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amplifyme · 10 months

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I'm working through the next part and just finished As on a Darkling Plain-- wow. Nan took the fairytale up to 100 to turn Vincent inside and out and save him.

Catherine peppering him with ways to reconnect to life and be a part of it with the Wizard of Oz references, only showing the Other's destruction through her tv set, Vincent knowing how to use the tv remote because of Diana, saving him during his darkest hour by still living inside of him and restoring that memory, the dead remain in him, the shifting tower, so many other things.... Absolutely thrilled and contemplative over that chapter (and the previous sections leading up to it.)

I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, any and all you can spare.

Under a cut again...

It's a great little fairytale, isn't it?

So here's a bit of the backstory. When the writer's room was first outlining what they thought would be a full 3rd season with a full cast, this was their thinking. I'll let George R.R. Martin tell you:

"The end-of-second-season trilogy was intended to lead into a beginning-of-third-season trilogy that we’ve referred to as the “Land of the Dead” storyline. I have discussed this in some detail in a long-ago STARLOG interview, so it’s hardly a secret. Catherine supposedly screams in the final moment of the second season because she finds Vincent dead in the cave.

In the third season, Vincent would have been interred in the catacombs, a grieving Catherine would have tried to get on with her life, and we would have followed Vincent through a bizarre, haunted streets of a city of darkness, where he would have faced many of the men he had killed. Thematically, this was meant to be the resolution of the Trilogy and its themes.

We wanted to use actors from previous episodes, playing characters that Vincent had killed… but he would also meet friends there. We hoped to bring back James Avery as Winslow. Ultimately, he would come face to face with the King of the Dead, who would of course be Paracelsus… again, resolving the Trilogy. And meanwhile his bond with Catherine would reach him even beyond the boundaries of life, and ultimately pull him back to the world of the living. He would wake up and burst free of his crypt, alive again, and we would never know if he had really been dead or not, if the adventure in the Land of the Dead had been true or just a very vivid dream.

This was more than just one idea among many, as was said uptopic. It had been discussed in some detail, and we were definitely going to go with a version of it. Maybe only one episode, maybe three… but some thing on that order. Perlman was absolutely crazy about the notion. Then… well… then came what you call Black Thursday, and Linda, and you know the rest. We never got to do it." (x)

The Black Thursday he refers to is when the network informed them that the show would only be returning as a 12 episode mid-season replacement, in large part because Linda Hamilton had made it clear she would absolutely not be returning for more than the first episode of S3.

So what Nan did was take the seed of this idea and create the darkling plain Vincent visits, where as Nan explains, "The Other is assumed to be a separate and independent self who, whenever he isn't surfacing to do violence in the "real world", lives in his own subjective country he orders as he chooses. That country is also inhabited by the wraiths of all he's killed, as well as those of people he'd held as they were dying - namely Catherine." (x)

As far as my thoughts upon first reading, I was gobsmacked by not only the initial idea of it and how Nan expanded on it, but the way she did it. Weaving the threads of Vincent's long battle with his dual natures and beginning to acknowledge that maybe he has more in common with the Other than he'd been willing to admit; that the Other has his own fully imagined and complete life, including a still-alive Catherine, protected and cherished. That maybe he does have the right to not only desire a complete life for himself and Diana, but that he also deserves it, beyond the pain and grief of losing Catherine. And all of this threaded with small touchstones and glimpses of the original La Belle et la Bête. It's really is a masterpiece of writing.

And this line: "I'm back from Kansas and I love you all very much," still makes me happy cry every time I read it. 🥹

I'm really am so glad you're enjoying Nan's work. I think she would be, too. Enjoy!

#beauty and the beast 1987 #fanfic #as on a darkling plain #acquainted with the night 2 #nan dibble #george r.r. martin

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russolaw · 1 year

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#Mortal engines #A darkling plain

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rosies-musings · 1 year

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I'm re-reading the Hungry City Chronicles and it is much darker than I remembered! So many people die! Nothing is safe from destruction!

Still, it's one of my favorite book series. I love the quick pacing, the world-building, the intertwining of different character's perspectives, the way everything builds and builds to a climactic ending, and of course the relationship between Tom and Hester.

I finished Mortal Engines in less than two days, at this rate I'll have the whole quartet finished by next week! Then I can start the prequels!

#rosie's reads #mortal engines #predators gold #infernal devices #a darkling plain #hungry city chronicles #sci fi #post apocalyptic #YA #young adult #reading #literature

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aftertheradar · 3 months

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just finished reading a darkling plain!!! super good and i haven't cried like that in a while :'3

anyway this is what pennyroyal looks like in my head how about you people?:

#mortal engines #philip reeve #pennyroyal #nimrod pennyroyal #predator's gold #infernal devices #a darkling plain

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alethianightsong · 5 months

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Why it's called "Mortal Engines"

You know how the Snowpiercer has a perpetual motion machine powering its engine? The engines of the traction cities don't have that, so they must constantly burn something to fuel themselves, making them 'mortal engines.' To summarize, earth's crust is rendered unstable due to earthquakes brought on by war, so cities are put on wheels cuz that's cheaper than constantly rebuilding after weekly earthquakes(?). Roll with it. Thousands of years into the future, the earth's crust has stabilized but big cities still consume smaller cities for their resources in a process known as "municipal Darwinism" which was supposed to be a temporary solution but humans are stubborn and the traditionalists refuse to go back to stationary cities. The result is that the UK and Europe are treeless wastelands of churned dirt, the forests ran over and consumed by centuries of moving cities.

Spoilers beyond this point:

The last few pages of Book 4 are dedicated to Shrike's pov where he sits guard and watches Tom & Hester's bodies decay. When he awakes, a forest has grown around him, the first forest in millennia. None of our characters save Shrike get to live long enough to see this forest and while it is sad, it's beautiful and sweet and fitting.

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dndtreasury · 2 years

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#cloak #cloaks #of plain sight #rare #invisibility #darkling ninja

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capaldofilcumbergirl · 1 year

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So the thing about Hester and Tom is that no matter how tragic their end was, their story was happy. They got to live happy in Anchorage, before that in Jenny, they got what most of the others in their world didn't. Their end may be sad, but their story wasn't.

Don't mind me, still sobbing.

#darkling plain #hester shaw #hester Natsworthy #tom natsworthy #wren Natsworthy #mortal engines series #mortal engines book #hester #hester/tom

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pessimisticpigeonsworld · 15 days

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The Demonizing of Change

A trend I've noticed in modern media is that many stories have the message of "protect the status quo". Whether it's a Marvel movie or a fantasy book, the fact that so often the villains are the only ones who fight to change society remains the same.

We all know the story: they were hurt by the system's flaw(s) and so they rose up to destroy that harmful system and in the process destroyed themselves. I'm not saying that this character type is wrong or bad (definitely overused imo), but the framing of the narrative and the protagonists is the issue.

The narrative typically shows the villain's first wrong doing to be the act of rebelling against the system. From the moment the person chose to reject the harmful system, they were in the wrong, or so the narrative frames it. Meanwhile, the protagonist may question and see injustice but they never fight it; it's just accepted and blindly defended. What's worse is the audience chooses to completely accept this telling and sides with the harmful regime the protagonist defends.

I find that some of the most drastic examples of these issues are Daenerys in GOT and the Darkling in the Grishaverse/SaB.

Daenerys Targaryen

One thing I want to specify before I go into this is that Dany's GOT ending is purely bad writing. It's not foreshadowed or justified in any way, so I'll be addressing how D&D tried to frame her past after S8e6 aired and how her antis interpret her.

According to D&D, we should see the beginning of Dany's "madness arc" from the very first season. Namely how she reacted to Viserys' death. While this isn't Dany rejecting a harmful system, her choosing to not defend Viserys (why would she??) is also her choosing to leave behind the cycle of abuse of her early life. It also sets the precedent of Dany killing/allowing the deaths of evil men.

Speaking of evil men, D&D also tried to paint Dany's campaign against slavery as a sign of her "megalomania and madness". This is where we get to the actual fighting against the system. Dany is leading a slave revolt and forcefully overthrowing the masters and the oppressive governments.

The way D&D tried to spin it was that Dany was wrong for using violence, and Tyrion's peaceful method was more successful. Except Dany did try peace in Meereen, it didn't work. She made concessions, she made agreements, she locked up her dragons and they weren't working. That's the whole point of her last chapter in ADWD.

However, the show chose to make it so Dany was failing because she was "too violent" and ultimately made the freedmen hate her. This choice, a clear deviation from the book, is the beginning of them trying to make Dany fall into the trope of "as bad as those you're fighting". In her fight to end slavery, she becomes as oppressive as the masters.

Which is just blatantly wrong. We see in the show that the freedmen are still free, they sit in her councils, they can come to her with their complaints and she listens. Dany is a queen, not a master. The show was already trying to gaslight its audience into believing the opposite of what they wrote. The same goes for her supposed violence. The violence she exerts is almost always towards the slavers, except when she executed Mossador for murder. That was her carrying out justice, why that was portrayed as a bad thing is beyond me.

The implications of the choices D&D made in adapting Dany's Meereen arc are very disturbing. They're basically saying that systematic and centuries old oppression should never be addressed with violence. The people who actively fight oppression are just as bad as the oppressors. If you can't magically fix a system that's been flawed for centuries immediately, you're a tyrant.

The choice to resolve the arc by having Tyrion come in with some great peaceful solution was plain stupid and sexist. We have seen in history that trying to unobtrusively phase out slavery doesn't work. By leaving the elite slave owners in peace, they are allowed to simply find ways to get around or wear down the changes. We see that in ADWD in Meereen by the way. Also the whole idea that a wise man had to come and fix the irrational woman's problem is so gross.

So basically: D&D took an arc about fighting oppression and learning that concessions only continue the cycle of violence and made it into a story about how violence is bad and you can actually just reason with slavers.

The disgusting ideas continue in season eight, where Dany torches KL for no reason and is put down like a rabid dog. Dany is the only character who wants to end oppression in this show. She's the only person to see and experience the suffering of the oppressed and chooses to do something about it. Season seven is full of her talking about leaving the world a better place and breaking the wheel. But in season eight "breaking the wheel" is turned into th deranged battle cry of her desired empire.

Let me restate that: the one character who fought to end systematic oppression is turned into the "true oppressor". Dany's desire to tear down the system that the entire show established as being unjust and awful is made into a sign of madness. Even in season seven, people were rolling their eyes at her talking about breaking the wheel.

Meanwhile, the protagonists of the show end it benefitting from the same system that tortured them the whole time. Westerosi society is shit, but the show ends glorifying the sexist, homophobic, classist, and feudalist kingdoms. They even laugh at Samwell Tarly when he suggests destroying the monarchy. All this sends the message that embracing the system is good, rebellion bad, and shut the fuck up if you're not happy.

Dany was reduced to a cautionary tale against fighting the system. I've seen people frame it as "seeking power is bad", but that doesn't make sense, as characters like Sansa actively seek power and are rewarded by the narrative. Dany's mistake was trying to change the world, rather than supporting it as it is.

The Darkling

The Darkling is a very different character from Dany; he's an actual villain. Aleksander is someone who has already reached the "become what you hate most" part of the trope, so he spends the whole story committing atrocities. The issue with his portrayal is the fact that the narrative and protagonists never address his very real reasons for fighting in the first place.

The grisha as a group are persecuted all throughout Ravka, they have been for centuries. The whole reason Aleksander begins his fight was to protect his people. By the time the series begins, the grisha are more protected, though only because they have become weapons of the state. That was only through Aleksander's mechanisations.

Aleksander became a villain in his attempts to save his people, making him a tragic character. So he has perfectly fallen into the trope, and, unfortunately, so do the protagonists. Alina and her allies all have seen and suffered under the cruelty of the Ravkan monarchy, however, they quickly dismiss just how awful it is. By the end of the story, the Darkling has become, in their eyes, the sole perpetrator of evil in Ravka.

There are no attempts made to rectify the constant damage done by the Apparat, in fact he's left to run free. Alexander Lanstov and Tatiana Grimjer are simply shipped off to a private island where they never are made to pay for the awful things they have done. There are no political reforms done to ensure the safety of grisha in the future; they're basically relying on the goodwill Zoya and Alina have bought with the people.

So basically, the minor villains who all had no reason to be completely atrocious receive basically no punishment from the narrative. Meanwhile, Aleksander, who had very valid reasons for wanting to overthrow the government, is ultimately given a fate worse than death. All his reasons for hating the Ravkan government and the power it has are ignored, even though the story set up that he's not wrong. The resolution of the story leaves the grisha just as, if not more, vulnerable to the prejudice and hatred of the world than they were before.

The narrative is communicating that Aleksander rising up for his people is worse than the centuries of corrupt Lanstovs. Aleksander is worse than the man who stirs up religious fanaticism and exploits the people through it. Yes, Aleksander did horrible things, but so did every other antagonist in the series, but he's somehow the worst because...well, he's grisha.

That's the only other difference between him and the others, aside from his motives. So either Bardugo is supporting the in-universe prejudice against grisha or she's saying rising up against an oppressive system is wrong. I don't expect her or any other author to have complex political and social commentaries in her story. However, she chose to create a world containing those elements and a main character who suffers from them. She chose to make the issues with the system have a prominent place in the story. And she chose to ignore them in the end.

Aleksander did awful things in the name of a just cause, this creates a complex moral issue that the story just never addresses. The established injustices and sanctioned atrocities by the Lanstovs are all ignored in favor of bringing down the dangerous rebel. That kind of message is pretty fucked up. Yes, Nikolai is a better man than his father, but what about his descendants? The propaganda of the Apparat and his church are extremely strong, it's only a matter of time before that propaganda once again starts turning people against grisha. The hatred of grisha is still embedded into Ravkan society.

Aleksander was the only character who was actually set on protecting and bettering the lives of the grisha. His original mission was still extremely important, no matter what he devolved to. The fact that the protagonists just blatantly dismissed just how dangerous Ravka still is for grisha is frustrating.

The treatment of both Dany and Aleksander by their writers and narratives show a hatred/mistrust of rebellion against the status quo, no matter how atrocious it is. The message of the trope is that people who fight against a system are worse than the system itself. I'm not saying that was Bardugo's intention (D&D I'm much less sure about though), but the way both the Darkling and Dany were written combined with the endings of the stories support that idea.

#daenerys targaryen #aleksander morozova #the darkling #pro daenerys #pro darkling #anti d&d #anti got #anti leigh bardugo #asoiaf #grishaverse #the grisha trilogy

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theweeklydiscourse · 11 months

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The Darkling decided early on how much he would disclose to Alina about his plans for the coup based on a conversation they had on the way to the palace.

I like to look back at this scene from Shadow and Bone that takes place after Alina was seconds away from being killed by a Fjerdan assassin. She denies that she is Grisha, pointing to her plain and scrawny appearance for proof of her certainty and Aleksander responds with a remark about how Alina doesn’t understand what being Grisha even means.

It’s a telling scene because it shows just how surface-level Alina’s view of Grisha is. To her, Grisha are shiny, beautiful and strong and they are prioritized over the common folk soldiers she once belonged with. Of course, Aleksander knows that there is so much more to being Grisha than just beauty, but realizes that there’s so much to unpack with Alina’s statement he doesn’t even know where to start.

This exchange explains one of the reasons why he didn’t disclose his true plans to Alina, much less his ultimate secret. If Alina has such a shallow understanding of Grisha identity, she will also have a shallow understanding of just how much is at stake in this conflict. Alina is no ordinary Grisha, so it hasn’t quite sunk in that she has skin in the game and is more significant than she realizes. Her denial of her Grisha identity (despite obvious evidence proving otherwise) Alina is staunch in her assertion that she is just a normal girl. It is that same denial that tells Aleksander that Alina cannot be viewed as reliable just yet, time needs to be taken to teach her a better understanding of the Grisha first.

This next exchange is the second reason why Aleksander doesn’t tell her. Though Alina herself may not have said that superstition out loud, it still demonstrates how Alina was exposed to those views during her formative years. It raises his suspicion that Alina may hold some remnants of the Serf’s ideas and perhaps compels him to think ahead to assess if this could grow into a potential threat. He ABSOLUTELY cannot tell her the truth anytime soon if there is even the slightest possibility that she believes that he’s soulless and “truly evil”. If Alina snitched on him, his entire operation could be shut down for good and set the Grisha back decades. Not to mention the fact that it could get a lot of Grisha killed.

“You didn’t hurt his feelings.” Dear Reader, this was only the beginning of Alina denying Aleksander’s humanity in order to avoid taking responsibility for her prejudice and to avoid the complex reality of the situation. You can almost hear the incorrect answer buzzer go off in Aleksander’s mind as Alina tells him her answer, I can almost feel his pure disappointment through the page.

Because Aleksander poses an important question that reveals one of Alina’s central conflicts that will continue throughout the trilogy. Alina is still deeply uncomfortable with the idea of Grisha powers after spending her life among people who call them unnatural and strange. To the point that it wasn’t just the fact that the assassin was sliced in two that bothered her, but because of the magic that sliced him. Why on earth would he trust her with his greatest secret when she reacts with such hesitation? He was testing her to gauge how long it would be before Alina could be trusted as an ally to Grisha and received an answer that told him it might take a while. If Alina can’t handle her the idea of her own powers, she cannot be trusted with a secret that could determine the future of Ravka.

I don’t know about you, but I fully believe that Aleksander had every intention of telling Alina the truth, it’s just that prioritizing his personal relationship with her over the safety of his people was a risk he couldn’t take. This gets a bit muddled later on because Alina’s narration seems to care more about her personal feelings of betrayal than the consequences this plan could have on the country. She never takes a moment to look at the bigger picture and consider the consequences of her reckless actions.

I know that I’m just breaking the scene down and explaining what’s happening in it, but it truly is such an informative scene that hints at a potentially fascinating storyline.

#shadow and bone #lb critical #s&b critical #alina starkov #s&b netflix #s&b salt #the darkling #darklina #aleksander morovoza #pro darkling #grishaverse meta #ruin and rising #shadow and bone season 2 #aleksander morozova #anti leigh bardugo #anti shadow and bone #close reading

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