a tank and decides eh why not and brings him with her. This ends up paying off as Beak suggests the obvious to get emma free.. just force the space guy they have over in the corner to do it. They do and it works
Back in the mansion our heroes prepare for Casssandra... but Jean and Logan object to saving her body, pointing out that getting hank to repair it is exactly what she wants, and that Jean feels she can save charles without uit, with Hank being understandably doubtful given their current condition.. but Jean’s real plan is to put charles in her head and it’s already too far in actoin to stop now: she’s been saving his memories as they flaked off and if she dosen’t do this now there will be no charles left. 
Hank evacuates the civlians to teh danger room, and has an encounter with trish who tries to apologize and get him back.. only for him to rightfully regjecter her..a and then goes a step further by capping it off with:
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Yeah on it’s own it’s not TERRIBLE. Still very dated to claim your gay just to spite someone, but for the time it was acceptable and compared to some of Morrison’s other gaffes in the run it’s minor at best. But it leads into a rather annoying subplot we’ll naturally get to that’s a much bigger issue, so i’ll save talking about it in full for when it comes up again. 
Jean manages to shove Chuck into her head, but is naturally leaking a bit and barely holding it or him together and may of overestimated herself just a tad.. while on the lawn Cassandra easily takes out the guards. That said the scene of Jean taking Chuck into her head is REALLY damn awesome. Jean is the arc MVP by a mile and Hank is pretty dang good competition. 
All Hell: We open the final issue of the arc with Scott and Xorn escaping the spaceship using some teleport tubes taking Arakai and Lilandra with them. 
We open with Cassadra utterly humilating gladiator while the kid team prepares to fight her despite you know, the 8 billion to 1 odds against them. 
Jean, despite hte discknes and trying to keep an old man in her brain marches out , prepared to fight, for the kids sake. For the world’s sake. But Logan’s easily taken out and with Jean barely holding it together.. the kids prepare to fight.. likely being slaughtered even if they mean well.. onlyf or help to finally arrive with Scott and Xorn glowy porting in. We get a really sweet , short moment with scott and jean...
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Scott not knowing the situation tries to have Xorn heal charles first but since Cassandra’s body is dead and unoccupied that’s a no go.. he’s still usefult hough, curing Jean of her nanosentital sickness and moving on to Scott and Hank while there’s still time. 
We find out more about cassandra: She’s a murrmadi, a bodyless parasite.. eseetinally the dark first test a person faces... she just stuck around because she was one for a telepath.. the world’s STRONGEST telepath. But really other than that part the rest just feels like stuff we alreayd heard LAST TIME, mildly repaackaged and seems enitrley like filler to pad the issue out. 
So while Jean takes cerebra, both to keep it away from Cassandra’s plans of mutant genocide and for whatever she has planned, Scott, Hank and Xorn prepare to hold the line.. and as Jean mentions.. emma’s still out in the wild. 
So we get our climactic showdown.. logan, hank and xorn veruss cassandra, with Cassandra trying to do eveyrthing she can, tear them down mentally, throw out the students with our heroes fighting back best they can. It’s good stuff.  
Eventaully Cassandra gets to Jean.. but she’s already inacted her plan, putting a piece of Xavier’s mind in EVERY mutant, and giving Cassandra one ohell ofa reason you suck speech. 
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It’s an incapsulation of what i said earlier and what the runs about: alone we are weak but together.. we just might make it. More on that as we go. But thanks to Cass naturally going fo rcerberba.. she accidently restores charles and is left bodyless.
Emma finishes the fight with her own brilliant gambit, presending cassandra her body.. but it’s actually stuff , reprogrammed into a sentient brain for her to inhabit and leaving her trapped, with Charles hoping t teach the now mentally reset Cassandra.  So Cassandra is beat, the virus is stopped, and our heroes have one.. but naturally for this run.. there’s one last suprise in store. 
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Charles can walk again.. and going forward will be a far more active member of the team. The team is complete, Cassandra is beaten, and the future.. is bright. 
Final Thoughts:
This arc is a mixed bag.. it has really good scenes with the first and last issues being the standouts, with the former being an utter classic with an intresting gimick and the latter being a rousing climax with tons of awesome moments, with some good mometns scattered throughout.
But that’s the arc’s issue.. it has good moments and ideas.. but they don’t quite work togehter. The idea of teh Shiar Imperial Guard nearly doing a genocide is good, but the Shiar are such flat characters.. it’s really hard to care. They just don’t have enough connection to the x-men to really have the betryal sting but aren’t callous enough for genocide protocols to maeks sense. It’s a good idea, I still support it being terrifying.. but not enough is done with it and it feels liek Grant is more concerned with throwing weirdos at the x-men than actually saying something. 
The biggest issue however is the art. While inconsitant art is an issue as they’d rotate artists.. but in previous arcs it was usually pretty evenly split but here it’s sloppy: Quitely does the first issue, van Sciver the second.. and the worst of the three Igor Kordey does most of the art. I gave him the beinfit of the doubt last time.. but this time not so much. His art is muddy and tries to be stylized but comes off confusing,ugly and not great. He’s probably a lovely guy but given he’s up against two legendary artists, his lack of style comapred to both shows badly.  And given the arc is alreayd a bit overly complicated, it makes things WORSE by giving us muddled art in a very complex storyline. The flip flopping art makes a fairly intricate story very hard to follow. It’s easily why this arc didn’t grab me in the past and even seeing some better moments, it’s not the series best. It’s not the worst either, Planet X easily takes that ground despite having far better art. It’s an incredibly muddled incredibly long feeling arc and really needed to be compressed by one or two issues but instead is just hard to get through. It’s owrth it for the rest of the runa nd the good moments within but all in all easily one of the weakest points in the series. 
Next Month on New X-Men:The X-Men soak in the new world order, and we meet fantomex, dust and the last surivivors of genosha. 
Next on this blog:Green Eggs and Ham is back!
If you enjoyed this review PLEASE join my patreon. The end of hte month is coming and I need eveyr cent I can get so join at patreon.com/popculturebuffet and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 
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amillioninprizes · 4 years
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An entirely too long post on how to fix Veronica Mars
So, anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows: 1) What a massive Veronica Mars fan I was and 2) how distraught I’ve been over the most recent season that debuted on Hulu in July. I’ve been pretty angry about it since it dropped, but the first month after I was pretty occupied with real life stuff. Now that I’m more settled, I’ve found myself getting sadder and angrier over time with just how terrible S4 was and what an obvious fuck you to longtime fans it was. It feels dumb to be so upset over a tv show, but this show got me through a lot over the past 8 years, and I feel like it’s been taken away from me.
 It’s anyone’s guess as to whether there will be a new season. Ideally it would end here with maybe an alternate ending filmed to avoid alienating fans further. On the one hand, the botched release, overwhelmingly negative response, and silence from the creators after initial interviews don’t look good for renewal chances. On the other hand, Hulu doesn’t have a lot of streaming hits, it probably did relatively decent numbers, and there are rumors floating around that its pickup chances look good. On a personal level, I hate the idea that this is where the legacy of Veronica Mars ends, while at the same time being extremely wary of what the creators have planned. I think a big part of the disappointment with S4 was that the movie and books set up what could have been some really interesting storylines and situations, all of which RT and co. squandered for cheap drama and to apparently turn the show into an entirely new vehicle; additionally I had hope that S4 would be a chance to rectify some problems the show has long had, but again, S4 exacerbated them. At this point I don’t expect anyone higher up in the creative process or at Hulu to give a fuck about the fans or making the show better as long as they hit streaming targets, but here are some suggestions:
Fire Rob Thomas
 While he created the show, it’s become clear that not only has he lost touch with the audience and the original spirit of the character, he doesn’t seem too keen on putting much effort into writing the show (as I will discuss below). Then you have his clear misogyny: his views that women in relationships can’t be interesting, that what makes Veronica interesting as a character is her trauma and how much she can endure, and the fact that basically every female character in the history of the show has a history of sexual victimization. He thought that making the Mexican cartel hitmen “philosophical” was subverting expectations (which says a lot of what his expectations of Latinx characters are). Then this is the way he essentially exploited his long term fan base to earn a new season of the show, only to turn around and tell us that we don’t matter. From a business perspective alone keeping him doesn’t make sense; selling a streaming platform on your loyal fanbase and then proceeding to purposefully piss ~80% of them off would be pretty questionable to me as someone in charge. The sheer cruelty with which he treated not only the fans who have supported him for 15 years (I fucking used to liveblog iZombie y’all. iZombie!), as well as how he callously dismissed long time cast members in favor of celebrity guest stars should not be rewarded. He’s admitted in interviews that he would be ok with younger writers doing a reboot many years in the future; why not just let him have a producer credit and then hand the show over to someone who’s invested in making it good?
Put a woman in charge and diversify the writing staff
A big problem with a) Veronica’s characterization in S4 b) RT’s ideas about what makes female characters interesting c) the show’s long history of problematic treatment of sexual assault is that it comes from a man’s conception of the female experience. The Veronica showcased in S4 and that RT wants to write in the future is very much a male fantasy: hates marriage and children, traumatized, DTF, and is too cool for other women. RT stated in interviews that he wanted to show Veronica at a “crossroads” this season in a way he claimed had been shown for men but not women; many female viewers found this depiction to ring false (few women are spending their time fretting about how committing to marriage after five years in an established relationship will bar us from strange sex going forward). In addition to having RT at the helm, most of the show’s writing staff for the majority of its run has been white dudes, which doesn’t bode well for telling the story of a female PI in a diverse community in today’s political climate. Putting a woman in charge would hopefully help rectify these issues to make the character feel more true to life and put a damper on the misogynistic storytelling. The show has a natural candidate in RT’s second-in-command Diane Ruggiero-Wright (despite her problematic history, never forget #KeisterEggGate), who has admitted to not being able to watch the last episode. Jennifer Graham, who wrote both of the books, would also be a worthy addition to the writing staff; while the books had a mixed reception, most fans agree that she got Veronica’s character right. And with the show’s problematic historical treatment of minority characters, adding more POC writers going forward is also necessary.
Bring back Logan (alive)
You don’t have to be a LoVe shipper to recognize just how integral Logan has been since the inception of the show, not just as Veronica’s partner but as a character is his own right. Logan’s journey in many ways parallels Veronica’s, and shows a contrast in how different characters respond to similar trauma. The most critical plot line in the show’s history, the mystery of who killed Lilly Kane, simply doesn’t work without Logan’s importance to Veronica. RT and his defenders like to claim that Logan was holding her back from true growth, which is frankly bizarre as he is the only character to consistently challenge her, like when he tells her that she obviously isn’t happy this season. Additionally, Logan’s scenes this season were the lone highlight of what was otherwise a painful slog of a season. Of the people who have said they would watch a potential S5, a good portion are only interested because they believe that the ambiguity of the last 10 minutes of the season means he’s not really dead (despite what RT has said in interviews). Then there’s what Logan’s death does to Veronica’s character, effectively cutting off what would have been an interesting character arc and stagnating her forever. No matter how much they try to shove Leo the pedo creep and other milquetoast RT self-insert love interests on us, no one else can possible measure up to Logan’s level in terms of being able to match Veronica as a character, intellectually or as a result of shared history.
Plus, the fact that we haven’t had a Weevil/Logan interaction since S3 is a goddamn travesty and should be rectified immediately.
Bring back Veronica
As sad as I am about Logan’s death, for me the most upsetting aspect of S4 was the assassination of Veronica’s character. For many viewers (including myself), the character we saw Kristen Bell portray in S4 wasn’t Veronica Mars but a different character with the same name. Between her abusive behavior towards Logan, her general indifference to her father’s medical condition, her dismissal of Wallace, and her racism towards Latinx characters (using a kid’s lawyer to threaten deportation: not a good look!), she was lacking the marshmallow-y center that always balanced out the pricklier aspects of her character and made her compelling. This change in characterization was especially jarring given that she was not this way when we last saw her in the books, where she mused about having children and sent her half-brother Hunter to summer camp (side note, but does he even exist anymore?). Many of us who had grown up with Veronica were hoping to see her grow with us as a character; instead we got an extreme regression lower than we’ve ever seen her. It would be one thing if they were trying to depict a PTSD storyline, which would make sense given her background, but since her change in behavior is never addressed by the narrative, it just makes her look like a cruel asshole and makes it impossible to root for her. This is exacerbated by the fact that RT has made it clear he has no interest in portraying her inner life, as shown by his wanting to avoid showing her grief over Logan’s death because it would be a real downer compared to the entertaining but ultimately hollow banter and quips he wants to focus on. Veronica this season was also just plain dumb: you mean to tell me that the girl who nearly got killed by Aaron Echolls in her back seat wouldn’t think to check her backseat every time she gets in a car?  (And let’s not even start with RT’s bizarre assertion in an interview that she apparently votes Republican). Not helping matters was Kristen Bell’s performance, which felt very flat for me this season compared to S1-3 and the movie; I don’t know if this was due to personal limitations or a reflection of the bad writing. Writers of future installments and KB herself would be wise to revisit S1, the movie, and the books to figure out what makes sense for Veronica’s character, leading me to my next point:
Get reacquainted with canon, develop a show bible, and hire a continuity director
This show has long had a problem with dropped plots, timelines, and continuity issues. Shelly Pomroy’s party has two happened either in the summer, or the fall. Then we have the movie paradox: Veronica graduated high school in 2006, which means her 10 year reunion should have taken place in 2016. The movie was released in 2014 and the books seem to keep to 2014 dates. Then S4 states that Keith’s movie accident took place in 2013, and mysteriously ages Veronica up to 35 when she should be 32 in 2019. Logan mentions an Aunt Naomi in S4--why didn’t she take care of him after Aaron was arrested (and what happened to Trina)? How the hell is Leo working as an FBI agent when he presided over the disappearance of the Lilly/Aaron tapes? Veronica is shown to be tentatively forgiving of Weevil taking the settlement from the sheriff’s department in Mr. Kiss and Tell, but is then shown to be extremely angry towards him for it in S4. This is just a small selection of the inconsistencies within the show. Plus there is the problem of repeated plot lines: Veronica rejects Leo in favor of Logan in S1, then rejects Leo in favor of Logan in Mr. Kiss and Tell, only for her to...reject Leo in favor of Logan in S4 (and RT says he wants to leave the high school plots behind). This sloppiness doesn’t bode well for a series that is supposed to be about mysteries, which require tight plotting. It would behove TPTB going forward to once and for all determine a timeline of Veronica’s life, keep a detailed record of past plot and character points, and have at least one person on staff who thinks to remember this stuff (RT notoriously has only a “solid, not spectacular” memory of the show, no matter what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says).
Make an effort (and do your fucking research) 
Moving on from continuity issues to more general problems with the laziness of RT’s writing. He has basically admitted that he doesn’t care much about facts or characterization when writing plots--he shoehorns details to fit the plot rather than have it evolve organically from the characters and prior canon. I know that when writing it’s often impossible to make every story detail 100% accurate, but the extent of RT’s sloppiness is alarming. This excellent Reddit thread details a lot of the problems with S4 in particular, but this has been a problem since S2. Did anyone ever understand exactly why the Fitzpatricks were invested in framing Logan for Felix’s death? In the movie, it makes no sense that if Cobb and co. wanted Carrie silenced, they would add the complication of framing Logan for her murder--given her history, it would have been a lot easier just to make it look like she had accidentally overdosed. Given his previous patterns of villain writing fans were able to guess the identity of the S4 bomber based on casting alone. The mysteries in both Mr. Kiss and Tell and S4 are both ripped from the headlines, which indicates that RT wants to turn VM into the next Law and Order. Meanwhile, he complained about how hard including Logan in the story in S4 was, while Logan arguably had the best lines and most interesting scenes this season--apparently when you put an effort into things, they work out! This laziness extends past storyline issues and into factual problems that detract from the quality of the plot. Longtime fandom pals are probably tired about hearing me go on and on about how there’s no way Aaron’s lawyers could have gotten Veronica’s medical records due to HIPAA laws. Logan’s career change from naval aviator to intelligence is highly unlikely (and unnecessary, given that they changed it only to fridge him at the end of the season). Meanwhile, I know fanfic writers who have spent hours on the phone with strangers in order to research what type of firearm would cause a specific type of bullet injury. It’s very puzzling to me that RT wants to take the show in the direction of being mystery-only when apart from that one time he is piss poor at writing mysteries and puts no effort into them. I shouldn’t have to tell television writers to, you know, do their job but this is what we’ve come to in 2019.
Know your audience
A majorly annoying thing about the promo for this season is how in every single interview Rob Thomas did he was always talking about how he wanted VM to be like other shows and movies: Fargo, True Detective, Game of Thrones, Chinatown (which is apparently the only noir movie he’s ever seen). The thing is, if I wanted to watch those shows, I would; I watched Veronica Mars specifically because I enjoyed its unique qualities, and I would say most fans agree. The general perception within the fandom is that with this season Rob Thomas seems to have been aiming to dump the old, majority female, CW fanbase in order to achieve what he perceives as a cooler prestigious male fanbase; the issue is, new people aren’t going to take up a show in its fourth season if they didn’t watch or didn’t like earlier seasons. Also, trying to write a prestigious show doesn’t make your show prestigious. Considering that based on anecdotal evidence most of the people who like S4 seem to be male, he may have succeeded in the first part of his aim. However, this majority female fanbase he was so willing to cast aside are the ones who have run fansites and rewatches during fallow times (i.e. between S3 and the movie and then between the books and S4), so drumming up interest among fans (and therefore streaming views) in the future may be a challenge. Plus, women are a better advertising demographic since they are more likely to be in charge of household purchasing decisions, so maintaining us as a fanbase makes business sense as well. He may have tricked enough people into watching S4 that S5 is given a go, but I wouldn’t be surprised if streams are weak beyond that. If the show is to succeed as a commercial endeavor, better to go with appealing to a known quantity than trying to make a generic show that very few people have expressed interest in watching.
Bring back the mystery of the week
This is a more minor thing I felt was missing from S4. I think after the criticism of S3 not having a season-long arc RT overcorrected in focusing on one mystery. However, the mystery of the week had the following benefits: 1) giving chances for the characters to interact and telling us more about them 2) helping to modulate the pace of the season-long arc. With better writing a season-long standalone mystery could maybe work, but in the case of S4 specifically the mystery was kind of dull and repetitive and could have stood to include a couple of diversions in the form of a smaller case here and there.
Re-evaluate the creators’ interpretation of the word “adult”
Much of the promo and reviews for this season noted the more “adult” content to be expected this season now that Veronica’s grown. Many fans hoped that meant seeing Veronica act like, you know, an adult with adult problems rather than a teenager less mature than the actual teenager she was. Unfortunately, the show’s interpretation of the word seems to be more in keeping with a television rating sense of the word--meaning sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence (But apparently not the word “fuck.”). Look, it was expected that as the show moved to a streaming service and given the overall dramatic scope that there would be an upgrade in some of this sort of content (and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t looking forward to steamier LoVe moments, which were sorely overpromised), but the way it was included this season felt like RT and co. included this stuff just because they could and not to serve the storyline. For me, personally, the biggest example of this was Veronica’s drug use, which I know didn’t necessarily bother everyone. Given her history as the daughter of an alcoholic as well as someone who had been the victim of two roofie attacks, not to mention the fact that her character never seemed to be into partying, I found it very out of character (and book writer Jennifer Graham agrees). It felt like RT included this just bc they thought it would be funny to see Veronica on drugs without considering whether it made sense for her character. Also, were the beheadings strictly necessary? Plus there’s RT’s little temper tantrum over not being able to use curse words this season--they weren’t present in the original show, no one was going to miss them now, and the “cuss” thing was just annoying and reminiscent of The Good Place. 
Dealing with a parent who maybe has dementia--that’s an adult storyline. Too bad RT ended it with a dumb excuse about “mixing meds” (another factual error! Pharmacy software would have caught it!) rather than actually exploring what it would mean for Veronica to see her father in decline and take over the family business (and give Rico Colantoni the exit he appears to want). This is the kind of adult content I would hope to see in future seasons.
Adult is not a synonym for “unrelentingly bleak” either. The original show, while dark, always had an element of hope that was completely removed from S4 (no matter what KB might claim). And would it have killed the writers to show Veronica wearing disguises and going undercover like she used to? There was nothing fun about this season (and no, I don’t count the multiple partying scenes as fun, more like sad).
Kill your darlings
It’s cliche, but it’s true. Another issue the show has long had is the writers keeping around characters or inserting jokes and references for their own personal amusement rather than for the story. The most notable example of this is the continued presence of Dick, a highly problematic character considering he pushed Beaver into the room with Veronica the night of Shelly Pomroy’s party, among a whole host of other racist, sexist, and generally obnoxious actions over the years. But because Ryan Hansen is so widely beloved among the cast and crew, so he stays. Then there’s the matter of the infamous Keister egg in 3x08, which the writers and KB have all expressed love for, despite the fact that said Keister egg is an example of sexual assault--which, even if the victim is a douchey fraternity president, is never funny. 
Also the constant Big Lebowski references are tiring. Watch a new movie.
Improve Neptune’s gender ratio
Veronica Mars, despite having a female lead, has always been a male-dominated show; other than Veronica herself, the only consistent female character over the original show was Mac (and she didn’t even come back this season). This is unacceptable in 2019, for any show. The books introduced promising female characters in the form of Marcia Langdon and Petra Landros, but Marcia’s character was was watered down for S4 and Petra was nowhere to be found. Additionally, Veronica and Mac have always been written as “cool girls” who looked down on other women for their femininity, which isn’t a great message. Almost every other female character, even the innocuous Parker, is portrayed as somehow bad or incompetent. I would love nothing more than a season centered on the women of Neptune and their interactions with each other. While we’re at it, stop giving every woman on this show a background of sexual victimization.
Treat VM as an ensemble show, not a Kristen Bell vanity project 
A major complaint from Burnt Marshmallows and S4 defenders alike was how little time was given over to the original core cast this season. While Veronica may be the protagonist, a large part of how the show became so beloved was her relationships with the other characters. Yet RT has decided that going forward VM will be a KB solo project, with her traveling town to town quipping and sleeping with strangers. This seems strange, given Kristen’s recent interviews talking about how difficult it is to shoot VM and how she never wants to be first on a call sheet ever again, not to mention how she asked for less screen time all the way back in S2, which resulted in the Weevil-Logan storyline, which was way more interesting than Veronica’s storylines during the first half of that season. (The traveling detective thing also seems weird considering that KB is pretty insistent on shooting in LA to be near her family.) Additionally, if this is truly the last season of VM with all the original characters, then no one got a proper sendoff. 
I’m not sure how willing much of the cast will be to return for future iterations, given how uncomfortable many of them seemed during promo as well RT and KB’s treatment of them (insensitive at best, deliberately mean at worst) this season (shout out to Tina Majorino for recognizing what a shit show this was going to be), but bringing back all the original characters into the fold and giving them significant storylines would go a long way to mending fences with fans, improving the show from a character arc perspective, and would also give KB the break she apparently wants. 
Recourt the fanbase
What has VM always been renowned for above all else? It’s incredibly loyal fandom which not only got it renewed twice during its original run but also put up their own money to get the movie made--I know many people who donated when they really couldn’t afford to. RT basically owes the last 6 years of his career to VM fans--the success of the Kickstarter arguably got him the iZombie show running gig, and the fourth season likely wouldn’t have even happened if not for it. Thus, the blatant cruelty and disregard with which RT and KB have treated fans during the promotion of S4 has been incredibly insulting and hurtful; I still can’t fathom what in the world possessed RT to think that throwing away this 15-year relationship was a good idea. It’s not a good sign when the 2 fansites most active during the post-movie period (VMHQ and VM Confessions) cease operations in the wake of S4, and when at least 3 out of 8 board members of the oldest running fan group, Neptune Rising (who were dormant during the post-movie period but played a critical role during earlier fan campaigns and in the S4 promo) resign. A fandom this loyal that was betrayed will not stand idly by if the S5 RT wants to make goes ahead; given the number of tweets the official Hulu VM account has had to delete in the wake of S4 due to the overwhelmingly negative response as well as the controversy over editing out Logan from S4 promos, I imagine that S5 will be a PR nightmare. Even if future seasons are amazing the trust can probably never be fully repaired, but it would be helpful for RT (or fingers crossed, a new show runner) and KB (as star and EP) to go overboard in reaching out to fans and at least admitting they made a misstep with the entirety of S4. Back in the day, the old Mars Investigation fansite was invited to set to conduct interviews; maybe do that again. Also someone should get KB some sort of VM fandom-fluent media trainer because I don’t think she has conducted a single interview during her entire stint on the show that didn’t anger fans (it might help if she actually bothered to watch the show).
Map out an endgame
Look, this can’t go on forever. As long as RT keeps leaving every installment open ended with the hopes of maybe getting renewed again five years down the line, the story is going to keep running into the issues the movie and S4 faced with having to shoehorn the characters into nonsensical plot lines to reconcile those endings and deal with actor availability issues. Either plot another 2-3 seasons to wrap the show up with a satisfying conclusion, or map out a greater timeline of Veronica’s life with spots where a mini series or movie here and there could fit in.
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herwildwhisper · 4 years
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stats: Mar Sandoval, 31 (b. September 19th, 1988.) she/hers (cis.) species: human occupation: mountain guide
alignment: chaotic good veering on chaotic neutral.
+ resilient. loyal. affectionate. capable. perceptive. – aloof. destructive. willful. bitter. blunt.
personality
a half-dry, charming-ish sensibility. “take no shit. do harm if they push you far enough.” values honesty, even if it hurts – this does not mean she’s capable of following through personally (looking at you, Sam.) kind, but not sweet. guarded. could use a friend or five, even if she’s convinced herself she’s better off alone.
aesthetic
widow, née [REDACTED.] whiskey aunt, not wine mom. indeterminate drawl. two dozen bad coping mechanisms in a trench coat, struggling to become a person. kinder than she lets on. angrier than you think she is. looking for answers without knowing the questions. inheriting a mystery; continuing the sketchbooks. a wedding ring on a simple chain. learning to count down from a hundred when all you want is to plant your fist in someone’s face. surviving out of spite. living with loss.
history
( tw physical/verbal domestic / child abuse, self-destructive behaviour, self-harm, death of a spouse, mentions of suicide. tl;dr at the end )
BLACKROCK, MT. EARLY MARCH 2011.
For a few years, the Sandoval house has stood empty. Mrs. Sandoval passed away in 2008, and no one managed to track down her son. He left town back in ‘03, a couple years after his father died in an accident, and since then, no one in town has seen hide nor hair of him – not even his pack.
And then, eight years after Dante Sandoval left his family and home behind, his widow shows up in town.
She’s young, too young; only 22. Dark-eyed and dark-haired and dark-minded. She smiles too much, and then she smiles too little. Is the kind of woman who shows up alone at the bar. The kind of woman who tells you to fuck off if she thinks you’re getting too close, too handsy, even if you don’t agree – and very few like that. She gets a job as a mountain guide, and then they don’t see much of her. The house she inherits is left behind like a carcass, just another unpleasant memory as summer stretches on. Then snow shuts down the mountain, and she returns, much to their disappointment. She’s remained a stranger ever since.
(Towns like Blackrock don’t like strangers. Towns like Blackrock don’t like women like Mar Sandoval.)
THE PAST, NOT AS DISTANT AS SHE’D LIKE.
Her parents tried, she thinks. Tried to love her, to love each other, but the bottle won out and the damage was done, their home broken into jagged pieces. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking; maybe they were bickering tyrants from the start, and she just didn’t want it to be true. It didn’t matter where they moved, Texas to Louisiana to Florida – same shit, different scenery. She grew up amidst screaming matches and plates shattered against the wall. Under the constant pressure, Mar fractured, too. She sharpened her edges to survive. Came home with bloody knuckles, and left for school with fresh bruises. She learned the tenets of life from people who had no business teaching it to her: to use leverage, to find meaning in whatever meagre thing you could control, to find fear as natural as breathing. To read a room the moment you walk in. To always look three moves ahead. To take the blame. Even when everything in you was screaming that it wasn’t your fault. To hate yourself for both. That if you excused it all as love, it was okay.
At school, she could be the one giving out beatings, whether they were earned or not. It wasn’t that she always started the fights, though she did that too – but she’d finish them, schoolyard scraps turning into brawling matches when Mar got involved. She was never loud, but she was always angry, rage simmering beneath her skin, a buzzcut saw waiting for an accident, looking for release. A bruise was a bruise was a bruise; it didn’t matter if she left it herself, so long as she could control how it got there, whether through someone else’s fist or her own. Her mind stirred into a constant, exhausting frenzy by thoughts she didn’t have the words for, yet: if you love me, if you love each other, why is it like this?
She left home at 19, slamming the door behind her on her way out, and she never looked back. No plan, no route. She’d never been further north than Atlanta, so it seemed like a good place to start. Got a job as a waitress, saved up every little bit she could, before she left Georgia to continue her trek north. Turned 20 in Tennessee, still no plan in sight – and then, right as she was considering her options, she met Dante.
He wasn’t her first, but he was the first one that mattered. A couple years older, from a small town in Montana, with kind eyes and a nice smile and hands that were firm but gentle. He always had a sketchbook on him; studies of the mountain trail, birds and flowers. No sudden movements. Never raised his voice. He didn’t mind her sharp edges, but before she knew it, they’d been sanded down – still present, but softer than they’d ever been, and better for it. She fell faster than she should have. So did he.
They spent the next few years working as guides on the Appalachian Trail, getting their certificates, and along the way, they got married. Began to plan their future, with a whole life ahead of them that they would share. It was Dante that taught her to be patient, that taught her love had never been – should never be – about leverage, that fear was a cruel thing to cause in someone else. And maybe she was a work in progress, but hey, Mar, so am I.
In retrospect, they both had their secrets. He would tell her about Blackrock with a fondness in his voice, and she would curb her tongue – if you love it so much, why did you leave? She shared what she could with him. Let him reassure her when she faltered, when the things she’d buried came crawling to the surface, when it felt like all the love in the world couldn’t stop her from becoming a black hole that would tear itself apart. They made it work. They were happy. Hopeful.
And then Dante died. Disappeared, technically. But they found his body a week later. Gunshot wound, weapon nearby. Coroner ruled it a suicide, despite Mar’s protests; Dante wouldn’t leave me– there was nothing wrong– why would he–
The pieces they'd mended were broken, and she was left alone with the wreckage, sharp and heavy. Dante would never have done that to her. He wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have.
She traveled west in their beat-up car, his ashes and their hiking gear secured in the back. Got her stupid, grief-ridden kicks out of asking obnoxious truckers if her husband could watch, only to let them face the urn. Laughed until she cried when they ran from the ‘crazy bitch’. Came to Blackrock with no intention of staying, only to find herself the recipient of a rickety old house full of family pictures she had no context for, heirlooms and trinkets; memories that weren’t her own, that had nothing to do with her.
And, of course, the collection of sketchbooks depicting wolves. All different sorts, snouts and pelt colours and scars, signed D. Sandoval. The torn old henley at the bottom of a chest down in the basement. The shredded remains of an old journal, the scratch marks by the kitchen door.
BLACKROCK, MT. 2019.
Lonesome, but not lonely. It’s how she likes it, she’s decided. It’s easier, that way. She’s used to it. Isn’t sure if it’s always been her nature, or if it’s just a force of habit, but she hasn’t stopped to ask herself. Mar keeps company when she feels like it, when winter gets too quiet for her taste, and as soon as the snow’s thawed, she’s gone. Just another ghost, until winter calls her back to Blackrock. She knows what it looks like – she arrives, and so do all the other strange things that haunt the town. (But she’s the only strange thing that’s been spotted near the deputy, and she knows the optics of that, too.) She hasn’t done much to improve the wide-spread impression of her. She’s pleasant enough if you haven’t tested her patience, but she remains distant; keeps most everyone at an arm’s length. It’s easier to not get attached, to not get disappointed, that way. To settle for that long life of lonesome, but not lonely.
There are answers to be found in Blackrock, if only she can find the right questions. She’s sure of it. Someone has to know what happened – why he left, why he died, why someone would kill her husband. But until she can find those questions, she observes. She adds her own sketchbooks to the pile. She takes meticulous notes of all the odd, out-of-place things she sees. And she bides her time.
So Mar Sandoval remains a stranger. Drinks her cocoa with a dash of peppermint liqueur, brings a book to the bar, doesn’t give a shit about small town nosying disguised as small town kindness. Takes up odd jobs at nearby ski centres if the money’s tight, and by summer, she is gone. None of them truly know her. None of them ever will.
tl;dr
grew up in an abusive home; has Issues as a result
certified brawler and troublemaker – currently on the mend, but not before she got a Reputation in Blackrock
met her now-departed husband after leaving home. they got married young AF 
said husband...... was from Blackrock. said husband....... was a werewolf, but Mar is (so far) unaware 
her husband disappeared and was found dead a week later. police ruled it a suicide, Mar did Not Agree
she came to Blackrock in 2011 with a car full of hiking gear and an urn strapped in, a widow at 22. inherited a house full of Weird Things, including sketchbooks filled with drawings of wolves
she had 0 intentions of staying for as long as she has, but she’s convinced the answer to her husband’s death can be found in Blackrock
knows SOMETHING’S up, but not quite what
specific pitches
(aka cherrypick what works for you from my ramblings!)
Redcedar / Teddy
I like to think that Teddy’s parents took care of Mar when she got to town, back in 2011 – maybe they took care of the Sandoval house, or knew the Sandovals?She liked them a good deal, felt grateful for their kindness and indebted to them for it, and with them gone, she sees Teddy as a young woman in a strange town that could maybe need some kindness, too. Mar’s just too awkward to fully commit to it, yet.
Basswood / Sam
It wasn’t necessarily the first reason, and it definitely isn’t the only reason, but a big part of her connection to Sam is that she hopes he could help her piece together the Dante puzzle. It’s not fair, she knows. It’s probably fucked up, asking him to help her figure out what happened to her dead husband, on account of.. whatever it is that they are. She tells herself that’s why she’s yet to really ask him for help with it. This thing between them was never meant to go this far, because now she likes Sam – and that makes her feel guilty, in more ways than one.
Blackthorn / Carson
She sees herself in Carson, sees the woman she used to be, the woman she’s done her best to bury – all fists and venom-veins, ready to set the world on fire. She doesn’t know the cause of Carson’s anger, doesn’t necessarily know Carson all that well in general, but like calls to like. Mar might be trying to reign herself in, these days, but she knows the anger she thinks she sees in Carson, the need for destruction. Pulling them out of that bar was an emotional impulse, one she doesn’t really want to acknowledge: she got cold feet right after. She’s got more on her own plate than she can handle; why did she try to take on someone else’s? That’s why she avoids them now. She has no intention of calling on whatever debt they think they owe her; in her eyes, it was almost selfish to not let nature run its course that night. Almost.
Oak / Diego & older wolves
Dante was 100% a werewolf, and I’d love to potentially plot out the older wolves of the Blackrock pack having known him, if you all are game! They wouldn’t know how much Mar knows about the pack, if she even knows anything, which I think could be a great source of ~drama – especially now that there’s a dead wolf. Diego in particular is someone I think could be cool for this, as he’d be the right age range and would have been there for long enough to have known Dante.
Ash / Romeo
Ash / Romeo is a new face, and Mar knows all-too-well what that’s like. I don’t think she’d be looking for any meaningful friendship, to start with, but I could see her potentially reaching out, just to see who they are, and maybe to let them know that there’s other out-of-towners around.
Sycamore / Eric
Much like herself, Eric doesn’t have a good reputation, though his is probably worse. Depending on his disposition, I could see them being acquaintances, even friends, united by their shared less-than-nice natures, with some drama added in thanks to their respective relations to Sam / Basswood. I also wouldn’t rule out the potential for future hunter plots, depending on where it goes!
wanted connections 
( consider these starting points! if something could work if we tweaked it a little to suit your character more, hit me up 💖 also, in the event that something is filled but you’re interested.... hit me up for that too! we can Work It Out )
witness ( Sam – multiple )
Men who won’t take no for an answer isn’t something Mar puts up with. By now, most of the culprits in town have learned their lesson, and leave her alone. In turn, Mar’s gotten better at using her words.. but back when she first came to town, there’s a good chance her anger got the best of her, resulting in someone walking away with a shiner and a split lip. (Hell, push her far enough, and it might happen now.) She’s good at brawls. MUSE B witnessed one such occasion – did they step in, or leave her to it? How do they feel about it?
ghost ( 0/2 )
MUSE B met Mar before she came to Blackrock: maybe it was years ago, down south, while she was a walking carnage, or maybe MUSE B met the two of them, Mar and Dante, leaving them to reconcile the vastly happier past Mar with the current version.
bruiser ( Raine – 1/? )
Mar and MUSE B traded literal blows a couple years back, and the fist-fight ended with no certain victor and both parties bloodied and bruised. Is there a grudging respect – or is it just a grudge?
reflection ( Lola – 1/2 )
Mar isn’t.. sweet the way some folks are, but there’s a kindness there, one that’s easy to forget what with her reputation and penchant for self-isolation. She helped MUSE B out, and asked nothing in return – maybe she let them sleep on the couch one night when things were rough, or maybe she offered company on an evening it was needed. Maybe it happened a while ago, and there’s a tentative friendship, or maybe it’s fresh!
ex-fwb ( 0/2? )
Mar arrived in 2011, self-destructive and reeling after her husband’s death. mistakes were made. good ones, but still mistakes. MUSE B and Mar had an unspoken thing for a while, before she broke it off. Are they still friends, or are things icy? How serious was it? How does MUSE B feel about the rumoured fling Mar has with the deputy?
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iamsashagay · 5 years
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RP Month 2019!
         Those of you who have had the (mis)fortune of following me on social media for a while, you know February is Retinitis Pigmentosa Awareness Month. Which means I get to write a bunch about myself and my life and nobody can judge me too hard about it! Yay! I thought this year I’d try to be a bit more #enlightened and talk about language surrounding visual impairment and the ableism that is so persistent in our lives. (For reference, I’ve already written a bunch about my diagnosis and what dealing with it has been like). If you don’t want to read a whole lot of words, here’s a brief summary and some updates.
-    I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa in the fall of 2015 with an approximately 60 degree field of vision (180 degrees is ‘normal’
-     I was told I would likely be legally blind by 40, if not by 35
-     I was referred to the CNIB and started accessing their services (such as orientation and mobility training, getting a CNIB bus pass) in the spring/summer of 2016
-     In 2017, my peripheral vision continued to erode and I lost roughly 1/3rd of my visual acuity in my right eye
-    As of my most recent eye appointment, my field of vision has degraded to about 25-30 degrees (combined). I have no peripheral vision at all at this point. -    Based on the rate of my vision loss since my diagnosis, I’ll probably be legally blind far before my doctors’ initial estimation (legally blind is defined as an individual having a 20 degree or less field of vision)
-       I went back to school (yay me!) last month and I’ve been *pretty* good about using my white cane to get around and forcing myself to get more comfortable with my reality as a ~blind~ person
And that’s what you missed! I’m also gonna sprinkle in some of my favorite RP Truth memes because they’re wonderful and make me feel seen (no pun intended). So having lived in this shit for the past few years and having to…let people know what’s going on, I’ve heard a lot said about my vision loss from (often) well-meaning people. Probably my biggest pet peeve re: vision loss talk is the initial conversation I have with people when they either find out about my condition or when they feel comfortable asking me about my blindness. Inevitably, the first question people leap to is “is there a treatment? Is there a cure?!”It’s an innocent enough set of questions, and I truly believe there’s good intent behind asking them.
The issue I have is that, with my condition, there…isn’t. There is no viable course of treatment, nor is there anything resembling a real-world cure. Which inevitably leads to “well they’re doing great things with rats and genetics and science is wonderful I know they’ll have a cure for you soon!” Which, again, is meant to sound supportive, encouraging, and positive. It’s what people have trained themselves to say when they’re confronted with something like blindness.
Think about this conversation for a moment. It is inherently ableist. The entire sequence (and it’s a very predictable one once you’ve sat through it a few dozen times at minimum) suggests that the only response to losing one’s vision is to immediately *fix* the problem. It tells people like me that we’re broken. That we need to be solved. It tells me that a reality where I just *accept* my genetic coding isn’t a viable one. That the thought of existing while blind is so disturbing that it should be completely leapt over to fixing the problem so that scenario never happens. Sure, it’s not intentional. That doesn’t change the meaning behind those words, well-intentioned as they tend to be. The words are ableist because they imply that I could not be productive, or valuable, or happy the way I am. They say that I must want to change a fundamental part of my existence. Why? Why is the default not to ask
-       How are you handling this?
-       How can I make this easier?
-       What are your plans for the future?
-       Do you have the support you need?
-       Can I make this space more accessible for you?
Those questions don’t spring into people’s minds because our society has so deeply ingrained ableism into our vocabulary that we act on the presumption that it is the disabled individual’s existence that needs to be altered, and not the environment that sets them up on an unequal playing field.
Telling me that I should hold out hope for a cure that may never come, or may never be accessible to me, is akin to telling me that I should just lay down and let the world do her thing and passively accept whatever comes. I understand fully that when people have this conversation with me they aren’t *actually* trying to make that statement. Five years ago, those are the questions I would ask. I struggled for a really long time (fuck, I still struggle) to just accept my reality-  to accept that this was simply something I was going to live with and that I needed to work within the circumstances I had been given. That, however, does not absolve people from the responsibility to look at why they are so uncomfortable with the thought of someone not being wholly invested in being “cured” or why I might not be interested in investing my energy into hoping and dreaming for science to bring back my vision.
Why do we think a life with vision loss is such a devastating notion? Why is my lack of peripheral vision such a scary thing people to think about? When we skip over these questions, we skip over what really matters: that the society we inhabit is not designed for people with disabilities. We focus all our energy into fixing disabilities because we’d rather ignore how poorly individuals with disabilities are treated and how inaccessible we have made the world for them.
I’m not able to speak for people who have other disabilities than mine, or even those who have different forms of vision loss than me, but I encourage you to seek out their work if you’re so inclined. We all experience our environments differently, but I think it’s safe to say the consensus is that living with a disability isn’t necessarily the problem – the problem is how we are expected to behave with our disabilities. We are expected to return to an “able” state as quickly and inspirationally as possible, or to step back and become passive members of society so as to not trouble the abled people around us.
Existing as someone who is blind is not revolutionary. I am not revolutionary for returning to school for a career that is more in line with the abilities I have now and will have in the future. I am not revolutionary for navigating downtown streets with a white cane. I am not revolutionary for holding down a job – and being *good* at that job (although given 80% of people who are legally blind are unemployed…it’s easy to see why that’s an assumption). I am not revolutionary for getting coffee from Tim Horton’s in the morning. I am not a token for you to look at and say “and we think we have problems” while gesturing to your coworkers. That’s some next-level ableist bullshit. All I wanted was a double double that morning, and that lady at the counter thought it was acceptable for her to treat me as an example of how cruel life could be. She dehumanized me. Fuck that shit.
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I’m going to go a little bit off on a side tangent here; feel free to skip down a lil’ if you’d rather not read this rant. In addition to the above, you know what else is not revolutionary? My love life. It is not revolutionary that I have a partner who loves me. It is not revolutionary that Joey deems me worthy of his time, or his respect, or his love. He does not get an award for being audacious enough to be in a relationship with someone who is disabled. He does not get to be the ‘better’ partner in our relationship because he is willing to somehow be chained to my crippled existence. We joke about it, because humor is how I cope with a lot of things, but at the end of the day, he is not *brave* for “seeing past” my blindness. So when you see us looking cute on the gram or him by my side at the mall when I’ve got my cane out – don’t chalk him up to being a wonderful supportive partner because he is willing to accept my disability.  Joey is a wonderful and supportive partner because he gives me space to explore who I want to be. He is a wonderful and supportive partner because he is without fail by my side even when I do a shitty job of prioritizing him. Joey is a wonderful and supportive person because he wants me to be independent. His love has been unconditional for over seven and a half years, and my diagnosis did not change his love for me. Do not disrespect his loyalty and love for me by suggesting he is the best example of what a man can be because he doesn’t treat me differently for my blindness. That’s the goddamn minimum. That is the lowest bar to meet. I am fucking worthy of love with or without my vision, with or without my hearing. My value is not tied to how able-bodied I may or may not be.
My abiity to pretend to be able bodied is not something to applaud me for. I am very good at pretending to see more than I often can – to the point where I’ve had people who’ve never seen me use my cane be shocked when they find out how little vision I have left. 
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I am not revolutionary for giving back to my community through my volunteer work. Blind people are not heroes for doing the same things you and the able-bodied people around you do.
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Do you know why inspiration porn exists? It’s because our world expects disabled people to fail. It’s because deep down, you know how little thought is given to making accessibility the default. You know that disabled people have to work harder and do more to be “normal” just because of the way things are. That’s why you ask me when I’ll be cured.
The idea of someone being visually impaired and not having an escape plan from that reality is deeply uncomfortable, because it means confronting how basic things are designed to be exclusionary.
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 It means realizing how shitty this city is to navigate as a pedestrian. It means noticing that we’re okay with people placing any and all manner of obstacles in the middle of sidewalks, from signs, to bowls of water, to clothing racks. It means recognizing how little people give a fuck about others. Just today as I was making my way downtown (walking fast, faces past) on the subway, a man with a seeing eye dog got on the train. Who do you think was the only person on the entire train who thought to give him their seat? It was me and my white cane who gave up their seat – while the lady next to me bent over in her fucking seat to pet the man’s SERVICE DOG. I was livid.
We pretend to be doing our part to be ‘inclusive’ and ‘improving accessibility’ while avoiding doing the actual work. The TTC for example, gives the CNIB transit passes to distribute to their clients so they can access public transit for free. I’d love to applaud them for that. I cannot, however, because they apparently forgot to train their employees on how to deal with visually impaired people who use the cards. It is *not*, as occurred the other week, to berate riders about not “showing the card properly” or “not waiting for an empty bus” and then getting on the intercom to lecture said rider about how “if they were smart enough to be going to school they should be smart enough to ride the bus” in front of sixty people. That is no accessible. It is not accessible when I complain both publicly and privately to the TTC about said incident and their initial response is not to be outraged that the incident took place, but rather to let me know their vehicle operators are “trained in how to accept fares”. (It’s been over two weeks since I submitted an official complaint. I’ll let you guess if I was graced with any formof a response other than a “we received your complaint” form email). The TTC is ableist. The TTC is a problem.
The problem is not my vision. The system is designed to burn us out so we don’t scream about the injustice of how we treat people whose DNA skipped a few lines. It’s exhausting trying to keep up with people who don’t have to give a second thought to where curbs are, or which seat on the subway is the easiest to get off from, or remember which set of stairs has the awkward landing on it, or how to hold a cane and a backpack and a phone at the same time. I’m okay with that though, because I’m learning to adapt. I’m unlearning a lifetime of ableist thinking. I’m proving my worth to myself. I’m doing good. 
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Just please stop asking me about a cure. I don’t have the time, because I’m busy trying to get my coffee (probably).
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toomanysinks · 5 years
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YC-backed Upsolve is automating bankruptcy for everyone
The popular image of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy might be a large company like Enron failing, or maybe some lazy drifter trying to shirk their financial responsibilities. The reality is anything but those sorts of images. Today in America, the most common reason for bankruptcy is to discharge egregious sums of medical debt [1], which might have been incurred in a short stint in a hospital emergency room.
Bankruptcy allows people to get out from under a debilitating and permanent state of financial crisis — assuming one can afford it. Applying for bankruptcy itself costs money, potentially thousands of dollars depending on the attorney used. The cruel irony is that the people who can least afford to apply are those who are most locked out from the help they need.
Upsolve, one of the three non-profit tech startups in Y Combinator’s current winter batch, is building a unified and efficient software product to allow users easy access to the bankruptcy system. Users go through a series of questions to collect the required information about their financial circumstances, and then Upsolve provides automated bankruptcy forms reviewed by an Upsolve attorney — all for free.
“Our mission is to help the victims of our broken financial system,” Upsolve CEO and co-founder Rohan Pavuluri said to me. “If you are poor, you don’t have access to the same rights.” He describes Upsolve as “TurboTax for bankruptcy” (although to be clear, TurboTax is a for-profit business line of Intuit). Much like tax, bankruptcy is convoluted. “There are 23 forms to file for bankruptcy,” he said.
So far, the software platform seems to be finding traction. Since starting in summer of 2016, Upsolve has processed $16 million in bankruptcies on behalf of 400 people, and has diagnosed debt problems for 5,000 users, according to Pavuluri. We’re “automating a $40k check to these folks…. for three hours worth of time.”
Unlike legal processes like estate planning, which are burdened with handling 50 different state processes, bankruptcy is based on federal law, which means that Upsolve’s solution can work across the country. Today, it supports 47 states, and the startup’s first target markets are New York and Illinois.
Where Upsolve gets really interesting is on the financial side, both in how it approaches revenues from users and also how it funds its operations.
On the revenue side, Upsolve is free. Inspired by GoFundMe and other startups, Pavuluri and his team have created a model where users donate “what they think is fair” for the service. That has worked so far, as “on a unit basis we cover our costs from the tipping model,” he said.
Over time, he hopes to break even using just the tipping model, but today the organization relies on legal aid funds to partially fund its operations. The U.S. government and many state governments have funding set aside to finance civil legal aid, and the Legal Services Corporation is the largest funder to date of Upsolve.
I asked about whether incumbent lawyers are threatened by Upsolve. Pavuluri said that most lawyers don’t want to handle these cases in the first place, because they are not profitable and generally need to be handled pro bono. He said that for simple chapter 7 cases, you (almost certainly) don’t need a lawyer, and “we challenge legal exceptionalism in that sense.” He has spent the last two years criss-crossing the country meeting with bankruptcy groups, judges, bar associations and attorneys to undergird support for the startup’s work.
In addition to Y Combinator, Upsolve has been funded by Harvard University, the Robin Hood Foundation, Schmidt Futures (Eric Schmidt), Fast Forward, and Breyer Labs.
[1] There is a large academic debate on how many bankruptcies are triggered by medical debt. The percentage varies hugely between different studies (from say 4% to 62%), and it really depends on how you define someone’s lead cause of bankruptcy. Most filers with medical debt also have other forms of debt, so what specifically triggered a bankruptcy? Due to stigma, filers will often point to medical debt when other forms of debt may be larger.
TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new — provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at [email protected]) if you like or hate something here.
Share your feedback on your startup’s attorney
My colleague Eric Eldon and I are reaching out to startup founders and execs about their experiences with their attorneys. Our goal is to identify the leading lights of the industry and help spark discussions around best practices. If you have an attorney you thought did a fantastic job for your startup, let us know using this short Google Forms survey and also spread the word. We will share the results and more in the coming weeks.
Stray Thoughts (aka, what I am reading)
Short summaries and analysis of important news stories
Slack’s Financials are quite strong
Zoë Bernard and Alfred Lee at The Information have the scoop on Slack’s financials. Huge revenue growth of about 75% last year to $389 million. The challenge is that Slack’s valuation is still very heady given its revenues, and is currently valued at about an18x multiple according to the writers. That’s expensive, but perhaps still desirable by investors who are otherwise looking at a relatively bleak market of investment opportunities.
What’s next & obsessions
I am reading The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. About half way through – and it’s quite thought-provoking (and depressing).
Arman is reading Never Lost Again by Bill Kilday, a history of mapping at Google and beyond.
Arman and I are interested in societal resilience startups that are targeting areas like water security, housing, infrastructure, climate change, disaster response, etc. Reach out if you have ideas or companies here.
source https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/16/upsolve-bankruptcy/
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