#unjust depths spoilers

[kimpining]

Inquisitor Gertrude Lichtenberg's encounter with the Drowning Prophecy!

Another Gertrude Lichtenberg from the Unjust Depths side story Knight in the Ruins of the End! This time commissioned from Link on twitter! She really loves getting herself into situations for the sake of women. I'm sure she'll manage to get out of this one whole, hearty, and unchanged by the experience!

sketch below the cut because I think it has crazy swag too.

She's basically really good at this 'knight' thing she's going for.

#unjust depths #gertrude lichtenberg #drowning prophecy #gore #web serial #unjust depths spoilers

[stealthrockdamage]

you should be reading unjust depths.

#i can't believe how hard this bit went #i'm still reeling #unjust depths spoilers #kinda. #not really.

[ineylesian]

— INHERITENLY UNJUST DESTINY

AVENTURINE X READER

AO3 | NAVIGATION

WORD COUNT — 900

WARNINGS — slight 2.1 spoilers, lowk angst, word vomit about aventurine’s lack of self esteem, sappy unconditional positive regard, handsy aven bc he’s touch starved, preesetablished relationship

SUMMARY — aventurine does not understand the twist of fate that allows him to stand beside you.

AUTHOR’S NOTE — the lack of official aventurine art is making me gnaw at the bars of my enclosure, sloppy headers for now!!

Aventurine isn’t sure how to feel. 

The low hues of noon cast a gentle light upon his gloves, giving light to the sea of shattered stones that lie in his grasp. A sea of dazzling green, torn and fragmented beyond repair.

He’s sure he sees it now, a reflection of the wildly wretched life he’s lived sitting in the palms of his hands. The remnants of the only control he’s managed to retain in his life frail as dust in the winds. SIlent he remains, still as a pound dog that has had its bone ripped away from it. 

It isn’t until he feels the ghost of your hands along his own that Aventurine realizes his heart is racing. You spin him to face you, and his heart lurches at the worry that etches itself upon your features. He fights with narratives in his head that play games of fallacies, yet the scorch of his devotion to you leaves his tongue tied.

Facades are a game that come like second nature to Aventurine, but he swears he will not do to you what he deems business in his schemes. Instead, he pulls at what little honesty remains in the depths of his heart and his breath shutters. 

“Guess I’m back to where I was five years ago.”

The words come out quiet, too soft for his nature and simply small. It’s a confession that makes him wonder how many other pieces of his life will break apart until the whole is severed. There’s a fear that lingers within, bubbling to the surface as he attempts to withdraw from your hold.

Aventurine does not believe that his life holds any meaning with or without the cornerstone. Yet, that title made him seem as if he truly meant something, and without it, what little reign he held over his life disappeared. 

He believes you deserve fire, yet he is no more than an ember flickering on a stoked match. He cannot burn in flames bright enough to keep you.

Silently, he awaits your scold, the reprimand that deems him as worthless as he believes himself to be. A reminder that it was all but a stroke of luck that brought you to him, a trial that has run out as you see him for who he truly is, barren and scared.

His hands shake as you guide them to pour his shattered stone into the box at his feet. Shock etches itself upon his features, and he looks to you with nothing but raw, unparalleled fear as you speak. 

“You will always be the same to me.”

Aventurine does not understand the twist of fate that allows him to stand beside you. Single handedly, you vowed to peer into the wasteland that was his soul, and devoted yourself to his inherently unjust destiny. And, even as his life’s worth is ripped away from him, you love him unchanged.

An insatiable want carves at his soul like a day yearns for night, and Aventurine knows no other place to put his hands but around you in embrace. His hold is tight, as if he imagines that you will fade away if he abandons it. Yet, the weave of your fingers through his hair is enough to tell him that you’re no illusion, a sensation that will cease to disappear as long as he lives.

“Let me see you, Aven.”

Your words flow as lost prayers on the horizon do, and Aventurine retracts his grasp on you, allowing his knees to bring him to the ground. Your hands, gentle as streambeds in the spring, cup his face, running over spilt tears from keeled eyelashes. Instinctively, his hands latch onto your wrists, desperately chasing after your warmth and attempting to sear it into his skin.

Aventurine outwardly sighs as you run your fingers along his jaw, stopping to tuck a stray wisp of hair behind his ear. Although your gaze rocks with the deepest seas of adoration, the child deep within his heart beckons him to gamble with his luck once again. A risk that trails the faint quiver of his lips, as he would utter no such words to any other being in the entire cosmos.

“Will you kiss me?”

Wordlessly, you nod, and Aventurine closes his eyes. The soft touch of your lips quells the troubles that brew within, igniting fire against endless water. His hands fall to his lap, melting in the passion of your touch, and his heart craves to continue beating as if you are the oxygen that fills his lungs. 

He refuses to leave you until there is no air left for him to breathe. Gasping for the vitality of you that runs rampant through his veins, Aventurine tilts his head upward, and your heart flutters at the gentle smile that greets your gaze. Brilliant hues of purple and blue shimmer amidst the night, and his hold on you returns, hands moving to interlock themselves with your own. It’s the same gesture that holds you in the deep of dusk, never waning as lost prayers to the universe whisper behind closed doors. 

The words that follow are never far from you, spinning like soft woven silk that rests in your dreams when he’s away. Your eyes shut as he presses his lips to the corner of your mouth, spreading warmth to your cheeks that subdue the chills of frosted wind. In yearn, you wait, reveling in the soft fan of his breath over your skin.

“I love you.”

#eleysiacalling #aventurine hsr #aventurine x you #aventurine honkai star rail #aventurine x reader #hsr aventurine #honkai star rail #hsr x reader

[racefortheironthrone]

What did you think of X-Men Blue Origins?

(I may turn this into a People's History of the Marvel Universe later today, so keep an eye on this space.)

X-Men Blue: Origins and the Power of the Additive Retcon

(WARNING: heavy spoilers under the cut)

Introduction

If you've been a long-time X-Men reader, or you're a listener of Jay & Miles or Cerebrocast or any number of other LGBT+ X-Men podcasts, you probably know the story about how Chris Claremont wrote Mystique and Destiny as a lesbian couple, but had to use obscure verbiage and subtextual coding to get past Jim Shooter's blanket ban on LGBT+ characters in the Marvel Universe.

Likewise, you're probably also familiar with the story that, when Chris Claremont came up with the idea that Raven Darkholme and Kurt Wagner were related (a plot point set up all the way back in Uncanny X-Men #142), he intended that Mystique was Nightcrawler's father, having used her shapeshifting powers to take on a male body and impregnate (her one true love) Irene. This would have moved far beyond subtext - but it proved to be a bridge too far for Marvel editorial, and Claremont was never able to get it past S&P.

This lacuna in the backstories of Kurt and Raven - who was Kurt's father? - would remain one of the enduring mysteries of the X-Men mythos...and if there's one thing that comic writers like, it's filling in these gaps with a retcon.

Enter the Draco

Before I get into the most infamous story in all of X-Men history, I want to talk about retcons a bit. As I've written before:

"As long as there have been comic books, there have been retcons. For all that they have acquired a bad reputation, retcons can be an incredibly useful tool in comics writing and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Done right, retcons can add an enormous amount of depth and breadth to a character, making their worlds far richer than they were before. Instead, I would argue that retcons should be judged on the basis of whether they’re additive (bringing something new to the character by showing us a previously unknown aspect of their lives we never knew existed before) or subtractive (taking away something from the character that had previously been an important part of their identity), and how well those changes suit the character."

For a good example of an additive retcon, I would point to Chris Claremont re-writing Magneto's entire personality by revealing that he was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. As I have argued at some length, this transformed Magneto from a Doctor Doom knockoff into a complex and sympathetic character who could now work as a villain, anti-villain, anti-hero, or hero depending on the needs of the story.

For a good example of a subtractive retcon, I would point to...the Draco. If you're not familiar with this story, the TLDR is that it was revealed that Kurt's father was Azazel - an evil ancient mutant with the same powers and the same appearance (albeit color-shifted) as Kurt, who claims to be the devil and is part of a tribe of demonic-looking mutants who were banished to the Brimstone Dimension, and who fathered Nightcrawler as part of a plot to end this banishment.

I don't want to belabor Chuck Austen, because I think that Connor Goldsmith is right about his run actually being a camp cult classic in retrospect. However, I think we both agree that the Draco was a misfire, because of how the retcon undermined Kurt's entire thematic purpose as established in Giant-Size X-Men that Nightcrawler was actually a noble and arguably saintly man who suffered from unjust prejudice due to the random accident that his mutation made him appear to be a demon, and because of how the retcon undermined the centrality of Mystique and Destiny's relationship.

X-Men Blue Origins

This brings us to the Krakoan era. In HOXPOX and X-Men and Inferno, Jonathan Hickman had made Mystique and Destiny a crucial part of the story in a way that they hadn't been in decades: they were the great nemeses of Moira X, they were the force that threatened to burn Krakoa to the ground by revealing the devil's bargain that Xavier had struck with Sinister (and Moira), they were the lens through which the potential futures of Krakoa were explored, and they ultimately reshaped the Quiet Council and the Five in incredibly consequential ways.

This throughline was furthered after Hickman's departure, with Kieron Gillen exploring the backstories of Mystique and Destiny in Immortal X-Men and Sins of Sinister, and both Gillen and Si Spurrier exploring their relationship with Nightcrawler in AXE Judgement Day, Sins of Sinister, Way of X, Legion of X, Nightcrawlers, and Sons of X. One of the threads that wove through the interconnected fabric of these books was an increasing closeness between Kurt and Irene that needed an explanation. Many long-time readers began to anticipate that a retcon about Kurt's parentage was coming - and then we got X-Men Blue: Origins.

In this one issue, Si Spurrier had the difficult assignment of figuring out a way to "fix" the Draco and restore Claremont's intended backstory in a way that was surgical and elegant, that served the character arcs of Kurt, Raven, and Irene, and that dealt with complicated issues of trans and nonbinary representation, lesbian representation, disability representation, and the protean nature of the mutant metaphor. Thanks to help from Charlie Jane Anders and Steve Foxe, I think Spurrier succeeded tremendously.

I don't want to go through the issue beat-by-beat, because you should all read it, but the major retcon is that Mystique turns out to be a near-Omega level shapeshifter, who can rewrite themselves on a molecular level. Raven transformed into a male body and impregnated Irene, using bits of Azazel and many other men's DNA as her "pigments." In addition to being a deeply felt desire on both their parts to have a family together, this was part of Irene's plan to save them both (and the entire world) from Azazel's schemes, a plan that required them to abandon Kurt as a scapegoat-savior (a la Robert Graves' King Jesus), and to have Xavier wipe both their memories.

Now, I'm not the right person to write about what this story means on a representational level; I'll leave it to my LGBT+ colleagues on the Cerebrocast discord and elsewhere to discuss the personal resonances the story had for them.

What I will say, however, is that I thought this issue threaded the needle of all of these competing imperatives very deftly. It "fixed" the Draco without completely negating it, it really deepened and complicated the characters and relationships of both Raven and Irene (by showing that, in a lot of ways, Destiny is the more ruthless and manipulative of the two), and it honored Kurt's core identity as a man of hope and compassion (even if it did put him in a rather thankless ingénue role for much of the book).

It is the very acme of an additive retcon; nothing was lost, everything was gained.

I still think the baby Nightcrawler is just a bad bit, but then again I don't really vibe with Spurrier's comedic stylings.

#xmen #xmen meta #raven darkholme #kurt wagner #irene adler #xmen blue #nightcrawler #mystique #destiny #chris claremont #si spurrier #krakoa #retcons #xmen spoilers #hoxpox

[houseofborgia]

omg i read blood and beauty and its sequel last week bc it had been on my reading list for months!!!! and is this a safe space where i can just say that it hit the nail on the head for all of the borgias without unnecessarily vilifying one or the other (i mean basically considering how most writers hold some vendetta against juan) and i loved how u could really see lucrezia's growth from her childhood innocence to being forced to mature and grow up AND obsessed w any media that portrays cesare as ferocious and sharp and ruthless and juan finally got his flowers bc they obv showed his flaws but without making him the big bad evil when instead he also started off a kid but ended up being dragged to the bottom of the river by his father's ambitions 😔

i wish the 2nd book had progressed a little further to lucrezia's childbirth bed death so the story could come full circle and sometimes the pov switching was confusing for me but aside from that, the borgias will always be famous to meeeeeeeee and i love a good book that portrays them well!

ive been on the hunt for more borgia-centric books so if u have any recs......... <3

zaynab omg hello!!!!! i was kinda waiting for someone to talk to me about this book because it's my absolute #1 favorite historical fiction book <3

i'm so happy you enjoyed reading it! the way miss dunant brilliantly humanized the borgia family by creating striking and compelling narratives for them was truly *chef's kiss*. it's safe to say that her portrayal of them has even made her my favorite author as well (and made me want to check out her other work, lol). the way she made them so sympathetic is truly admirable to me, which is also a standout aspect of the book as we manage to develop a deep understanding of their motivations and complexities through her nuanced portrayal, you know? i say it could've been done more when it came to lucrezia, as she is truly one of the most compelling figures in history (and my all-time favorite). i'm not criticizing dunant for lucrezia's portrayal!! but it's more like i wished she added more of lucrezia's lore...but alas! other books did her more justice, i must say!

my favorite theme of the book is the immense love the pope has for his children. the way [spoiler] juan was taken too soon from him is profoundly melancholic and it added emotional depth to the story and it highlighted the power of a father's love and the devastating impact of losing a beloved child. also, YEAH, the book felt like a breath of fresh air when it came to juan borgia! he was unfairly demonized with no reliable narrative and mostly used as a prop to hype up cesare at his expense *yawns*… but dunant made him an individual, likable character in the book, countering the unjust treatment he always receives. her portrayal of him allowed us to discover the vulnerability and sensitivity that lie beneath his outwardly arrogant and handsome demeanor. we really can't help but feel deep empathy and pity for him as we read about his inner struggles and emotional depth. he became a truly compelling and sympathetic figure within the borgia family, especially when his death is met with cruelty and brutality. the tragic nature of his demise evokes an even stronger sense of empathy and sorrow in the narrative of juan losing himself and being overwhelmed by the heavy task he was entrusted with…

and cesare, of course, was portrayed as that sulking, bitter, cruel but incredibly intelligent, cunning, and charming guy! lowkey a recurring theme for him, but the flavor in making him extra dark in the slayest way possible made me insane in a very positive way! you should watch "los borgia (2006)" for a delicious portrayal of cesare (and personally, i think it's the most historically accurate).

more books? i'd recommended emma lucas's 'lucrezia borgia' and maria bellonci's 'life and times of lucrezia borgia' - both are biographies btw! their work is a solid read, very unbiased without any manipulation of the letters about/between the siblings to push certain narratives (hello sarah bradford!!), well-researched, sheds light on the family's complex relationships and their rise to power, and is highly sympathetic to all of them. you won't be disappointed!!

for historical fiction, i'd recommend mario puzo's 'the family' ...you will never be disappointed after all it's by the dude who wrote the godfather!

i hope you enjoy them <333 i'll be waiting for your feedback :)

#zaynab 💌 #giggles i love this family #i'm glad you enjoyed the book <3 #the borgias #history #historical fiction #book recommendations #historical book #house of borgia #borgia #blood and beauty #mario puzo #sarah dunant

[wordsandrobots]

4, 5, 6, 21, 24<-(insert WoSH in these), 23, 30, 37 & 41

For this ask game. WoSH as in Wishing on Space Hardware, my twenty-part Iron-Blooded Orphans sequel fic.

4. What detail in Wishing on Space Hardware are you really proud of?

Aaaah! There are so many I can't talk about because they're spoilers for the current story!

I've very much enjoyed fleshing Chryse out. You know, naming districts, putting in a public transport system, alluding to the criminal underworld, giving Yamagi a set of dodgy Russian lads and an Irish granny as neighbours . . . that kind of thing. The city is pretty nebulous in the show proper, so it was fun trying to give it some depth and join together the disparate backdrops we see.

(Arbrau encompasses what was once Russia so that's why there are people named Alexi living in one of their former colonies. Mrs Finucane did not deign to explain her presence, just sailed into the fic from stage left and installed herself upstairs.)

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about Wishing on Space Hardware? Answer it now!

I had been hoping someone would ask me about the title I gave the whole series. It is, as previously stated in the notes and more explicitly via the gimmick I added to Ragnarök in G Minor, taken from the song 'A New England', written by Billy Bragg and famously covered by Kirsty MacColl (a version I greatly prefer).

I saw two shooting stars last night I wished on them, but they were only satellites It's wrong to wish on space hardware I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care

There's a few of reasons this stuck out to me at the time I was putting together the plan for a longer series after finishing To Catch a Falling Star. First and most obvious, 'space hardware' is the Gundam franchise's bread and butter, and I'd argue the degree to which the mecha provide the solution to each series' problems is a key indicator of what that series is doing. In Iron-Blooded Orphans, the mecha are ultimately a millstone for our protagonists, trapping them in the meat-grinder of their life as soldiers. So the third line of this verse fits very well, especially since my fics explore issues around searching for answers in the wrong places and trying to break free of harmful modes of thought or action.

Then there's the 'two shooting stars'. In IBO, a shooting star is Shino's motif, with all that that implies about how he ultimately burns out. The recurring idea throughout writing the survivor version of him that he is 'just the pieces left over' ties back into this. However, in the wider context of writing an IBO sequel, the two shooting stars are Orga and McGillis, who both relied on 'space hardware' to carry the day, dazzling people into believing in them despite that being a mistake. I think I've mentioned before that I made a point of never writing anything from either of their points of view: they are the ghosts haunting the narrative, who have ceased to matter as actual people; all that remains is the impressions they left behind and what those drive others to do.

Finally and most importantly, there's the last line of the verse, where the singer does what they have just declared wrong: I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care. Because wishing, desiring, wanting is so very human. It's just what we do, regardless of whether it's a good idea or not. We can't help it. In the fic, Yamagi is perhaps the one who most visibly struggles with this in these particular terms, since it forms the crux of his romantic troubles, both with Shino and in his absence. But it's the issue underlying everyone's actions. Ride's 'I have to try' attitude to revolution. Kudelia's war of attrition against the pillars of an unjust world. Almiria's loneliness. Iverson's Gundam-stanning. Gaelio's fears over being betrayed again. All these people who've learnt the hard way that wishes can be invested in the wrong places, doing it over and over again because they can't help it. They're human. They want. That's our nature.

So yes, that's why my Gundam fanfic series is named for a 1985 song about being let down by some bloke who clearly wasn't worth it.

6. What’s one fact about the universe of Wishing on Space Hardware that you didn’t get a chance to mention in the fic itself?

Very few details have not made their way into the fic by this point! What have I got left . . . ?

Ah! Right, yeah, so, the way I think about the Martian Union's government -- and please bear in mind this is not a fully-formed idea, which is why it's only alluded to in-text -- is that it's not a party system. Representatives are selected and voted for on an individual basis and government ministers are drawn from the resulting Assembly as required. When Kudelia talks about consensus and deadlock, this is why. And the Chairperson is appointed by the Assembly rather than themselves being an elected representative. They're there to act as a trusted mediator and a mouthpiece for the body at a global level.

This structure might well change as time goes on. It emerged after the Earth blocs ceded control and it's both very new and relying on pre-existing bureaucracy to enact its legislation. In theory, it avoids some big issues with party politics and gives people more direct control over who represents them. But the extent to which that works in practise is variable. There are still powerful interests at play, tilting the scales one way or another. It's nonetheless an attempt to do better than the Earth, since the impression I formed from events in Arbrau is that political leadership is very much not in the hands of regular people there (the parliament appeared to be electing the Prime Minister on its own, without it even being a leadership contest within one party??).

21. If you wrote a “missing scene” in Wishing on Space Hardware, what would it be?

Honestly, the way this series came together, I've already done tons! History of a Catastrophe is basically *all* missing scenes (a creative decision I'm still not 100% sure I pulled off; that fic is meant to feel like an inexorable piling-up of events but that's possibly not the best reader experience!).

I did toy with the idea of writing a bunch of smut based off all the times I faded to black over Shino and Yamagi getting it on. To the point of typing out the following, which picks up where the final chapter (pre-epilogues) of To Catch a Falling Star leaves off:

“Working up a sweat with you sounds great,” Shino says, rising to catch Yamagi's mouth. He manages to be less clumsy this time. Their tongues flick and slide over one another, Yamagi pressing down in return. In a second, the contact goes from careful to urgent. In another, Shino feels himself harden against the weight on top of him, a greedy need rushing through him. Yamagi lets him breathe, grinning. “So you can kiss properly.” “Yeah – 'course I can! You wanna maybe let me try for longer next time?” “I'll think about it.” A hand worms its way under his shirt. “Hmm.” “Hmm?” “The Union Military probably doesn't stock cabins with stuff to help its soldiers fuck, does it?” That . . . isn't something Shino had considered. “Nah, probably not.” If his experience with Gjallarhorn is anything to go by, big militaries are real stingy about that sort of thing. And Eugene certainly wouldn't have guessed he'd need to make up for their shortcomings. Yamagi's lips purse. Then he shrugs. “Oh well. Guess I'm finding out how you taste.” Shino's brain must still be frazzled from – everything – because it refuses to understand what that means until his trousers are most of the way off and Yamagi's mouth is moving over the front of his boxers, breathing hot air in places that were already getting nicely warmed up on their own. Duh. Obviously.

Which was fun but honestly, it felt like I would just be repeating the same joke about Yamagi being more experienced than Shino. While I'm not a proponent of smut needing plot justifications, I didn't think this would really add much to what's already there in terms of characterisation.

So a more serious answer is that I would have liked to dwell more on the period between the end of the anime and bringing Shino back. I think there'd be worth in looking at Eugene coming to terms with being left in charge and how that leads him to joining up with Kudelia, or in going deeper into one of Yamagi's relationships, to see him struggling with the things he can't properly let go of. Because I worry with those two in particular that effectively starting with 'fixing' their situation robs some of the impact of what they went through, and I think it'd be worth revisiting to underscore how much they gain from Shino's return.

24. Are there any easter eggs in Wishing on Space Hardware, and if so, what are they?

Oh, there are a bunch. I raided the Gundam back catalogue for incidental names, so there are call-outs to the other series all the way through. The SAU rep who has one line in The Ares Affair was originally explicitly named 'Winner' because I do not like Quatre from Gundam Wing very much, and the 'guy with the long braid' Shino is mentioned as having danced with in Revolution for Beginners... is obviously Duo, who I do like. There's a very explicit My Next Life as a Villainess reference in Love, Death and Cannoli, which doubles as a voice actor joke if you know the dub for that show. There was going to be a sneaky little OG Gundam reference in History of a Catastrophe, alluding to some ideas I have about the origin of the Calamity War, but I ended up cutting that entire section. Oh, and for the final fic and with reference to my previous post from this ask game, I decided that the 'small ocean' created by terraforming Mars is situated on the Utopia Planitia, which is not not a dig at Star Trek.

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

I nearly wrote 'crossovers' before remembering @thedancingwalrus-blog and I are responsible for Geniuses and Madmen, a Batman/Iron Man mash-up from a few years ago. I do really admire people who can get crossovers to work on the regular though; it's a very hit-and-miss prospect for me.

But a concept I'd like to write and haven't . . . I can do you one I *started* writing only for my interest to fizzle. There's a 1985 Transformers comic, part of Marvel UK's attempts to pad a monthly comic for weekly publication, called Man of Iron. And it's weird, in context of the 80s cartoon bombast that characterises most Transformers fiction. It's almost a ghost story, featuring a spaceship buried under an English castle, the Transformers flitting around the edges and being more threateningly alien than they're usually presented. There's a greater emphasis on them being these weird things that are concealing themselves (imperfectly) as human vehicles, and the eventual open conflict is pretty apocalyptical in its depiction.

And I thought, what about following that approach in an ongoing sense? Treating Transformers as a horror story of these beings who'd snuck into our mechanised, industrialised world and were having a war over control of it? It could almost be like The Magnus Archives, with various 'encounters' slowly building into an interlinked narrative. Indeed, the framing device for the couple of chapters I wrote was the Intelligence and Information Institute, a secret US government department from the old Marvel comics that would have eventually turned out to be working with the Decepticons because of course.

I dunno. I enjoy the concept and I'd like to see where it goes, but I've mostly fallen out of the Transformers fandom on account of the franchise's complete refusal to innovate or reinvent itself any more.

I might end up posting what I wrote of it at some point though.

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

Honestly? Between Family. I'd written an explicit sex scene maybe once before this. Not out of any disdain for that kind of thing, it had simply never been something I felt inclined to do. I guess I just found Shino too sexy to resist, huh?

Actually that's not so far from the truth. You see, in writing him, I didn't want to lose sight of his being a canonically sexually-active character, with what seemed to me to be a fairly typical teenage attitude towards exercising his libido. Since I decided this wouldn't change much over the time period I was covering and saw no reason to assume Yamagi wouldn't grow up to be likewise active (plus a belligerent dislike of turning him into a blushing violet), sex between them was inevitable. Sure, I didn't have to be explicit to make the point that the sex precedes the romance/dependency and doesn't solve any of their issues. But I still had to think about it. And thinking about it was hot. As was the idea of chucking Eugene into the middle. Eventually, I just couldn't resist writing it out in full.

Which was fun. More importantly, it offered new vectors for exploring the characters I hadn't used before. That kind of unlocked whatever had been holding me back from writing sex scenes previously (probably just the idea that they are hard and would look silly), allowing me to add them to my toolkit.

I am unlikely to suddenly become a full-time smut writer. But it's nice to know that I can write it, when I want to.

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

I am a little disappointed The Haunting of Takaki Uno hasn't seen more readers, as it's one of the parts of WoSH I'm most proud of on a technical level. I think I managed to pull off a very solid structural conceit, as well as exploring something quite thorny with regards to the classism of the setting.

I do kind of get why it didn't get much traction -- it's gen, it's about a character who even I struggle to have something to say about -- and I'm certainly not unhappy with the response it *has* gotten in comments and kudos. But still. It feels like it got skipped a lot and I'm a bit sad about that.

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

If I ever manage to write something as brutal as Order 3066 by Dailenna, I will be a happy bunny. It's a Fullmetal Alchemist (manga) fic that explores Riza Hawkeye and Roy Mustang's time in Ishval and is a brilliant example of how to comprehensively grind characters down, with an exquisite eye for the mundane details that surround atrocity. It is as much about boredom and numbness as it is the misery of serving in a pointless, genocidal war and the dawning realisation you're doing so on the side of the perpetrators.

One of my greatest ambitions is to be able to write proper horror and this is the kind of excoriating story I aspire to.

(On a more topical and light-hearted note, I aspire to the kind of comic timing LaoraRyn managed with The Scientific Method, a Gundam 00 fic that played a not-insignificant role in me deciding to make Haros more than a sight gag in an IBO setting.)

-----------

Thank you so much for asking so many questions!

#words in answer #lilenui #gundam iron blooded orphans #tekketsu no orphans #writing #fanfic #my fic

[kleineshexenkraut]

A theory about why Kaname Tōsen really thought Kenpachi was unforgivable. Besides the obvious reasons.

Spoilers for the whole series including Can't Fear Your Own World novels.

TW: character death, abuse, violence

Very long post again. Sorry not sorry.

Being part of Aizen's team and their subsequent betrayal makes it easy to dismiss everything Tōsen said before that as lies, but there are bits and pieces that remain true. Lets list his stated reasons for why Kenpachi should be taken down and then take a more in depth look at which ones were meant serious.

aiding the intruders

disrupting the peace of the Gotai 13

killing the former captain of the 11th Division

being a danger to Soul Society

acting out of pure blood-lust

The first two are pretty clearly bullshit. Ichigo and friends were a great distraction that helped their plan. Aiding the intruders was therefore helpful as well. The entire Seireitei and the Gotai 13 are the very thing Tosen want's destroyed. Disrupting the piece of the institution one hates can't be bad either. But what about the rest?

Kaname Tōsen contradicts his own morals on a regular basis. Or so it seems. He believes killing out of fun is wrong and evil. But to him, the murders his co-conspirators and he himself committed, and planned to commit, were a step towards their goal that he deemed just and therefore a necessity. By the time of their fight Tōsen also seemed to be very much in love with his own voice and so, instead of getting the info-dump about the rules on how to become captain in the form of a thought-bubble, we get him stating the obvious at length to someone who already knows. (And, yes, I'm aware I can't really throw stones here.) This establishes another trait of Tōsen's character, but the info itself is rather odd.

First we get to hear about the two peaceful options to attaining captaincy, which are of course preferable. Then comes the option that made Kenpachi eligible: killing the previous captain in a duel in front of at least 200 witnesses. Which immediately begs the question why this is an established method in the first place? (This is one of the many awful rules and behaviors that we get to sit on for a while until more explanation comes forth, and a lot of them don't make things look any better. Which in turn gives the villains a more understandable cause while remaining wrong in their methods.) Rightfully, this paints Kenpachi in a very bad light. Later we hear killing the previous captain is the only way to succeed them in the 11th. (Which isn't really true either, seeing how the first Kenpachi was Unohana and Azashiro was imprisoned.) But since this is given as established rule - what's the gripe about here exactly?

The little info we get on Kiganjo is that he didn't follow orders and had a strong sense of justice. These two are not necessarily mutually exclusive if you think about the Seireitei as a deeply unjust institution. With that he may well have been a candidate for joining the traitor team around Aizen. Although, even if that was a possibility, it's not what I think played a part here. More allies would've been nice, but would also mean more risk of exposure, depending on how strong their convictions were.

Kiganjo became captain the exact same way before, by killing his predecessor. Succeeding this man via the same method shouldn't cause the unease and dislike Tosen admits to having. A dislike for the 11th and their doctrine in general? Sure! But why this specific focus on comparing Zaraki to a demon or monster who thrives on violence and bloodshed? The answer to this and the remaining two points is, in my opinion, in the backstory of how Tōsen's friend died.

Her death made him join the Shinigami to bring them down and we finally got the full story in the Can't Fear Your Own World novel. It's a small part of the whole story, but every bit of backstory is appreciated. For everyone who didn't read this one - a quick summary:

Tōsen's friend, Kakyō, was married to a Shinigami from one of the four great noble houses, Tokinada Tsunayashiro. Tokinada married her with the express intent on making her as miserable as possible and was at some point confronted over this behavior by another friend of Kakyō. After Tokinada admitted to his reasons this person attacked the noble. Kakyō tried to intervene, but Tokinada first slaughtered the distracted friend, then Kakyō as well. He then claimed the two had an affair and he killed them in self-defense after finding them out. Kyōraku didn't buy into his explanation and exposed what actually happened, so there was a murder trial after all. Sadly we also learn that Soul Society is firmly in the grasp of the noble families and even more corrupt than ever shown previously. Tokinada's family succeeded in getting him an easy sentence, house arrest for a few decades.

When Tōsen was demanding an audience with Central 46 to have this injustice corrected Tokinada approached him pretending to be another friend of Kakyō and proceeded to trick Tōsen into agreeing that he won't avenge his late friend for she wouldn't want anyone to shed blood over her. After this he reveals the full truth to Tōsen, hurts and violently subdues him, then orders the guards to beat him up further and throw him out.

Aizen picked him up almost immediately after he's thrown out. With all of this it's easy to understand why Tōsen chose to do what he did.

But back to why he might have had this gripe against the guy he stood next to in captain's meetings for however many years it was.

A quick reminder, the Gotai 13 is woefully uncommunicative. We get fun snippets of interactions later and some more in the Illustrated Guide etc. after the episode's end-credits, but all of it is after Ichigo and his friends waltzed in and things got scrambled up. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the captains never spoke with each other for decades outside of a meeting. And the things discussed in meetings itself are hardly an insight into someone's inner motivations, especially before shit hit the fan. What did Tosen know about Kenpachi?

That the guy loves fighting and murdering people. That he has fun doing so and doesn't care about how much pain he causes.

And from what little there is up to this point it's understandable to get this impression.

This view doesn't even change all that much for maybe most people throughout the story. To Kenpachi a fight to the death means everyone goes all out, no holding back. Those are the most challenging, fun fights, the only truly worthwhile battles. The killing part is an unfortunate side-effect that all of them have to face eventually, himself included. No need to be hung up about it too much. However, if an opponent manages to survive, he's frequently letting them live. Tōsen himself is an example of this. He also complains whenever he has to deal with small fry that are easily killed off. Although it happens - killing is not the main goal. Nor is torturing people for fun, ever, especially not if they're just randos. But again, from his actions and the few interactions with other captains that's more than easy to misinterpret.

Tōsen says he shouldn't be allowed to dwell in their world too long and that he needs to die for their peaceful existence to be protected. That part of his motivation is true. From the Soul Society arc alone it would fit well to assume the 'we' and 'their' he spoke of is a stand-in for the traitor's and their plans.

But I suspect Tōsen thought Kenpachi was the same kind of unforgivable, sadistic asshole Tokinada is. And then these words extend much further, to the kind of world he wishes for. In which people of the same ilk as the murderer of his best friend shouldn't have any right to exist or run around unpunished.

It raises a different question. While Tōsen was rather partial to villain-speeches, that may not be the only reason for giving Kenpachi the weird, lengthy explanation about his abilities while he couldn't hear or see any of it. Was it a bit of gloating in front of someone who could be a stand-in for the person he hated even more? A trial run for the witty comeuppance towards said actual target? It's rather ironic given that it made him resemble Tokinada in that regard.

I fully believe Tōsen tried to kill Kenpachi by stabbing him in the back after his Bankai was shattered, but was too weakened to even cut him anymore. The conviction behind it wasn't faked, though.

He was ready to die trying in this moment, even if it meant jeopardizing the big plan. Maybe especially while he was in this pained state. With someone he perceived to have similar desires to Tokinada responsible for his near death. After getting repeatedly laughed at too. Must have felt awfully like back then...

#bleach #bleach meta #kaname tosen #kenpachi zaraki #tokinada tsunayashiro #tw: abuse #tw: violence #tw: death #long post

[kissmefriendly]

Another connoisseur of The Truth I see. Would you do me a favour, if it's no trouble, and tell me your thoughts on the book(/those two characters you know which ones,) simply because I'm kinda lonely in caring about it as much as I do, and would like to hear another fan's views?

Ah! I’ve been thinking about how I’d answer this. A little context before I do, I’ve read The Truth thrice now - once when I was 15, again when I was 21 and 22 (but more as an audiobook narration for a family member with poor vision but a great taste in books). So it’s been a while. So I’ll answer best I can!

Short answer: I love this book. And all of the characters are just Peak Pratchett; those two in particular are definitely in my top 3 Discworld antagonists.

Long answer: The first time I read this I was totally unaware of Pratchett’s previous job as a journalist and so reading it again with that in mind was just incredible. Talking about what The Truth is, at the end of the day, what it really is ought to be such a simple question but it’s one hell of a complicated answer. How do you talk about topics that are truly, undeniably wrong and unjust while still remaining objective? Who CONTROLS what the truth is??? There’s a line that haunted me, one that I thought was just meant to be an ominous villain line: Make Ankh-Morpork Great Again. When I read that book again it was just. jfc. SO it’s a fantastic book about privilege and who gets it and how, accountability, journalistic integrity, possibly mildly sentient news presses and the truth. I adore the main cast, they’re just so much fun and all of them are so well written and characterised. And I gotta be honest, the history nerd in me was absolutely DELIGHTED with all the naming references.

Now those two in particular. Like I said, top 3 antagonists in Discworld. And I say antagonist and not villains because I never truly believed Tulip in particular was a villain (and even Pin, tbh). SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK BTW —

Tulip had one of the most heartbreaking deaths I’d read in a while and Pin definitely had one of the most terrifying. They’re essentially just the lackeys, the muscle. They don’t really have personal stakes in de Worde’s newspaper beyond ‘This is a job we get paid to do.’ But in true pTerry fashion, they’re incredibly memorable with absolutely fascinating aspects. I use fascinating in a more objective sense - I suppose surprising amount of depth for The Henchmen archetypes is a better way of putting it. Tulip is still a scared little kid holding onto the belief that so long as he’s got his potato, everything will be fine. And in a way, the narrative justifies that belief for him. He got a quick, painless death. And just his interaction with Death contrasted with Pin’s speaks absolute volumes about both of them. They’ve both done horrible things - both on page and alluded to - but the way they approach these things makes all the difference. The people they kill, the harm they cause, you (I) get the impression it’s just Business As Usual, completely impersonal. I don’t know if this’ll make much sense but I think a major difference in both of them comes from the knowing. But again, Tulip has his potato, he still has his sense of morality, however warped that is by the time we meet him. Pin is completely detached. So by the time he comes undone at the end, completely stark raving, he’s grasping at anything to reattach him, to justify all this insanity - so he grabs A potato, not HIS potato. On a meta textual level, we get glimpses of Tulip’s past and absolutely none into Pin’s, which I think was absolutely deliberate. They’re both humanised and in ways most readers could relate to or at the very least understand.

Idk. I kept coming back to this ask trying to work out how I wanted to phrase this. It’s a good ask but I couldn’t get the words in the end. I hope this makes sense?? It’s been a hot second since I’ve read the book so I’m going off of what I can remember. Anyways! Thanks for the ask! I really do have just. Soooo many thoughts on this book, I can’t properly do it justice lol Cheers!!

#also it’s 1.30am and I don’t have my copy of the book!! #aah! #discworld #gnu terry pratchett #ask #bbugseye #the truth

[brinstar-real-estate]

very minor unjust depths spoilers/speculation under cut

the longer it goes without being mentioned, the more dread i feel waiting for the other shoe to drop re: commissar bashara writing the daily chronicle of the ship and her personal feelings on the events of the story. if ulyana ever has to listen to aaliyah's recorded voice in place of her real voice i WILL throw myself into the mississippi river.

#unjust depths #i'm only midway through episode 11 though so maybe it has shown up again idk

[wcdonaldo]

episode 8 spoilers below the cut, going back to this chapter because it's stolen a part of my brain

i ended up going back to the marina chapter in goryk's gorge because i realized that this was the turning point for her where i said Wow I REALLY like her

everything in this chapter is fucking golden. unjust depths took a long time before addressing the obvious america analogue in the room and it really perfectly addresses the attitude of everybody i've ever met who's worked in or around our government and isn't a heartless ghoul

but it's more than that because it's also about marina's self-hatred, her view of her transness as a dream she can never realize, the view of looking at men in her life and feeling dread that she could one day look like that

it's the sense of hopelessness. the sense of looking at the world around her and feeling that it's something she can never change. the pressures that she MUST conform to just to live another day, and the feeling that nothing she could do as a singular person could ever change her dying country.

she's so rough. girl who's never been in a good spot in her life. girl who, in this chapter, isn't even in a spot where she can be a girl. and there's an astounding amount of self-hatred in her.

i have to stop writing this post or i'm going to end up screencapping the entire chapter but it's been a week since i read it and i'm still lost in the sauce. madiha really knows how to write a trans woman who hates this fucking country and damn do i feel it

#wcdepths

[slowpoke272]

“east of eden” by john steinbeck

finished: june 13, 2023

beware, spoilers ahead!

having just finished this book yesterday, i’m still processing so much of how the book ended and overall thoughts on it... but i’ll try my best. i enjoyed this book. first, john steinbeck’s writing, while not for everyone, i feel like paints an accurate picture of the salinas valley landscape, and this certainly made me interested to see what he has to say about monterey bay. this book encompassed so many characters over numerous generations, but i love the depth we got of every single character.

the only character we really never get more of, shockingly, is the narrator, and i sense that this is deliberate either to further demonstrate the closeness/word of mouth-ed-ness of small town salinas valley OR that john steinbeck was the real narrator IRL? i just took a quick peak and steinbeck’s history on wikipedia, okay so being that his mother was olive hamilton, yes steinbeck is the true narrator so that does offer an explanation as to why the narrator is never actually involved in the story. before knowing steinbeck’s personal connection with the characters, it always felt like a story that was passed from word of mouth.

the story takes a while to get going, i had actually discussed this with someone else online about how slowly it starts. especially knowing the majority of the story takes place in salinas valley, california, starting off on the east coast with cyrus trask and it seems like the story is mostly going to be centered around the bond between cyrus and his boys, adam and charles. then we flashback to the present when adam is traversing to california with his wife. it isn’t until after she births twin boys that the plot really starts to get going.

although the story spans generations and decades, the pace of the story unfolding is careful and steady. we get the “cain and abel” parallel right away with cyrus’s boys, but then find several chapters/parts later that the true cain and abel story is aligned with adam’s sons, cal and aron. i did really enjoy the grappling with people being “all good” or “all bad” and how that is almost never the case, even with someone as vile as their mother. i also thought the lettuce story was actually gonna go somewhere completely different, i was so excited for adam to pick up refrigeration and it just made me feel his loss so much.

idk if it was just me or if steinbeck meant to write it like this, but it took me a good long while to like adam and believe he actually was trying to be a good person. at first, i really don’t think he was all that great, going off to the army with very little protest against his father’s wishes, and stringing cathy along even though she clearly didn’t want to move to california and verbalized it several times. catchy might not have been a good person either, but keeping someone captive in their own life is unjust.

of course, given the time period, there is a lot of ruthless racism that goes on, but with it we get the most purest character in lee. samuel hamilton is also a very likeable character, despite his flaws, his moral compass was always calibrated properly.

it’s going to take some time to fully process everything that happens at the end, i suspect when i look back i’ll think of this as a harsh rating but i’m also definitely biased for john steinbeck. i think what makes this book a bit aggravating is the people it’s about, the community it’s for, the ones who would benefit most and relate to these characters best are also the ones least likely to read such a lengthy tale. i thought it was funny how the book kind of scoffs at education and nerds generally, but i also appreciate steinbeck’s resistance to military operations. i also find cal’s existential dread extremely relatable, and i think this was steinbeck’s way of slowly, purposely getting us to side with “the bad one.” well played, steinbeck, well played.

overall, i understand why this book gets so much adoration, it’s well-deserved and is a great timepiece. it’s definitely made me want to read all the rest of the steinbeck catalog. timshel.

rating: 7/10 really enjoyed but wouldn’t necessarily recommend

#john steinbeck #east of eden

[scorchedthesnake]

The Burnt City – Review

No I’m not “blogging” again, we are so past that moment, so past tumblrs. I just need a place to post this that I can link back to with some permanence (haha Tumblr permanence? Have you learned nothing?) Remember, Scorched is a pedantic, academic prick, so you’ll get that here. Mild spoilers probably.

The prospect of a new Punchdrunk show electrifies the immersive theater enthusiast community like no other. Given the achievements of their last major new undertaking, The Drowned Man in 2013, two questions loomed large in many of our minds. First, would the new show advance the state of immersive art by the same leaps and bounds that The Drowned Man had shown over its predecessor Sleep No More? And would Punchdrunk, like all of us coming off two agonizing years of global pandemic and disruption, make a significant change in either methodology or aesthetics? The answer to both questions is: no. But to couch this ambitious new show in this comparative context is unjust to its many accomplishments. 

Punchdrunk have very much doubled down on all their trademark elements, but most especially on darkness and violence. I have walked into walls, collided with performers, and exited multiple performances with bloodstains on all my garments. It is certainly a choice, in the year 2022, to offer little respite from the harshness of the world even in a fantasy place. Whether it is the right, or a good choice, will be tested by this show’s reception and endurance.

As for the state of the art, do not expect radical new development over The Drowned Man. In some regards this production feels less refined – though that is almost certainly because it has only just launched and will gain in detail and depth as it runs. Some rooms feel thrown together; there is a disappointingly high number of object assemblages with no apparent use in the performance; there are spoon montages and plastic food and bathtubs full of objects, possibly to suggest decay, but leaving the impression that space had to be filled somehow. 1:1s, created in a post-pandemic world where the safety of such scenes continues to be in doubt, have been given less dedicated space than in the previous show, with less stunning effects (so far, that I have seen). We have likely already reached the apotheosis of those elements of the Punchdrunk offering, and so they will need to push their boundaries in other areas from now on.

This is, at once, both Punchdrunk’s smartest show and also its most accessible. The narrative, particularly on the Grecian side of the Trojan War, is surprisingly clear and linear, aided by a cavernous performance space with enormous set fixtures and a wide range of viewing stances. In Troy, the visitor experiences a more traditional Punchdrunk environment of dark narrows and difficult to identify characters moving rapidly and mysteriously. A further meta-level is covered by characters not looping in the traditional sense, with loads of tantalizing hints in the props at the true nature of what guests witness. There will be months of raging fan discussion over what’s really afoot, and whether ‘that is all there is.’

Advances in lighting technology are evident everywhere: miniature LED fixtures providing an astonishing level of precise color control and dramatic effects. Unfortunately, the temperature of such light is lower and produces both a foreboding gloom and genuine difficulties with sight. When the theatrical haze is added, the show is significantly more difficult to see than its predecessors. On top of this, the redesigned Punchdrunk masks - in their traditional shape, not the pandemic adaptation in use in New York - sit further from the face and restricts peripheral vision considerably. 

The soundtrack is an absolute triumph, varied and powerful and overlapping: songs chosen for small spaces matched against sweeping overtures that fill both enormous warehouses at once. There is truly nothing so powerful as standing in the halls of Mycenae when the reset music, a cue from Dark City, reverberates through the space gloriously. Unfortunately sound isolation is a bugbear, so you will frequently hear the noise from the bar during key scenes and find your immersion lessened.

Choreographically, initial PR promised new inspirations from German Expressionism. You will see some new kinds of movement, but you will also see some elements recycled in near entirety from previous productions. Punchdrunk note that this show is created in collaboration with their artists, and one hopes this extension of credit could be even more explicit: some whole scenes, clearly in the style of the dancers who originated them, are among the highest points of the performance. The cast, a veritable who’s who of Punchdrunk all-stars from every era, are also joined by stunning new talents. Standout scenes, to me, include: literally everything on what has come to be known as “Putin’s Table;” the sacrifice of Iphigenia; Polydorus in the back square of Troy and in a “Spiderman” sequence through its alleys; Achilles/Neoptolemus and Patroclus in a heart-rending duet invoking Greek wrestling. There is so much that the dancers create, you will go broke trying to see all of it, and as always, these pursuits feel like the most rewarding.

Operational challenges remain even after previews. The entry experience, while gradually taking more effective and efficient forms, still feels like a wasted opportunity, though the story it tells is easily identified in the performances that follow. The show’s bar, Peep, is a unique arrangement that is fully integrated into the show, with characters coming to its stage as part of their loops; but it is not a pleasant space. One gets the impression its discomforting vibe is a way to urge guests to go back out to the streets of Troy. This is where the promised “Weimar Berlin” elements are palpable, but they are sadly more simple nods to Cabaret, an Englishman’s Weimar fantasia, than anything else. It provides much needed camp and contrast with the grim proceedings outside, but is not an enchanting place. Nor will it become, like Manderley, a neighborhood institution. 

A surprising amount of space is dedicated to a VIP lounge, which is more pleasant, but also contributes to the traffic issues that plague the show. Audience traffic is very lumpy – at no point does the space feel full, but it frequently feels frustratingly congested. Loops cross in the narrow passages of Troy and crowds collide. Returning from the grand finale – which it must be noted is a breathtaking piece of work – is a slog, as everyone tries to squeeze back through just one narrow door into the VIP lounge, where you’re still stuck within the cordons lest you bother VIPs while trying to get to the exit. After a few shows I began to refer to the finale return as Golgotha, as performers doing walkouts, barefoot and – initially at least, in just dance belts – would have to wait along with all the other traffic before finally getting to offstage.

As my time in the two cities has worn on, I have wondered when precisely this show is supposed to be. Sleep No More attempts in broad strokes to be located in 1939 or thereabouts in the Jazz Age more generally; The Drowned Man was firmly anchored in the 1960s milieu. The Burnt City, despite occasional references in the props to the 1920s, seems unfixed in time. There is detritus of objects from a range of eras; lots of plastic bits and fake jello molds. It reminded me, in its material conditions, of scenes from Christoph Ransmayr’s Die letzte Welt and its surrealist retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. An absent unity of time, combined with an absent unity of place, is disorienting, but not debilitating for this show. This is just another way in which something feels a little off from what you’re used to with Punchdrunk, but this is certainly no accident or failure.

While it is a smart show, it is easily the least “fun” of any of the major Punchdrunk shows – and this will be its most divisive characteristic. For my part, I love this. Part of it is thematic from these foundational tragedies of Western civilization, though Macbeth and Woyzeck were hardly suggestive of a rollicking good time either. Longtime fans have had the sense that something is missing from this show and have struggled to exactly identify what. Is it mirth, glamor, humor? To my mind, what is absent is that desire is not a currency here. At SNM and TDM, there is a sultry suggestiveness amongst the characters and between them and the audience. At The Burnt City, everyone is too busy being dead, being robots, being dead robots or sacrificing their children to uncaring gods to have much space for suggestive glances and come-hither looks. Accordingly the show is brooding, sad and full of unceasing lamentation – fitting, perhaps, to our terrible moment in history, and probably edifying – but a night at this museum will never occupy the sort of lifestyle position a night at the McKittrick Hotel continues to be eleven years on. This will be a relief to the noise sensitive neighbors in Woolwich, and was almost certainly the intention of a company craving recognition for serious theater and not just for spectacular entertainment.

#the burnt city #punchdrunk #immersive #sleep no more #the drowned man #woolwich

[pickypicknoname]

A good man [yan. Wars]

TW: Yandere themes, Non consensual body modification, non consensual kissing, mispelling, bioshock 1 spoilers, character death (Time), Brainwashing.

This is a snippet for a bigger piece i’m writing.

once again- Spoilers for Bioshock (old game, but like eh)

0. a good man is:

“Would you kindly love me back.”

Warriors isn’t a good man.

He knows this. He knows this very, very well.

He has cheated, lied, deceived, pillaged, and murdered for the sake of Hyrule — a city that has consumed the life and souls of people seeking salvation, only to turn said salvation into an eternal purgatory to torment their souls even after death. He’s brought destruction hidden under the ideals of creation and protection.

In the words of others: “His” cause is just, yet his methods were no better than Ganon’s or Cia’s.

(Link is not a good man. He is a selfish, egotistical, self centered, cruel, and unjust man who spent his entire life to conveying the image of a heartful, charismatic, kind and understanding captain that others love to perceive as a “true hero.”

After everything, sometimes, Link looks at steps that he’s built upon to make his life and has to bite back the hysterical laughter that bubbles up chest

A hero. Hero. hero . heroherohero—

A manmade hero made out of brutality and horrifying experiments that have destroyed lives that are seen as things, but pure cattle. In the reflection of shattered glass that litter the streets of ravaged Hyrule, Warriors Link smiles.

Oh, He’s a hero alright. )

However, he’s a selfish man. A business man even.

And whats Warriors want, Warriors gets. No matter what.

i. a good man is a liar with a scarf.

Warriors isn’t a good man.

This you know, but by the time you truly know it, it is far too late to do anything about it.

“Would you kindly sleep for me.”

You stare hazily at blue eyes before you mind shuts down like a tv. A loud buzzing rushing through your fuzz filled mind. His hands linger on the sides of your face, cupping your face gently as the syringe loads into your body with ADAM. In the depths of closing slumber, you wonder when he had gotten his hands on that before you suscumb fully to his demand. Hazy, blank eyes stare back at him. Vacant like the halls that he wanders around. Vacant like the morals he had liked to parade in front of Ganondorf.

A good man wouldn’t use an innocent person. A good man wouldn’t brainwash, torture, and create a “human being” for the sake of revolution that isn’t even his

(shooting Time shouldn’t have been so easy, but in the end, it was as easy as taking candy from a mere babe. The poor fool had been frying at the seams. Begging for scraps of information about Malon and his dear boys, Twilight and Wind.

Even willing to eat at the hands of a cowardly liar who hungered for blood.

Parading with his identity, taking over the revolution as “Time” had been one of the easiest things he’d ever done, and Link had done a lot of difficult things.

For example: You.

Meeting you. The bastard child of Ganondorf. A creation bored from plasmids, dna of the sworn enemy, and a piece that Lana swore up and down that belonged to Hylia. By all means you weren’t technically human. You weren’t born in a real womb, but an artificial human in a mimicking test tube and thrown out into the surface after experiments showed your durability to live beyond what should be fatal wounds, strength, and the final plan of taking down Ganondorf

He should’ve killed you after the deed was done. Should’ve strung you up like the rest of damned beings in hyrule—Instead he strings you along which makes you wish you were dead. Just like your father.

He always looks at you with a charminh smile that never reaches his cold, blye eyes: “ would you kindly come with me .”

It was never a question.

After all, You never did have a choice.)

A good man wouldn’t touch somebody without their knowledge for the sake of a farce, or under the impression of “true love.”

A good man wouldn’t cut and destroy the ability to choose, to think, and to know for the sake of pure adoration even if it’s fake.

(Warriors is an awful person, but Link will always be a coward at heart. He doesn’t fully go through with destroying your mind, instead just settling your consciousness into a sort of “backseat” type of occasion that blanks whenever he uses the trigger phrase. He chooses to ignore how you’ll know everything he does to you and you can’t do anything about, aside from internally screaming in horror, rage, and grief as your autonomy is taken by the so-called “hero” of Hyrule.

Link is not a good man, but a coward, and cowards will always prioritize their own wants over the needs of others.

Even yours.)

A good man wouldn’t be doing any of this. But Warriors isn’t a good man. And when your eyes flutter, the light returns back to them. He ignores the blistering hatred concealed under dull eyes that show “love.”

A good man doesn’t exist in Hyrule. Only devils in human skin.

#yandere lu wars #yandere lu warriors x reader #yandere lu warriors #yandere lu #my writing #tw yandere #tw: yandere #cw yandere #rosie writes

[ponett]

hi i watched the new my little pony movie and it was... pretty good! it was very cute, i like the new cast a lot, there were some nice heartfelt moments that had some surprising depth, all the locations were really pretty to look at, the poppy musical numbers were fun, the character animation is really lively. it's a solid little fantasy adventure flick for kids. i do have mixed feelings about the story though. here are some casual-ish thoughts. (i posted some of this on twitter last night but i have even more thoughts now. i'm sorry. i'm so sorry)

spoilers below the cut

okay so, i liked it a lot when it was just letting the new characters play off each other, but unfortunately my fears came true and almost the entire movie is laser focused on the oversimplified extremely on-the-nose trump era racism allegory plot. i do have to cut it some slack for their good intentions, and this is a 90 minute animated movie for 5-year-olds, so there's only so much they can do. it did also have a bit more nuance than i expected at points. (it's more nuanced than zootopia, for what it's worth. not that that's hard.) and hell, friendship is magic also screwed up its attempts at similar topics, and y'all know how much i still love that show. so it's not like i hate this movie. but it has such an oversimplified "we should all be friends!" take on real issues, and it frustrates me that it completely dominates the film, being the main focus of almost every single scene

there's some interesting stuff where they show how those in power are stoking peoples' fears to maintain their own power. like the big factory in the earth pony town is essentially an arms manufacturer capitalizing on the fear of outsiders, the cops mainly exist to uphold the laws segregating the ponies, the pegasus royal family pretends they still have the ability to fly and this lie seems to be the only reason they're in power (the queen literally gets arrested the second the truth comes out lol). but then they all just kind of... see the error of their ways shortly after meeting other types of pony, and there are no repercussions? not saying this toy commercial cartoon for little girls needs to fuckin kill the bad guys or throw them in jail or whatever, but we don't even get like a "they made them turn the arms factory into something else" type resolution, and no one even really acknowledges that these characters did anything wrong. no one is considered an oppressor, the movie takes for granted that these people in power who derive their power from bigotry were just misguided, and that they'll totally change their beliefs as soon as they're presented with new information. society is fundamentally unjust, but none of the individuals maintaining that unjust status quo are at fault for doing so

i also don't know if it's a good or bad thing that there's no explanation for why the ponies hate each other now. like on the one hand at least there's no historical backstory that inadvertently justifies the prejudices (like zootopia and its story about how the predators used to eat the prey). but on the other hand... how the hell did they get from g4 to here in the intervening centuries? at my most uncharitable it feels like this whole story about how equestria used to be this land where everyone got along and now everyone is divided is a heavy-handed metaphor for The Sudden Division Of America In The Trump Era as it's perceived by a lot of liberals. history didn't logically lead us to this point, no one is really at fault, everyone just arbitrarily started hating each other at some point and we just all need to put that aside and get along again. it's almost the FiM episode about how the cowboys and the natives should just learn to share all over again. (again: i will admit this is an uncharitable read of the film)

(sidebar with BIG SPOILERS: the very end also really bugged me, but that's more just a personal taste thing. in the leadup to g5 i was excited to see them make an earth pony the protagonist. i thought that was a nice change of pace after nine seasons of twilight. but then in the end of the movie, after sunny delivers the moral, she's magically turned into an alicorn... like oh we're just doing that again huh. okay. it also doesn't really gel with this story where the different types of pony are being used for a racism/xenophobia allegory)

i feel a little bad hyper-focusing on the way the allegory falls apart like this, but like. the allegory is the entire fucking movie lol. they are constantly talking about it in every scene, the first song mentions "building a wall," the main antagonist (who may or may not be intended to evoke trump???) manipulates the earth ponies' prejudices to make them all go full fascist, etc. it is not subtle. of course, this story isn't ALL bad - the adventures along the way were fun, i was relieved when everyone realized that the macguffin wouldn't magically make everyone get along again (although realizing this DOES make the macguffin restore everyone's magic which seems to mostly fix everything, so... lol), and a message about looking past stereotypes and misinformation to befriend people who are different from you definitely isn't a bad one for a kids' film. and obviously a story with this target demographic is ALWAYS going to have to simplify reality a bit. it's just extremely obvious that they wanted to go for a nuanced topical political story that would surprise the parents in the audience and maybe teach kids a thing or two, and it turned out messy

but again, i liked the characters. it was nice to look at. it was cute. i'll gladly watch a new show with these characters. i hope the inevitable show focuses less on this political allegory though lol

anyway there's a shot of fluttershy and rainbow dash in the opening scene so 10/10

[hazydaaze]

An analysis of the Bold Type that I need to get off my chest (it'll be worth it, I promise)

I studied English literature at university, and it has always been instinctive for me to analyse characters, storylines, bigger pictures and under the surface tensions in film & tv. Discussing emotions, motivations and themes with my gf and my pals late at night is one of my favourite pastimes ever and I love everything to do with filmography and art ahhhh. (I wrote my dissertation on David Bowie & The Artistry of Sexuality, ya feel me?)

The Bold Type isn't filmography at all, but I think Jane Sloan and Jacqueline Carlyle hit different for me, being a queer woman in my 20s and a full-time writer. I can't really explain why. I guess there are a lot of queer female characters in film & tv that don't really feel inherently queer, and even as two identifying straight women Jane and Jacqueline felt queer to me. Their connection and understanding of each other was authentic and quite complex. I think they had potential to be something that we'd never seen before in mainstream media, because of their age difference and life experiences. I thought that was so compelling and so important to talk about and to give a recognised space to.

There is one thing that struck me most about them and it's insane to me that I haven't seen a lot of analysis on it, so it's the point of this post.

To my knowledge the show or actors haven't delved too deeply into it either, and given what went down I don't understand why people AREN'T talking about it. I wanted to bring it up. Btw, this post contains spoilers.

***Sexual abuse trigger warning***

In season 1, we learn that Jacqueline is the victim of rape, and the only person she has told about it is her husband, Ian. Given that she mentions that they've been married for around 19 years and the assault happened before they met, we can assume Jacqueline has been carrying the weight of what happened to her for over two decades. During all that time she didn't talk about it with anyone else, not a single other person.

And then Tiny Jane comes along. Jane Sloan, the big swing writer who just wants to write meaningful stories that help other women and girls that need it, like she did growing up. She fucks up a lot on the way and slowly begins discarding her judgemental opinions as she grows. But when she is at her best she has genuine compassion and empathy for people, and despite her reservations, Jacqueline gives her the opportunity to write about the story of a rape survivor and performance artist. She isn't aware, at the time, what that means for her own trauma or her own acceptance of it. But she does it anyway, because she sees something in Jane and she has seen it there from the beginning.

Jane starts to write and, as we know, in the most beautiful and compelling moment at the season 1 finale, Jacqueline is confronted with what happened to her. She stands in Central Park holding these weights, and you can see the crushing pain in her eyes as the realisation descends down on her. She shares a look with Jane, and a moment of understanding passes between them at what this means.

Despite all this, she lets Jane capture her trauma. She lets her publish her untold experience of her rape from two decades gone. She lets millions of people see her story in writing, with Jane Sloan's name printed above it. She re-lives and faces up to the harsh reality of that pain and that truth, through Jane.

Can you even imagine the trust you must have in someone to do that? The sheer love that took, for Jacqueline to give Jane her voice and her truth, with all its painful and hard repercussions?

This storyline is the boldest part of the Bold Type. It's the most honest and the most authentic. It captures the raw emotion of Jacqueline, and of Jane, and the two characters really see each other for who they are. It's one of the reasons why their relationship is so central to the other's storyline.

We don't ever see Jane truly unpick in detail what Jacqueline did for her. It spoke so many volumes and ... well, isn't that what love is?

It's this storyline that sets the tone for their relationship over the course of the show. Jacqueline sacrifices herself for Jane again and again. She publishes the article about the lack of accessible healthcare at Safford and gets fired for doing so, purely so Jane can afford to freeze her eggs. Jacqueline says there were a lot of other things that contributed to it, but Jane knows her article was the final straw, the point of no return.

Over a decade of pouring everything she could give into Scarlet Magazine and it’s readers, only to be gone in a second. All for Jane.

And again, in season 4, in the few real moments we are given between them, one of their final interactions is Jacqueline giving Jane the go-ahead to explore a story of potential abuse at States & Nations, a company Ian is associated with. Ian literally asks Jacqueline to stop pursuing the story, due to the sexual relationship he had with the source when he and Jacqueline were separated. When Jane challenges Jacqueline over her reasoning for pulling the story, she asks her to give the story a chance. Jacqueline lets her, knowing full well that it could prove irreparably damaging to her marriage and her family, and she does it anyway.

Jacqueline chooses the truth, over her career and over her marriage. She chooses Jane. As humans, there isn't much more you can give to someone else. I’m wracking my brains trying to think of a way Jacqueline could portray her love for Jane more, and I’m all out of ideas.

I want to reiterate again how insane it is to me that none of this is really acknowledged, or at least not nearly as much as it should be amongst the show, its creators and its viewers, Jacqueline continually falls on her sword for Jane (weird analogy, but she does) and it is repeatedly glossed over. Their relationship is quickly dismissed as a "mother Jane never had" or a simple "boss/employee" power dynamic, and it seems so hollow, unjust and sorry - so unbelievably boring - in contrast to the experiences they have shared together and the sacrifices they have made.

I understand Jacqueline’s character was based on Cosmopolitan Editor in Chief, Joanna Coles, and therefore it makes sense that this queerness to her relationship with Jane was not intended. However, it’s there. Everything I mentioned in the post happened on the show in canon.

In 2021, the possibility that these two women could have romantic or sexual feelings towards each other shouldn't be a stretch. If either of these women were male characters with this much intertwined investment, high stakes and sacrifice, there would be no doubt they would be endgame. They would run away, have the hottest sex, all the while their reputations would be forever ruined in the name of love. And we, as viewers, would celebrate it without question - we would never dismiss it.

The concept of what they are, and what they can be as two women should be able to live and thrive. It should be given a beating heart. In the very least, the reality of it should be on the table and up for debate. But for many viewers, and the show’s creators, it just isn’t. And here lies the problem.

Jane and Jacqueline have such a beautiful dynamic, it is so deep and soul-wrenching. How can we ever limit what these two women are and what they would do for each other?

I really hope that one day we can see a relationship like theirs given the queer space it deserves. Because it would've been the bold thing (and the right thing) to do.

I'm going to publish a longer and more in-depth article about this on Medium, because as I said, analysing is my favourite pastime and I can't stop doing it. But for now, this is all I can manage.

Edit: Read my published Medium article.

Here's to Jane and Jacqueline and what could've been.

#jacqueline x jane #jane x jacqueline #janequeline #jacqueline carlyle #jane sloan #the bold type #the bold type review #the bold type edit #queer ships #otp

[mashkaroom]

Lengthy analysis of Holes, as promised!. This will include spoilers, which will be marked. Just gonna go through the book and the philosophy/themes/connections I caught onto this time around. Stuff discussed, in order: connections to Camus, on the question of children’s books, systems, cycles, and why Stanley is gay and jewish 😏

Camus:

The first and perhaps most obvious set of texts/theories it makes sense to put Holes in conversation with is the works of Albert Camus. Holes starts out with a description of the sun and the heat, which readers of the Stranger will remember are major themes there. The heat continues to be a prominent part of the story, though thematically, it functions very differently in the two books. In The Stranger it primarily represents the indifference of the universe (or at least so claim a ton of sources and I’m inclined to agree) and the lack of control we exert over our own lives while in Holes it’s basically the opposite of that. The heat and drought is implied to be a semi-divine punishment for a past injustice and, moreover, the elite adults of the camp have air conditioning and access to shade: the sun does not affect everyone equally in Holes as it does in The Stranger (though even that is debatable: I don’t think this was Camus’s intent, but it’s notable that it’s only the white englishman who’s driven to murder by the sun. This could certainly be read as critique of colonizers who cannot/refuse to coexist with the land and environment and how the indigenous population always suffers for it, but I digress). The other Camusian parallel one is immediately inclined to draw is that, of course, of Sysiphus: there’s the repetitive and seemingly meaningless act of digging holes not to mention that carrying stuff up a mountain is both thematically and plot-wise a very important part of Holes. But, once again, it is eventually revealed that both acts do carry an inherent meaning. Holes does not present the image of an uncaring universe: on the contrary, destiny and semi-divine influence plays a major role. The story may start out with a series of seemingly random and inherently meaningless events, but as the story progresses, people, actions, items, and events become increasingly imbued with meaning. In the Holes universe, one must imagine Sisyphus redeemed, not through the act of rolling the stone but by rebelling against it. I have difficulty imagining that Sachar was not thinking of Camus while writing Holes, or, at the very least, that if he encountered Camus afterwards, he must have been struck by the similarities. I don’t know if there was a specific intent in creating a story so embroiled in Camusian absurdism, especially since the target readership is (allegedly) children who almost certainly are not recognizing specific allusions to Camus, so perhaps the similarities are purely aesthetic — after all, everything that is nominally similar does play quite different thematic roles. However, I would never pass up the opportunity to talk about the myth of sisyphus and I think placing Holes in dialogue with Camus can raise some interesting questions about the nature of meaning.

Is Holes a children’s book?

Speaking, though, of the target audience, the audience for this book is in fact children. What about it makes it a children’s book makes it difficult to say: the protagonists are children (and, I would argue, it is not a coming of age story, despite the claims of one piece of lit crit about Holes in which i disagreed with almost every claim made, but i digress once more) and the writing style is fairly simple: you can read it with a second-grader’s vocabulary. Also, of course, being a children’s book doesn’t (and crucially shouldn’t!) mean that it’s lacking in depth and complexity. However, I think most thematically rich children’s books tend to be quite allegorical. The Little Prince is a good example. Holes is just way too specific for its sole market to be children. It’s either intended to be read by multiple generations at once or for child readers to return to it as an adult. It addresses themes of racism (and not just generic racism, anti-black racism in the reconstruction south), homelessness, intergenerational trauma. and the modern carceral system. These are social critiques that will probably go over most kids’ heads (certainly over mine). However, the themes of the text are not inaccessible for children. You don’t have to understand the particular history of the US criminal justice system or even that Sachar is making a comparison to anything specific to get that the system that he’s portraying is unjust. Knowing the real-world context just adds another layer to the text. Holes also has one of the hallmarks of children’s books that I really like, which is a particular type of absurdism that the child characters come up against. This always rang true to me as a kid and well into my teens, when you start understanding that your life is controlled by some set of systems, but you haven’t quite gotten what those systems are or why and how they came about. Like nowadays, I can say “we did this in elementary school because of a state law, that because of a federal law, that because of the history of puritanism, and this because we got a grant for it”, but as a kid nobody tells you these things or really even cares to explain why the rules are as they are, and the systems that govern your world, often with no small degree of violence and almost always with an inherent disregard for your agency, are ineffable and slippery, and good children’s books capture this really well (Series of Unfortunate Events is probably my favorite example of this, where a secret organization that everything is implicated in and more more tragicomic details about it get revealed until the Baudelaire children find themselves to some degree members with mixed feelings is honestly an excellent coming-of-age allegory. oh, not to mention the constant conflict with bureacracy. god that series is so good, everyone read it). Back to Holes, Sachar weaves the more fantastical ineffable elements in with real-world issues so neatly. Stanley’s family is allegedly cursed, which is why Stanley keeps having bad luck, but he also lives in systemic poverty, which is also why he keeps having bad luck. Sachar eschews neither the allegorical elements common in children’s literature nor the more direct systemic critiques more often found in YA and adult lit, and it creates a really unique vibe. I think the story really benefited from having a children’s author, and I would love to see more authors in both children’s and adult lit do this!

Systems

Speaking of the systems, this book is surprisingly radical. Like it’s full-on an abolitionist text. The law is pretty much only ever presented as adversarial, both in the story of Stanley’s present time, and in Kate and Sam’s story. It’s implied if not stated repeatedly that Stanley and the other boys are pretty much victims of circumstance and have been imprisoned pretty much for the crime of being poor. The hole-digging is shown to be cruel and bad for the boys. It’s noted that in digging the holes Stanley’s heart hardened along with his muscles. This is of course very evocative of the system of retributive justice we have in America. Additionally, Camp Greenlake’s existence can ultimately be traced back to an act of racist violence, also in close parallel with our prison system. Hole’s stance on justice is very restorative. Punishments are never shown to work: only through righting the wrongs can true justice be achieved. Moreover, Holes even gives the opportunity for redemption to a minor antagonist when [minor spoiler] Derrick Dunne, the kid who was bullying Stanley in the beginning ultimately plays a small role in helping Stanley regain his freedom [spoiler over].

Cycles

Cycles are a major theme in holes, and Sachar creates a unique temporality to support this theme. There are 3 interwoven stories: that of Stanley’s in the present date, that of Stanley’s ancestors, and that of the land that Stanley is on (though, as I will delve into later, it’s at least a little implied that Stanley is descended from the characters in that story also). The stories from the past reach in and touch the present. You can’t untangle the past from the future. Looking at this again through a social justice lens, it could be seen as fairly progressive commentary on what to do with regards to America’s past wrongs. The past cannot and will not be left in the past: it must be dealt with on an ongoing basis. Even the warden, the greatest villain of Stanley’s story has a sympathetic moment at the end where it’s revealed that she, too, is stuck in a cycle of intergenerational trauma she can’t break free from.

Stanley is gay and jewish

Ok, I will now talk about how Stanley is a queer Jew, but this entire section will be riddled with spoilers, so read the book first and then come back!

A queer Jew?? i hear you ask. You’re just projecting. Yes, 100%. However, I think that interpreting Stanley as both these things adds to the thematic richness of the text. Let’s start with the Jewish bit: it’s not explicitly stated that Stanley is Jewish, but his great-great grandfather is a nerd-boy Latvian immigrant with the last name Yelnats, and his great-grandfather was a stockbrocker, so, like, ya know. Louis Sachar is also himself Jewish, as was the director of the movie, who cast Jews in the roles of Stanley and his family (dyk Shia LaBeouf is Jewish?? i did not), so I know I’m not the only one interpreting it this way. And honestly, does it not resemble the book of exodus quite a bit? They escape what is pretty much a form of slavery and wander in the desert. Sploosh resembles the well of Miriam, and then they ascend up a mountain to the “thumb of god”, perhaps in a parallel to Moses receiving the commandments. Is this a useful way to look at the text? Who knows. But what I think we do get from reading Stanley as Jewish is a more nuanced discussion of privilege and solidarity. If Stanley and his ancestors are Jewish (or at least Jew-ish), then what placed the curse upon his family (and, we see, Madame Zeroni’s family isn’t doing so great either) is the breaking of solidarity between oppressed people. But also, the fact that you are also marginalized does not wash you of the responsibility to other marginalized groups. I don’t think Sachar intended it this way, because I think he probably would have talked about it more if he had, but I would say this book can be read as a call to the American Jewish community to take an active role in forging solidarity with other marginalized groups and actively righting the wrong you, your ancestors, and your community wrought upon them.

Now, why do I think Stanley and Zero are gay? Before I go into how it augments the text thematically, I bring to your attention this passage.

Two nights later, Stanley lay awake staring up at the star-filled sky. He was too happy to fall asleep. 

He knew he had no reason to be happy. He had heard or read somewhere that right before a person freezes to death, he suddenly feels nice and warm. He wondered if perhaps he was experiencing something like that. 

It occurred to him that he couldn't remember the last time he felt happiness. It wasn't just being sent to Camp Green Lake that had made his life miserable. Before that he'd been unhappy at school, where he had no friends, and bullies like Derrick Dunne picked on him. No one liked him, and the truth was, he didn't especially like himself. 

He liked himself now.

 He wondered if he was delirious. He looked over at Zero sleeping near him. Zero's face was lit in the starlight, and there was a flower petal in front of his nose that moved back and forth as he breathed. It reminded Stanley of something out of a cartoon. Zero breathed in, and the petal was drawn up, almost touching his nose. Zero breathed out, and the petal moved toward his chin. It stayed on Zero's face for an amazingly long time before fluttering off to the side. 

Stanley considered placing it back in front of Zero's nose, but it wouldn't be the same.

Girl, I’m sorry, that’s gay as shit! It’s such tremendous tenderness, not to mention the traditionally romantic imagery of moonlight and the flower petal. There’s also the non-romantic aspects. Stanley’s inexplicable happiness and suddenly liking himself evokes, for me, at least, the experience of coming out to yourself, of realizing who you are. Later in this chapter, Stanley contemplates running away with Zero despite the fact that it would make them lifelong outlaws. This book, remember, was written in 1998, and homosexuality was decriminalized in 2003, and the book takes place in Texas. It would have been, if anything, even more evocative of gayness when it was published. Now as to how this increases the thematic richness of the text: obviously, in carrying Hector up to the thumb, giving him water, and singing the lullaby, he redeems the wrong done by his ancestor, after which his family’s luck immediately changed. However, after Hector and Zero return to camp Greenlake, rain falls there for the first time. What was redeemed here? Remember that earlier on we learn that what caused the drought was the fact that Sam the onion man (who was black) was murdered for kissing Kate Barlow (who was white) — so what would a [post-factum wronging of that right look like? Zero, as we remember, is black while Stanley is white, so them being in a romantic relationship would be a successful interracial relationship to redeem the one Kate and Sam weren’t able to have. It’s also, as I said earlier, implied that Stanley is descended from Kate Barlow on his mother’s side: Stanley remembers seeing the other half of the lipstick tube with her initials on it in his mother’s bedroom. I’d also argue that Sam the Onion Man is implied to be descended from Madame Zeroni (chronology-wise, I think he’d be her grandson). First of all, there’s no follow-up with Madame Zeroni’s son who moved to America, and pretty much all other plot threads are followed up with in Holes. Secondly, Sam mentions water running uphill, just like Madame Zeroni does. Even without these speculations being true, Stanley and Hector being gay would redeem the land they’re on, but If they are, the parallel with the other ancestral redemption arc becomes to much to imagine it was unintentional.

So anyway, those are my thoughts on Holes, now everyone go read it!

#was trying to express my dad that shia labeouf is jewish but couldn't remember how to pronounce his name #so i was like. dyk sheeya labeeoof is jewish? indiana jone's son. shaya labyof. Pap. Indiana Jone's son. you know who he is. Pap come on #when he figured out who he was he asked if harrison ford was also jewish #as a joke #and turns out he fucking is! his maternal grandparents are jews from minsk! #quoth my father: 'they're everywhere. nothing is sacred' #lololol #anyway this fucking booooook you guys