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makingqueerhistory · 9 months

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Spooky Queer Books

Since spooky season is starting, I thought I would share a list of my favourite queer books that are great for this time of year.

Some of these links are affiliate links.

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

Joe Vallese

Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes--such as the circumspect and resilient "final girl," body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet--spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world.It Came from the Closet features twenty-five essays by writers speaking to this relationship, through connections both empowering and oppressive. From Carmen Maria Machado on Jennifer's Body, Jude Ellison S. Doyle on In My Skin, Addie Tsai on Dead Ringers, and many more, these conversations convey the rich reciprocity between queerness and horror.

Into the Drowning Deep

Mira Grant

The ocean is home to many myths, But some are deadly... Seven years ago the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a mockumentary bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a tragedy. Now a new crew has been assembled. But this time they're not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life's work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost. Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves. But the secrets of the deep come with a price.

The Devouring Gray

C. L. Herman

After her sister's death, seventeen-year-old Violet Saunders finds herself dragged to Four Paths, New York. Violet may be a newcomer, but she soon learns her mother isn't: They belong to one of the revered founding families of the town, where stone bells hang above every doorway and danger lurks in the depths of the woods. Justin Hawthorne's bloodline has protected Four Paths for generations from the Gray--a lifeless dimension that imprisons a brutal monster. After Justin fails to inherit his family's powers, his mother is determined to keep this humiliation a secret. But Justin can't let go of the future he was promised and the town he swore to protect. Ever since Harper Carlisle lost her hand to an accident that left her stranded in the Gray for days, she has vowed revenge on the person who abandoned her: Justin Hawthorne. There are ripples of dissent in Four Paths, and Harper seizes an opportunity to take down the Hawthornes and change her destiny--to what extent, even she doesn't yet know. The Gray is growing stronger every day, and its victims are piling up. When Violet accidentally unleashes the monster, all three must band together with the other Founders to unearth the dark truths behind their families' abilities...before the Gray devours them all.

Tell Me I'm Worthless

Alison Rumfitt

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, Ila and Hannah. Since then, Alice's life has spiraled. She lives a haunted existence, selling videos of herself for money, going to parties she hates, drinking herself to sleep. Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, to go past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, Alice knows she must go. Together, Alice and Ila must face the horrors that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, whom the House has chosen to make its own. Cutting, disruptive, and darkly funny, Tell Me I'm Worthless is a vital work of trans fiction that examines the devastating effects of trauma and how fascism makes us destroy ourselves and each other.

#queer #lgbt #transgender #queer books #lgbt books #book recommendations #queer history

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rwbyrg · 1 month

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Hello!

I would like to ask if there's already a post a long the lines of "Why Rosegarden is a good ship" or reasons to ship RG? If none would it be alright to ask for your insights?

It's my first time being interested in them but I just can't wrap it around my head for now. I would love to read about them!

Thank you in advance ^^

Hi Anon!

I have not yet made any posts specifically with these questions in mind, no. Just a small, unfinished, series about why I believe the ship is likely to be canon. I am happy to offer some insight, but I don't know that I'm going to give you the answers you're looking for. 😅

First and foremost, the questions you're asking aren't really ones that can be answered objectively. What makes a ship "good" or "bad" is largely subjective, as there are as many ways to view a ship as there are people viewing it. I could make an argument about how I think it is - objectively speaking - a well written pairing that follows the typical beats and tropes (with delightful subversions) of a good romance arc, that also parallels how other canon ships within RWBY have been established... but at the end of the day, if you're not a fan of what RG is about, then there's not much I can say to change your mind.

Which brings me to your second question. The best reasons to ship RG are going to be the same reasons for why anyone should ship anything: ship it if you want to, ship it if it resonates with you, and ship it if you enjoy it.

If their characters, interactions, themes, parallels, allusions, tropes, symbolisms, foils, designs, messages, etc., aren't your cup of tea, it's completely okay if you pick something else on the menu! So long as you don't like. verbally harass people that do like it or fill the tag w the same discourse that we are all very tired of seeing.

I don't know if that is a sufficient answer to your question, so I'll take a chance and also provide some of my personal reasons as to why I think it's "good" and why I ship it. While there are many reasons I can't all include, the main things are just how much they mirror each other:

From their complementary character designs (red vs. green, silver vs. gold, moon vs. sun, etc.),

To shared fairytale allusions (Little Prince and the Rose, Dorothy and Princess Ozma/Tip, Warrior in the Woods, etc.),

To the narrative parallels (both being the youngest of the group when they joined respectively; how both of their attachments to each other keep being put into focus; to their shared themes around choice and identity: Ruby having chosen adventure but feeling as if she has no choice but to keep moving forward, while Oscar was chosen by adventure but chooses to do what he can despite his circumstances; Oscar not knowing who he is because of the merge and asking: "I'm just going to be another one of his lives, aren't I?", versus Ruby not wanting to be who she is after chasing the the ghost of an unachievable ideal, but being asked "what if you could be anyone?"; how they're both just kids thrown into war and unfair responsibility before they even have a chance to figure out the kinds of people they want to be, etc.),

to perhaps, most importantly, the show of mutual support between the two of them.

Ruby supports everyone as best she can. She is always giving to and supporting others as a show companionship and leadership. But thanks to V9 and also E4 of RWBY Beyond, we know this was not sustainable or sufficiently reciprocated.

She was let down by Weiss who constantly managed to hit her right in her insecurities; let down by Blake who - even while trying to uplift her - just ended up adding more pressure by treating Ruby like a role model; to Yang and Qrow who both tried to support her as best they could, but kept comparing her to Summer in the process; to Penny having so much of her own lack of experience, stressors, and very immediate worries going on that she couldn't offer Ruby the support she needed even if she wanted to; to Jaune flipping his lid at her and pointing the blame even when he himself was guilty and knew he was out of line; to Ozpin, Qrow, Maria, Tai, Summer, Cordovin, Ironwood, etc., all being adults who could have taken responsibility or done the right thing, but fumbled or failed leaving her to pick up the pieces in their wake. But Oscar? We see it from Oscar's introduction that he - like their shared fairytale allusions - is in awe from the moment he meets her. But after one conversation about the weight of her grief, trauma, and the responsibilities she is carrying - a conversation she has not had with anyone else up to this point - he immediately sees how heavy Ruby's burdens are. Saying, as early as V5: "This must be really hard on her too". And while it is subtle, he never stops looking after her as best he can as the volumes go onward ("Looks like you're needed elsewhere."/"You're sure?"/"Yeah, I've got it."). However, it's only in V9 that her sister Yang is asking "why didn't she just talk to us?". It is only in V9 when her partner Weiss admits: "Maybe it's because she didn't feel like she could". It is only V9 when Ruby finally lays her burdens out to someone else again, this time to the Blacksmith, after almost having given up completely.

For a character who's 116 episode long arc has been about carrying the weight of responsibility far beyond her limits, never asking for anything in return no matter how difficult it gets... to meet another character that instantly notices her struggles and makes a conscious effort to help where all others have failed? To have one conversation and say "that looks heavy, let me help you carry that" without her asking or waiting for an answer? It's just one of the most beautiful acts of care I can think of. The themes and the parallels all resonate very strongly with me on a personal level, making it - in my humble opinion - a brilliant, and very stable foundation for a relationship, and for a story.

Thank you for your question, I hope I was able to offer some of the insight you were looking for. 💕

#i could have spoken about the reasons by most people say they don't get the ship and broke down the biases behind them #but that veers too close to d/scourse and didn't feel as productive #ask #asks #anon #rosegarden #rwby rosegarden #why i ship rosegarden #ruby rose #oscar pine

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anthurak · 1 year

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So I recently saw some discussion on Luz being a ‘Chosen One’-type character. And it really got me thinking about how Luz is, if not an outright subversion, certainly a very interesting exploration and twist on the ‘Chosen One’ trope.

See, Luz technically fits most of the criteria for being a Chosen One, namely being ‘chosen’ by a greater/higher power (the Titan) and gifted great power (glyphs) which she winds up using to defeat the big bad (Belos). However, when we look at the context, execution and subtle nuances of Luz’s relationship with the Titan, we see a lot of differences from what we would expect from a more ‘typical’ Chosen One.

Consider for a moment when most Chosen-Ones are actually ‘chosen’. Usually it’s from the moment they’re born, or in some cases even long BEFORE even that. Alternatively it’s at the very start of the story as part of whatever inciting incident kicks off the protagonist’s role in the plot. Basically, a protagonist being a ‘Chosen One’ is almost always closely tied up in whatever is bringing them into the story in the first place.

But that’s NOT what happened with Luz. She’s not some ‘destined savior’ who was singled out by the Titan when she was born, or even when she first entered the Boiling Isles. No, the first time Luz became known to the Titan (barring time-travel chicanery*) was almost certainly when she began to befriend their son.

I mean, think about this: it’s not until episode FOUR that Luz actually becomes ‘chosen’ by the Titan when they show her the first glyph.

On top of that, there is nothing ‘destined’ about the Titan showing Luz the glyphs. I mean I think it’s pretty clear that the first time they showed Luz the light glyph they were simply trying to help Luz and King to pacify Eda. And after that, they kept showing Luz more glyphs… simply because they wanted to.

The Titan didn’t show Luz the glyphs as part of some grand, thought-out plan for her to defeat Belos and bring peace to the Boiling Isles. Luz didn’t pass some ‘secret test of character’ to become ‘chosen’ by the Titan. She was simply kind and befriended King, and so the Titan decided to just… help her out. First by showing her the first couple glyphs and then showing her more because, well… they LIKE Luz.

The Titan may fill the role of some greater, higher power of the series, but when we finally meet them, they aren’t really presented as one. The Titan is characterized as being quite grounded and down to earth. For all of the incredible power and influence they have over the series, the Titan isn’t presented as some ‘godly’ figure, but simply as ‘King’s Dad’. And not even in some ‘all-knowing, omnipotent entity taking on a form the protagonist can comprehend’ way either (see Amphibia’s finale), but instead simply as a person who wanted to do the right thing, made some major mistakes, and now in large part just wants their son and his new family to be safe and happy.

Again, it all frames the Titan reaching out to Luz to show her the glyphs not as part of some grand plan to defeat Belos or some other ‘destined purpose’, but as the Titan simply wanting to help Luz.

Contrary to what I think a lot of people think, I would call Luz’s story fundamentally distinct from the typical ‘Chosen One’ narrative. Despite the surface-level similarities her story might have, there is nothing ‘destined’, ‘predetermined’ or ‘chosen’ about Luz’s story. She really did stumble through Eda’s portal door chasing Owlbert by pure chance. And it wasn’t some hidden, secret, inborn ‘quality’ about Luz that led to her receiving knowledge from the Titan, or even pure, random happenstance either. Luz simply befriended the Titan’s son and slowly grew into his adoptive older sister.

Just as Luz’s friendliness, kind heart and love for the Boiling Isles and its people endeared her to Eda, King, Amity and so many others, it also endeared her to the very Titan themself.

*If anyone is going to bring up the time-travel point, I would like to remind everyone that is the ‘Stable Time Loop’ trope. NOT ‘The Chosen One’ trope.

#toh #the owl house #toh analysis #toh rambling #Luz Noceda #toh the titan #King Clawthorne #discussing narrative tropes #the chosen one #subverting tropes #how luz unintentionally stumbled into chosen-one status through sheer power of friendship and found-family #when the higher powers make you the chosen one because they think you're pretty cool and you've been really nice to their kid

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lemon-natalia · 2 months

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Gideon the Ninth Reaction - Epilogue

oh poor poor Harrow, she’s gotten everything she wanted at the beginning - to become a Lyctor, the Ninth’s future guaranteed - but now its come at the cost of one of the only people she really cared about

what am I gonna do without Gideon’s internal monologue and bad puns this doesn’t feel right 😢

i genuinely don’t know how Harrow’s gonna live with herself after this. it’s obviously not her fault, but wow is she guilt spiralling like hell

‘But you’re God’ Harrow he’s a white brunette man he’s not all that

‘She was the very best of us’ i do feel like you can still see this in Gideon’s interactions with Cytherea, especially in chapter 20. she was kind to Gideon to some degree, even if most of her persona was a front

no kidding i can imagine that all the Houses are gonna be very concerned about what the hell went down

no Gideon’s body … or Camilla or Coronabeth hmmm. Suspicious. i’m not convinced he’s telling the truth here

the Emperor is honestly a lot more understanding and more overall normal than i was expecting (bar the rainbow oil slick eyes obvs). that being said, i still don’t trust the dude

i really enjoy ‘chosen one’ characters who feel like they have to/do sacrifice themselves for the world (Aang & Korra, Earendil, Kendal from the Aurora webcomic, Adora), as well as inversions/subversions of that trope (e.g., Emperor Belos from The Owl House who's convinced he’s a saviour when he’s not), so i’m very interested to see where the character of the Emperor goes

all i can really say at the end of this book is that i have not been this emotionally devastated by a piece of media in a long time. gonna have a followup post shortly about my final thoughts on everything

#lemon natalia reads the locked tomb #the locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb liveblog #gideon the ninth

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fake-married-my-dead-fiance · 1 year

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One of the fascinating trope subversions in Alchemy of Souls is that Jang Uk is a Chosen OneTM, but instead of the usual paths, where he's specially trained, or hidden away for safety, or famous or something, everyone who knows Uk is special is actively trying to hinder his progress.

And not just the bad guys! The good guys too. It's like if every single teacher in Harry Potter was Snape.

His father cripples and abandons him, Park Jin will not let him be trained and actively encourages him to be lazy, and Jin Mu writes him off as useless but also refuses to train him. All the other important mages dislike and refuse to train him (though they don't know the whole truth). Master Lee is the only person in the entire series who knows Jang Uk is the Prophecy King Star Baby and actually helps him.

Now of course, if you try to mess with destiny, destiny messes back. So obviously Jang Uk would find the most terrifying possible trainer, a soul-shifting murderer, who is willing to help him. Which is just perfect because that's tootally what happens narritively when you try to prevent a prophecy, it just finds another way to come to fruition. Everyone is acting like the king and queen in Sleeping Beauty, thinking they can just destroy all the spindles and nothing bad will happen. She will always find a spindle, you fools!

What's just great karma is that they end up with a Chosen One who doesn't believe in their morals at all. Seo Yul is more like what they would want, a person who will sacrifice themselves to save the world, but instead they have Jang Uk, who will burn the world down to save one person. And it's their fault! They made him that way.

Also, how picky to be like, "Well the Prophecy Baby wasn't born in a way that I like so I don't think he should be the Chosen One." Do you people realize you could have all died? And again, Master Lee is there being like, "I don't care how he was born, if you guys got a King Star baby it's because you need one. Ya idiots."

Edit: I meant Sleeping Beauty not Rapunzel 🤦🏼‍♀️

#alchemy of souls #jang uk #chosen one trope #prophecy must be fulfilled by any means possible #nature will find a way #master lee #being the only person with brains #prophecy baby

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foxlored · 1 year

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Deconstructing Luz & Hunter and Wittebane Siblings Parallels

Alternatively titled: Luz is actually not a stand-in for Philip and I will fight the show's writers on this myself if I must

Another Owl House mini-essay because this show's been on the mind. As the previous one, expect some mentions of abuse, murder, colonization, and so on (as per canon-typical Belos awfulness). Technically peer reviewed (my discord friends talked about it with me)

Luz & paralleling Philip/Belos

The show does a lot of work to make you see Luz as equivalent to Belos, partly in order to deconstruct that. I don't mind that actually, I think the subversion of the "just as bad as the villain" trope fits the show's themes of deconstructing the fantasy genre, given its similar takes on the idea of a chosen one and so on. However, I don't think these parallels are narrative as much as they are just a manifestation of Luz's anxieties and Belos feeding into that.

Stay with me here: We have a character who abandons the only family member they have left in order to stay in the Demon Realm. They fall in love with a witch, and fall in love with the world they're staying in. They unlearn the initial ideas they had about the world that dehumanize its inhabitants in some way—and are in conflict with Philip/Belos, who wishes to "save their soul" and get them out of there.

Am I talking about Caleb or Luz? That's a trick question, because it's both. It's literally the same character arc! And more importantly here—there's something to suggest that at least Belos sees them in the same way.

"We're human! We're better than this!"

Belos has a very peculiar dynamic with Luz in the fact that he is incredibly bent on trying to "save" her despite all she has done to go against him. He sees her as a potential ally, a human corrupted by the sinfulness of witchkind—and offers her an honestly that is pretty much never given to any other character. Now, compare this to the scene in For the Future where he hallucinates Caleb.

"I tried to save your soul. It's your fault this all happened!"

The mentality is strikingly similar—and while we don't have much content to show the specifics of Philip and Caleb's relationship, what we are given suggests a very real parallel between how he views Caleb and Luz.

What about Hunter?

A fair question, as the show poses Hunter as the Caleb to Luz's Philip—especially with him already being a grimwalker of Caleb. However, it's important to note that a significant part of that parallel is that it's incomplete—Hunter isn't the replacement for Caleb that Belos wants.

Because the cycle of killing and destroying grimwalker upon grimwalker is built off the fact that they cannot match what Caleb was. They... aren't Caleb. Even Hunter, who looked the closest, was just that: the closest. Not an actual replacement. Remember Belos had no qualms about branding him with a sigil, a death sentence on the day of unity.

Speaking of that—

King's Tide, & the curious case of Belos' Manipulation

King's Tide gives us two interesting scenes with Belos attempting to manipulate Luz, then Hunter. Both give a surprising insight into his mentality towards both characters.

Hunter, why are you hurting me? I only wanted to help you!

when trying to elicit hunter's help, belos is very much focused on that emotional relationship he cultivated in order to manipulate hunter. Why are you hurting ME. I only wanted to help YOU. but there's no further depth to it. Its a purely emotional attack. Contrast that both with his earlier scene with Luz, and what occurs in Watching and Dreaming.

And despite our differences, I want to help you, Luz. I can send you home. I have just enough Titan Blood for one more trip. Please. I don't want to see another human life destroyed by this place.

While Belos certainly isn't above using emotional attacks to weaken Luz's resolve—playing on her fears of being complicit in his crime, comparing his self afflicted monsterous form to Eda's curse, he also tries to connect with her on a logical level (at least from his point of view).

When he calls Hunter to stop fighting, it's purely because he knows he can eliminate a percieved threat by playing on his weakness—when he calls Luz to stop, it's because he wants to work with her.

You did do something good. I thought this one was another lost cause. Because of you, we can finish our work as witch-hunters, starting with them!

This exchange from Thanks to Them really encapsulates it all. Hunter is a tool for Belos to use, while Luz... I think the ambiguity in "we" in the above quote is purposeful. At face value, it's we as Belos possessing Hunter, an extension of Caleb—him and his brother together again. But he's addressing Luz, thanking Luz, and I don't think that's necessarily because Belos sees himself in Luz. A wayward human who needs guidance back from the clutches of humans... he sees Caleb in her.

Luz & Hunter, two sides of a Caleb coin

I think the two of them are both supposed to represent different facets of Caleb. They're the two characters who are deeply harmed by his manipulation, and both represent the ways in which Belos views his brother. A lost soul to be saved, family to be controlled; Someone who's loyalty must be maintained by emotional abuse and manipulation.

And I think the show becomes stronger when you look at it through this lens, instead of the forced "they're like siblings so they must be like these other siblings" comparison partially born out of Luz's insecurity.

#dove rambles #dove does analysis #the owl house #toh #toh spoilers #hunter toh #luz noceda #philip wittebane

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mdhwrites · 1 year

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I have to said it because is been bothering me for a while, but TOH obsession with "subverting" tropes ("there's no choosen one"/"the Found Family stays together at the end"/"No leaving the new world"), while fine in and on itself, with the way the series presents this subversion it comes across as 'holier than thou' in regards to others stories and it kinds of bothers me.

So what's interesting to me is that as far as subversion goes... It's really dumb, especially the examples you gave. If just straight up not subversive. This is actually an aspect that I'm kind of surprised I haven't discussed yet. Because... TOH isn't subversive mostly. It just acts like it is. Like a big, bold statement like "THERE ARE NO CHOSEN ONES!" has me sitting here, staring at the person before asking, "And?" I mean, especially by the definition that TOH tries to put out there instead of the more general version of chosen ones, how many pieces of media nowadays ACTUALLY have Chosen Ones? I guess one could argue in a way it's a riff on the general isekai genre but Luz is a Chosen One in the same way that most of those protagonists are. They just happened to be the person warped to this world with the ability to save it, or be the person able to gain the ability to save it. Most of them are just a lot more fun with this fact because they don't have a massive stick up their ass about it.

As an example I can think of off the top of my head: Mar. Fucker gains the most powerful item in the realm, has super human capabilities by coming here when he used to be a nerd and, spoilers, his FUCKING FATHER IS THE VILLAIN. And that show still dedicates multiple episodes to him training, him getting his allies, his allies' weaknesses and strengths, the personality he puts into the different forms of the weapon and even the limitations of what he can do with those forms and the fact that he needs to get stronger if he wants a prayer to use it all properly. I mean, how different is stumbling into a cave while running for your life and finding a super weapon in there than being, literally, GIFTED BY GOD your magical powers? Because to me it sounds like the only difference is that one actually has an action and adventure hook to it while the other is basic and comes out of nowhere and is hardly earned. How about the other two? How subversive is the ending to TOH? Not. Just straight up not. The ending of TOH was effectively done by FUCKING INUYASHA. Kagome still has the well between the worlds. Inuyasha is still with her. The others are happy and happy to see her. She can go between as she desires. How different is that from the portal door being permanently accessible for Luz to go between the two realms? Besides going even harder on the wish fulfillment by making Luz's life be in the other world than in the real world? Hell, I don't watch much modern isekai but how many them don't even bring up going home, in part because the character DIED to get there? The only reason people might think of it as a subversion is because of Amphibia and... I don't think it counts as a subversion when the media you're contrasting had a VERY deliberate point with the decision. At that point it's not just a trope, it's the storytelling device that fits with your story. Tropes don't become tropes when they're used for a good purpose. Most people start pointing them as tropes through endless reuse and lazy reuse where the trope is being used but to no real effect other than "This is what a story like this does." And this sort of interrogation is actually required for a lot of TOH's subversions and why I agree that it REEKS of ego. It's also why, even if the creators actually do really like fantasy, it feels like they really don't like fantasy in how they write it. A contrast between my own work and TOH: In the chapter where the human character who knows very little of the world meets Pythia, an angel, she makes a comment about that meaning there being God or Heaven and everyone just kind of stops to look at her until she realizes how stupid that must sound to the demon, dryad and ice demon that are surrounding her, none of whom came from a tree or Hell. But it's grounded in the character's ignorance, the fact that magic is just a fact of the world and they MOVE ON. It's playing into the fantasy of the world for the comedy, not specifically you needing to know the reference. Compare that to the stupidity of the Quidditch reference. Specifically the Golden Snitch. Not only does Boscha say ALL fantasy sports require this sort of BS which is just frankly not true, the fact that Grudgy is already just Quidditch without broomsticks is real bad for making their lack of creativity here more pointed. And Luz doesn't let it go. She loses it for at least thirty seconds, if not even longer, about how stupid that is. That it is trying to lampshade what it just did by over explaining the joke because AREN'T WE CLEVER FOR POINTING OUT HOW STUPID THIS IS!? When it's really just a Harry Potter thing as far as my memory of fantasy works go. Especially within the past twenty years.

And then there's the final version I hate the most: The one that damages its own story. I've talked about this before with how Bill of the Titan Hunters just MURDERS any and all tension in that episode. You cannot take anything happening seriously after that because you can't question if King is going to stay here, because they're obviously fakes or their leader would be taken seriously and you can't be worried about everyone's safety because their leader is a fucking joke about convoluted fantasy names. Which frankly, once you hear like Norwegian names or the like where Magnus is just a regular ass first name, it kind of comes as mean and very American in the worst ways. But it's not the only time. They use this joke a LOT. It sometimes works like the monster hunter who's dreamed of throwing kids off of cliffs but it's EVERY villain besides Belos effectively. Hell, one could claim it's almost any authority figure besides Belos and MAYBE Bump if you're really kind to the writing of Bump. They're all jokes and they're all the same joke of laughing at the audience for expecting them to be serious. Looking Glass Ruins frankly makes no sense once you meet the librarian. Amity and the animation and the like really sell him as this mysterious figure who may hoard knowledge or be too worried about it being misused to even talk to Luz about letting her borrow the journal. It's classic fantasy storytelling and there's nothing wrong with that. Frankly the biggest issue before the reveal is how boring the forbidden section is because... I mean all Amity and Luz do in that episode is either stand and talk or lay and talk and then a cheek kiss. They aren't bad conversations but it de-emphasizes the magic and outside of fueling fanfiction these aren't the most engaging conversations, especially since Amity isn't questioning that the portal could mean anything but good for the two of them and some sort of portal angst between them might have been nice. *sigh* But again, it all works... Until you find out the librarian is a stoner dude. A well voice acted one that actually got a snort out of me when he was first revealed but has always left a lingering question: Why couldn't they have asked him about the journal? He seems entirely reasonable. He didn't take the journal from them despite them trespassing and while Luz had to perform trials to get Amity her badge back, getting the badge back was still an option. It gives the impression that if they had just been actual human beings and talked to him, because it's not like they have a reason to not trust him or authority in general besides the EC, the whole episode would have been avoided. And yes, nitpick theoretically but they make it a big reveal about the fact that he isn't scary.

And as I've talked before, the more emphasis you put on something as clever, the more it needs to hold up to scrutiny. And when the threat of the librarian is the only thing causing tension in that half of that episode, it murders the ability to rewatch it because you can't enjoy that dread again. Not because you know the outcome but because you can never forget that this is all pointless because the animation is effectively lying to you. There's no explanation for why he looks a Ring Wraith of some sort so... Why? Quick admission though: This trick did get a smile out of me with the Titan. I suspect I'd like it even more if it didn't feel like the dozenth time TOH has presented someone who should be taken seriously as a joke but at least with him, it's also characterization. He's a dad. King was actually indicative of who he wanted to be and never got to be so he's more laid back than you'd expect and acting like a dad. It's EXTREMELY charming for the like... thirty seconds I've seen of him. No idea if I'd felt the same way if I were actually watching the episode especially since The Collector right before then drives me up a fucking wall with his "I'm going to pretend I'm five instead five thousand," routine.

It's almost frankly bizarre how much of TOH's issues all revolve this same concept though: A lack of care with what the statement being said is actually doing to their narrative and an overwhelming amount of ego that is hard to shake. And in a genre like subversive comedy, where you are going to sound like an ass regardless to someone (there's a reason it's to hard to write parodies, many of which have literally made every joke TOH has), you have to be ON POINT for it not to bite you in the ass. And man, there's a hole in TOH's trousers. =======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead, If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

And finally a Twitter you can follow too!

#The Owl House Criticism #TOH Critical

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limpfisted · 9 months

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Thinking about how this game is explicitly about grooming and all the different ways lgbt people are groomed, and their varying, complex reactions to that

And how some of them think they couldn't possibly be groomed. Because shar is GOOD. Because mystra is GOOD. And she loved me. Im the one whose wrong. I betrayed HER.

And some of them are angry. They weren't at fault. They never would have wanted that. Not a second of it. They would have never chosen that life. And it ruined them. They'll keep living---theyll crawl and scratch and bite and live, beautifully, in the sun. (Karlach and astarion are opposite sides of the spectrum of this. Notably they are both "hunted" by their abusers.)

And then there's wyll. Who tells you he CHOSE mizoras pact. He thought he could outsmart her. Trick her. He wanted what she offered. He did it for all the right reasons, and then some of his own. He was a child,of course he wanted magic of his own, to hold in his hands like a pop up picture book, to turn eldritch blasts in his hands like cardboard tabs. He claims he wasn't abused. He couldn't have been abused. He doesn't regret it. He probably hurt and hunted people just like Karlach before, as a trope subversion of the knight in shining armor. And yet he can't stop. And he can't regret it. And he needs you, he needs you to save him. He can't outsmart her on his own. Because left to his own devices---he can't make a decision in the third act about his pact. The game doesn't let you. He needs you, more than even the others. He chose this, he chose violence, and power, and his Father, because he loves his Father, and he loves Baldur's Gate, and he would do anything for them except die (theres always a way, there's always a way, Gale can fell the elder brain, he doesn't NEED to blow himself up), he loves his Father, but his Father and Baldur's Gate are not enough and they are lost to him now, and Mizora is still willing, and he is only seventeen. At the beginning of the game, he is not even in his late 20s!!!!

I think a lot about how they're all grooming victims and how they react to their trauma, but wyll is the youngest, and the literal human, who is supposed to be the most generic. And he WANTS to be generic, and he WANTS to be a hero, and he wants to have chosen this life for himself. But there are so many parts he didn't want, that he doesn't know how to fix, and he can't get out of his "contract" with his "devil" without you. And even if he does, he'll always be a devil. He'll never see a man in the mirror again---just proof of a punishment he doesn't know how to explain, and literally can't.

ON A POSITIVE NOTE. Now they have each other. And they have you

#i think also about us all rping grooming victims/survivors #and having 18+ in our bios #because we were kids once and we wanted to be adults and we wanted to choose to smut and have fun and whatever #and there were adults who DIDNT have 18+ in their bios #and there are always worse adults. there are always worse adults #idk i think we're healing! i think nature is healing! and there are things we just dont talk about!#that we can express in our art and our love for these characters #grooming tw

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lollytea · 1 year

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☕️ my best girl forever & ever luz noceda!!!

The protagonist ever!!! I love Luz so much!!! She's such a fun subversion of the "plucky girl heroine" thing that media really likes.

She's upbeat and silly and clumsy and hyper and cuddly and a sweetheart and everything you'd expect from that kind of character. But she's so much more than that. Luz is an insightful, curious and imaginative person who loves to create and learn. She's a brilliant artist!! She wants to be a writer when she grows up!!!

I've always adored the very realistic angle they took with her, being an adhd riddled teen who struggles in a typical school environment and how she uses fantasy books and fanfiction and anime as a form of escapism and how it gets to the somewhat unhealthy point where she has a hard time separating her coping mechanism from the world around her. It's just. It's so real. It hits.

And then!! And then!!! Luz actually does escape to a real living breathing fantasy world and she thinks this will be her opportunity to live out her YA protag dreams. But ironically, this fantasy world is the place that actually helps her to come to terms with the complexities of the real world. Like. She didn't exactly get what she wanted. But she got what she needed.

Her whole struggle with wishing she could be special. A "chosen one" but she's so consumed with fantasy tropes that she struggles to see things the way they are. But she learns!!! She learns to accept herself as nobody especially important and decides to make an impact on the world herself, rather than wait for somebody to give her a destiny. Idk I feel like it's a lovely lesson for kids.

And then once she accepts that she really starts to flourish!! Luz would not have made it this far in the series if she wasn't the person she was. She's so smart!! She figures out the mechanisms of glyphs and how they work. She experiments and tinkers until she masters all the tricks of the technique.

She wanted to be a witch so bad but she initially felt limited because she didn't have biological magic. But that's Luz!! She does stuff in her own way!!! She thinks outside the box!!!

She means a lot to me. A neurodivergent teen girl who's always felt so isolated in the world she was living in finally getting the chance to form real emotional bonds with people who care about her for the whacky messy flawed but genuine person that she is.

Just. Luz still having Camila and adoring her but there's still such a poignant emptiness left in her life after Manny's death. And Manny will never be replaced. But it must be so therapeutic for her to form those new familial bonds. Not only does Luz have Camila, but she now has Eda and King and Hooty and Lilith and Vee and Hunter AND AND AND!!!!

Luz being a social pariah at school at best and being bullied at worst, now having friends her own age like Willow and Gus who are also outcasts at school and welcome her with nothing but love. And they get to have all those fun teen experiences together that they've always been left out of!!!! The way Luz is so affectionate with them, calling them cuties and her babies and squishing their faces. Man it's awful thinking about her never having friends before this. There's so much love pent up in her and she's finally getting an outlet for it.

Luz, after being mocked relentlessly at school for being "cheesy" falling in love with a girl who is just as sappy and sentimental as she is who adores her antics and blushes from her smooches and flirting and its just!!! And getting to see Luz, this silly yet insecure and still deeply troubled girl navigate her very first romantic relationship and the mutual care and consideration they have towards each others' trauma....ohhh it's so sweet!! I love her!! I love them!!! The way they have the complete freedom to be their cringe sappy book nerd selves with each other because they found their cringe soulmate. Mwah. Lumity I'd go to war for you.

I LOVE LUZ NOCEDA!!!!!!!

#this isnt an analysis or anything #its just my senseless gushing #i love luz noceda

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stierhai · 11 months

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Thoughts on: The One Within the Villainess

Manga: The One Within the Villainess

Amount read: Up to chapter 12

Impression: Middling positive.

On genre:

I'm not an Isekai person. I don't find wish fulfillment to be compelling in media. I don't care about game mechanics. I don't like characters going into the narrative with all the answers already and just needing to wait to put them into effect. Isekai may run the gamut of tones, with there being as much seinen edgelord bullshit as there is cute reincarnator sidesteps the plot of the in-fiction original work, so I won't say there's never conflict in isekai but... none of that does anything for me. With rare exceptions, the conflict almost always feels extremely shallow to me even when the stakes are high.

This is because they don't typically feel like they're about the characters, so much as they feel like lore infodumps and following a road map. Then top that off with a main character that has either a narratively convenient power that typically is powerful enough to overcome all conflict by default whilst requiring a lot of info-dumping— or the power is skipped in favor of short-cutting straight to the power being a lore and plot dump... they feel less like stories in and of themselves and more like reading a tabletop corebook. Lore is, in my mind, meant to be the stage upon which we tell stories, not the story itself— and I just don't think the stage can stand all its own and pretend to be a competent story.

And that is even assuming the stage was competent to begin with. A lot of Isekai also are very tropey and reference not just the broad strokes of other fantasy settings writ large but other isekai.

And there is no place this is more exemplary than the Villainess subgenre of isekai works.

They've all got this same basic framework: girl dies somehow and wakes up in an otome game she either played or knew about in her old life! However, she isn't the protagonist of the otome game, she's the villainess: an odious character who existed just to obstruct the heroine's chosen route in the game!

But here's the thing. I play otome games. I'm maybe not an expert, but I do have a casual acquaintanceship with the genre. The villainess rival plot that's endemic to this whole-ass genre? It stems from one of the earliest otome games ever, Angelique. However: it's not a trope that actually stuck around in otome games. To the point that Angelique's own sequels and spin-offs also didn't have the villainess rival. Similarly, the idea of the grindy items or whatever-- most modern otome games are not "dating sims", they're visual novels. You can think of them as choose your own adventure books, way more than a grindy dating sim where you have to raise stats, repeatedly talk to the dating options in certain areas on certain days, or give them items. The last set of actual popular otome games that had those elements is probably the [Heart/Spade/Diamond/etc] no Kuni no Alice series, I'm pretty sure? Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. But either way, I can say pretty confidently that Persona 5 is more of a dating sim than most otome games.

The fact is, these manga and light novels are all cribbing notes off each other, not otome games. So I have a grudge against them for that, first and foremost. It's like, okay you're talking shit about the problems and how terrible it is for the villainess to have to suffer just because she also liked the guy and her life is ALSO BAD and it's like. This is just not a thing. These works exist as critiques of a phenomenon that just isn't widespread and barely exists at all. You are all still just mad at Angelique-- or rather, because they don't know their "source material" at all, they're just empty shells of someone else's subversion of an extremely old game. And the subversion of ACTUALLY THE VILLAINESS IS FINE is also eroded even further by the fact a lot of them just decide to have the plot be actually the heroine is the real bad guy. Look at that hussy, chatting up these dudes above her station and stealing someone else's fiance. The issue isn't that the original plot of the game set up these girls as having their own happiness achievable only as mutually exclusive, implying women are all enemies competing for men, the real issue with the initial story is... genki girl bad, elegant girl good. I'm hating on a few specific manga here, but I'm sure there's more than that out there that have pulled that particular twist.

They have nothing to say. But when the framework of the story is we're going to fix the shit that went wrong in the original... it reads like they're trying to be commentary on the original genre. Which just falls so, so flat. Thanks for the commentary on a thing that isn't even a problem with the genre and also your commentary sucked.

So, enough generalities. Onto The One Within the Villainess.

The Plot:

The basic rundown: The villainess, Remilia, was replaced out as a child by Emi, a Japanese girl who was familar with the game Remilia is from. Emi did all the usual villainess isekai protagonist things-- rescued the male love interests from problems in their lives and came to occupy the same space as the protagnist did within the original game's story. Remilia, from within Emi, watched this and was satisfied because she had lived a loveless life with terrible parents but with Emi's memories of her own family in Japan and the second-hand experience of Emi's new life, she was able to finally experience happiness and became protective of Emi.

However, a fellow isekai'd girl has taken over the role of the game's protagonist. Pissed off that the villainess has changed the plot, she plots Remilia/Emi's downfall. Emi suffers the same fate as the villainess in the game, and retreats within herself. Remilia, back in control of her own body, swears vengeance and to make herself happy to fulfill Emi's wishes for her. To these ends, she does some bog-standard villainess things. She takes control of the land she's exiled to, begins doing damage control to her reputation, saves some poor people who were neglected by fate in the "original" timeline, teams up with a demon lord, and kills god.

I won't say the plot is anything special. A lot of the plot points I have read beat for beat in other manga. It also has the issue of not being very familiar with otome games— aside from my usual otome games almost never have a villainess issue, the whole subplot about the shop shows that the writer is thinking of the mechanics of a mobile game. And granted, I've never played a mobile game otoge, maybe they really are like that. But with the genre as a whole taking cues from a very old otome game, it is weird to see the very modern cash shop mechanics thrown in there. It feels like indiscriminate cribbing off the notes of other isekai that just accidentally took something from the wrong source material-- that any one isekai is as good as any other to crib from, overlooking the thing that's supposed to make the subgenre distinct. Which makes sense-- if you don't play otoge, you wouldn't know what the mechanics were like so you probably wouldn't see an issue with a cash shop existing as a plot point and as a major part of a subplot.

Thus far, this review has mostly been negative. But that's because I've focused on what it has in common with most other villainess isekai— a genre I started with saying I don't like. So, next: what sets it apart and what it does well within its trappings.

The Art:

The art fucks /pos.

Manga is a visual medium, and having good art isn't a must persay, but it does a lot to influence audience perception of characters, setting a mood, and just the overall enjoyment of a series. Characters in this manga make great fucking faces. The otoge heroine just runs around making the shittiest faces, the clearest faux-cutesy but complete scumbag expressions ever. They're great. Emi and Remilia technically have the same face but they're very well distinguished by light shines and make-up, sure, but also the kind of expressions they make— Remilia playing at Emi is also distinguishable from what we saw of Emi. Things are telegraphed really well-- you can see the people around Emi being affected by the heroine because they also begin making shitty smug faces (though not to the same degree).

Also, about selling a mood: killing God isn't an exceptional plot point in a JP fantasy series. It's every JRPG I played growing up, it's my beloved Angel Sanctuary, etc. So how do you sell the audience on the gravity of killing this God that was only recently introduced? Radical art style shift from villainess isekai to surreal high contrast Madoka witch labyrinth was the answer this manga landed upon and damn if I can't say it doesn't work. That sequence was great. Excellent choice by the artist.

The character designs are also pretty good. Remilia and Pino Blanchet definitely pass for the villainess and heroine isekai tropes. The demon shopkeep also looks like a minor NPC that for some reason has been taken out of a minor role and been given a more major one, whilst also making sense with the larger world set-up as we get that. The demon king looks like a boy you might romance on an otome route. The gods have weird inhuman forms. The dwarf girls both look like dwarves, in a western fantasy sense whilst still fitting into an otome game! I'm not sure any of them really stand out to me as like damn good job, but I think as a whole they do help get across the setting-- both as a fantasy in its own right outside the "game's plot", and as an isekai into an "otome game".

Emi and Remilia:

Okay. Listen. Listen. I grew up in YGO fandom, alright? Bodyshare romance is peak. And I've got a thing for unrequited love, tragic loves, dead girl haunts the narrative she can no longer directly touch but everyone around her is still impacted by the hole she left. And, to clarify, that isn't what this manga is— I do not think this was written with the intention of being read as hot girl doppleganger ghost romance— but it's got the vibes. That even if that is not the intended reading of the text, it has an appeal that people into that could appreciate.

So, Emi is not textually dead, aside from the whole reincarnation thing. But she is functionally a ghost in the story. After she fell into despair, she retreated within herself and Remilia retook control. In-character, Remilia believes that Emi is as she was— alive, and now merely watching from behind the scenes. With this belief, she seeks to make Emi's ideal world so she can emerge and live happily again, just as she did before. There is no sign of Emi stirring, but Remilia is motivated by her memories and ideals, by what she gave her and honoring her memory. The Remilia the audience knows is a person changed, but not by someone who is in the story any longer. In this way, Emi "reads" as a ghost, haunting the narrative through her effect on Remilia. Dead girlfriend vibes, is what I'm saying.

There's also something to be said for the dynamic necessitated by the bodyshare where despite being deeply invested in the other's happiness, they do and do not have any personal relationship at all. They both know intimately and have never met the other person— we see Emi playing Remilia's game and crying over her; we see Remilia watching Emi living her life on a flat-screen television window in their mindscape. Without direct interaction, they nontheless are invested in each other, their highs and lows, their success and happiness. They're the other's biggest fan, but not in the sense that we usually think of in the modern era when someone says Parasocial. They are aware of each other, and both is individually important to the other. Whilst the situation is fantastical, it comes out feeling like an early internet friendship with both girls lurking on the other's blog, more than it feels like the relationship between stan and oshi.

On Female Characters:

So, this manga is guilty of the whole villainess isekai trend of actually the game heroine is the bad one! twist.

I forgive it.

The most important relationship in the manga, the fulcrum upon which the whole manga's storyline sits, is the one between Emi and Remilia. They're both full characters in their own rights, even though Emi exists only in flashback. Meanwhile, of the major side characters the ratio of male to female characters actually favors women. There's two men, whilst all the other major side-characters with personalities are women. So, Pino being shitty is just like, oh okay she's just a shitty person, not that this author has kind of an unfortunate attitude about women. Also, Pino's character flaws of being incredibly selfish and focused on romantic feelings without caring about the target of her affections as a person-- it rather neatly echoes the evil god featured in the manga as well. The two of them echo each other, so considering we see the exact same flaws in evil incel god and the main female antagonist... Yeah, I don't see the way Pino is written as a problem here.

The Demon King:

So, speaking of side-characters. The Demon King Angel is supposed to have been a secret route from within the game. And while I think this manga gets a lot of shit wrong about otome games I will say this for it: Angel absolutely feels like a true/secret route character. Gorgeous character design, genuinely tragic backstory with a good reason for him to have been an absolute bastard within the story. . . nailed it. Good job. A++. More than anyone else here, I actually buy him as an otoge character.

It's a little bit unfortunate for him that Remilia is only interested in Emi and making Emi's ideals a reality! That just makes him feel like he's properly executed even moreso though, and really drives home that this manga is about the relationship between Emi and Remilia more than any thing else though.

post also available on dreamwidth

#manga review #the one within the villainess

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candyskiez · 2 months

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Tropes I love a lot:

1. "No matter what you do, you will never stop being yourself. If you want to change, you need to nurture yourself instead of trying to destroy who you used to be." (Ex: MP100)

2. Clones/copies finding their own identity,bonus points if it's an allegory, double bonus points if the complicated relationship between them and who they were copied from is explored, triple bonus points if they get to have a rage breakdown over it. (Ex: Infinity Train. Please watch Infinity Train.)

3. Mindscapes/going into someone's head or memories and playing around with the many ways they can manifest, bonus points if there's an inner self of some kind

4. "You love me?" "Don't be an idiot. Of course I do." Or anything even remotely along those lines. Of course you matter to me. Why wouldn't you? Doesn't have to be romantic at all and honestly I prefer it as not.

5. Emotional powers, bonus points if it's an allegory (Ex: MP100)

6. Subversion of the "we're not so different you and I" trope. Whether it be instead of a cheap grab at a hero it's abuser to victim (ex: she ra) that's actually yk. Relevant to the themes of the show, hero to villain (ex: MP100), or just like. Actually making it relevant and interesting.

7. Yelling at the gods!!! Bonus points if it's an allegory!

8. Dog symbolism

9. Attack dog + handler. Bonus points if it delves into how it effects both of them

10. Character design changing to reflect character growth

11. Light as cold and dangerous and overwhelming, dark as hiding you from harm and being warm and comfortable.

12. Haunting the narrative (ESPECIALLY when it's related to the heart of the story and the themes and!! When the one haunting the narrative is the core of the message when the. When they. Hi.) (Ex: The Owl House)

13. Shapeshifting symbolism. Monstrous form that MEANS something. Bonus points if its not just "oh this character is evil." Bonus points if it's "this is how they view themselves" or smth. Get creative with it!!!

14. Bitter chosen ones

15. "Chosen" Ones that aren't actually chosen and were being lied to

16. "FUCK waiting for the chosen one, I'm doing it myself!"

17. "Actually this is why the idea of Chosen Ones are harmful and encourages the bystander effect and-"

18. Religious symbolism. Especially if it's done to show a character elevating someone they love to such an unhealthy height of love and devotion.

19. When a fallout between two friends is the heart of the narrative when the end or rekindling of a relationship is the heart of it I don't CARE if its cliche I love it so much

20. Comic relief slowly being revealed to be dealing with So Much Shit.

#writing prompts #feel free to tag shit that applies to this

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jadelotusflower · 7 months

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Stargate rewatch: 1x17 Solitudes

aka episode of the blurry/dark screenshots. What is this, Game of Thrones?

A Brad Wright episode, and the debut of the franchise’s most prolific director Martin Wood.

Jack and Sam bond over his broken bones and her inability to make a splint, heh.

It’s Siler! aka Dan Shea, RDA’s stunt double and later Stunt Coordinator.

Hammond giving him half the time Siler says it will take to fix the Gate and Siler going “it doesn’t work that way sir” is great, nice subversion of a trope.

lol, how many times do we get an extreme close up on Daniel’s face and a blurry pov shot of him waking up from being k’o-ed on this show? A lot, I can tell you.

Sam correctly identifies their situation (option 2) but gets stuck on the probabilities of the SGC finding them, leaving Jack to be the optimist. Nice callback (unintentional or not) to him sarcastically telling Samuels in 1x02 to “let me be the optimist for once.”

Sam then deduces that the matter steam jumped to a different but nearby Stargate, just as Daniel comes to the same conclusion. Wonder Twin powers, activate!

At least they got good lighting in the close ups!

The gang's all here - even Harriman (who as this point is just Airman/Technician).

I do love it when they use the plexiglass map.

What is Siler’s job anyway? Chief engineer?

Sam identifies this symbol (far right) as the point of origin on the DHD. We later learn this Gate was the original one used by the Ancients and this could conceivably be an Alteran-esque symbol since we know their written language is block based and their aesthetic is heavy on the circles. It could represent a sun and a pillar, or maybe a Stargate itself.

It does explain away a bit of a plot hole with Earth’s point of origin being a pyramid if the gate was built pre-Ra. It makes more sense that this is the original Earth point of origin and the other was built/chosen later.

Oof Jack coughing up blood onto the snow.

Why Sam doesn’t try to dial any addresses other than Earth - la la la don’t think about it. Sam's brain too cold to function I guess?

Or maybe the DHD has something else wrong with it? We learn later that connecting the DHD designates that gate as the primary gate on Earth, so really the SGC gate shouldn’t be working at all if Sam is trying to use the Antarctic gate.

Nice little moment where Sam says that if they don’t make it she won’t have any regrets, and Jack says he’ll regret dying - a good reflection of both their characters.

Daniel with his ever-present coffee, but this time with good reason. There’s a cool shot of him in the control room worrying, tracking up to Hammond in the briefing room worrying. Martin Wood loves a tracking shot. I love a tracking shot too.

I also love how interactive the set is, the gate room, viewing room, briefing room, and Hammond’s office are all connected allowing us to move through the set as if it were a real facility.

“I should have gotten you out of here by now.” Aw, Sam! Telling language through use of “you” and not “us.” She’s the problem solver but can’t solve the problem, and even though Jack is in command, given his injury she’s now the one who feels responsible for him and his safety when usually it's the other way around.

Amanda Tapping is great in this episode, we don’t often see Sam so frustrated, unable to push through to find the answer.

Also a tender moment when Jack calls out for Sara and Sam, having been told earlier that Sara is what got him through a similar situation, giving him the comfort of “I’m here, Jack.”

Uh oh, I think that means there’s a T-Rex around!

“We ruled out a world we shouldn’t have.” Daniel thinking forth dimensionally again! Even separated the team are still working together, the juxtaposition of Sam trying and failing to the dial the gate but Daniel still receiving the message is great.

Ah, I love it when they work a retcon into the plot! The SGC installed “frequency dampeners” that stopped the shaking of the gate (and made the trip through smoother/less cold), so the shaking now is unusual and helps them solve the mystery.

Aw, Hammond going along with the rescue party. He’s well and truly Papa Hammond now!

#stargate sg1 #stargate rewatch #1x17 solitudes

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polis-fandom · 1 year

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I'm actually gonna say it.

The heart of the Witcher story is the Found Family of Geralt-Yennefer-Ciri, so for the story to work, you have to get the dynamics and relationships between those characters right.

The Netflix show failed at every single one of them.

In the books, Geralt and Ciri meet for the first time as a total accident, when she's 11 years old and escaping Calanthe's marriage ideas to Brookilon. Geralt rescues her from some monsters, and without either knowing who they are to each other, they bond like a father and daughter, with Geralt telling her bedtime stories et all. At the end Ciri returns to Cintra, but conection between them stopped being "the destiny prophecy blablabla", it's personal now. When Cintra gets attacked by Nilfgaard, Geralt rushes there for Ciri, but he's too late, so he searches for her and destiny makes their paths cross again. When they meet second time at the farm, Ciri runs towards him, and he runs even faster towards her. The dialog that happens between them is one of the most poignant exchanges in the books:

Ciri: So it's true what they said? I'm your destiny?

Geralt: You are Something More.

This is a direct call back to something Borch the Golden Dragon said, "Destiny is not enough, you need something more" and it captures the theme of those books. Destiny is not enough, you need something more, and that something more is the will, the choice, and the active pursuit of it.

The show chose to make this scene Geralt and Ciri's first meeting, fine. But then they ruined it, by scrapping the dialogue. Instead we have Ciri asking : "Who's Yennefer?" One - this fails to establish the bond between the Geralt and Ciri, a mistake that has to be rectifyed the entire second season (and every attempt still falls flat for various reasons), and two - this puts an emphasis on the Destiny as the thing linking those three characters together, when I just pointed out that's not the theme of the books. The books are intentionaly subversions of the Chosen One and other classic fantasy tropes, meanwhile the show falls stright into the hole of them.

In the books, Geralt uses his Last Wish to bound his destiny with Yennefer, BUT! she is aware of this, she hears him making that wish, and is moved, that despite him knowing her for such short time, despite her using and manipulating him, he still chose to save her, he still chose HER. She enters the relationship with him at her own will, she consents to it. They have ups and downs, but she doesn't spend decades wondering why they keep running into each other, like she does in the show. Just for the drama, the show removed her consent and her awarness of the situation between them, and thus the entire relationship instead of just being complicated, became toxic.

And Ciri and Yennefer! In the books Ciri is aware that she's a valuable chess piece, that everyone wants to control and manipulate and use her, so she's distrustful. Yennefer, on the other hand is aware of that in Ciri, so the very first thing she does when meeting Ciri, the very first rule she establishes between the two, is total HONESTY. She promises to always tell Ciri the truth, to never manipulate her, never use her. This is the fundament of their bond.

What does the show!Yennefer do when she meets Ciri? She manipulates her and tries to use her, to sell her to the Demon, to gain back her own lost magic. A move, that she will have to "make up for to Ciri and Geralt" for an episode or two in season 3, according to the showrunner.

I really don't understand why they made all those choices, there's plenty of drama in those books, they didn't need to change those dynamics so bad.

EDIT: I came across a youtube video essay by Alien Platypus that says all this so much more clearly and well detailed, here's the link

youtube

#the witcher netflix #the witcher #wiedźmin #anti the witcher netflix #Youtube

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khalesci · 2 months

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psst mari .. tell me your thoughts 👀 - do you believe that dany (or your dany) would/would consider martyring herself in some way, if she believed it would 'break the wheel'?

Ok so basically I think that in IC terms, Dany would absolutely martyr herself if she feels that's what she needs to do. She is selfless, and like any mother, she would do anything to save her children (her people). In some ways, most of her life has been a constant repetition of her being "martyred", either willingly or unwillingly, in various ways.

She was sold to a Dothraki Khal so her brother could have an army, her entire autonomy was taken from her.

She sacrificed her status and reputation among the Dothraki in an attempt to save Drogo, though the cruel irony here is that all she did was earn her son's death unknowingly.

She walked into fire knowing well that she could die, just to hatch her dragons. (She doesn't really bat an eye at death in these situations, I've noticed.)

She accepted the dangers of the House of the Undying because she knew that she had to go there to find answers and hope for the people that follow her. Again, she risked death just for the *hope* of some salvation.

She wanted to join in battle herself to be at the sides of the men who fight for her despite having no experience with fighting or combat at all and was only stopped by her councilors. She would have put herself in danger just to give them strength and hated watching from the sidelines.

She helped tend to the sick and injured in Meereen HERSELF, not caring if she would fall ill or not.

She put herself into an unhappy, political marriage that ultimately proved dangerous to her, just to stop the bloodshed in her city. She put a would-be assassin within arms length of her because the only thing that mattered was making sure the Harpies no longer slaughtered her people.

She charged at Drogon when he was causing mayhem in the pit, and remarks that he would kill her if she faltered, and she goes on to tame him herself, in her own way. But yet again she was fully ready to die.

Dany's entire character is one that has constantly sacrificed personal happiness and well-being for others that she feels responsibility for. She feels led to pursue the throne *because* of that sense of responsibility, and she feels entitled to it because she feels she is the right person to do it. And with her role as Azor Ahai, she will have an even greater responsibility beyond the Iron Throne, to play her part in saving not just the continent, but the entire world from the Others. The world has been out of balance for too long, and Dany will have to make sacrifices to restore order; she has already begun this from the moment she hatched her dragons, bringing the magic of fire and life back into the world when it was on the brink of extinction. And if she has to sacrifice her very life to save everyone and fulfill this destiny? She absolutely would. She would make that choice.

That being said, however, just because she would, does not mean that she should.

Personally, I certainly don't think she should, not from a narrative standpoint or a selfish self-fulfillment standpoint. George has said since the inception of this series that Daenerys was intended to be the subversion of the exiled prince / chosen one tropes where this role is filled by a woman instead. She is not going to be "corrupted" by power, she is not going to be a "Mad Queen", her entire purpose is to be a hero and savior in this story, she is not the red herring (that's Stannis). And she's not meant to be a tragic or "dark" hero, either; if anyone has been positioned to fill that role, it's Jon, as described by George himself.

I think where her character gets misunderstood most is that people see her as a privileged Targaryen queen and forget that she came from nothing. She was literally a slave. Dany is the antithesis to the abuses of power and wealth that came from her predecessors, not the resurrection of those things. She has been the VICTIM of those abuses, not the perpetrator. She had to earn everything that she has and climb her way to her station. Her people follow her not because she's claimed any divine right to rule over them, but because they have CHOSEN to follow her because they trust and believe in her. If things were the other way around, I could understand the idea that she *needs* to be a martyr to undo a system she has upheld, but she has not done that. She has been as oppressed by that system as the smallfolk, and she's not even on the same continent; born with assassins chasing her right out of the womb just because of who her parents are. She is the underdog. And no one wants the underdog to lose or die at the end; we want them to win. Narratively, that is the proper resolution to an arc like that, yes?

But there is this odd trend of insistence that somehow, for some reason, Daenerys must die; whether for the implausible reasons (corruption, madness, etc.) or the plausible one (sacrifice). And a more interesting pattern is, you do not see any other male played-straight hero archetype (original trilogy Luke Skywalker, Aang from ATLA, etc.) treated as if the definitive conclusion for their primary arc SHOULD be martyrdom. We all WANT Luke to save the world and make it out safe and redeem his father. We all WANT Aang to save the world from the Fire Nation and go on and live a life of peace that he was denied. But then you look at the female versions of the hero archetype (Dany, Buffy Summers, Katniss Everdeen, etc.) and there is no small percentage of people who advocate that somehow their deaths would be the justification of their lives.

Obviously this has everything to do with how women are treated and viewed in media in general, but also with Dany, I think there is this unique aspect of internal fandom politics where we have these factions that are so strongly pro or anti anything, and that plays into it. There are some people who think Daenerys should die just because she is a Targaryen, despite the fact that she has benefited nothing from being a Targaryen outside of 1. the magic in her blood and 2. being able to use other people's fetishization of her against them. In every other way, she has *suffered* for being a Targaryen. And I think a lot of the "Dany must die" arguments come from people who want the Targaryen to be retroactively punished again and want no "Targ restoration" as the fandom has dubbed it. Because a lot of people talk about Targ restoration as if that means all the dead Targaryens are going to suddenly come back or possess Dany to be a tyrant or whatever, when really, a true and realistic Targ restoration just means Dany living happily and possibly on the Iron Throne, and possibly NOT having her line end with her. It's just one woman being happy and getting what she wants, not a tyrannical dynasty being restored, because Dany's version of House Targaryen will not be anything like what her ancestors created.

The entire oppressive system of Westeros existed long before the Targaryens ever arrived, they didn't invent the concept of feudalism or monarchy, and when they ruled, they were not solely responsible for the oppression of the realms; the realms did a good enough job at oppressing themselves. And the idea I see coupled with the "Dany must die" crowd a lot is that George would overhaul this entirely at the end of the series and replace it with something like democracy, and that is, frankly, ridiculous. That's not how things work, and that's not how George writes. But the better ending for a new and freer Westeros is to finally have a leader (Dany!) who is more mindful of ruling for her people than for herself. She isn't there to hold power for the sake of it; she wants to empower her people. Her job is to keep them fed, clothed, keep the law, and protect them. Dany is one of the only people who would not uphold the status quo, she would actively do things to change it, and THAT is Westeros' hope to move forward.

In short, from the most basic terms of my personal take on the narrative and Dany as a character, everything is more fulfilling if she lives to reap the benefits of all her work and to actually enact change, because without her, ultimately Westeros just ends up back in the same shitshow it was at the start of the series. With her alive, things can be different. And from a more personal, isolated read of just Dany herself? As someone who does adore her character so much? I think she deserves better than to die just for having the audacity to be a woman with power and the will to use it for good. I think a character that has suffered all her life deserves to find peace *before* she dies, not in death itself. She deserves to plant her lemon trees and have a home and paint the door red if she wants. She deserves to find happiness and have that little girl she dreamed of and have the relief of knowing that she will not be the last of her kind after being alone for so, so long.

#bruiisedpetals #♛ asks. ⊱ ❝ 𝘈 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘭𝘭. ❞#♛ about. ⊱ ❝ 𝘐𝘧 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘐 𝘢𝘮 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘵. ❞#did I hyperfixate on writing this for the past hour? yes asfdljkfdslkj

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