#he gives her by far the most 'glimpsing the shape of the narrative' moments | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

moiraineswife · 3 years

Text

Jasnah and Wit - Presentation Meta

Part 1 of the great saga of Witsnah “WELL ACTUALLY” metas I plan on doing bc y’all have just pushed me That Far.

Well hello there. I’m GRUMPY. And what I do when I’m grumpy is I channel it into a little thing called spite meta. That’s what this is. It’s me angrily yelling for several thousand words about why this thing is a GOOD thing, actually.

Today’s subject, the much controversial post Rhythm of War canon pairing that is: Wit/Jasnah.

So let’s (angrily) explore why this is actually a positive thing for both characters, on a nuanced, meta, character analysis level. Because that’s the only level that I have.

I admit, I was sceptical and uncertain. But when I actually sat and thought about this for a hot second...It started making a lot of sense to me. And then I thought about it for, like, a hot minute, and it made a LOT of sense to me. And now I’ve thought about it for a hot month, so come. Step into my thoughts, and I will explain my perspective on this all…

Firstly we’re going to talk about clothes. Yes, clothes. Clothes and what they symbolise for this pair, together and individually.

He was immaculate, as always, with his perfectly styled hair and sharp black suit. For all his talk of frivolity, he knew exactly how to present himself. It was something they’d bonded over. - RoW, 64

Wit and Jasnah have bonded over the idea of presentation and the effects it can create. Both of them have used this idea to great effect multiple times in the series. Wit displays himself as a more appropriate form of an Alethi highprince at war - a crisp, tailored, military suit in a colour that makes him instantly and easily identifiable in a crowd. It’s part of his subtle mockery of those around him - that the King’s Wit is a better presented highprince than the REAL highprinces. It also makes him recognisable, and it makes him seem professional and able to move easily in high society.

Equally, we’ve seen him take the guise of a poor beggar so as to sneak into Kholinar and go unnoticed and dismissed when he sneaks into the palace to recover Design in Oathbringer.

Jasnah, meanwhile, gives a memorable and impactful speech to Shallan at the beginning of Words of Radiance about the illusion of perception. About how by presenting herself as a princess, looking the way others expect, she is able to effectively use her authority. And would be able to similarly do so if she simply convinced people she was a princess, by manipulating their perception of her.

Both Jasnah and Wit understand this idea - of presenting yourself, not necessarily in the way you want to look, but in the way you want others to look at you. Creating for them the thing you want them to see, which enables you to better be that thing.

It also runs deeper than that. They’re not just people who like to dress well. They understand that this has a power to it. They understand the effect it will have over others. And it’s this deeper thing that I believe they’ve bonded over.

Because they don’t simply appear put together in their clothes; they appear put together in their everything. Wit and Jasnah are people who are consistently calm and composed regardless of the situation. They do it in very different ways. Jasnah with calculating stoicism and intellectual calm. Wit with indifferent frivolity and nonchalant acceptance of what’s happening around him.

The core effect is the same. When the walls are crumbling down, the armies are sweeping in, and everything’s on fucking fire, Wit and Jasnah are two people you expect to be able to look to for direction and a bit of sanity amidst the chaos.

They’ve both cultivated personalities and personas that revolve around appearing and seeming in control and unperturbed whatever is happening. It’s like their whole Thing.

So the presentation is not only about clothes and make up, it’s about who they are deep down as people. The fact that they’re always the strong ones. Always the ones in control. Always the ones who aren’t panicking despite the fact that everything’s on fucking fire.

They’re people that others EXPECT to behave a certain way. There’s a predictability to them. A dependability. In Wit’s case, it’s that you can rely on him to be esoteric, confusing, and unpredictable, but still.

There’s a pressure in that. There’s a pressure in always being THAT put together. In always being THAT on top of things. In always being THAT person who can never break down screaming when things go wrong because that’s not who they are and not what people expect. They have to be more than that. They have to be BETTER than that.

They’re also people that other characters tend to other/deify. Shallan remarks several times about Jasnah being inhuman/beyond ordinary people, and even goes so far as to compare her to the divine, despite her being a heretic.

Wit, meanwhile, gets asked if he’s a Herald, has that odd air of always knowing things that he shouldn’t, and being in places he shouldn’t at the right times.

They’re both ‘positively’ outcast. And I don’t mean that in an overly posh English way and being positively outcast, darling. What I mean is that, instead of being shunted outside of the circle of normality, they’re both placed on pedestals above it. Which is a different sort of outcast, but comes with its own package of problems.

And this brings us to: vulnerability. Because they’ve bonded over this presentation thing, but they’ve ALSO bonded over the fact that they’ve found someone they don’t have to do that around all the time. Someone they can let their guard down with and just be themselves. Someone they don’t have to present and perform for. Someone they can just be HUMAN with.

So we’re going to look more closely at the clothing aspect of this. Because there’s symbolism here, and it deeply interests me. With a focus on Jasnah, because Wit’s a mystery by design, and Jasnah’s got some more intentional stuff going on here I feel, re narrative symbolism.

So from the moment we’re introduced to her, Jasnah always looks immaculate. She always looks perfectly put together. Shallan remarks multiple times on her havah, on her make up, on the intricate and perfectly done braids of her hair. Which is a little bit gay on Shallan’s part (which is valid) but it’s also significant, symbolically.

I talked already about Jasnah’s idea of ‘power is an illusion of perception’, but I feel it’s worth coming back to. Both because of how much it shapes Shallan, but also how much it shapes Jasnah, and informs what we know about her.

Jasnah is ALWAYS put together. She is ALWAYS perfectly made up, the absolute ideal of the perfect Alethi princess. Even in scenes of distress or ‘downtime’ scenes - such as waiting for Shallan in the hospital, or visiting her after her betrayal, or the relatively more relaxed setting being on board the Wind’s Pleasure. The text makes a point to note that Jasnah is perfectly done up and presenting exactly as she wishes.

The times we see slips in that are DEEPLY interesting to me.

The first one I want to look at, briefly, is That Controversial Scene in the way of kings, where Jasnah uses Soulcasting to kill the men who attacked her and Shallan in the alley.

Just prior to this we see her bathing, where Shallan still remarks on how composed Jasnah is. This is also part of her presentation. She’s entirely naked, but that illusion is still up. She’s still more in control than other people are fully clothed.

What I find interesting is the specific note that Jasnah does not take the time to have her hair braided before she sets out with Shallan. It’s mentioned as being unbound a few times.

Symbolically, I like this, because I feel like it speaks to a slight loosening of her usual control. There’s something about that scenario that sets Jasnah on edge. There’s something about it that makes her feel.

Besides, men like those…” There was something in her voice, an edge Shallan had never heard before.

What was done to you? Shallan wondered with horror. And who did it?

Shallan is unnerved because Jasnah seems calm. But I get the sense, from this line, and from the intense repetition of how unnaturally composed Jasnah appears, that her composure is a front. And that if we had her perspective on this scene, it would look very different from how Shallan imagines it.

There’s something driving her here. Something beyond the logic she explains to Shallan, about making the city safer, about the guards not doing anything, about how innocent women will not be able to protect themselves from this, and how she wanted those men gone. All of which I believe is true, but that line from Shallan, and the way in which Jasnah goes about this...It feels personal. There’s something else going on behind the scenes that we don’t know or understand.

Regardless. This is the first time we see Jasnah step out of the cultured, reserved, stoic scholar. She’s something other than an ideal Alethi princess and studious mentor in this scene. And the detail of her hair being unbound, contained, wild, for the first time since we’ve met her feels..Significant. It’s an important detail to linger on, I think.

Which brings us to the next exception to Jasnah’s exceptional presentation rule: her murder!

Even in the scene before where we see Jasnah, arguably, the most vulnerable that we’ve seen her, in the cabin when Shallan confronts her about her fear of the upcoming apocalypse. It’s only a moment. Only a moment of genuine emotion that Shallan manages to glimpse before the mask comes back.

This was not the Jasnah that Shallan was accustomed to seeing. The confidence had been overwhelmed by exhaustion, the poise replaced by worry. Jasnah started to write something, but stopped after just a few words. She set down the pen, closing her eyes and massaging her temples. A few dizzy-looking spren, like jets of dust rising into the air, appeared around Jasnah’s head. Exhaustionspren.

Shallan pulled back, suddenly feeling as if she’d intruded upon an intimate moment. Jasnah with her defenses down. Shallan began to creep away, but a voice from the floor suddenly said, “Truth!”

Startled, Jasnah looked up, eyes finding Shallan—who, of course, blushed furiously.

Jasnah turned her eyes down toward Pattern on the floor, then reset her mask, sitting up with proper posture. “Yes, child?”

The text notes in this segment that Jasnah’s poise and presentation is a mask, but it also describes it as her ‘defenses’. This is her armour. It stops people looking too close. It stops them reading her emotion, her weaknesses. This is also one of very few times we see Jasnah attracting spren in the series.

However, even in this scene, clearly exhausted, overworked, and overwhelmed, Jasnah remains perfectly put together. All of her armour, her immaculate havah, her make-up, her braids, are all in place. Even in this moment.

Which makes a stark contrast to the next scene we find her in where she’s dressed only in a “thin nightgown”, and is lying on the floor with a sword in her chest. The vulnerability of unexpected assassination.

When next we see Jasnah, in the epilogue, is when she’s freshly spat out of Shadesmar after an apparently harrowing ordeal.

Her clothing was ragged, her hair formed into a single utilitarian braid, her face lashed with burns. She’d once worn a fine dress, but that was tattered. She’d hemmed it at the knees and had sewn herself a glove out of something improvised. Curiously, she wore a kind of leather bandolier and a backpack. He doubted she’d had either one when her journey had begun.

Even in another plane, apparently being hounded and in fear of her life, she’s managed to acquire some appropriate clothing, a glove, and a damn bandolier. Because of course she has. Perception. Iconic.

After that we don’t see her out of anything beyond her famous havah-braids-make up combo. Even when she’s with her family, and Navani remarks in her setting down the mask of the queen, she remains masked. There are still defences up. She never fully lets her family in on her plans, or her thoughts and fears.

No, the next time we see her symbolically, and emotionally, vulnerable: is with Wit. Perhaps for the first time, fully, without ANY of her usual masks and pretences, and under her own steam and of her own volition.

Locked away in a central room on the second level—sharing no walls with the outside, alone save for Wit’s company—she could finally let herself relax.

She DELIBERATELY picks a house with a second floor, and an interior room with no outside walls, with multiple fabrial traps to warn of assassins or intruders. But she manages to relax in Wit’s company. There’s a trust there. An understanding. A much needed vulnerability.

Clothing wise, in this scene Jasnah is dressed only in a nightgown and a dressing gown, and is carefully noted to have her safehand uncovered. Jasnah isn’t Vorin, strictly speaking, but she’s still been raised her entire life in a society that views safehands as something inherently sexual/to be hidden. So much so that she takes the time and care to sew herself a safehand glove while in Shadesmar. So all of this is a fairly Big Deal. It’s a Big Deal for anyone. For Jasnah? More miraculous than Kaladin giggling.

Jasnah Kholin is not vulnerable. Jasnah Kholin is never unguarded. Jasnah Kholin never willingly lets her guard down. Jasnah Kholin is absolutely as paranoid as Elhokar, if not more so.

She’s made herself a BUNKER at this point. She’s in an interior room, surrounded by traps, there’s spheres sewn into her dressing gown, and she has a wholeass BOAT waiting for her in Shadesmar JUST IN CASE someone manages to get through: guards, an entire BUILDING, multiple rigged traps, then her, with her plate, her blade, her Soulcasting ability, and all of her wit and skill, to somehow manage to wound her badly enough that she has to retreat to Shadesmar.

This woman does not do trust. She does not do vulnerability. To the point that it is absolutely 1000000% a fault. This IS Jasnah’s greatest flaw. Her isolation. Her mistrust. Her paranoia.

Anyone that comes into her life she’s suspicious of. She blithely warns Shallan about Kabsal stating he’s only using her to get close to Jasnah to steal from her/kill her.

We dismiss this, and look at it as brilliance/Jasnah knowing all, because she’s right. But it’s flawed brilliance. Because it’s the ‘broken clock’ fallacy, you know? If you suspect EVERYONE around you of being an assassin...Well, some of them will be.

Jasnah’s paranoia is another meta, however. But the point here is that: Jasnah doesn’t do anything by halves. She has an ideal for how she wants to live her life and she COMMITS to it. And part of that is her presentation, and the perception she projects, to an unhealthy degree, even around trusted family.

So the fact she has found someone she can relax all of her INCREDIBLY strict and overzealous masking and enforced personal presentation? Is both very significant in terms of her relationship with Wit, but also herSELF?

Because Jasnah NEEDS this. She needs it like Kaladin needs therapy yesterday.

Jasnah is a “strong independent woman” but if you double down on that idea, and follow it up with “Jasnah is a strong independent woman who doesn’t need a man/anyone” then you are absolutely 1000% missing the whole entire point of her character.

All the Stormlight characters are deconstructions of classical fantasy tropes, to varying extents.

Jasnah is the ‘strong independent woman’ trope except asking what if you ACTUALLY apply that to an actual human person? What would that do to them? How would that hurt them? And what it does is everything Jasnah is.

Which has been done so MASTERFULLY because we look at all of these flaws, and these objectively negative things that she does to cope with having this label slapped onto her, and we golf clap quietly in a corner and go ‘wow that’s so badass, that’s so cool, let’s totally romantacise all of these actually deeply worrying coping mechanisms and not look at them at all until Brandon smashes us in the face with them like a baseball bat with the nails of Jasnah’s trauma pounded into it’.

Okay maybe that was SLIGHTLY dramatic. But my point is: Jasnah’s apparent omniscience can also be looked at as extreme paranoia and mistrust.

Her independence and ability to ‘get shit done’ on her own, to the point she doesn’t tell another living soul about the LITERAL APOCALYPSE for more than HALF A DECADE is actually self-inflicted dangerous isolation.

Her constantly being poised, and on her game, and never displaying any emotion is actually extreme repression, to the point her own MOTHER describes her as ‘having the empathy of a corpse’.

Her consistent othering by all of the other characters, from her ward to her mother, deifying her, and othering her, and considering her immortal is actually putting her on a pedestal and cramming an INCREDIBLE amount of pressure to reach an impossible, unattainable, and inhuman level of perfection that becomes so normalised and commonplace that her return from the dead is just like ‘well yeah that’s just Jasnah’.

And all of these things are INCREDIBLY unhealthy!!! They’re not something any real person should have to do just to exist. Especially not in the middle of an apocalypse. When her father was killed in front of her. And then her brother was murdered. And the apocalypse she tried to warn everyone about is happening. And she’s the most experienced Radiant. And she’s also suddenly a queen of her kingdom. Which has been taken over by the enemy btw. And they’re in the middle of a war. And people are dying. And she’s responsible for those people dying. But also some of her highprinces are treacherous bastards. And oh look here’s a couple of slightly mad Heralds she’s taken charge of and- OH MY GOD PLEASE LET HER NAP!?

Again. Slight hyperbole on my end but I feel like I’m #Justified. The point is, her suddenly, after FOUR books, having a single person that she can confide in, and be vulnerable with, and admit she’s afraid, and uncertain, and doesn’t know what she’s doing, and isn’t sure she can actually do this, is not ~anti-feminist~ and it’s not “out of character” and it’s not damaging her ideal it’s actually deeply positive, and healthy, and a symptom of Character Growth.

Jasnah’s is choosing Wit. With her eyes wide open. And she has some reservations about things, because she’s JASNAH, of course she does. But she listens to him. She confides in him. She lets him see HER. She lets him help HER. She admits that she needs that help. She actually says to him, out loud, with full human words, to his face, right in front of him, that she’s frightened. SHE ADMITS THIS!!! Jasnah’s having all this stealth background character development that y’all are sleeping on but I am personally deeply hype about.

And it’s because Wit UNDERSTANDS her. And she understands him. And this is really the crux and core of this whole relationship for me, you know? This whole idea around them always being The Strong One. and finally FINALLY (for him, too) having someone that they don’t have to be strong for. Or regal. Or composed. Or poised. Or in control. Or even knowing what the fuck they’re doing.

She can just...Be. She can ask questions. And show uncertainty. And admit to fear. And to doubt, of herself, of the other Radiants, of humanity in general. And have someone to look to, when everyone is ALWAYS looking at her.

It’s the beginning of an actual support system. Because she needs this SO badly. Because she has her family but she also...Doesn’t have her family? She looks after them. She protects them. From assassins, and then from what was happening in the world/her role in it. Because there’s that line in Oathbringer that she has, about people loving her but still hurting her.

Navani mentions that after she hit adolescence (and after her parents locked her in a dark room and let her scream herself hoarse because they called her mad, lol) she withdrew. And she no longer asked questions. And she no longer wanted a mother, or a support figure, or someone to take care of her. She rejected all notions of that. Because there was something broken there. That trust was gone. And Jasnah will set aside the crown, and the mask of the queen around her family, but she is only fully vulnerable, and fully HERSELF with Wit.

And I cannot understate (i feel like I’m doing a Good Job of not understating this here people) how absolutely fucking ESSENTIAL that is.

Jasnah is NOT a machine. She is not a divine being beyond trauma and pain. She is a human being who has suffered, and who has responses to this.

Jasnah accepting Wit’s support and companionship is as big a step in processing and healing from her trauma as Kaladin accepting he can’t protect everyone and does not deserve to always carry that guilt.

I don’t care if you don’t like the ship. I don’t care if you think it was rushed (there was...a year long time skip. Things did not remain in stasis. Things changed. This is an interesting narrative device bringing us into them and letting us extrapolate backwards). I don’t care if you hate the bones of Hoid and never want to see him on screen: I DON’T CARE.

If you have any respect and regard for Jasnah as a character I need you to acknowledge that this relationship is a positive and healthy thing for her. I need you to see that it’s a step forwards. I need you to see that, from a purely narrative standpoint: this is a thing that should be celebrated for her.

In terms of Wit, too, this is a good thing. I am not about one-sided relationships where only one person is getting something out of it. Even when that one person is the light of my life Jasnah Kholin who deserves all the things ever.

For all his talk of frivolity, he knew exactly how to present himself. It was something they’d bonded over.

Coming back to this RoW quote let me make things as abundantly clear as possible re why I’ve bonded over this ship: They’re kindred spirits. They understand each other. In a way that no-one else has understood them for Jasnah possibly ever, for Wit in a very very very very very very very very very long time.

They’re both brilliant. They’re both intellectually at the pinnacle of humanity. They both know that. They’re also both damaged. They both cover up that damage with a carefully crafted presentation. Jasnah’s is regal composure and Wit’s flamboyant nonchalance, but it’s a mask in both cases.

They understand each other. And they understand the need to have what they’ve found in one another: someone they don’t have to be that way around. Someone they can just be with. Someone who understands why they have to be that way with everyone else; but can give them the freedom to be themselves.

Such parallel. Much power. Very choice.

I was gonna talk about Other Stuff in this meta but lol. 4k words of clothes screaming later and I feel like maybe this should be part 1 of an ongoing saga. Ahem.

The take away from this is: I totally understand why Brandon put these two characters together. For the amount of characters he has, he actually has relatively few romantic relationships. None of them are done on a whim, and they’re always healthy, mutual, and positive for both characters. They make sense, in short.

And these two as a pairing makes sense. On more than a “”””business transaction””””” level of them wanting and getting information out of one another. It makes sense even if there was no Desolation, and no threat to the world, and they were two randomers who met in a tavern and connected.

There’s a personal connection there. There’s an intimacy, and an understanding, and a sense of looking into another person’s eyes and saying ‘yes. You know. You feel it too’. They go through life in much the same way - standing out, never quite fitting, never finding anyone on their level that can relate to them or compete with them or challenge them.

They have someone who can fulfil them. Someone who can actually meet and exceed their abilities for once. But equally someone who can ground them, and meet them at their lowest point, and allow and even encourage that vulnerability.

TL;DR: this relationship is positive for both characters, and healthy, and important for both and this is a hill I WILL fucking die upon. Just watch me.

More metas to follow. Bc I have more to say. Not as long as this one, in all likelihood, bc I feel like this is the Lynchpin argument for this pair. But still. More to say.

171 notes · View notes

theartofdreaming1 · 3 years

Photo

As usual, my thoughts regarding this week’s prompts and random thoughts on chapters 25-27 are below the cut.

heart

The imagery that really caught my attention this time was Peeta pointing out the changes in the moon to Katniss: The only indication of the passage of time lies in the heavens, the subtle shift of the moon. So Peeta begins pointing it out to me, insisting I acknowledge its progress and sometimes, for just a moment I feel a flicker of hope before the agony of the night engulfs me again. - So for one, we see another example of Peeta focusing on the small details in life (which I’ve previously hypothesized to being an important element in his recovery from his hijacking) as well as Peeta being the one to give Katniss hope, even if it’s just for a brief moment. Also, it’s a nice parallel to Katniss looking at the moon and desperately wishing for it to be “her moon” back in chapter 23. As a nocturnal person, I also love watching the moon from my living room window🌙

mind

Hmmh, I don’t think that Katniss and Peeta’s win was predetermined - although I do believe that by introducing the romantic angle, they significantly improved their odds. A Career winning the Games is not really that special and exciting, since it happens so often (although Careers generally satisfy that excitement for violence/blood/gore, that plenty of Capitol people seem to share). As a volunteer from District 12, who achieved an extremely good training score and proved herself to be very capable in the arena already, Katniss definitely had an edge by playing into the classic underdog story, which offered another exciting “narrative” for the Capitolites to follow - that, coupled (heh) with the romance angle Peeta introduced? Katniss (and Peeta) definitely had the entertainment (and excitement through novelty) factor on their side. Ironically, Cato’s chances of winning were not as good as he expected, precisely because he was playing it by the book.

soul

Poor Peeta (and Katniss), it hurts that their relationship was in such a rocky place by the end of the book. Especially those weeks right after the end of Book 1, when there were still cameras around District 12 and they had to pretend while hurting must have sucked big time🥺

Chapter 25

Ugh, the muttations are just so unsettling... *shudder*

Honestly, I’m just so impressed by Peeta’s presence of mind to draw that X on Cato’s hand, after he had just most of his calf ripped off, only to be grabbed and put in a headlock by Cato! He and Katniss work insanely well under pressure

God, Cato’s death is just so gruesome and awful... In the end, his “gift” from the Feast doesn’t help him win at all, but instead ends up prolonging his suffering a cruel amount... I wonder if in general these “gifts” come with a string attached (aside from the expected danger of trying to get them, I mean) - because the Gamemakers also intend for Katniss’s “gift” (medicine for Peeta) to force an even more cruel outcome on her - saving him from blood poisoning only to be forced into killing him herself... 🤔

I’m not sure if this is exactly medical protocol, but I’m terrified that if he drifts off he’ll never wake again. “Are you cold?” he asks. He unzips his jacket and I press against him as he fastens it around me. - Katniss is terrified of the idea of Peeta dying; at the same time, Peeta worries about her freezing - I can’t with these two 😩

Peeta begins to doze off now, and each time he does, I find myself yelling his name louder and louder because if he goes and dies on me now, I know I’ll go completely insane. He’s fighting it, probably more for me than for him - Katniss can’t lose any more people she cares about 😢; on a different note, Peeta fighting his unconsciousness “probably more for [Katniss] than for him” points out one of the crucial elements Katniss brings into Peeta’s life - she is that someone for whom he will fight - including for his own life and well-being - even when it feels easier to give up... Having that person in your life that keeps you going can make all the difference - if Katniss hadn’t had Prim and promised her “to really, really try” to win (and later also made Rue the same promise), I’m not sure she would have made it this far; it’s the thought of Prim anxiously watching her after Rue’s death, that forces Katniss to keep going, to not give in to despair after that particular traumatic event - Peeta, on the other hand, didn’t really have that kind of person in his life, as he will point out on the beach in CF (and Katniss acknowledges herself that the only person who will be devasted if Peeta dies is her)... that is not to say that neither Katniss nor Peeta aren’t fighters on their own - but it helps to have someone that inspires you to not give up

the adrenaline pumping through my body would never allow me to follow him, so I can’t let him go. I just can’t. - We’ll see the mirrored version of this by the end of Mockinjay

Pity, not vengeance, sends my arrow flying into [Cato’s] skull. - Another act of rebellion, technically (sure, this can be spun as Katniss killing Cato so she and Peeta may win - before Peeta dies from blood loss - but we know better - Katniss’s motivation was compassion for her supposed enemy)

We inch down to the tail of the horn and fall to the ground. If the stiffness in my limbs is this bad, how can Peeta even move? - Peeta is tough as nails, yo!

Before I am even aware of my actions, my bow is loaded with the arrow pointed straight at his heart [...] I drop my weapons and take a step back, my face burning in what can only be shame. “No,” he says. “Do it.” [...] “I can’t,” I say, “I won’t.” - In spite of her initial reflex, Katniss chooses Peeta/ chooses not to kill him; it’s a recurring theme in their relationship (despite her wariness of others, she chooses to open up to Peeta eventually; although she vowed to never marry and have children, she’ll choose to have a family with Peeta); also, my psychology-brain just noticed how this moment illustrates how harmful thoughts/impulses don’t have to determine your actions and are not an indicator of who you are - it’s about what you choose to do

“You’re not leaving me here alone,” I say. Because if he dies, I’ll never go home, not really. I’ll spend the rest of my life in this areny trying to think my way out. - Again, makes me think of MJ; also, I think that from this point onwards, Katniss and Peeta are officially linked together forever; the bond they forged during this traumatic experience will connect them to each other until the day they die

“On the count of three?” Peeta leans down and kisses me once, very gently. “The count of three,” he says. - My heart😭

Chapter 26

... while our muscles are immobile, nothing is preventing the blood from draining out of Peeta’s leg. Sure enough, the minute the door closes behind us and the current stops, he slumps to the floor unconscious [...] Through the glass, I see the doctors working feverishly on Peeta, their brows creased in concentration [...] I’m not sure, but I think his heart stops twice. - Peeta was in such a bad shape by the end of the Games; I’m still kinda salty that the movie really glossed over this fact :/

... they’re taking Peeta but leaving me behind the door. I start hurling myself against the glass, shrieking and I think I just catch a glimpse of pink hair - it must be Effie, it has to be Effie coming to my rescue - when the needle jabs me from behind. - Oh geez, in Catching Fire Katniss will also get sedated in a hovercraft because she’s upset about being separated from Peeta 😢 (also, Katniss thinking that Effie is coming to her rescue 😭)

While she [Lavinia, the avox] adjusts my pillows, I risk one question. I say it out loud, as clearly as my rusty voice will allow, so nothing will seem secretive. “Did Peeta make it?” She gives me a nod, and as she slips a spoon into my hand, I feel the pressure of friendship. - Katniss is so considerate of Lavinia’s situation, and Lavinia’s giving her a gesture of comfort and support; they’ve never been able to have a proper conversation (Katniss doesn’t even know Lavinia’s name), but still they managed to build up such a bond - compassion certainly is a strong thing to behold 😭 (and this whole scene is just through and through about compassion, with Katniss asking how Peeta is doing!)

Home! Prim and my mother! Gale! Even the thought of Prim’s scruffy old cat makes me smile. Soon I will be home! - Katniss is so excited to see her home and her loved ones again

I want to get out of this bed. To see Peeta and Cinna - Aww, the two people she grew closest to over the course of the past weeks (Haymitch will be added to that list in just a smidge)

Or do I hear a man’s voice yelling? Not in the Capitol accent, but in the rougher cadences of home. And I can’t help having a vague, comforting feeling that someone is looking out for me. - Thank God for Haymitch!

And behind one of them [doors] must be Peeta. Now that I’m conscious and moving, I’m growing more and more anxious about him [...] “Peeta!” I call out, since there’s no one to ask - Katniss is sick with worry over Peeta; romantic feelings or not, she cares so fricking much for him by now!

I run for them [Effie, Haymitch, and Cinna] and surprise even myself when I launch into Haymitch’s arms first. When he whispers in my ear, “Nice job, sweetheart,” it doesn’t sound sarcastic. - These reunion scenes are so intense and heartwarming! And then Katniss asks about Portia and Peeta because their presence would make this scene complete

when I asks for seconds, I’m refused. “No, no, no. They don’t want it all coming back up on the stage,” says Octavia, but she secretly slips me an extra roll under the table to let me know she’s on my side - It’s moments like these that help humanize Katniss’s prep team - they might be shallow, they might be completely oblivious and ignorant, but they aren’t that bad [of course, the prep team chattering about their mundane lives while talking about the event that ended with the deaths of 22 children shortly after, leaves a bad taste in our mouths]

I immediately notice the padding over my breasts, adding curves that hunger has stolen from my body. My hands go to my chest and I frown. “I know,” says Cinna before I can object. “But the Gamemakers wanted to alter you surgically. Haymitch had a huge fight with them over it. This was the compromise.” - God, the idea that the Gamemakers wanted to give a boob job to an unconscious, malnourished 16-year-old girl makes me sick 🤢 (Also, what’s the flipping deal about boobs?! As a pretty flat-chested gal, I’ve always been annoyed that there are barely any bras my cup size that are not push-up ones; I’m not self-conscious about it, so stop making me pretend that I’m bustier than I actually am!)

“I thought it’d be something more... sophisticated-looking,” I say. “I thought Peeta would like this better,” he [Cinna] answers carefully. Peeta? No, it’s not about Peeta. It’s about the Capitol and the Gamemakers and the audience. Although I do not yet understand Cinna’s design, it’s a reminder the Games are not quite finished. - Ugh, that sinking feeling when Katniss and the reader realize that the Games are still not over... Sidenote: Peeta flirted up a storm with grimy, bloodied Katniss and complimented her when she wore Cinna’s first, absolutely badass costume (”You should wear flames more often”)... Katniss’s girlish outfit has nothing to do with Peeta and she knows it... Cinna could have dressed Katniss up in a trash bag and Peeta would have been smitten - although a trash bag by Cinna would probably still look pretty good ;)

“How about a hug for luck?” Okay, that’s an odd request from Haymitch but, after all we are victors. Maybe a hug for luck is in order. - Aww, Katniss actually wouldn’t have minded giving Haymitch a hug just because - sadly, this is about survival tips instead :/

But what was it Haymitch said when I asked it he had told Peeta the situation? That he had to pretend to be desperately in love? “Don’t have to. He’s already there.” Already thinking ahead of me in the Games again and well aware of the danger we’re in? Or... already desperately in love? I don’t know. I haven’t even begun to separate out my feelings about Peeta. It’s too complicated. - Poor Katniss... she didn’t have the time and peace of mind to sort out her feelings regarding Peeta before they all got tied up and muddled with her need for survival. Now she’ll be having an even harder time trying to untangle that mess :(

Chapter 27

Then there’s Peeta just a few yards away. He looks so clean and healthy and beautiful, I can hardly recognize him. But his smile is the same whether in mud or in the Capitol and when I see it, I take about three steps and fling myself into his arms [...] He rights himself and we just cling to each other while the audience goes insane. He’s kissing me and all the time I’m thinking, Do you know? Do you know how much danger we’re in? After about ten minutes of this, Caesar Flickerman taps on his choulder to continue the show, and Peeta just pushes him aside without even glancing at him. - Man, their reunion here always gets me - it would be so fricking good if Katniss didn’t have to worry about their potential doom 😒😔 - she barely has time to just be happy to see Peeta alive and well before slipping back into survival mode while Peeta is just genuinely thrilled to have her in his arms, completely unaware of the pressure and immediate danger Katniss experiences in this moment... It hurts so bad

I’m with Katniss - How did the previous victors endure rewatching those horrible moments from the Games?! I guess because they had to, but oof... I think I’d just completely shut down, blocking out the footage shown, ugh

But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her [Rue] in flowers. Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion. - In such a callous and cruel place as Panem, any act of compassion can be regarded as rebellion, it’s crazy. In a place filled with apathy, hedonism, greed, and cruelty, the most radical things you can exhibit are love, kindness, and respect!

A wave of gratitude to the filmmakers sweeps over me when they end not with the announcement of our victory, but with me pounding on the glass door of the hovercraft, screaming Peeta’s name as they try to revive him. In terms of survival, it’s my best moment all night. - Again, another instance where Katniss’s genuine feelings/reactions to Peeta are get muddled with her need for survival

The one thing I never do is let go of Peeta’s hand. - irrevocably linked with each other

Despite Haymitch’s running interference, I’m determined to see Peeta privately. - Katniss just wants to have an honest and open talk with Peeta 😢 (I get where Haymitch is coming from, and maybe in this instance it’s the right call, but we’ll see a similar situation in the beginning of CF when Haymitch advises Katniss not to tell Peeta about President Snow’s visit and that time, it doesn’t go so well...)

Then Peeta’s there looking handsome in red and white - for someone who isn’t sure whether she’s into him or not, Katniss sure mentions how good Peeta’s looking a lot 😏

“Well, there’s just this and we go home. Then he can’t watch us all the time,” says Peeta. - 👀👀 Peeta is so thirsty here; reminds me of when he pulled Katniss close to him in the cave before they set out to hunt... He clearly believes she’s also “already there” regarding their relationship; he’s never this “suggestive” (can’t think of a better word right now) with her once she lets him know that she doesn’t really know how she feels about him - I feel a sort of shiver run through me and there’s no time to analyze why - Katniss totally isn’t averse to what Peeta’s suggesting here, either (though there’s probably also a healthy amount of fear mixed in with the thrill of being wanted - letting people in can be terrifying)

I can feel Peeta press his forehead into my temple and he asks, “So now that you’ve got me, what are you going to do with me?” I turn in to him. “Put you somewhere you can’t get hurt.” And when he kisses me, people in the room actually sigh. - It’s me; I’m people 🙋🏼‍♀️ (also, the “turn in to him”?!?!! it just suggests such a closeness, I can’t-)

Katniss burying her face in Peeta’s shirt when she’s afraid she might cry learning that he lost his leg 🥺 (how awful it must be to be constantly on display while you’re dealing with your private feelings, ugh)

“... The moment when you pulled out those berries. What was going on in your mind... hm?” [...] It seems to call for a big, dramatic speech, but all I get out is one almost inaudible sentences. “I don’t know, I just... couldn’t bear the thought of... being without him.” - It might not be a super eloquent way to put what she was supposed to say, but this way, Katniss is being perfectly honest (and frankly, if she’d had the chance to properly process her feelings, she would have been able to voice this sentiment with less hesitation)

I go back to my room to collect a few things and find there’s nothing to take but the mockingjay pin Madge gave me. Someone returned it to my room after the Games. - For one, Katniss didn’t think of that pin (again), but also - was the pin returned to her simply because it’s standard procedure or did someone (like Plutarch, for example) arrange for Katniss to get the pin back, to keep her connection to this symbol going?

I stare in the mirror as I try to remember who I am and who I am not. - Poor Katniss! She’s been through so much, experienced so many traumatic events in short succession recently (aside from the trauma she already had), already had problems defining her identity beyond sheer survival, and now the Capitol also keeps pushing an identity onto her and a romantic relationship, when she hadn’t even had the chance to figure out how she felt about that yet

“... Haymitch has been coaching me through the last few days. So I didn’t make it worse,” I say. “Coaching you? But not me,” says Peeta. “He knew you were smart enough to get it right,” I say. “I didn’t know there was anything to get right,” says Peeta. - Oh boy. It’s always so painful to see Peeta realize that he’s been completely out of the loop; again, we’ll see how Katniss and Haymitch adopt a similar strategy in the beginning of CF: banking on Peeta’s good social skills and eloquence and keeping him in the dark. In a way, it’s a sort of compliment they pay to Peeta for being good with people, but, by not telling him, they are also using him for their purpose (which is motivated by caring for and wanting to protect Peeta, but still). Peeta is right to be upset about it - he has always been very clear about not wanting to be used as a piece in anyone’s games, really. And, as we will see later in CF, they are way more effective as a team when they are open and honest with each other.

“It was all for the Games,” Peeta says. “How you acted.” “Not all of it,” I say, tightly holding on to my flowers. “Then how much? No, forget that. I guess the real question is what’s going to be left when we get home?” he says. “I don’t know. The closer we get to District Twelve, the more confused I get,” I say. He waits, for further explanation, but none’s forthcoming. “Well, let me know when you work it out,” he says, and the pain in his voice is palpable. - It’s just so goddamn painful😢 They’ve both been done so dirty by that forced star-crossed lovers of Distrct 12 routine. (Sidenote: I appreciate that Peeta actually gives Katniss the chance to explain herself here - still, it’s too much to deal with on the spot so I can understand why Katniss ended up dropping the ball, even though it’s frustrating to read.)

That it’s not good loving me because I’m never going to get married anyway and he’d just end up hating me later instead of sooner. That if I do have feelings for him, it doesn’t matter because I’ll never be able to afford the kind of love that leads to a family, to children. And how can he? How can he after what we’ve just been through? - Oh Katniss, you certainly are skipping a couple of steps here; I’m pretty sure there are some options in between dating and being married with kids you could look into. Also, she’s just assuming that this is what Peeta wants, but she doesn’t know that at all - As someone who also has this stupid habit of imagining how whole conversations could possibly transpire and then resigning myself to the hypothetical outcome of said imagined conversation instead of actually having them: Don’t do that. ‘Never assume - it makes an ASS out of U and ME.’

I see Peeta extend his hand. I look at him, unsure. “One more time? For the audience?” he says. His voice isn’ t angry. It’s hollow, which is worse. Already the boy with the bread is slipping away from me. I take his hand, holding it tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment when I will finally have to let go. - Ma babies! They are both so hurt and both just want to be with each other 😭 But they’ll need some time apart, to figure things out before they can do that.

#thgagain #thg #hunger games #everlark #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark #my sketches and drawings #thg meta

64 notes · View notes

everythingsinred · 3 years

Text

Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Natsume (pt. 20)

PART TWENTY! I've written thousands and thousands of words about this particular character's love. That's really crazy. And you guys read thousands and thousands of words! And we're not even done yet!

We will talk about the second half of this "gap arc", including one of my favorite chapters, and then the school will turn upside down, as we will see in the next part.

Chapter Ninety-Three

Mikan was so exhausted saving Narumi from Persona’s alice that she ended up hospitalized. Nobody else seems to know much of what really happened except Natsume, who spends so much time in the hospital these days that it would have been more surprising if he didn’t know she was there too.

Besides, Natsume knows so much about Mikan. He knows about her mom and that the ESP is interested in Mikan possibly possessing the stealing alice. He knows that she’s in danger. He’s vigilant, as I’ve said, and this vigilance means absorbing all possible information. He overhears Narumi warning Mikan to keep her new alice a secret, and Natsume gets confirmation that Mikan does indeed have the stealing alice, that Narumi knows and wants to protect Mikan too, and that this information could possibly get to the ESP if they’re not careful.

Dead man walking. Or rather... dead boy walking.

He walks away from her room, unseen, coughing. He walks down a hall of doctors and patients and nurses and he doesn’t stand out at all. Natsume’s presence in the hospital is so normal that nobody bats an eye anymore. Kaname is hospitalized for long stretches of time, as we shall continue to see, but Natsume merely goes to the hospital for limited periods of bed rest and for getting huge bags of medicine to take before bed so he doesn’t accidentally pass away in his sleep. Natsume might be in just as much need as Kaname for long periods of hospitalization, but he can’t for two reasons.

One, the school absolutely does not want that. They want their favorite child soldier to be always at the ready. He can’t be at their beck and call at all times if he’s cooped up in a hospital bed. He needs to be where they can grab him easily, and pumping him full of medicine and pretending that’s enough for him is the most they will do.

Two, Natsume absolutely does not want that. Mikan is in more danger than ever, and being sequestered in a hospital without seeing anyone leaves her alone and unprotected. How is he supposed to spy on the ESP and Persona for information on Mikan if he’s hospitalized? He needs to be free as a bird, just like they want him to be, so that he can be at Mikan’s beck and call. At the slightest threat, he will be there for her.

Later, when Bear follows Mikan around while Kaname is sicker than ever, Koko can discern that Bear wants Mikan to steal Kaname’s alice from inside of him. Many people are onlooking, and Natsume has a shocked expression, not because he didn’t know that Mikan has the stealing alice, but because he’s concerned for what consequences may come if more people find out. If the ESP comes to hear any of this, serious issues will arise. Things are already dangerous enough, but if the ESP finds out, then turmoil will come sooner than later.

This is an "Oh, shit" moment! How terrible.

Things get worse when the rumors about Mikan’s alice spread through the upper divisions. Mikan gets chased by upperclassmen who want her to steal their alices because they think their star rank will go up if they can catch her in the act. The ESP seems to have purposefully spread such a rumor in order to speed things along. He wants to push Mikan into a corner, perhaps force her into using her alice and exposing herself, so that he has an excuse to swoop in and take her into his custody.

We see a panel of Natsume hearing the news of the middle schoolers’ pursuit of Mikan and he’s just as shocked as before. Her life is endlessly hectic in the worst way. She is always under attack from rumors and speculation and being honest about her alice will only end poorly for her. This is the last glimpse we get of him this chapter, but his reactions, despite the fact that he says nothing this whole time, is enough to give hints to where his mind is right now. His priorities and concerns are all made clear, building up to when he will eventually be quite needed.

Chapter Ninety-Four

Class B is getting ready for swimming lessons in P.E. Most of the class, especially Mikan, are excited for this.

There’s not much Natsume in this chapter either, but we can see him on the poolside, obviously not well enough to swim. Swimming is one of the most physically taxing exercises because of how much it requires you to use your full body. Natsume can’t waste what little energy he has on P.E. when he has missions to do. Those are much more important.

Mikan may get occasionally down or sad about her alice and the uncomfortable state of things, but Ruka is there to cheer her up and play water polo with her. Natsume simply looks on.

Tsubasa spots him, and instantly looks troubled. He and Natsume are not just both in the DA class now, they’re also going on many of the same missions. He’s also the only one who knows the truth about Natsume’s alice shape, and how much the taxing missions affect his body. Seeing Natsume sit on the side and not join in with the others is not a good sign. He’s not doing well.

Fun and games are over! It was never gonna last long anyway!

The panel of everyone having fun while Natsume coughs by himself, isolated from everyone, brings to mind the page from Chapter Nine, so long ago. The last page of that chapter has Natsume being sent on a mission, in stark contrast to the final panel of the rest of the class having fun and bonding over dodgeball.

He could never join in for long was the message we got then, and it’s not any less true now. Natsume let himself get attached to Class B and to Mikan in particular but his fun happy times of joining in on the fun were never meant to last. He can’t play the sax anymore. He can’t run around with the rest of them. Luna was a warning to him as much as she was to Mikan. His time is running out and his life will always be too different from the rest of theirs. He will always be shrouded in darkness and an imminent death. They can take occasional breaks from the stress and worry of their lives, but he can’t. Not anymore. Not in any real way. Not without it taking a serious toll on his body.

The last page features two groups of best friends: Natsume and Ruka looking out the window at Hotaru and Mikan as they walk through the rain.

Bad things are going to happen. And that right soon.

There’s a feeling of foreboding in this arc. The last page carries some threat with it while also trying to stay on the side of hope. One should not take things for granted is the main take-away, a harsh lesson for these kids to learn, especially in this way.

These few chapters between the Sports Fest and the next arc are almost similar to the gap chapters between the Hana Hime den chapters and the Sports Fest. They are a much needed respite from the heavy chapters before and after. The difference is that these gap chapters are heavier and there’s a threat looming over Mikan and the others in each one. The happiness and lightness of the Valentine’s day chapter are not present, even in this sweet chapter about swimming. Everyone is unsettled and disturbed, aware that something horrible is to come.

Chapter Ninety-Five

And nothing good ever lasts, as this chapter reveals. The tension that has been building for so long is starting to reach a boiling point.

A lot will happen here. Hotaru gets called to the headquarters. Yuka returns to the Alice Academy campus to find Mikan. Tsubasa goes missing.

God, could they stop sending children to get blown up for FIVE MINUTES?!

Natsume and Tsubasa are separated during a nondescript mission. A warehouse explodes and Natsume screams out for Tsubasa, not knowing where he’s disappeared to, or if he’s even still alive.

Tsubasa is missing, his location unknown. Natsume has returned to campus from the mission, but he hasn’t been seen by anybody yet either. He’s busy trying to locate Tsubasa, trying to find information.

Natsume goes on missions all the time. He goes with other DA types and is frequently in life or death situations with them. That being said, he hates most of his classmates, Youichi being one exception. But Tsubasa is different. They have an unspoken respect for each other, and might even be considered friends. They spent a lot of time in the DA class on missions that we haven’t seen in the manga and their work to find--or rather not find--Yuka and protect Mikan has probably brought them closer.

Natsume wants to find Tsubasa because he’s so important to Mikan, because she loves him like a big brother and losing him would break her. He wants to find Tsubasa because Tsubasa is his friend too. If something happened to him on a mission they went on together, then it’s his responsibility to bring him back, and he might even feel guilty for his disappearance as well. Knowing what we do about Natsume’s self-esteem, martyr complex, and tendency to blame himself for everything, he is probably not taking this very well.

It’s exciting and nerve-wracking to see so many people involved in this chapter, but seeing as everything’s coming to a head, many of the characters narratively have to be involved.

Nobara, who discovers that Narumi plans to run away with Mikan to keep her safe from what’s to come, is soon after made aware that she will be blessed with a friend in the DA class: Mikan. Nobara and Natsume do not get along, but so far she’s been diligent in communicating with him about information she discovers that he would not otherwise find out. There’s no way she wouldn’t try to reach out to him, which explains why he knows about it.

Natsume has been mainly absent from the chapter, and from school as well. Nobody has seen him, because he’s too busy trying to find Tsubasa. But it’s nighttime now and everyone is going to sleep. The rumors about Tsubasa’s disappearance are all around the school and he knows that Mikan knows by now. And she’s all alone.

So he takes a break from all the work he has to do to go and comfort her. He cannot leave her alone, even if he originally planned on it.

He appears in her window and she rushes to him. She asks him questions, about where he’s been and all those wounds on his body, but he didn’t come here to talk about what happened to him. He’s here for her. He confesses that he hadn’t wanted to see anyone until he’d found Tsubasa safe and sound, but he had to see her, fearing that she was crying on her own.

They're both sad. They're each other's comfort.

Natsume knows Mikan, that she frequently acts fine even if she’s suffering. Her resilience and determination are great traits, and it’s easy to get lost in the illusion that she should always be bubbly and optimistic and smiling, but even a girl like Mikan needs to let it out sometimes. Finding out that someone you love is missing is not easy, and smiling in the face of that is not something that even Mikan can do all the time. She needs comfort, and Natsume wants to be there for her.

He’s wanted this the whole time, deep down, to be someone she could rely on, someone who could comfort her, and now he’s the only one who can. All the things he’s wanted to do for her this whole time: to comfort her, to tell her it’ll be okay, to hug her. He does it all because after all they’ve been together, she knows now that he’s someone she can rely on.

She’s crying, and she admits that she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to, because she has to cry in Natsume’s place.

Natsume came to comfort her, yes, but he’s been through a lot too. He also cares about Tsubasa and has been suffering on his own for even longer. He also needs comfort, and because he won’t let himself cry, she’ll do it for him. Mikan can see that he can’t afford to not be perfectly composed all the time. She’s thinking of him, too, and it must be nice to be seen so clearly by somebody he loves.

She knows that he's close to Tsubasa too, even if he won't admit it. THEY'RE EACH OTHER'S COMFORT.

He tells her he will find Tsubasa, and “about her too”, which means he’s letting her know he’s taking care of her. He will keep an eye out and try to keep her safe. He’s hinting that he knows about her other alice, and that he’s on top of it. He has to go now, but his farewell--his promise--is his final way of comforting her for the night. She doesn’t need to worry too much about Tsubasa or what will happen with the school, because he will fix it all. He will protect her.

Conclusion

There's something looming over the kids at the academy. Something really bad is going to happen, and everyone seems somewhat aware at this point. Natsume is at the ready for the slightest threat to Mikan, and he will finally be able to spring into action in the next edition of this already-too-long essay.

So... This is the twentieth part. If I'm to guess, I'd say there's not going to be another ten parts to make it to thirty, but I might be wrong, depending on how long my analysis gets in the last parts of the manga. As I post this, I'm about fifty chapters ahead (which sounds impressive but actually isn't considering the Time Travel Arc has groups of entire chapters that I had to skip). Maybe it'll get to something like twenty-eight but I'm not sure about thirty. We'll see. Once upon a time I thought it'd be forty, even! No, not Natsume's. Mikan's, maybe, but not Natsume's.

<- Previous Next ->

25 notes · View notes

whump-town · 3 years

Text

Puzzle Peices

Warnings: the vague mention of Emily smoking, child abuse bc Hotch, and major character death but like... not heavy

No pairings

Just not the best but I haven't managed to write anything in like forever and this happened today so what the hell?

As a boy, Jack had thought his father something akin to a knight. Adorned in an armor that he could not peel away as simply as the suits he wore to work each morning. As humble as a knight and lucrative in speech and behavior as only one from the highest order. A right hand to the queen, though Jack could never decipher exactly who that was. Perhaps one of his aunts. Many times he’d seen a customary bow out of his father, carrying a wailing Henry around to give his mother a break or moving Penelope’s couch around to as many absurd places as she requested. Even as protective, as demanding as one. Dragging himself limping and bleeding home to recount a lie meant for Jack’s ears only for Emily to tell him, hushed by the late hour of the night and the novelty of time spent together, that his father had done something heroic. Brave but so very stupid.

Bravery, Jack would come to understand, in his father had always been linked in arm with stubbornness.

He was four when his mother died, too young to understand exactly what had happened. He wasn’t alone in that confusion. The circumstances of her death had been abnormal. No one seemed to be able to understand, least of all his father. Who had held her body in his arms. Who had been pried away, sedated to get him out of the house. Now laying supine and dazed. Repeating his slurred questions for anyone willing to answer them a third time.

Haley had been an attentive mother and with his father’s attention hazed in and out by drugs, Jack had felt the startling icy fingers of solitude seeping into his bones for the first time in his life. Never before had he been so alone. His mother dead and his father stumbling to follow after. Startled into silence he’d sat by his father’s bedside, left swaddled in his suit jacket to wait out the instruction of an adult more put together than Hotch.

Jack remembers his father’s weak cries, his voice dried out and confused. Asking again and again for Haley, until he couldn’t even manage to get words to pass his pale lips. Until his dark eyes sunk shut.

Jessica took him in her arms that night, a habit she formed that day in the hospital and never kicked until he was too big to collect like a baby and nestle in her lap, and told him about his parents. A story mutilated time and time again to create an almost, not even a half-truth. His mother, the prom queen, and his father the too shy, too reserved bad boy. About the night she won the crown and tore out of that dance with her fancy, expensive prom dress to go dance with his father. The delinquent who had been expelled the week before, who couldn’t attend the dance but was adamant she go without him.

But Jack couldn’t imagine his father like that. Only as he is now, only as he has always been in Jack’s memory. The past he could see written out on his father’s flesh, a roadmap that dated him back to this boy Jack could not comprehend him as. Scars raised like mount peaks and valleys of tissue and muscle that Jack traced his fingers along, hoping to catch a version of the truth in their layers. There was still a boy in the depths of his father’s aged eyes. In his falter to punish Jack, never raising a hand but losing control of his voice. In the hot tears that streamed down his face in the aftermath, in the way that Jack felt more guilt over those tears than what he’d actually done. Sometimes in his father’s light, jovial laughter Jack could catch a glimpse of that boy. The one Jessica could only whisper about, the one she’d thought was buried alongside Haley.

How could his father have ever been so young? Knocked around by emotions too strong for such small bodies. In part, Jack couldn’t understand it because he knew nothing of his father’s childhood. He could trace his fingers along scars and date them by his father’s willingness to speak about them. Accidents, the majority of them. The clumsy stumblings of a twenty-seven-year-old, a story to be told with a gently sad smile. Refocused narratives that tell him more about his mother than the scar. Gunshot wounds and horror movies slasher bad guys with knives. Those were the stories told by the light of the lamp on his bedside table. Told in the low grumble of his father’s sleepy voice, ones Hotch didn’t even look to see just laid there and knew by touch which ones were being inquired upon.

It was the scars on the great expanse of his chest, the perfect circles on his wrists and by his elbows that deserved no comment. That Jack learned to know better than to ask about.

“My father smoked a lot,” Hotch began but his eyes would get this haze and he’d fall silent before shaking his head. “Don’t worry about it buddy,” he’d decide instead. Keeping to himself the secrets of those scars. Bit by bit Jack still learned to put together the intricate truths until he understood for himself how those perfect circles made their way onto his father’s arms. Until he understood why Emily never smoked around his father and why she always did her best to stop. His father’s impressive armor torn to shred in Jack’s curious fingers and he no longer wished to understand the human underneath.

His father was unforgivingly private.

Never prone to gossip nor betrayed secrets, or pried into Jack’s life. He asked about grades when he felt it necessary but trusted that if there was a problem, he’d know about it. He never went through Jack’s room, wouldn’t even take out old laundry or pick up dirty dishes. If asked he’d give one of his solemn nods but never followed it with a comment. Never passed judgment on Jack’s frequently messy room, simply went in and left. It never occurred to Jack he’d do anything different. That he’d search through his drawers or scold him for his mess. The boundaries were set. Parent and child and Hotch did not easily forgive these boundaries being scorned in others.

Jack did not find it easy to reciprocate these boundaries with his father.

His gravely sullen father had only ever interested him. The moment his father left in the mornings or in the death of night Jack would find himself in his father’s room. Unzipping the bags holding those larger than life dry-cleaned suits, softly rubbing at the material. Hoping to find something, a puzzle piece to connect to the choppy image he has of his father. Not even the pictures Jack found of the closet answered his questions. There were pictures of his mother, countless in their abundance with his father appearing seldom. Always in the corner, just out of focus.

That’s how most people see his father. The figure standing just to the side of the action and out of focus.

Between the ages of four and sixteen, Jack heard over a dozen versions of the story about his mother being crowned prom queen. He’d seen pictures of her that young, understood why it was that people liked her so easily. She had effortless charm but Jack was left with his father’s fumbling shy ways, reserved where his mother was bright and cheery. Over the course of that time, the story changed a little every time it was told.

Jack placed his own version, understood what parts were truths and what parts were not.

That night Hotch hadn’t been at the prom (that part is always the same) but it wasn’t because he was expelled, he was in the hospital. There’s a scar on the back of his neck, unphased by time and still thick and ugly despite the decades it’s had to heal. Hotch had flipped his old truck the week of the prom, laid up pretty bad in the hospital. Bad enough Haley had been afraid to leave him for the night. Hadn’t wanted to leave him alone that long or even to go have fun without him. She had gone but only because he’d begged her to and when she’d won she hadn’t even waited for her dance. She’d come back to the hospital in her flowing gown and crown, plucked the silly thing down in his messy hair, and decided she was saving her dance for him.

He’d danced with her three weeks later. Having worked hard to stand again, nurses and his physical therapist standing close by just in case he couldn’t make it through the whole song but he had. She was wearing a summer dress and he was wearing her crown.

But he doesn’t learn this in one fell swoop.

On his seventeenth birthday, he walks out of his bedroom, shuffling outside in his boxers and still squinting through the sun when keys are pressed into his hand. A truck, “I had a similar one when I was your age”, and the customary crooked smile his father often wore when speaking about his childhood. Later that night he’d ask what Hotch’s truck had been like, why he got a truck of all things. And, in the spirit of the day and because at night Hotch was always a little more willing, to tell the truth, Hotch had told him about his truck.

He’d spent two summers saving up for it. Working towards his license and the truck and saving to ensure he could keep it on the road. He’d flipped it when he was eighteen. That’s why he hadn’t made it to see Haley crowned prom queen.

But that wasn’t the full truth either.

Hotch really did flip his truck but those injuries were minimal enough he’d driven home and there his father beat him within an inch of his life. The sort of injuries that left nothing but a gaping hole in Hotch’s memory and the need for a story to tell the nurses. With enough panic and tears, they made it through the E.R. and no one mentioned the lack of blood in the cab of the truck or the hand-shaped bruise wrapped around Hotch’s throat. They noticed. They had to but no one said anything.

Jack doesn’t learn about that truth until he’s in college, old enough to cave to curiosity and far enough away from his father to lack the guilt he should have for prying. He’d spent an afternoon looking over newspaper articles from that time. One article is dedicated to the beautiful, radiant Haley Brooks. All charm and intelligence, no one could think of a better girl to win prom queen. The other a hazy black and white photo of that old pick-up truck and his father, so young Jack can’t believe it’s really him, laying in a hospital bed. A tube down his throat but his eyes opened to slivers, giving the camera a thumbs up.

Jessica tells him about the dance and how serious the injuries had really been. She was only a little bit older than his parents but she’d still been young. Scared watching in slow motion as the weight drop off of Hotch. Leaving him skeletal and so still. They moved him around, kept a walker at hand to try and get him to move but most of the time he couldn’t even manage to hold himself upright. The night of the prom he’d been sitting in a chair by the bed, moved to try and make it look like he’d done it by himself. All for the benefit of Haley. All the nurses were in on it, he’d been hard to argue with during these days. No one really knew if he’d make it and it made his soft request impossible to deny.

So Haley had been welcomed by his illusion, blankets covering the chest tube in his side and pillows sitting him up. Her aim for the night was to stay here with him, another request she knew would be breaking the rules but they were just so hard to say no to. But he’d been adamant, breathlessly fighting with her, until he won. She’d caved seeing him gasping for breath, shaking under the exertion it was taking to fight with her. So she went.

Jack grew obsessed with these stories.

Held onto every piece of his father that anyone was willing to tell him about.

Collected newspapers about him. Articles he was mentioned in. Watched interviews. His intense search for his father made it feel more like Hotch was the dead parent. The one just out of his grasp but Haley had always been available to him. He had home videos of her. Photos in bountiful supply. Stories from everyone who had ever known her. He knew about her childhood. He knew she broke her ankle when she was eight and that Roy had been impatient with her. Harder on her because he thought she was too soft, too comforting and he knew someone would take advantage of that.

His father… there was only mystery.

So Hotch was everywhere Jack could put him. In pictures when he was four. Drawn out like a wisp of smoke, dark and thinly stretching up towards the sky. In the stories he fought out with action figures. The broken hero there to save the day at the very last minute. Crashing through the ceiling, shouting down the hall. The hero.

Hotch always encouraged an open, broad education. Boy scouts. Soccer. Swim team. Drama club. Writing classes. Two semesters of ASL. One semester of Arabic. It didn’t matter if Jack stopped the swim team after three months, so long as he learned something. Hotch hadn’t cared that Jack gave up soccer after sophomore year of high school. Not even when the coaches called and begged him to make Jack keep going. Jack was good but Jack hadn’t wanted to play anymore, so he didn’t.

Jack preferred writing.

Writing out his stories when he thought himself too old for those action figures, even if he keeps the collection under his bed in a tote. Sitting for hours recounting every detail Jessica or Roy or Emily or Dave could give him about his father. Constructing a story for the man he thought without one. Until he had one. Put together slowly through the course of years and bound loosely together. As rough and uneven as his father’s skin.

The one book that remains unpublished.

The one Jack can’t bring himself to speak of. It’s not his story to tell. It’s not even his story to know. But he learned a great deal about his father. That he really can read Jack’s mind but chooses not to. How most people regard his father as this thing to look past or as something akin to a dancing flame, edging around his larger-than-life presence afraid to be burned.

It’s how Jack knows he’s dying.

Writing about people had made him something of a profile. That and growing up with a man like his father had meant a lot of silence, communicating through side-eyed glances and grunts. His partners always hate it, “don’t motion at me, just speak Jack. Tell me what you want”. But the silence is a blessing.

Emily thought it was funny that Jack had found a partner worth marrying in James, a deaf man. His father had nothing to say on the matter but it was funny, they all could see that. No one could deny that.

But with James, the silence was never questioned. It was natural to answer James with his hands, to never shatter the silence his father had taught him to treasure.

“Your father,” James signs one night, the two of them stretched out in Dave’s lawn just watching the ever-growing crowd of his family dance. “Your father is odd.” It takes Jack a long moment to understand. In the ways that Jack is bad about not answering his phone and spending far too many hours at his desk writing, James has a brutal way with words. And not in the “brutal” way that Jack’s publicist compliments him on. In a way that leaves much to be desired.

Jack brushes it off, “he’s always been odd.” But he sees it. He knows what James means.

Hotch is standing a few feet away, eyes watching Hank and the younger kids, while Dave and Emily talk on. His attention not on them at all. There’s something in his eyes, Jack can’t tell what the expression is but it’s not good. It’s a type of sullen he hasn’t seen in a very long time. Not since he was just a little boy sitting by the hospital bed, asking for his mother and hating how confused and weak his father was.

They don’t actually talk about it. When Jack gets a call from the hospital, that his father has had a procedure and can’t drive himself home, he goes without comment. Pulls up with milkshakes and takes him home. Double checks things around the house before setting himself up in the old office, and getting to work. James shows up once he’s off work, welcomed into their easy silence.

James tries to get one of them to say something. He mentions it several times, asks Jack if he’s going to force a confession or not. Jack gets another call, his father’s in the hospital with pneumonia and they needed to contact the next of kin. It’s right there. Jack’s spent his entire life pushing at his father’s for more, to tell him something and now he can’t bring himself to ask, to pry and find out.

So they don’t.

They don’t ever talk about it.

It’s dark now. The bedroom door kept shut to muffle the sounds of the others moving throughout the house. To stifle the rounds of sobs taking them all by surprise. Fine one moment and torn the next.

Jack sits softly on the side of the bed, careful not to jostle the mattress too much. “Hey, dad.” He knows his father can’t see him well, his glasses on the nightstand, and the room too dark. He smiles when he hears his name rasped back, just the thin parting of Hotch’s lips. “James is gonna come in soon,” he promises. “He’s just giving us a minute.” He’s thirty-some years old and he realizes he never came out to his father. Just held a string of girlfriends and boyfriends until James. Of course, he’d been nervous to bring anyone home but he’d never stopped to think to warn his father who he might bring home.

“I love you.”

They’ve always said it a thousand other ways but this time it feels like too much. Too heavy. Too painful. Jack starts to cry, big heaving sobs until he can’t breathe. Consumed by his grief until he curls over himself and leans into the palm Hotch puts his cheek. Lays his head down on his father’s chest and allows himself to be held, to seek comfort like a little boy. Drawn in by thin arms and held close.

James comes in at some point.

Jacks only sort of aware of the two of them talking over him.

This is goodbye.

What had he thought he’d find at the end of this puzzle? It’s done. He put it together. He figured it out.

James folds Jack into his arms and Jack can only cry harder. Recognizes the shift is made. The way James is now the person who’s supposed to love and protect him. That his father’s role in his life has come to an end.

The mystery has died.

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner #jack hotchner #jessica brooks #haley hotchner

38 notes · View notes

bts-storys · 3 years

Text

Bathing a bomb (m)

Author: bts-storys

Pairing: Seokjin x Reader

Rating: mature content, 18+

Genre: Strangers to lovers/ Lush Store AU/ Smut

Word Count: 5,901

Summary: Your job at the Lush store isn’t what you would call extremely exciting. That is until one customer just won’t stay out of the shop. And for that matter he won’t stay out of your head either.

Warnings: oral (female receiving), fingering, dirty talk, graphic description of sex, penetration, lots of stuff with hands, because I feel like that's what lush is essentially about, Seokjin being handsome as ever, some daydreaming about a shower

A/N: I changed my narrative perspective a bit, I hope everything sounds better now. I won't lie, this piece gave me a real hard time, so happy so present to you what I worked on the last weeks.

„Damn it! “

You flinch when you hear an angry voice right on the other side of the wall, sitting upright again in the process. The door bursts open and someone marches right into the break room.

“Are you okay, June?”, you carefully ask your co-worker. When you catch a glimpse at her hands you cock an eyebrow. “Did you touch the lilac soap again?”

“Yes, for god’s sake!”, she grumbles while digging in her bag. “I hate this damn allergy!”

“I told you to wear some gloves or at least call me to take care of it instead”, you say in a judging tone.

“I know, I forgot them. And you’re on break Y/N!” She looks at you with an apologetic expression while opening a jar of cream from her bag.

You laugh. “Well I was until now. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of the customers and you do something about your hands, you look like an angry lobster.”

You put your coffee aside and your customer smile back on your face. Walking through the door, the overwhelming smell of hundreds of different scents washes right over you. When you first started working at the Lush store a few months prior, you found yourself with a headache at the end of every day from smelling so much all the time. When you had told June about it, she gave you a painkiller and assured you it would get better soon. She was right at the end and you grew into loving all the different scents. Nothing relaxes you more than the familiar fragrances in the store after a hard day of studying. You shake your head to get rid of the memory.

Even though June had been working here far longer, she just can’t deal with her lilac allergy due to her extreme stubbornness. Nara, your other co-worker is talking to a customer so you get back to one of the shelves and finish putting in the soap. Right at the last piece, someone behind you makes a coughing noise.

“Ehrm- Excuse me?”

You turn around. The speaker is a tall guy at least one head-length taller than you. He has broad shoulders and the most handsome face you have ever seen. His skin has a perfect shine as if he uses the exact right amount of moisturizer every day and his head looks perfectly shaped. His black hair matches his dark coat and the pair of boots he wears. His body-position gives off a high level of self-confidence, much contrary to his worried expression. His complete appearance is quite overwhelming and it takes you a second or two to get over yourself.

“Hi, what can I do for you?”, you smile at him.

He smiles back at you and you feel your heartbeat increase. “I was wondering… how many different bath bombs do you sell at the moment?”

Inwardly, you let out a sigh. Chances are pretty small, a handsome man like him would ask about bath bombs without the intention of giving them to a boyfriend or girlfriend. On the outside you maintain your customer smile.

“Right now, we have 20 different types of bath bombs here at the store. Do you have a specific fragrance you’re looking for?”

“N-No, not exactly. I want all of them…please.”

You look at him with confusion. “You want to buy every bath bomb in this store?!!”

“No!”, he quickly corrects. “I want to buy one of every type, if that’s possible.”

You start to laugh.

“I’m so sorry”, you tell him after getting a hold of yourself. “Of course, that’s possible, let’s grab a basket for you.”

He sends you a smile that gets right to your core. “Don’t worry, I know that it's a weird request. You have a cute laugh though.”

You feel your cheeks heat up, quickly turning around, reminding yourself that he is still a customer.

“Thank you, Sir. Let’s get to those bath bombs.”

“It’s Seokjin, actually. Please don’t call me ‘Sir’.”

You hide your surprise behind a straight face. “Okay Seokjin, follow me, please.”

You get to the counter where the bath bombs are stored, aware that he is right behind you. While filling the little basket with colorful shapes, you just can’t resist the curiosity.

“Soo, is there a reason to your special request?”, you ask him while scanning the stacks for more bombs.

“Um, I guess I just want to know what color they would produce. You know, all together.”

You turn around again, seeing him gulp.

“You want to use them all at once?” You try not to sound like you are laughing at him again, maintaining a neutral expression. “I’m finished by the way, so follow me to the checkout, please.”

You get behind the cash register, scanning the items before dropping them into a bag.

“Should I pack them as a gift?”, you try asking without raising his suspicion. Maybe he is still getting them for his SO or whatsoever even though it seemed like he was flirting with you for a brief moment.

“No, thank you”, he says, looking right into your eyes. The dark brown of his iris seems to pull you in, until you snap out of it after a few seconds. He pays and takes the bag from your hand. His gaze lingers on your form behind the apron you are wearing and you feel your breath hitch for a second.

Then the moment is over.

“Thank you for your kind consultation, Y/N.”, he says with a look at the tag on your shirt. At the mention of your name, you feel heat shooting through your body like he just set you on fire. Suddenly, you find it difficult to concentrate when he gives you one last look and leaves the store.

“DID GOD SEND US AN ANGEL TO GET 20 BATH BOMBS?!”, you hear June yell behind you.

“Who the hell was that, Y/N?”

“That was Seokjin and he wants to know what color they would produce all at once”, you answer like you’re in a trance.

“He WHAT- now?!”

For the next few days you try not to think about Seokjin too much. To tell the truth, you fail miserably. The main reason to that is certainly June who just won’t let go of the story, but if you are honest, you think about him as well. Even without her help. Seokjin piqued your interest and you want to know more about him.

You even start looking him up on social media in your work breaks but either he doesn’t have any public appearance or your fbi skills just aren’t good enough to find him.

The next week starts without any major events if you don’t count the old man who tries to eat a whole bar of shower soap and the middle-aged woman who just won’t understand the usage of a massage bar. After the third attempt of explaining she doesn’t need a lighter for the process, she just leaves and you try to stay calm. Suddenly, you hear someone call your name from behind.

“Hey, Y/N.”

You turn around and immediately feel like you’re not ready for the sight you’re greeted with. Seokjin is wearing a white, half-transparent shirt with long sleeves combined with skinny black pants.

They look too tight.

Your lungs feel tight too.

He even remembered your name. And how the hell are you fangirling over someone you only met once before?! A quick look around shows that both Nara and June are busy with customers so you pull yourself together and return his smile.

“Seokjin. How can I help you today?”

For a moment he looks a bit lost but quickly recovers.

“I loved how everything smelled the last time I was here, so I thought I’d get something else. You do sell shower gel, right?”

“Yeah, of course”, you say, turning around to get to the other side of the shop. While walking in front of him you try to relax your shoulders a bit.

Arriving at the shower themed area you try to get back to being professional again.

“Do you have anything special in mind? Maybe some ingredient you like?”, you ask him while scanning the stacks.

Your gaze comes to a halt when you spot a sign right next to his handsome face saying “prince charming”. Normally, you love the shower gel that is advertised, but right now you curse whoever chose its name. The real prince charming in front of you has the audacity to smirk at your irritation.

“I like products that smooth my skin when I’m in the shower”, he says looking you dead in the eye. “Maybe something that feels good when you apply it.”

You can’t do anything about it, the picture just appears in front of your inner eye. Seokjin standing in the shower, water floating over his shaped body. He rubs his damped skin with nourishing oils, his lips sinfully parted. His body looks perfect surrounded by the steam from the hot water. You visibly shudder.

“Are you cold?”, Seokjin asks, bringing you back to reality.

“N-No!”, you hastily say. Quickly, you grab a bar with a minty color from the shelf, showing it to him.

“What about this one? It’s really good for your skin, it’s based on natural ingredients.”

He leaves you completely stunned when he takes your hand into his, bringing the bar to his nose. His palm is soft and warm, embracing your small fingers with his. You feel like you float and the feeling tingles. Every inch of your body is on edge, not missing a single second of the moment. His touch is light and gentle, giving you the opportunity to pull away. Obviously, you don’t. Further, you don’t even breathe until he lets go of you again.

“Yeah, it smells nice", he says. "I’ll take it."

Your wobbly legs take the two of you to the checkout, where you wrap the soap bar.

“Do you work here every day?”, Seokjin asks you casually. “If you don’t mind answering”, he adds.

“I don’t”, you smile. “I work from Monday ‘til Thursday after my college courses.”

He looks impressed. “You study and work at the same time?”

You laugh at his expression. “Something has to pay the rent, right? Also working here is more fun than it looks like.”

“I mean, if you like working in a giant flower meadow, then yeah”, he jokes. “What’s your major though?”

“International Management”, you say sheepishly. “Probably not the most interesting- “

“Awesome!”, he exclaims. “I work in the management area myself, you know.”

“You do?” Secretly, you had put him into modeling or maybe he really was an angel like June had noted multiple times.

“I work at a small music label with some of my friends”, he explains further. “Maybe we could- “

You don’t get to hear what he wants to say.

“Y/N? Can you please go and help June? I swear to god if she touches that damn soap one more time, I’ll tie her hands behind her back!!”, Nara shouts at you from the other side of the store.

“I’m sorry.”

You and Seokjin both apologize at the same time.

“Here’s your recipe”, you smile and hand him the package with his purchase.

“It was nice talking to you Y/N”, Seokjin says, giving you one last look before leaving the store.

You look at his broad back longingly before rushing to get to June before Nara can live up to her promise.

On Friday, you start your day off with working on an essay for your finance course. After finishing a couple of pages, you get ready to meet June at the fairground. Apparently, her roommate works there, selling crêpes which are “not from this world, maybe even from another galaxy”, as June claims.

At the end of the day you wonder if you may have lost some of your sanity, because on the weekend you can’t stop thinking about Seokjin at all. The picture of him touching your hands and looking at you in such a deep way seems to be burned into your brain. You also start to ask yourself if he feels the same about you. He must have felt something the second time he went to buy the shower bar. At least you hope he did. Maybe you’re completely out of place and he was just being himself? It’s not only the girls who get mistaken when they’re just being super nice, you remind yourself.

You could ask him out the next time he buys something. If there is a next time. Or would that be unprofessional at your workplace?

Without finding a solution to your problem, you nervously wait for the next workday to arrive. Who doesn’t arrive though is the person in question. June comments on your stiffness a few times but other than that nothing happens the entire week. You’re exhausted from studying and working afterwards but most of all from wondering if you will meet Seokjin again.

The next Monday comes and goes while your hope slowly dies. On Tuesday, you’re stacking up some massage bars catching yourself daydreaming. You can see Seokjin right in front of you. He’s wearing a dark blue sweater that makes a great contrast to his skin tone and reminds you of a deep ocean.

Only then you realize that he is indeed standing right in front of you. You’re not dreaming, you’re staring and it’s getting damn awkward.

“Seokjin!”, you screech, quickly trying to change to professionalism again.

“Hi, Y/N”, he says, completely oblivious to your thoughts. He’s really here, you think, getting more and more excited. It’s as if someone just lifted a grey filter and every color gets brighter again.

He points at the bar in you hand. “What’s that?”

“That’s a massage bar”, you say, happy he picked a topic other than you ogling him. “It can be used for a massage or as a body lotion after showering. It contains cocoa butter and mineral oils.”

The shower image comes to your mind again but you quickly shove it back.

“Sounds lovely”, he says and for a split second his gaze falls to your lips. At least you think it does. Internally you take a deep breath, working up some courage. “Do you want to try it?”, you ask in a rush.

He looks surprised but quickly recovers, nodding and pulling up one sleeve. You’re greeted with the sight of his slender hand and the visible veins running down his arm. Holding back a shiver while taking his hand you softly rub some of the product onto his skin. Then you start massaging the back of his hand with gentle strokes. Your gaze lingers for a moment and your heart most definitely skips a beat when you look up again. All the angelic features of Seokjins face have vanished. His eyes are half closed and he looks almost sinful. A small noise escapes his parted lips and you think you might faint.

It feels exciting and intimidating to touch him like this.

In the middle of the store you’re working at.

For each and every one to see.

When the realization hits you, you drop his hand in embarrassment. His eyes snap open and he looks equally as shocked as you are. He takes a step back in the same moment you find your voice again.

“I’m sorry, do you- eh do you like the product? Should I pack it for you?”, you ask, trying to deescalate the situation.

“Huh?” Seokjin looks at you like he sees you for the first time today. “Ah no, thank you! I-I think I need to leave, actually.”

Before you can even do so much as blink, he rushes out of the door. You’re left with the massage bar in your hand and your heart at your feet. How come you didn’t notice it was involved until now? Why did he leave, did you do something wrong?

You feel like you’re about to cry but fight it successfully. Okay, maybe you did develop a crush on a customer. And maybe some part of you was convinced that it was mutual and Seokjin had a thing for you as well. Obviously, he had not.

The last time someone ran from you as fast as he did was at a fetching game in elementary school. Either way, now is definitely not the time to dive further into your feelings. While leading another customer through the store, June brushes your shoulder.

“What the hell did just happen?”, she whispers, keeping up her façade smile at the same time. You just shake your head, unable to answer because honestly you don’t know. Maybe you did cross a line but at the same time you felt like Seokjin had actually liked it.

The rest of the shift you work on auto-pilot. Your customer smile never fades but inside you feel empty. Even if you had interpreted every sign Seokjin gave you wrong, you felt as if there was a connection between the two of you. How could you be so false about that?

By the end of the day you feel exhausted, looking forward to crying in some of your pillows. Maybe there’s still ice cream left in your refrigerator. A miserable scene starts playing in your head and you quickly shake it off, as you finish cleaning the last counter.

“I’m heading home, okay?”, you exclaim, earning a thumbs up from Nara and a worried look from June. Luckily, she stays silent giving you the space you need right now. With your jacket and bag draped over one arm you leave the store. It’s dark outside but still pretty warm. Only a few people are out, most of them heading home as well now.

Maybe the rejection will hurt less in a few days, you think to yourself. Just as you turn around the corner, someone tall bumps into you. You squeak and jolt backwards when you realize who you just ran into. Seokjin. It had to be him out of all people. A thousand different thoughts cross your mind.

How do you react? What is he doing here? Did he come back to talk to you? Should you be angry at him?

Your stupid heart betrays you by skipping a beat and then starting a race in your chest. Still, it starts to hurt just as much when you hear his voice again.

“Y/N!” He seems to be just as surprised as you are. “Shit, I’m so sorry, are you okay?”

Even with a shocked look on his face he’s still gorgeous and you feel like crying again. Avoiding his gaze, you look down and realize that he’s waiting for an answer.

“Y-Yeah, I’m fine don’t worry.”

Even a total stranger would notice the shakiness of your voice. You really need to escape this situation. Now.

“Look, I’m okay. I’ll just head home now, so… have a great evening.”

You awkwardly try to shuffle past him but he catches your arm holding you back.

“No, please wait!”

He’s so close now that you can smell his cologne. Something really sweet mixed with soap that makes you want to get closer to him. Instead, you try to free yourself from his grip. You still don’t know why he left earlier and it hurts being near him.

“Let me go please, I need to- “

“Just listen to me, I swear I’ll make it quick!”, he interrupts you.

His voice sounds really desperate which is why you feel yourself slowly nod.

“I owe you an apology for what happened today.” After his first words the scene starts to play in your head again and you slightly stiffen at the memory.

“I’m really sorry that I just left like that. It wasn’t your fault at all, I was just- you know I- shit this is embarrassing.” He sighs, stumbling over his own words.

By now you’re even more confused than before.

“I don’t understand”, you say. “Why did you leave?”

Seokjin runs a hand through his hair. You can see that he’s frustrated but you don’t know why.

“Ah, fuck it”, he mutters under his breath and then looks right into your eyes.

“The first time I came to the store, it was because I lost a bet with my friends”, he admits in a rush. “I felt stupid and embarrassed, but you were so nice and extremely cute so the next time I came, it was because I wanted to see you again.”

The world stops spinning. At least you feel like it does, because you’re suddenly out of air after his confession. He came to see you?

Not noticing any of this, Seokjin continues.

“I know, it may sound really creepy, I realize that, but you seemed to be having a good time as well, so I figured you felt the same?” At this he pushed his fingers through his hair again. It’s an irritating gesture because you know you shouldn’t stare at them like you do right now.

A tiny part of you wishes he would touch you instead.

“One time I almost asked you out, but we got interrupted and I lost my courage, I guess. And when I saw how shocked you were today after what happened, I just thought that I completely misinterpreted everything. I didn’t want you to feel pressured if you really don’t feel the same, that’s why I left. So- yeah, I realize now that I probably acted like an idiot. I’m sorry.”

“You were an idiot, that’s true.”

Seokjin looks startled.

Gaining courage, you openly smile at him.

“I feel the same about you”, you softly say. “Talking to you is so easy, I feel like I could do it all day. I’m sorry I reacted like this back in the store, I just remembered where we were and you’re a customer…I panicked.”

You take a deep breath.

“And when you left, I felt devastated. One moment you’re there and it’s going great and we're touching and the next second you run off. It just hurt…” Your last words are only a whisper escaping your lips.

At some point during your confession, Seokjin decided to take a step closer, now standing only inches away from you and his scent is all around you again.

“So, you liked touching me?”, he asks with a small smirk on his lips. Those beautiful pink lips you want to feel so badly. You quickly nod, heat rushing through your cheeks.

“And Y/N”, he says while moving the last bit closer. “Do you feel like panicking right now?”

“I don’t think so. “

His lips are on yours in an instant. Everything becomes less important to the feeling of Seokjin kissing you. It’s as if the whole world went silent at once just so you won’t get interrupted.

When his thumb starts caressing your cheek, you part your lips, giving him access to your mouth. His tongue plays with your lower lip before licking into you softly. He tastes amazing and you feel yourself getting lost, when he suddenly pulls away.

“This is okay, right?” he asks, panting heavily.

Instead of answering, you pull him in again. This time it’s different though. The first kiss was sweet and new. This one is pure hunger. You feel your skin burn where he touches you on top of your shirt. In return, you let your hands wander beneath his blue sweater, tracing his skin with your fingers. Seokjin growls against your mouth.

He then starts to tilt your head so he can bring his lips to your neck. And boy, he knows what he’s doing. His lips place wet kisses on your sensible skin and when he starts sucking right below your ear, a tiny moan escapes your lips. At this you push lightly against his chest. Again, this is sadly not the right place. You’re still out on a street.

He takes the hint and stops kissing you. His lips look swollen and wet and you have to force yourself not to kiss him again. He opens his mouth, possibly to say anything including some stupid apology, but you quickly take his hand.

“Let’s continue this some place else. Maybe somewhere without an audience?”, you suggest.

Seokjin laughs, visibly relieved and starts pulling you into the direction he originally came from.

His voice seems darker than before. “I live right around the corner, we can go there.”

You hum in approval, not missing the fact that he doesn’t let go of your hand.

On the way to his apartment you keep up a small chat about some of your courses and the work Seokjin does. Still, you can feel the tension in the air between you. On the outside you maintain interested, when all you can think about is his skin against yours.

Finally, you arrive in front of a small building with a blue painted wooden door. Seokjin fumbles with his keys while you can only look at his beautiful hands. You crave his touch and the feeling of being in his arms. The door opens and he pulls you inside. A staircase later you’re in front of the apartment door.

“I do have a roommate, but he’s out of town at the moment”, he explains while unlocking the door. Inside the hall you don’t even get time to look at the furniture before Seokjin pushes you against the wall.

“God, you’re so beautiful”, he whispers right before he kisses you again.

His lips are rough, and you meet them with the same amount of hunger. After all, you missed them since the last touch. You can feel his hands on the back of your thighs when he suddenly lifts you up without missing a beat. His mouth is still working against yours but now you’re just too aware of a certain hardness between your legs that shoots heat through your spine.

You feel yourself getting wet and pray that he won’t notice.

When Seokjin flips his thumb over your hard nipple you can hardly hold back a moan. He searches for permission in your face and upon finding it, pulls your shirt over your head. He’s met with the sight of a mint green bralette hugging your breasts. When he’s teasing you again over the fabric, you’re forced to close your eyes, moaning his name in pleasure.

The next thing you feel is his mouth engulfing your nipple. It’s hot and wet and you automatically arch your back to get closer to the feeling. He swirls his tongue around you, drawing soft noises from your throat.

“Please don’t stop”, you beg while pulling at some soft strands of his hair.

“You’re driving me crazy, Y/N”, he admits. “I can’t wait to feel you.”

“Then don’t”, you simply say, tugging at the hem of his sweater. He complies, pulling it off and you gasp lightly at the sight of his naked torso. Your fingers trail down the lines of his shoulders and your lips connect again, this time it’s sweet and full of anticipation.

You can feel the wall behind you vanish as Seokjin starts walking towards his bedroom, never breaking the kiss. He lays you down on his bed as if you were made of glass and starts taking off your jeans in the same movement.

“Come and sit here, will you?”, he says.

You do as you’re told and when you meet his eyes again, you forget how to breathe. Seokjin is on his knees right in front of you, his black pants hanging loosely on his hips, his dark hair messy from your hands. You don’t even think he looks human anymore.

“Open your legs for me, princess.”

The new nickname makes you shiver, as well as the cold air meeting your wet panties as you comply. The man in front of you uses a long, slender finger to tug your underwear to the side and is rewarded with the sight of your glistening folds.

“You’re so wet princess, is this all for me?”

You moan as a response, unable to form a proper word in your head. No one has ever made you feel like this before.

Seokjin lowers his head and you lose every train of thoughts when you feel his tongue on you.

He licks up a stripe and your legs tremble out of pleasure. He starts sucking on your clit, leaving you a moaning mess, your hands grasping the sheets so you won’t lose balance.

Your breath hitches as Seokjin introduces a single digit to your entrance. His other hand is still holding you in place, while he works you up simultaneously with his tongue and finger. He starts pumping in and out faster, hitting your soft walls with every push. You’re on the edge, all you can think of is more, more.

“P-Please”, you say, breathing heavily. “I want to feel your cock inside of me. I need you. Now.”

He looks at you like you’re the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

“You think you can take me, princess?”, he asks while getting up.

You nod a bit nervous at the sight of Seokjin taking off his pants and boxers at once. He’s way bigger than you had imagined. Like the rest of his body even his cock looks perfectly shaped, his tip already wet with a few drops of precum. You bite your bottom lip, can’t help but stare at him in awe. It’s the first time you see him completely naked and you try to take everything in at the same time.

Seokjin starts to crawl above you, keeping eye contact while you shuffle back until you hit the bedside. He pulls you down again by your legs, bringing his lips to your ear.

“I keet imagining this moment since the first time we met. Your hands all over me, while I pound you into the mattress until you scream my name”, he whispers.

Your answer is a kiss. On his lips you can taste yourself, mixed with the same impatience you feel building up inside of you. You reach down, slipping a finger over the head of his cock, bringing it back up to your mouth. Seokjin looks like he’s about to choke. Next thing you know, your panties are abandoned and he’s rolling a condom on himself that just appeared out of nowhere.

“Look at me while I fill you up so good”, he demands as he positions himself at your entrance. You both sigh at the feeling of him entering you inch by inch. He pauses when he’s completely inside of you.

“How can you be so tight? Your little pussy was made for me, right princess?”

You feel your cheeks get red, but there is no time to be ashamed of anything.

When he starts moving, you can feel how big he really is with every push. Seokjin flips at your nipple again before his mouth is on yours again and your soft moans get mixed with needy whines. His left hand is stroking your curves, coming to a halt at your hip, to keep you in place while he starts to go deeper.

His lips find your neck and you mewl loudly when he bites down on it. The next second the short pain is gone as he licks over the hickey he just created.

All of the sudden, he lowers his pace and you feel him even more, stretching you out deliciously. With a small movement, he starts to hit you at a specific angle, still going slow and making you feel him all the way.

He presses light kisses behind your ear, whispering “You’re fucking gorgeous Y/N”.

And then you feel his hand between your legs.

Seokjin stops kissing you to look at your face as he starts stimulating your clit with his fingers while moving faster again. You moan uncontrollably at the pleasure that takes over you.

“P-Please!”, you choke out.

“What is it princess? You need to use your words. Tell me what you need.”

His hot breath is on your face. Never in your life has anyone made you feel so precious and vulnerable at the same time.

“Please, S-Seokjin! Make me cum, I need you!”, you whine, while he proceeds to push you to the edge with every hard plunge of his cock.

“Say my name again, princess, I’ll make you feel so good!” His clenched teeth tell you that he’s not far from coming himself. His fingers and the feeling of him bouncing in and out of you almost make you faint.

“Seokjin!”, you cry out and your world shatters as the orgasm rips through you. A few pushes after, you feel Seokjin spill himself into the condom.

You’re both painting heavily when he rolls off of you and you feel his gaze from the side.

You turn your head, giving him a soft smile and the look, he rewards you with, makes your face heat up again.

“I think that was the best sex I ever had”, you admit sheepishly, holding your breath for a few seconds before releasing it again.

Seokjin smiles his angelic smile and brushes a sweaty strand of hair behind your ear.

“Me too.”

For a moment you both remain silent. Then he clears his throat.

“I hope this isn’t too late, but I really meant what I said before. Will you go out with me Y/N?”

“Yes”, you say wholeheartedly. “I would love to. There’s only one last question I have.”

“And that is?”, he asks with a confused look.

“What color did that bathtub have at the end? You know, the one where you put all the bath bombs together?”

“Y/N, I swear to god…”, he says and the rest of the sentence is drowned out by your laughter.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading all of it! I'm still working on my smut writing skills, I hope you can see some improvement.

#bts #bts fanfction #bts fanfic #bts jin #strangers to lovers #fanfiction #kim seokjin #ficswithluv #btsgoldnet #bangtanuniversity

41 notes · View notes

shiredded · 4 years

Text

A white animation student’s take on Soul and POC cartoons

This got long but there’s lots of pretty pictures to go with it.

Hi, I’m Shire and I’m as white as a ripped-off Pegasus prancing on a stolen van. Feel free to add to my post, especially if you are poc. The next generation of animators needs your voice now more than ever.

My opinion doesn’t matter as much here because I’m not part of the people being represented.

But I am part of the people to whom this film is marketed, and as the market, I think I should be Very Aware of what media does to me.

And as the future of animation, I need to do something with what I know.

I am very white. I have blue eyes and long blond hair. I’ve seen countless protagonists, love interests, moms, and daughters that look like me. If I saw an animated character that looks like me turn into a creature for the majority of a movie, I would cheer. Bring it on! I have plenty of other representation that tells me I’m great just the way I am, and I don’t need to change to be likable.

The moment Soul’s premise was released, many people of color expressed mistrust and disappointment on social media. Let me catch you up on the plot according to the new (march 2020) trailer. (It’s one of those dumb modern trailers that tells you the entire plot of the movie including the climax; so I recommend only watching half of it)

Our protagonist, Joe Gardner, has a rich (not in the monetary sense) and beautiful life. He has dreams! He wants to join a jazz band! So far his life looks, to me, comforting, amazing, heartfelt, and real. I’m excited to learn about his family and his music.

Some Whoknowswhat happens, and he enters a dimension where everyone, himself included, is represented by glowing, blue, vaguely humanoid creatures. They’re adorable! But they sure as heck aren’t brown. The most common response seems to be dread at the idea of the brown human protagonist spending the majority of his screen time as a not-brown, not-human creature.

The latest trailer definitely makes that look pretty darn true. He does spend most of the narrative - chronologically - as a blob.

but

That isn’t the same as his screen time.

From the look of the trailer, Joe and his not-yet-born-but-already-tired-of-life soul companion tour Joe’s story in all of its brown-skinned, human-shaped, life-loving glory. The movie is about life, not about magic beans that sing and dance about burping (though I won’t be surprised if that happens too.)

Basically! My conclusion is “it’s not as bad as it looked at first, and it looks like a wonderful story.”

but

That doesn’t mean it’s ok.

Yes, Soul is probably going to be a really important and heartfelt story about life, the goods, the bads, the dreams, and the bonds. That story uses a fun medium to view that life; using bright, candy-bowl colors and a made-up world to draw kids in with their parents trailing behind.

It’s a great story and there’s no reason to not create a black man for the lead role. There’s no reason not to give this story to people of color. It’s not a white story. This is great!

Except...

we’ve kind of

done this

a lot

The Book of Life and Coco also trade in their brown-skinned cast for a no-skinned cast, but I don’t know enough about Mexican culture to say those are bad and I haven't picked up on much pushback to those. There’s more nuance there, I think.

I cut the above pics together to show how the entire ensemble changes along with the protagonist. We can lose entire casts of poc. Emperor's New Groove keeps its cast as mostly human so at least we have Pacha

And while the animals they interact with might be poc-coded, there’s nothing very special or affirming about “animals of color.”

So, Soul.

Are we looking at the same thing here?

It’s no secret by now that this is an emerging pattern in animation. But not all poc-starring animated films have this same problem. We have Moana! With deuteragonists (basically co-protagonists) of color, heck yeah.

Aladdin... Pocahontas... The respect those films have for their depicted culture is... an essay for another time. Mulan fits here too. the titular characters’ costars are either white, or blue, and/or straight up animals. But hey, they don’t turn into animals, and neither do the supporting cast/love interests.

Dreamworks’ Home (2015) is also worth mentioning as a poc-led film where the deuteragonist is kind of a purple blob. But the thing I like a lot about Home is that it’s A Nice Story, where there’s no reason for the protagonist to not be poc, so she is poc. Spiderverse has a black lead with a white (or masked, or animal) supporting cast. But, spiderverse also has Miles’ dad, mom, uncle, and Penny Parker.

I’d like to see more of that.

And less of this

if you’re still having trouble seeing why this is a big deal, let’s try a little what-if scenario.

This goes out to my fellow white girls (including LGBTA white girls, we are not immune to propaganda racism)

imagine for a second you live in a world where animation is dominated to the point of almost total saturation by protagonist after protagonist who are boys/men. You do get the occasional woman-led film, but maybe pretend that 30 to 40 percent of those films are like

(We’re pretending for a second that Queen Eleanor was the protagonist, because I couldn’t think of any animated movies where the white lady protagonist turns into and stays an animal for the majority of the film)

Or, white boys and men, how would you feel if your most popular and marketable representation was this?

Speaking of gender representation, binary trans and especially nonbinary trans people are hard pressed to find representation of who they are without the added twist of Lizard tails or horns and the hand-waving explanation of “this species doesn’t do gender” But again, that’s a different essay.

Let’s look at what we do have. In reality, we (white people) have so much representation that having a fun twist where we spend most of the movie seeing that person in glimpses between colorful, glittering felt characters that reflect our inner selves is ok.

Wait, that aesthetic sounds kind of familiar...

But I digress. Inside Out was a successful and honestly helpful and important movie. I have no doubt in my mind that Soul will meet and surpass it in quality and and in message.

There is nothing wrong with turning your protagonist of color into an animal or blob for most of their own movie.

But it’s part of a larger pattern, and that pattern tells people of color that their skin would be more fun if it was blue, or hairy, or slimy, or something. It’s fine to have films like that because heck yeah it would be fun to be a llama. But it’s also fun to not be a llama. It’s fun to be a human. It’s fun to be yourself. I don’t think children of color are told that enough.

At least, not by mainstream studios. (The Breadwinner, produced by Cartoon Saloon)

It’s not like all these mainstream poc movies are the result of racist white producers who want us to equate people of color with animals. In fact, most of those movies these days have people of color very high up, as directors, writers, or at the very least, a pool of consultants of color.

These movies aren’t evil. They aren’t even that intrinsically racist (Pocahontas can go take a hike and rethink its life, but we knew that.) It’s that we need more than just the shape-shifting narratives of our non-white protagonists.

It’s not like there isn’t an enormous pool of ideas, talent, visions and scripts already written and waiting to be produced. There is.

But they somehow don’t make it past the head executives, way above any creative team, who make the decisions, aiming not for top-of-the-line stories, but for the Bottom line of sales.

When Disney acquired Pixar, their main takeover was in the merchandising department. The main target for their merchandise are, honestly, white children.

So is it much of a surprise

that they are more often greenlighting things palatable for as many “discerning” mothers as possible?

I saw just as many Tiana dolls as frog toys on the front page of google, so don’t worry too much about The Princess And The Frog. Kids love her. But I didn’t find any human figures of Kenai from Brother Bear, except for dolls wearing a bear suit.

So. What do I think of Soul?

I think it’s going to be beautiful. I think it’s going to be a great movie.

But I also think people of color deserve more.

Let’s take one more look at the top people who went into making this movie.

Of the six people listed here, five are white. Kemp Powers, one of the screenplay writers, is black.

It’s cool to see women reaching power within the animation industry, but this post isn’t about us.

We need to replace the top execs and get more projects greenlit that send the message that african, asian, latinix, middle eastern, and every other non-white ethnicity is perfect and relatable as the humans they were meant to be.

Disney is big enough that they can - and therefore should - take risks and produce movies that aren’t as “marketable” simply because art needs to be made. People need to be loved.

Come on, millennials and Gen Z. We can do better.

We Will do better.

TLDR: A lot of mainstream animation turns its protagonists of color into animals or other creatures. I (white) don’t think that’s a bad thing, except for the fact that we don’t get enough poc movies that AREN’T weird. Support Soul; it’s not going to be as bad as you think. It’s probably gonna be really good. Let’s make more good movies about people of color that stay PEOPLE of color.

#soul #pixar #disney #poc #animation #long post #shire screams

177 notes · View notes

veridium · 4 years

Text

Commission: “Not A Word”

One of my lovely commissions, and if my memory serves me right my first Solas x Lavellan commission, @noire-pandora asked me to write for him and her delightful Elluin Lavellan. Thank you for introducing me to her!

I am pleased to share the final piece, “Not A Word,” with you all tonight.

“If it is quiet you wanted, why did you have me come with you?”

She provoked him with her question after the third time his brow creased at the sound of her boot beginning to tap on the stone floor. These old libraries had many perks to them -- including fair acoustics.

“Not in the least,” Solas replied. Standing in the left-hand side of the rounded, aged shelves. One book opened in his dominant hand, the other bent at the back of his waist. Well, until the third disruptive sound. He turned to the side. “I am used to such habits and their echo, or else my placement on the ground floor of the library below Lord Dorian and Sister Leliana would seem rather fruitless, yes?”

Elluin had blanketed herself across the chair paired with a wide and ornamentally designed table. Such a relic seemed rather fragile and yet it endured while most everything around it decayed. Protected and secure, a description she could not apply to the far they found this place so many months ago. By Solas’s demeanor, however, she could swear he was one of the artifacts found with them, and at the very least, dubious to having his age-old routine tampered with.

She switched which leg crossed over the other and smirked. The book she had chosen rested against her curled lap, contoured to its place as she was to hers.

“For some reason, I do not quite believe you.” She almost breathed it in a sigh whilst turning the page. A volume on Nevarran history, inspired by curiosity for a culture Seeker Cassandra was wary to share anything other than rancor.

“What stakes are there, Inquisitor, in identifying dishonesty?”

Her coyness was just as brief as her peek upward. Her glasses had slid down the ridge of her nose. Half of him was life-size and the other was magnified twice that, and she bit her lip to stifle a laugh. “I am a simple woman, I prefer my knowledge free of distortion.”

“Distortion.” He repeated it back as if a clever endearment. He reversed his turn from her in favor of facing her head, his book hand falling away from his view of it. Then, by virtue of curiosity, their eyes locked on one another.

“Yes. Distortion: the act of distorting something, or being in a state of being distorted.”

“You are quite correct, in the most literal and erudite sense.”

“I know.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “That is the knowledge of a definition, but is it the experience of your own self?”

She slid herself up against the chair, shoulders rolling as her elbows hooked behind her for leverage. She slid her glasses back to their proper position. He was always sneaking these needles, so much so they had begun to change what her idea of “troubling” really was. Rather strange, for someone who could take little grief from recruits or bureaucracy from diplomats. Talking with him was not like an argument or an insubordination so much as a book in and of itself: a course that began with a curiosity that unfolded its true extent the more she turned pages, ended and began chapters, and reached the back cover. There only was one difference: with Solas there never seemed to have an ending to the narrative that satisfied.

How fitting, for a woman -- for an Inquisitor -- who never rested on reaching one very long before going elsewhere.

Her book snapped shut. “Why would you wish to know?”

“Is it egregious to encourage the matter that brims at the surface?”

“No more criminal than disturbing one’s quiet reading, I imagine.” Her words were vitriolic but framed by a soft smile. One that was met by his own, conservative grin. She would see this match through.

“I can imagine for someone who has traveled most of his life alone, having someone nearby is off-putting.”

Solas approached the table and set the book down, open and beholden. She could almost read from it, herself, if she was well-versed in upside-down texts. She leaned forward just enough to where he even noticed, and slid the book forward just a few inches.

“Though I have been alone in my travels I would not say it has made me hostile or apprehensive to company. As we have discussed before, I was rarely ever alone where I wandered, my companions were simply of a different kind than I have found here.”

“Yes, and we talked at length about those companions.”

“We have.”

“So then, what remains to be seen is what the “sort” you have found here, is.”

He took a half-step back from the table, his arms joined at his back in confidence. “You are enamored with my perceptions of the Inquisition and those in service of it. I see no reason as to why it would be a mystery to you now, especially since it appears your true intention is to get a rise out of me as I appear to elicit from you.”

“It is just that you strike me as the sort of person who is gratified from provocation.”

“My capability of conversation does not mean I do not have preferences for it.”

“Preferences?”

“Do you enjoy being needled and demanded-upon by people at all hours of the day, for all causes both on the forefront of your mind as well as those you could care little for, Inquisitor?”

Her legs slid off of the armrest, the balls of her feet landing on the floor. Her hands gripped the edge of her seat but did not tense. Rather, the lean of her locked elbows and slightly-bunched shoulders signaled increased fervor.

“Not in the least,” she answered.

He remained still for a moment longer than her reply required. He must have expected a quip as lengthy and exacting as his was -- or as much as she was known to give when pressed.

“One could ask, then, why you see fit to impose the expectation onto others.”

“Onto others?”

“...Onto me,” he refined.

“Maybe there is no expectation at all, Solas.”

“How do you mean?”

“You have said it yourself in the past that it is strange for you to think others would simply wish to talk to you in order to just get to know you better -- to have some kind of friendly understanding, rather than an exchange of information. Maybe that is what is afoot, now, in my ‘choice’ to bother you, and not anything more. Maybe it is...it is because...”

There was more frustration in her tone than she would have liked. The slight spark of light in his eyes further damned her for it. It was then she realized without a doubt the indictment he had for her was also the lure intended for her. Maybe she knew all along, and that was the pit in her stomach orbited by the butterflies. A wonderful concealment, but ultimately lacking in opacity.

“I have had enough,” she concluded as she stood. The book remained in her death-grip, for it was coming with her. She did, however, remove her glasses from her face. Folding them quick but carefully in her hand she took one last look -- one attempted last look -- as her boot heel ground into the floor.

Solas concurring was not fully convincing. Rather, it was drenched in astute formality as it most always was. “Perhaps you are, and these are not best practices for our respective needs of study.”

“I will be finding another place to continue mine, then.”

“Very well, Inquisitor. I hope you find a place that is most compatible.”

“I will.”

“I am...sure of it.”

She spun toward the hall where the doors and stairs would take her back up. In the speed of her heart and thoughts she couldn’t care, either. She walked until she was concealed in the dimness of the corridor and the corner they shared looks like an island of light left in her wake.

But when she was far enough away to believe he couldn’t see her turn to look, she did exactly that. When she did, she saw him as anything but victorious. He does not carry on or act like he is relieved. Instead he is pensive, head hung slightly over the book before him. It isn’t focused or exact. It’s contemplative of anything but the literature. He even went so far as to press a hand to his face. It almost makes her smile, first out of triumph, and then out of flattery. But flattery is too shallow of a word for the way she truly feels.

A minute went by of his solemnity before he looked up from the table. Elluin returned out of the dark, book held against her waist. For a moment she feared he would have something to say, something vindictive, or callous even. But he said and did nothing of the sort. She resettled back to her chair, sliding in in almost the same shape she was in before. She avoided eye contact with him while she did so, crossing her legs and finding the right page. With glasses slid on she skimmed to locate the proper section.

Solas took his book into his hands once more. She thought she heard an observant hum, a commentary on her choice. But when she next caught a glimpse of him, she saw what she both longed to see and feared most at the same time: warm smugness.

“Not a word from you,” she remarked. But surely there would be many words to follow in the days and weeks to come.

#commission #noire-pandora #elluin lavellan #solas x lavellan #comission fic #thank you!

22 notes · View notes

noctoh · 4 years

Text

collecting some of my ffvii remake thoughts under the cut, bc i beat the game a couple days ago and still have a lot of thoughts about the ending and i need to get them out somewhere before i explode askdzhjhfs

FFVII REMAKE ENDGAME SPOILERS BELOW

i think the most difficulty i’m having with the ending right now is that we can’t really judge it until we know what direction they’re going to take with the following game. i don’t mind them changing things - hell, they changed a lot of things even before the last part of the game, and i thought those were done really well for the most part (a few parts dragged on a little long, like the train graveyard, some of the sidequests, and the hojo’s lab sequence, but the way they expanded on the sector 5 mission, wall market, etc, completely elevated the source material.)

the thing that’s been bothering me the most with the ending is the way it framed the ‘predestined fate’ (i.e. the og game ending) as something that needed to be avoided. originally i thought that the flashes of the future that cloud/aerith/everyone were seeing were from an au future, particularly one where cloud wasn’t able to break free from sephiroth’s control (the one shot of the future where tifa and barret die, and we see sephiroth and cloud standing back to back, really drove this home for me). but then there were other indications that it was the original ending, particularly the scene with nanaki running. the game treated this like it was a terrible fate but that moment felt triumphant to me in the original, nanaki taking his children to see the wreckage of midgar that had bloomed with life in the 500 years since. what part of that needs to be fixed?

the one who has the most to lose by following what fate has planned for them is sephiroth, since his plans ultimately failed. i would really love if the main party finds out that the ‘destiny’ they broke was actually one where they all came out on top, and now that the whispers were gone sephiroth has a chance to succeed now.

i’m worried about how much they’re ‘undoing’ a lot of the meaningful deaths that shaped the original game. biggs/jessie/wedge’s deaths served a narrative purpose, and while it was really painful to watch them die, i think bringing them back to life really cheapened the sacrifices they made. i don’t think biggs should’ve been brought back to life, i love wedge but i don’t think he needed to be present for the second half of the game.

i am thrilled they they added a few zack teases at the ending of the game, but whether those were just teases to drive home how fate can be changed now, or an introduction to something major in the next game, i’m not sure yet. i love zack so so much but i’m glad that the timeline they let him live is an alternate one and not the main timeline. again, i think zack’s struggles and sacrifices and becoming cloud’s hero were so poignant in crisis core, and it would really cheapen that to undo those sacrifices as well. i have no idea where the devs are going to take this, but i’m excited to see glimpses of what could’ve been, while also honoring zack’s choices in the context of the original games.

and of course, i think we’re all curious/worried about what they’re going to do in regards to aerith. aerith’s death had such an incredible impact on the original game and, again, i think undoing that would really cheapen the sacrifice she made and her role in saving the planet. i love aerith, i love how they’ve portrayed her so far, but i think that if they don’t kill her in the same way as the original, they’ll do so in another way. but that creates a whole other dilemma because aerith’s death is the one sticking point that makes the og ending ‘bad’, since everyone else comes out the other side victorious. if they kill aerith anyway and still save the world, then what was the point of defeating fate/defying destiny?

a part of my brain thinks that if they let aerith live, it’s because everyone’s expecting her to die anyway, and the devs want to recreate that kind of emotional shock in a different way. we were all expecting aerith to die, but what if they killed a different party member instead? it would have to be one that appeared in the first game, because i don’t think any of the characters introduced later would have the same kind of emotional gut-punch. honestly i think there is only one character they could kill instead who would incite that same level of emotional devastation in cloud, but i don’t even want to think about that scenario because that would have some major implications for the story going forward. and i would cry.

at this point, i want to stay cautiously optimistic. i think i’d be a lot more wary if the rest of the game hadn’t been so on-point. they nailed the characters, their interactions, the gameplay, expanding on the story and bringing the narrative to life in a way the original didn’t. i think if the remake goes along the same route, following the same major story beats and acknowledging the core theme of the game with a few fundamental changes here and there, then the remake is going to be something really special. they don’t need to change any of that. i’m really excited to see what else the devs are going to expand on. we’ve still got half of the main cast to meet; we got a cait sith cameo, but i’m really looking forward to how they’re going to expand the introductions of yuffie, vincent, and cid as well. i want to see how they’ll integrate yuffie and vincent especially, since they were optional characters in the original, and i have faith that the devs are gonna do this incredibly. but if the rest of the series starts going off the rails a bit like what we saw with this ending and starts changing the core themes of the original, then that’s gonna be both disappointing and disheartening. the fact that the second game is already in development gives me hope that they’ve thought through all of this and have a clear vision of where the story will go moving forward. but we just have to wait and see.

#ff7 remake spoilers #ffvii remake spoilers #ffviir spoilers #ff7r spoilers #im just throwing every spoiler tag i can think of here because i do NOT want to spoil anyone #the ending was divisive but i think things can still continue on the right track if they're careful #anyway time to go back to screaming abt aerti and clack into the void ajshfgzsa #text #ellen out

3 notes · View notes

ansheofthevalley · 5 years

Text

Jenny of Oldstones, the Prince of the Dragonflies and Sansa Stark and Jonsa: parallels, symbolism and motifs.

(This is regarding this post and some kind of discourse that it brought, because apparently, drawing parallels bewteen them is a reach now)

@sansasnowstark, your defense of this parallel inspired me to write this.

First off, what’s a parallel?

A person or thing that is similar or analogous to another.

A similarity or comparison.

Something very similar to something else, or a similarity between two things

Parallelism, in rhetoric, component of literary style in both prose and poetry, in which coordinate ideas are arranged in phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that balance one element with another of equal importance and similar wording. The repetition of sounds, meanings, and structures serves to order, emphasize, and point out relations.

The Oxford dictionary uses the word analogy. Let’s see what an analogy is as a literary device:

A story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.

A story, play, poem, picture, or other work in which the characters and events represent particular qualities or ideas that relate to morals, religion, or politics

Allegory is a figure of speech in which abstract ideas and principles are described in terms of characters, figures, and events [...] Writers use allegory to add different layers of meanings to their works. Allegory makes their stories and characters multidimensional, so that they stand for something larger in meaning than what they literally stand for.

And since we’re on topic, let’s see what symbol mean:

A thing that represents or stands for something else, especially a material object representing something abstract.

A symbol, says the dictionary, is something that stands for something else or a sign used to represent something.

About symbolism:

Symbolism is the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities, by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense. [...] Symbolism can take different forms. Generally, it is an object representing another, to give an entirely different meaning that is much deeper and more significant. Sometimes, however, an action, an event or a word spoken by someone may have a symbolic value.

So, with all these definitions in mind, let’s jump into Jenny of Oldstones and her story with Duncan Targaryen, the Prince of the Dragonflies.

As said in the post linked above, Michele Clapton uses the dragonfly motif on Sansa’s costumes throughout the series, whether it’s a pendant, embroidery (x) (x), fabric, or the shape of her costumes (x) (x).

But what’s a motif?:

A dominant or recurring idea in an artistic work.

An idea that is used many times in a piece of writing or music

Motif is an object or idea that repeats itself throughout a literary work. A motif can be seen as an image, sound, action, or other figure that has a symbolic significance, and contributes toward the development of a theme. Motif and theme are linked, but there’s a difference between them. A motif is a recurrent image, idea, or symbol that develops or explains a theme.

Now, having better understanding of what a motif is, we can all agree that the dragonfly (image) is linked to Sansa throughout the seasons. The dragonfly motif on Sansa works as symbolism of Jenny of Oldstones and the Prince of the Dragonflies. It has symbolic significance. But why?

First of all, we have to understand that a symbol’s meaning can change throughout the story. It evolves, same as a character.

At first, during S1, the dragonfly as symbol are meant to represent Sansa’s idealism and love for songs and knightly valor. We know the story of Jenny and Duncan is one of her favorites (as is the story of Aemon the Dragonknight and Naerys, but I’ll talk about later). In S1, the dragonflies represent her naiveté. But as the seasons come and go, the dragonflies are still present but their symbolic value are not the same: the embroidery is gone, but we still catch glimpses of dragonfly motif in her pendant, her circle and needle necklace and her dresses’ clasps:

While in King’s Landing, the dragonflies are still tied to her idealism and romanticism, as she befriends Margaery and expects to marry Loras. So, even though her previous idealism and worldview are shattered the moment her father is executed, she still holds on to those things, as they give her a sense of security and normality. But the meaning of the symbol changed: it doesn’t represent the idealism and naiveté of before, now it represents her longing for freedom.

While in the Vale, she goes under a rather radical transformation. She debuts the feather dress, which is a direct contrast to the dragonfly symbolism of season 1: she’s no longer that “sweet summer child”; she has seen how terrible the world can be, that “life is not a song”. So she shows the world, through her costume, how the world made her tougher. The “needle” of the circular necklace, while paralleling Arya’s sword and being her own kind of weapon, is also an evolution of the dragonfly necklace: it represents how she had her wings cut off.

The dragonfly motif comes back to her costume in the form of clasps, while she escapes Ramsay and while she’s at the Wall. But again, the meaning of the symbol is not the same as it was during her stay in King’s Landing. Now, she’s reclaiming her freedom, she’s growing back her wings: she’s ready to fight; for Winterfell, against Ramsay and anyone who wants to harm her.

The most recent appereance of the dragonfly motif, even if it’s subtle, is in her leather armor from 8x02, as pointed out by @castaliareed (x):

As castaliareed said “she isn’t wearing a dragonfly anymore, she is the dragonfly”. Again, the meaning of the symbol changes: on one hand, you’ve got a fully grown and independent Sansa, one that has wings. After years of being caged and having her wings cut off, she’s finally free; but on the other hand, if she’s becoming a dragonfly, that means the dragonfly is not just a symbol and a motif, now Sansa herself is a symbol, at the same time she starts antagonizing Dænerys, and thus bringing back the Dragonfly/Dragon dilemma Duncan had to face: there is a parallel between her and the story of Jenny of Oldstones and Duncan, the Prince of the Dragonflies.

So, why is it important that Sansa “becomes” a dragonfly, clearly evoking the story of Jenny and Duncan, in season 8? What does this parallel mean? Why is it important for the narrative?

First, let’s remember the story of Jenny and Duncan Targaryen:

Duncan Targaryen, the Prince of Dragonstone, met Jenny while traveling the riverlands in 239 AC. The prince loved Jenny so much he married her against the wishes of his father, King Aegon V Targaryen, breaking his betrothal to the daughter of Lyonel Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End. King Aegon tried to have the marriage undone, but Duncan refused to give Jenny up, ultimately relinquishing his rights to the Iron Throne for her. The outraged Lyonel led a short-lived rebellion. With his younger brother Jaehaerys becoming Prince of Dragonstone and the new heir, Duncan came to be called Prince of Dragonflies. (x)

At first sight, their story resembles the one of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. Both were princes, in both cases there is a scorned Baratheon betrothed, there’s a rebellion against the Targaryens. The story of Jenny of Oldstones and Duncan Targaryen is extremely similar to what happens between Lyanna and Rhaegar but it’s not a direct parallel, Lyanna and Rhaegar’s story is more of a tragic retelling of the story of Jenny of Oldstones and the Prince of the Dragonflies.

But elements of this story are present in both Sansa and Jon’s respective arcs.

As remarked above, the motifs and symbolism is fairly easy to identify in Sansa’s character. So what are the parallels between Sansa and Jenny?:

Connected to the Riverlands

Descendants of the First Men

Both considered strange: some villagers thought Jenny was a witch; after Joffrey’s murder, some talked about how she killed Joffrey with a spell and flew the scene turning into a winged wolf

But what are the parallels between Jon and Duncan?:

Both are dark-haired Targaryens, something that was unusual: Duncan favored his mother, Betha Blackwood; Jon favored his mother, Lyanna Stark

Both are the heirs to the Iron Throne

Duncan chose love over duty when abdicating the crown in order to stay with Jenny; part of Jon’s arc is the dichotomy of duty/love, so far he’s chosen duty over love, but there will come a time in which he will choose love over duty

Both are linked to Baratheon rebellions, one started one, the other “ended” it: Duncan’s marriage to Jenny led to a short-lived rebellion, in which Lyonel Baratheon declared himself the Storm King; Jon was born at the end of Robert’s rebellion, one of the reasons Robert rose his banners against the Mad King was the abduction of Lyanna Stark by Rhaegar Targaryen

The main connections between Jonsa and Jenny/Duncan:

A marriage for love: Duncan and Jenny married for love. In Sansa’s case, in GOT, she’s been married twice, neither of them of her choosing and neither had any love. Following the Rule of Three, her third marriage must be different, it has to be one of her choosing and one that will bring her love.

The choosing of love over duty: Jon’s arc has been marked by the duty/love dichotomy. From his time at the Wall, while he infiltrated the Wildling camp, to when he gave up his crown so he could secure a military alliance, Jon has always chosen duty. It will come a time when he will put love first.

The choosing of Dragonflies over Dragons: this has strictly to do with Jon rejecting his Targaryen heritage, while favoring the Starks (through a marriage with Sansa).

#Sansa Stark #Jon Snow #Jonsa #Jenny of Oldstones #Duncan Targaryen #The Prince of the Dragonflies #got #game of thrones #got meta #game of thrones meta #costume analysis #character analysis #character arcs #sansa stark x jenny of oldstones parallels #jenny of oldstones and the prince of the dragonflies #my meta #my thoughts #my stuff

165 notes · View notes

reading-while-queer · 4 years

Text

Adult Onset, Ann-Marie MacDonald

Rating: Great Read Genre: Realism, Literary Representation: -Lesbian protagonist -Lebanese protagonist -Protagonist with anxiety/panic disorder Trigger warnings: Infant death, Stillbirth (explicit), Child abuse, Child sexual abuse (not in scene), Homophobia, Misogyny, Biphobia, Animal death, Internalized racism, Reclaimed D-slur

Note: Not YA; somewhat sexual but not explicit

Transitioning into reading more adult fiction than YA in your early twenties is often unpleasant. Disturbing topics make a happy home in adult fiction, and they don’t always announce themselves in the book jacket. (Adult Onset’s book jacket even describes the novel as “hilarious” - a fact which is hilarious in itself. Are adults okay?) The disturbing topics aren’t bad in and of themselves. Adult readers of these difficult literary novels can sometimes resonate with the battle between ugliness and meaning, finding catharsis in the trenches. Some readers may even find an unpolished aspect of themselves reflected in the novel, their relationship to the book becoming a form of literary therapy. The books that save lives are rarely the easiest reads. By the same token, undertaking a difficult literary novel can put a bitter taste in your mouth. Sometimes that moment of catharsis isn’t worth the taste.

I found myself waffling over my opinion about Adult Onset. On the one hand, it’s about the generational gift of abuse from mother to daughter, and the ugliness of that abuse is not safely contained within a “bad guy” the reader can despise, but in sympathetic characters. It’s an uncomfortable book with a subject matter that isn’t going to appeal to the escapist reader, that’s for sure. On the other hand, as we get older, many of us develop more tolerance for morally gray characters as we discover that we are morally gray ourselves; it can even be refreshing to read about someone with our same flaws - flaws bad enough we might hesitate to speak about them - treated not as evil, but human. Reading Adult Onset, I felt myself straddling that line. Yes, Adult Onset was an uncomfortable, unhappy read. But at the same time, I saw glimpses of myself in the main character’s serious anger and anxiety. While I’m not a mother in my mid-forties struggling to manage a suburban household, anyone who has had to grapple with mental illness or abuse will feel kinship to Mary Rose.

Adult Onset is one of those books that can’t be measured by plot. The narrative is urged forward by the compulsion of symmetry, not linear time, and so the story takes a beautiful, mirrored shape, rather than the parabola of a plot arc. The central character, who is the line across which the shape of the story is reflected, is Mary Rose (“Mister” for short), a lesbian mother of two who used to write YA novels, but who has since traded roles with her wife in favor of home-making, giving her wife a chance to follow her career as a theater director. Mary Rose has untreated anxiety that causes her to catastrophize everything in her life. She has untreated anger that causes her to yell and throw things in front of her kids. She is kind of a dick, to use the most accurate term, which causes her to ask her wife, “If she got the flowers?” when Mary Rose never sent any flowers (but feels like she might be in trouble if she doesn’t make some claim at a redeeming quality). Mary Rose is also the heir to two generations of abuse. Her maternal grandfather married a twelve year old child. Her mother hit her and her brother (her elder sister had a different experience). Both parents rejected her in the most severe way when she came out as a lesbian in her twenties. She has chronic pain from childhood bone cysts, a pain which leads her down the rabbit hole of memory as she tries to find some closure on a childhood that her aging parents don’t fully remember anymore.

Adult Onset is a good book. It’s a beautiful piece of art. The structure of the novel is inspired, leaving one more than satisfied with the symmetrical beauty of it all. The narrative about Mary Rose is inter-cut with glimpses from Mary Rose’s mother’s perspective, showing the reader not an old woman with memory loss, but the young mother struggling with postpartum depression she once was. We also receive the perspective of the main character from Mary Rose’s popular YA book series, a young girl whose magical adventures were unwittingly inspired by Mary Rose’s trauma. These snapshots of other points of view are unannounced, and even confusing at first - but therein lies their value. Mary Rose’s identity bleeds into her mother and her main character, and the structure of the novel itself illustrates that.

Adult Onset is a good book. It takes Mary Rose’s flaws, holds them before the reader, and says: motherhood is not easy, and you’re not a bad person for floundering. It explores where the line is, that makes a person irredeemable. Mary Rose almost hits her toddler, and she thinks with horror - what if there is an alternate universe where she really did? She thinks about her own life in those terms, considering that while she is the Mary Rose who was abused by her parents, perhaps there is an alternate Mary Rose who wasn’t. She loves and defends her parents as if they didn’t pass her trauma down to her, as if she were the lucky Mary Rose - yet she still contends with the unhappy result. She asks herself: if her parents don’t even remember her childhood anymore, are they still the parents who did and said the things that hurt her?

Adult Onset is a good book, but it is also a book that very artfully dances around a concerning issue with its theme. Herein lies the problem: Adult Onset gives itself an almost impossible task, that of fixing Mary Rose’s unhappy life into a somewhat happy ending. Mary Rose almost hit her toddler, her marriage is on the rocks because she keeps yelling at her wife, and she refuses therapy to the bitter end. The reader won’t be satisfied with the realism of the book if Mary Rose changes too much for the better, nor will the reader be satisfied with an unhappy ending. In the end, Mary Rose doesn’t really change, so much as realize she can ask for help. She asks a friend to come over and stay with her for a couple of days while her wife is out of town, and she has an all-day play-date with a mom from her son’s preschool - a mom who Mary Rose has always believed is perfect, but who whispers to Mary Rose, “You saved my life today.” Mary Rose could have said the same thing, a fun little turn of the tables with the positive message that there is no perfect mother. Women suffer far too much unaddressed misery, desperation, and shame (with dire consequences), but there is solace and reprieve in one another’s support. This one play-date, and the lesson therein, is the cathartic moment of the novel.

Yet one play-date carries a heavy burden, if it is to be the cathartic moment of a novel about abuse, infant mortality, anger, anxiety, lesbianism, and motherhood. On reflection, a reader might be more horrified than satisfied, that a play-date is the only help Mary Rose is to receive. Perhaps MacDonald would agree, because after this play-date from heaven, Mary Rose’s life magically falls into place in all sorts of ways. She’s the mom who has it together now, offering organic pretzels to the lesser mothers who forgot to pack a snack for the park. She even makes peace with a memory of her father’s homophobia, satisfied by how far he’s come in the twenty years since. Her wife, who hasn’t wanted sex over the course of the novel, suddenly changes her mind when she finds some lingerie that Mary Rose bought for herself (even though she didn’t even really want it). Mary Rose’s experience of gender is what some readers might call dysphoric, but Mary Rose herself calls “internalized misogyny.” She feels like it’s wrong of her to be uncomfortable with womanhood, so when her wife tells Mary Rose to wear the lingerie to bed, reminding her with exasperation that “I’m attracted to women,” Mary Rose falls in line. What a tidy ending! Motherhood? Resolved. Relationship with parents? Resolved. Sex life? Resolved. Complicated lifelong relationship to gender? Resolved.

This was the real key to my discomfort with the ending of the novel. The message seems to be: if you’re about to self-destruct (taking your children down with you)... just get with the program. At your breaking point? Just ask your friend to come over with spaghetti. Just set up a play-date. Just perform motherhood better. Just perform womanhood better. How sad is it, that this was all the book could give Mary Rose? If the theme of your novel is also the Nike slogan, it’s not as radical an outlook on life as one might think.

The weak ending aside, there are only a few such cracks in the perfect veneer of Adult Onset. The Gen X humor is off-putting (What’s up with Facebook, ladies, am I right?), and Mary Rose obnoxiously discredits her wife’s bisexuality, saying “She refuses to call herself a lesbian.” She still uses the word “transgendered,” too, which even word processors auto-correct these days. And yet, for all its flaws, Adult Onset is a good book. If you have anger and have ever been a hair's breadth away from hitting a child in your care - and let’s face it, this is the unspoken shame for many, many mothers - it’s a book that will make you feel seen, and understood. The mothers that have hit their children in a moment - or months, or years - of weakness are seen too, in Mary Rose’s mother, who is neither torn down nor excused, but simply put to the page.

Adult Onset is a good book, yes, but do I recommend it? Not to everyone. It’s a frustrating book. It covers topics that may be triggering. It’s a book that can, and probably will, ruin your day (Gen X humor just isn’t enough to cut the despair, folks). On the other hand, it offers an underlying message that not every book can give you: Even if you didn’t solve the problem, even if you’re just barely hanging on by a toxic “Just do it!” attitude, there is grace for you.

For more from Ann-Marie MacDonald, visit her website here.

#adult onset #ann-marie macdonald #great read #lesbian #protagonist of color #literary #realism #reviews only #not ya #mentally ill protagonist

2 notes · View notes

upontheshelfreviews · 5 years

Text

And now we come to the final piece of Walt Disney’s original animation trifecta, Fantasia, and it’s one I’m both anticipating and dreading. Fantasia isn’t just one of the crowning jewels in Disney’s canon, a landmark in motion picture animation, and second only to Snow White in terms of influential music and storytelling in the whole medium, it’s one of my top three favorite movies of all time. Discussing it without sounding like an old history professor, a pretentious internet snob, or a hyper Disney fangirl is one hell of a daunting task.

“Did someone say hyper Disney fangirl?! I LOVE Disney!!”

“I thought you only liked Frozen.”

“Well, DUH, Frozen is my favorite, which makes it, like, the best Disney movie ever! But Disney’s awesome! There’s a bunch of other movies I like that are almost as good!”

“And Fantasia’s one of them?”

“Yeah!!…Which one is that again?”

“The one with Sorcerer Mickey?”

“Ohhhh, you’re talking about the fireworks show where he fights the dragon!”

“No, that’s Fantasmic. I’m referring to Fantasia. Came out the same year as Pinocchio? All done in hand-drawn animation…has the big devil guy at the end?”

“THAT’S where he’s from?! Geez, that’s some old movie. Why haven’t I heard about ’til now?”

“Probably because you spend twelve hours a day searching for more Frozen GIFs to reblog on your Tumblr.”

“Ooh, that reminds me! I need to go post my next batch of theories about the upcoming sequel! Toodles!!”

“Thanks. Another second with her and I would’ve bust a gasket.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Anyway, it’s no surprise Sorcerer Mickey is what people remember the most from Fantasia, and not just because he’s the company mascot. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” was the reason we have the movie in the first place. It began as a pet project between Walt Disney and renowned conductor Leopold Stokowski.

youtube

“Yep. THAT Leopold.”

However, between the upscale in animation and the use of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the cost grew too high to justify the creation of only one short. Over time more sequences featuring animation set to various pieces of classical music were added in what was initially dubbed “The Concert Feature”. Later it was wisely changed to the more memorable “Fantasia”. It works not only because it’s derived from the word “fantasy”, but because “fantasia” is a term for a musical composition that doesn’t follow any strict form and leans towards improvisation. Combine the two meanings and you get the whole movie in a nutshell.

And this leads us to –

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #1: “It’s SOOOOOO boring! Nobody’s talking and nothing ever happens!”

You know, few recall that decades before Warner Brothers was known as that studio that made rushed prequels to beloved fantasy franchises and a hastily cobbled together superhero universe, it had humble origins in the music business; their Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts began as music videos made to sell their records. Disney’s Silly Symphonies followed in the same vein, though they focused more on pushing the envelope in animation technique and character resonance than selling music, as did the lesser known Harman-Ising Happy Harmonies.

And if that’s the case, then Fantasia is the Thriller of animated music videos. It’s the result of years of technological advancement and trial and error, all culminating in the flawless weaving together of visuals and some of the greatest music mankind has created to tell seven stories and elicit an emotional response for each one.

Let me repeat that: FANTASIA. PREDATES. THRILLER.

“And unlike Thriller, Fantasia has the advantage of NOT being directed by a man who literally got away with murder or involving an artist whose pedophilia accusations are still discussed a decade after his passing…at least as far as we know.”

By the way, if you’re watching the current version of Fantasia that’s available, do me a favor and pause the movie to watch the original Deems Taylor intros; while they’re shorter than the ones on the blu-ray, they have Deem’s original voice. All later releases have him dubbed over by Corey Burton because the audio for these parts hasn’t held up as well over time. Now Corey Burton is a phenomenal voice actor who’s done countless work for Disney before, but there’s a problem I have with him taking over these segments: One, he and Deems sound nothing alike, and Two, he makes him sound so dry and dull. Not to mention the longer intros practically spoil everything you’re about to see whereas the cut versions give you just enough to build some intrigue for what’s to follow.

youtube

Regardless of whichever one you’re watching, Deems gives us the rundown on what Fantasia is all about and lists the three categories that the sequences fall under.

A concrete story

Clearly defined images with something of a narrative

Music and visuals that exist for its own sake

And the very first of these parts falls directly into the last one.

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor – Johann Sebastian Bach

Some hear this tune and attribute it as stock horror music, but for me it’s the start of a grand, dark, fantastical journey through realms of the imagination. While it is intended as an organ piece, this full orchestration blows me away. Capturing the orchestra in bold hues and shadows with colors specific to certain highlighted instruments was a brilliant move, setting the stage for what’s to come.

And if the previously referenced Bugs Bunny cartoon was any indication, the real Leopold Stokowski is one of the main draws to this segment. Stokowski’s claim to fame was that he ditched the traditional conductor’s baton and used his hands to guide the orchestra. His passion and restraint is plain for all to see, even in silhouette.

Ultimately Stokowski and the orchestra fade away into the animated ether. The idea behind Toccota and Fugue was to show a gradual transformation from the conscious world to the subconscious, providing a literal and figurative representation of what you see and hear with the music. That’s why the first animated images resemble violin bows sweeping over strings. Over time those distinct objects evolve into abstract geometric shapes.

Honestly, no amount of stills can capture what it’s like to watch this sequence play out. It’s a radically unique experience, almost like a dream.

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #2: “It’s the world’s first screensaver/musicalizer!”

This is something I hear often from people (ie. the people making the complaints I’ve chosen to highlight). First, read the previous Thing. Second, Toccata is not so much about recreating a story as it is capturing a feeling. And yet a story isn’t out of the question. I always saw at as glimpses of a battle of light versus dark, heaven versus hell, albeit not as overt as the opening of Fantasia 2000. That’s the beauty of this segment. It’s all up for interpretation. You can let the images and sounds wash over you as if you were dreaming it, or attach whatever meaning you find.

And on that note (ha) –

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #3: “God, all these animators must have been so fucking high to come up with this shit.”

I tell ya what, if you’re one of those people who think that, take whatever drug is handy, grab some crayons or whatever you feel comfortable doodling with, and when you’re comfortably high, draw one full second of animation. That’s 24 consecutive drawings that need to flow, squash and stretch into each other realistically. It doesn’t have complicated; it can be a ball bouncing, a flower blowing in the wind, an eye blinking, but it has to work.

Not so easy, huh?

Classic Disney animators who lectured at art schools received comments like this all the time. While there were some like Fred Moore who would go for the occasional beer run on breaks, there’s no record of narcotic or alcoholic influence on the animators’ turnout. I’m pretty sure Walt would’ve fired anyone who turned in work produced while high because it’d be awful. Animation was still a fairly new medium at the time, and Disney was constantly experimenting with what it could do, which is why we got things like this, the Pink Elephants, and other delightfully trippy moments throughout the 40’s, not because of drugs. Isn’t that right, classic Disney animator Bill Tytla?

“Of course! I’ve never done drugs, and I never drink…wine.”

The Nutcracker Suite – Pyotr Illich Tchaichovsky

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #4: “Yawn. Nutcracker is SO overplayed. Of course Disney had to jump on the bandwagon with their version!”

Ironically, the extended Deems Taylor intro has him mention how nobody performs Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker; in light of its modern seasonal popularity, the sentiment is rendered archaic. True, the ballet wasn’t an initial critical hit and Tchaikovsky himself virtually disowned it, but much of its ubiquity is largely due in part to Disney adapting it for Fantasia. It eschews the title character in favor of a nature ballet portraying the cycle of seasons. Initial planning included the overture and the famous march featuring woodland critters, though they were eventually cut. Walt considered pumping scents into the theater during this part, but was unable to figure out how to do it naturally. If they had Smell-O-Vision that might work, but what scents would you have to scratch off for the other Fantasia segments? Wood resin? Wine? Wet hippo? Brimstone?

The sequence begins with The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. In the night a group of fairies dance like fireflies, gracing spring flowers and spiderwebs with delicately timed dewdrops.

“Any of you girls seen Tinkerbell?” “She ditched us to hang out with that obnoxious flyboy.” “Again?! That’s the third time this month!”

The scene is atmospheric with beautifully rendered pastel backgrounds. After the fairies comes The Chinese Dance performed by a group of little mushrooms. It’s a cute number, and just another that was parodied more than a few times in other cartoons – wait do those mushrooms have slant eyes? And they’re prancing around nodding like extras in The Mikado…

You fungi are lucky you’re so darn adorable otherwise I’d sic the self-righteous side of Twitter on you.

Dance of the Reed Flutes follows. Lilies gently float on to the surface of a pond before inverting themselves to resemble twirling dancers with long, flowing skirts. And since I’m not always one to take the easy route, enjoy this niche reference instead of “You Spin Me Right Round”.

youtube

A gust of wind blows the spinning lilies over a waterfall into some moody underwater caverns, where a school of unusually sultry goldfish perform the Arabian Dance.

Cleo, does Gepetto know about this?

A novel idea, using the basic swimming motions of a goldfish and their naturally diaphanous tails and fins as veils to resemble exotic dancers, though like other animated characters in a similar vein, this has led to some…”interesting” reactions from certain people.

Right, well, bubbles transition us into the penultimate movement, the Russian Dance. Thistles and orchids resembling dancers clad in traditional Russian peasant clothing spring to life in this brightly colored energetic minute. You’ll be chanting “hey!” along with it.

And finally, the Waltz of the Flowers. As a little girl I would often hold my own “ballets” to this scene, which mainly comprised of me in a ballet costume or fancy nightgown spinning around in circles for family members with this playing in the background. Top that, Baryshnikov.

Fairies similar to the ones from the beginning transform the leaves from fresh summer green to autumn orange, brown and gold. Milkweed seeds blossom forth and float through the air like waltzing ladies. This piece above all else is what really shows the beauty of nature. I feel more emotion watching the leaves pirouette in the wind than any plain live-action drama.

Fall turns into winter, and the fairies, now snow sprites, skate across a pond creating ice swirls while even more spiral down from the sky as snowflakes. The secret of animating these snowflakes was nearly lost to time. Several years ago a notebook by technician Herman Schultheis was rediscovered, revealing how many of the special effects in Disney’s early films – Fantasia in particular – were brought to life. The snowflakes were cels on spools attached to small rails from a train set that were filmed falling in stop motion and black and white, then superimposed on the final picture.

In conclusion, The Nutcracker Suite is a lovely piece of animation and music, and I’ll pop in Fantasia at Christmastime just to watch it. This was my introduction to The Nutcracker, and it’s an excellent and unique one.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – Paul Dukas

The symphonic poem of the same name now gets a proper name with Mickey Mouse stepping in the title role. It’s impossible to imagine any other character in his shoes, but for a time there were other considerations.

“Nope. Too wooden.”

“Too angry.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re just too darn loud.”

As we all know, Mickey was given the part since his popularity needed a boost. He doesn’t talk here, and I know those who find his voice grating wholeheartedly embrace that fact, but what we’re given is proof that Mickey works just as well silently as he does speaking. Very few cartoon characters can pull off that kind of versatility.

And while we’re on the topic of sound, Walt was so determined for the sound quality to match what was happening on screen that he devised a system he dubbed “FantaSound”, where it would seem as though the music would move around the the theater instead of just blare out from one speaker.

You read that right. Fantasia is the movie that invented SURROUND SOUND.

But that’s not the only technological leap Fantasia is responsible for – this is the first time we see Mickey with sclera.

That’s the white of the eyes for those who don’t speak science.

Before Fantasia, Mickey had what we refer to today as “pie eyes”, a relic of the era he was created in. As the art of animation progressed, animators found it increasingly difficult to create believable expressions with two little dots. Fred Moore is responsible for the mouse’s welcome redesign. Mickey as the apprentice serves the sorcerer Yen Sid, named after his real world counterpart.

“Hey! I didn’t teach him that!”

Mickey’s craving a taste of his master’s power, so he borrows his magical cap after he goes to bed and enchants a broom to finish his work of gathering water. It’s fun and bouncy, though the part where Mickey dreams he can control the cosmos, seas and sky is something to behold.

“The power! The absolute POWER!! The universe is mine to command! To CONTROOOOOOL!!!”

But Mickey is jolted from his dream of ultimate conquest when the broom begins flooding the place. Unfortunately the sorcerer’s hat doesn’t come with a manual so Mickey doesn’t know how to turn it off. He resorts to violently chopping the broom to pieces with an axe. The animation originally called for the massacre to happen on screen, but was altered to showing it through shadows instead. I think it’s much more effective this way. The implied violence is more dramatic than what we could have gotten.

youtube

One of my favorite stylistic choices in Fantasia is what follows. The color is sucked out, drained if you will, mirroring Mickey’s exhausted emotional and physical state after committing broomslaughter. But it slowly returns as the broom’s splinters rise up and form an army of bucket-wielding drones. They overpower Mickey and catch him in a whirlpool until Yen Sid returns and parts the waters like a pissed off Moses.

“You! Shall not! SWIM!!!”

Mickey sheepishly returns the hat, and I have to give credit to the animators for the subtle touches on Yen Sid. He appears stern at first glance, but the raised eyebrow borrowed from Walt? The slight smirk at the corner of his mouth? Deep down, he’s amused by his apprentice’s shenanigans. Even the backside slap with the broom, while rendered harshly due to the sudden swell of music, is done less out of malice and more out of playfulness.

The piece ends with Mickey breaking the barriers of reality to congratulate Stokowski on a job well done.

“Hey! I didn’t teach him that!”

If you haven’t already guessed, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is easily one of my preferred sequences. It’s energetic, perfectly matches the music, and features my favorite mouse in one of his most iconic roles. I joke about the scene where Mickey controls the waves and the sky due to Disney’s far-reaching acquisitions in the past decade, but within the context of the film it’s one of the most magical moments. Some theorize that The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is an allegory of Walt’s journey to create Fantasia itself, and there’s some merit to it – Mickey’s always been Walt’s avatar after all, and here he dreams big only to wind up way in over his head. But you don’t need to look for coincidental parallels to enjoy this part.

Rite of Spring – Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is admittedly my least favorite part of Fantasia, though I don’t hate it by all means. Thematically it’s the furthest from the original work’s intent: instead of a pagan ritual involving a virgin sacrifice, we witness the earth’s infancy. I was never really into dinosaurs as a kid (I didn’t even see Jurassic Park until I was in fourth or fifth grade), and the thundering, threatening music put me off. I found it too long (twenty-two minutes is an eternity in child time), uninteresting, and dour compared to the other sequences, with the exception of one moment. I can appreciate it now that I’m older, though.

A solitary oboe echoes through the vast darkness of space. We soar past comets, galaxies, suns, and down into our lonely little planet still in the early stages of formation. Volcanoes cover the earth. They spew toxic gas, but their magma bubbles burst in precision with the music. Once again this is due to Herman Schultheis. He filmed a mixture of oatmeal, coffee grounds, and mud with air pushed up through a vent, and let the animators go to town on it.

The volcanoes erupt simultaneously. Lava flows and the ensuing millennia of cooling form the continents. But deep in the sea, the first protozoan life wriggles, divides, and evolves into multi-cellular organisms. One of them crawls up on to land, and finally we’re back in the time where dinosaurs weren’t just confined to zoos.

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #4: “Dinosaur inaccuracies…brain melting…”

True, most of the dinosaur and plant species here never shared the same period of existence, but try telling that to the animation studio or John Hammond. They mostly went for whatever looked cool and prehistoric regardless of scientific accuracy. Some of the designs themselves are a bit off, but the animators did their best considering how much we knew about the creatures in the 30’s and 40’s. Heck, we’ve only recently discovered that most dinosaurs were covered with feathers or fur, and I don’t see anyone harping on Jurassic Park for omitting that detail. Thank God Steven Spielberg doesn’t harbor George Lucas’ affinity for reworking his past movies with extra CGI.

Believe it or not, this scene was once considered the height of accurate dinosaur depictions on film, because nobody else had done it before with this level of research and care in animation. Without Rite Of Spring, we wouldn’t have The Land Before Time or Jurassic Park in the first place. Look at Land Before Time’s bleak, orangey atmosphere and the Sharptooth fights and tell me this didn’t influence it in any way.

The dinosaurs themselves have little character and, while fascinating to see how they might have lived, are not particularly engaging. Until…

youtube

Yes, when the king of all dinosaurs makes his entrance, bringing a thunderstorm along with him no less, all the others are wise to run and hide from him. I would hide under a quilt but still peek through the holes in awe. He snaps about throwing his weight around, but when it goes toe to toe with a stegosaurus? That’s when things get real.

This battle, by the way, is animated by Woolie Reitherman, who had a knack for bringing gargantuan characters to life. He was responsible for animating Monstro in Pinocchio, and was behind Maleficent’s dragon form in Sleeping Beauty.

Though what follows is far from triumphant. The earth has become a hot, barren wasteland. The dinosaurs trudge through deserts and tar pits, their fruitless search for water turning into a slow death march. Not even the mighty T-Rex can survive this.

California: present day.

Some time later, the dinosaurs are all gone. Only their bones bleaching in the sun remain. Without warning, a massive earthquake hits and the seas flood through, washing away the remains of the old prehistoric world. The sequence comes full circle as the lonely oboe plays over a solar eclipse, which sets on an earth ready to step into the next stage of life.

If Walt had his way, the segment would have continued with the evolution of man and ended on a triumphant note with the discovery of fire, but he was worried about the possible backlash from zealous creationists. And I don’t blame him for wanting to avoid a confrontation with that crowd.

“It’s bad enough he makes a mouse act like a people with his dadgum pencil sorcery, but propagandizin’ evil-loution in mah Saturday mornin’ toon box? That’s just plum un-okkily-dokkily!”

“…You wouldn’t happen to have a dictionary on hand, would you?”

“DICTIONARIES ARE THE DEVIL’S BOOSTER SEAT!!”

Subsequently, those edits made to Stravinsky’s score pissed off the composer so much that he considered suing Disney for tampering with his work. He opted not to, yet the experience turned him off animation for good. A crying shame; Stravinsky, apart from being the only classical composer alive to see his work made part of a Fantasia feature, was excited to work with Walt. The two deeply respected and recognized each other as artists ahead of their time. Who knows what else could have come from their collaboration if things ended better?

With that knowledge, it makes sense that one of Stravinsky’s most famous pieces, the Firebird Suite, was included in Fantasia 2000: perhaps on some level Disney wanted to apologize for how the finale of Rite of Spring was mishandled by making Firebird the grand finale (though knowing Stravinsky he would have hated the little changes made to his music there as well).

Following the intermission, the orchestra reconvenes and has a fun little jam session. Deems Taylor takes a moment to introduce us to the most important – but rarely seen – figure that makes Fantasia and most music in movies possible, The Soundtrack.

youtube

Once again, Disney does what it does best and anthropomorphizes what no one thought was possible. Think about it: giving personalities to animals is one thing, but they’ve successfully done the same for plants, planes, houses, hats, and here, sound itself. It may seem silly and out of place, but I think it’s brilliant and charming. The visuals it creates to represent different instruments are perfectly matched; some of them harken back to Toccata and Fugue. This, combined with the improv from the orchestra, is a good way to ease us back into comfort after the harshness of Rite of Spring.

Pastoral Symphony – Ludwig Van Beethoven

There’s a famous story about Walt Disney while he was pitching this segment. When met with complaints that it wasn’t working, he cried out This’ll MAKE Beethoven!” In a way, he was right. This was the very first piece of Beethoven I ever heard, even before the famous “da da da DUUUUUN” of Symphony #5. And as far as I know, it was for a good many Disney fans too. We still get a romantic depiction of the countryside as was the composer’s intent, but instead of an rural utopia, we see the Fields of Elysium at the foot of Mount Olympus. It’s home to a variety of mythical creatures from the golden age of Greece: fauns, unicorns, cherubs, centaurs and Pegasi.

If there was ever a Disney world I wanted to spend a day in, this would be it. It’s so innocent, laidback and colorful; it takes me right back to my childhood. A great portion of this sequence was used in my favorite music video in the Simply Mad About the Mouse anthology album, “Zip A Dee Doo Dah” sung by Ric Ocasek from The Cars. Whether that was my favorite because it featured Pastoral Symphony or Pastoral Symphony was my favorite because it was featured in the video I don’t know. There’s nothing that could ever destroy it for –

Oh son of a…

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #5: “RACIST. FUCKING. CENTAUR. EQUALS. RACIST. DISNEY… RACIST!!!”

Yes ladies and gents, that image is real. Meet Sunflower (or Otika, I’m not sure which one she is) one of the the censored centaurettes (for very obvious reasons). I’m of two minds when it comes to their inclusion. First off, yes, they’re crude and demeaning blackface caricatures that have no place in a Disney movie, let alone one of the best ones and in one of my favorite sequences. But my inner art/film historian that despises censorship feels that erasing these depictions is the same as pretending they and other prejudices of the time never existed.

Thank you, Warner Bros.

As time and the civil rights movement marched on, all traces of the Sunflower squad were removed from later releases of Fantasia. The downside to that was editing techniques at the time weren’t as high-tech as they are today; I was lucky to see a film print of Fantasia at the Museum of Modern Art in 2015 that must have dated as far back as the ’60s because she wasn’t there, but the cuts were very noticeable. Sad to say the amazing remastered tracks done by Irwin Kostal in the 80’s used a similar print because the shift in the music is very jarring at points in this segment. It wasn’t until Fantasia’s 50th anniversary that they were able to zoom in and crop the scenes that had Sunflower in them while recycling other pieces of animation over parts where they couldn’t get rid of her, eventually managing to digitally erase her from some of the film entirely (look carefully at the part where the red carpet is being rolled out for Bacchus on the blu-ray. Unless he got it from the Cave of Wonders, carpets normally don’t roll themselves…)

I completely understand the reasoning behind Sunflower’s removal, but can also see why animation aficionados would try to pressure Disney into bringing her back with each new re-release for Fantasia, possibly with one of those great Leonard Maltin intros putting everything into context like in the tragically out-of-print Disney Treasures dvds – though the chances of that happening are as likely as Song of the South being made public again (the Disney+ promo should have made that clearer when they claimed Disney’s entire back catalogue would be available for streaming, but I doubt the tag line “We have everything except Song of the South” would hook people). It’s an issue I’m very torn on. So if there was ever a chance that a version of Fantasia with a restored Sunflower was possible, either through Disney themselves or fan edits, my thoughts on it would be a very resounding…

The first movement of the symphony is “Awakening of Pleasant Feelings upon Arriving in the Country”, and this part does just that. As the sun rises and we get our first glimpse of the technicolor fantasyland. Pan flute-playing fauns and unicorns frolic with each other while a herd of Pegasi take to the sky. Again, going back to other notable movies taking cues from Fantasia, Ray Harryhausen carefully studied the movement of the Pegasi here when creating his stop-motion Pegasus for Clash of the Titans. They canter through the air as they would on land, but in the water they move with the grace of a swan.

And look at the little baby ones, they’re just too cute!

The second movement, “Scene by the Brook”, takes place exactly where you think it does. A group of female centaurs, named “centaurettes” by the animators, doll themselves up with the help of some cupids (and the aforementioned Sunflower) in preparation for mating season.

“”I used to like the centaurettes not just because they were pretty but because each of them having different colors could be interpreted as women of all colors hanging out together and finding love. But no, having Sunflower there confirms that they’re all supposed to be lighter-skinned ladies. Racism given context makes it no less of a pain in the ass.”

The male centaurs arrive and hook up with their conveniently color-matching counterparts. The cherubs help set the mood for their flirting interludes until they discover two shy, lonely centaurs (Brudus and Melinda, because I’m that big of a Disney nerd that I know their actual names) who haven’t found each other yet. They lure them to a grove with some flute music a la The Pied Piper and it’s love at first sight.

One of my favorite details throughout the Pastoral Symphony is that we keep coming back to Brudus and Melinda. They’re a cute couple, one of the closest things we have to main characters in this sequence, and it’s nice to follow them.

Our third movement is “Peasants’ Merrymaking”. The centaur brigade prepare an overflowing vat of wine for Bacchus, god of booze and merrymaking. Bacchus, forever tipsy, arrives backed up by some black zebra centaurettes serving him. Maybe they were considered attractive enough to avoid being censored.

The bacchanalia is in full swing with everyone dancing and getting loaded. But Zeus, who appears more sinister than Laurence Olivier or his future Disney counterpart, crashes the party with a big thunderstorm. I used to think he was a jerk for endangering his subjects just for kicks, but in light of recent revelations maybe he had ulterior motives.

“Feel the wrath of the thunder god, you fucking racists!”

“Come on, dad, you used to be fun! Where’s the Zeus turns into a cow to pick up chicks?!”

“He grew up. Maybe you should too, son. Now EAT LIGHNING!”

“The Storm”, our fourth movement, provides some stunning imagery against the torrential backdrop, from the centaurs being called to shelter to the pegasus mother braving the gale to rescue her baby.

Ultimately Zeus grows tired and turns in for the night, ending the storm. Iris, goddess of the rainbow, emerges and leaves her technicolor trail across the sky. The creatures revel in the effects it has on their surroundings, then gather on a hill to watch the sunset, driven by Apollo and his chariot. Everyone settles in to sleep, and Artemis, hunting goddess of the moon, shoots an comet across the sky like an arrow that fills the sky with twinkling stars.

Pastoral Symphony was the one part of Fantasia that always received the most derision from critics, but racist characters aside I simply don’t get the hate for it. It may be longer than Rite of Spring but feels nowhere near as drawn out. I love the colors, characters, and the calm, bucolic fantasy world it creates. This was my first exposure to Beethoven and the world of Greek mythology and I still hold plenty of nostalgia for it. I admit it’s not perfect, and not just for the reason you think. Out of all the Fantasia pieces, this is the one whose quality is closest to an original Disney short than a theatrical feature. It’s a bit more cartoony and there’s some notable errors, particularly when the baby Pegasi dive into the water and emerge different colors. Also, Deems and the animators flip between using the gods’ Greek and Roman names, and the stickler in me wants them to pick a mythos and stick with it. But for all it’s flaws it’s still among my very favorite Fantasia pieces and nothing can change that.

The Dance of the Hours from the Opera “La Giaconda” – Amilcare Ponichelli

Like I said before, Disney was a master of the art of anthropomorphism. And nowhere is this more true than Dance of the Hours. Animals portray dancers symbolizing morning, noon, dusk and evening – only they’re the most unlikely ones for the job. The characters of our penultimate act are as cartoony as any you’d see in a Disney short from the era, but what puts the animation above it is the right balance of elasticity and realism. The exaggeration is on point, but there’s enough heft and weight to the animals that I can buy them being grounded in (some semblance of) reality. The animators studied professional dancers and incorporated their moves and elegance flawlessly. Half of the comedy derives from this.

The other half comes from how seriously the mock ballet is treated. We’re never informed who the dancers will be, leading anyone who hasn’t seen this before to assume they’re people. The ballet itself is a parody of the traditional pageant, but the performers carry on with the utmost sincerity. It doubles the laughs when it comes to moments such as Ben Ali Gator trying to catch Hyacinth Hippo in a dramatic pas de deux or an elephant getting a foot stuck in one of her own bubbles as she prances around. The familiar lighthearted refrain of the dance provides wonderful contrast to the caricatures on screen, particularly if you recall its other most famous iteration beyond Fantasia.

No one ever told me Camp Grenada was this Arcadian or zoological.

Morning begins with a troupe of uppity ostriches in ballet gear waking up, exercising and helping themselves to a cornucopia of fruit for breakfast. They fight over some grapes only to lose them in a pool. Something bubbles up from beneath and the ostriches run away in terror, but it’s only the prima ballerina of the piece, Hyacinth Hippo. She prepares for the day with help from her handmaidens and dances around a bit. Then she lies down for a nap, but no sooner do her ladies in waiting leave than some playful elephants come out of hiding and dance around Hyacinth unawares.

Elephants blowing bubbles in a Disney feature…nah, it’ll never catch on.

The elephants are blown away by a gust of wind (must be a really strong breeze), and with the coming of night a sinister band of crocodiles sneak up on Hyacinth. They scatter at the sudden arrival of their leader, Prince Ben Ali Gator, who immediately falls in love with Hyacinth. Surprisingly, the feeling is mutual.

I’m calling it – first body positivity romance in a Disney flick.

The climax of the piece has the crocodiles returning to wreak havoc on the palace and pulling the ostriches, elephants, and hippos back into a frenzied dance which brings down the house.

No bones about it, Dance of the Hours is a comic masterpiece and one of Fantasia’s crowning jewels. And the moment it ended was always the signal for younger me to stop the tape and rewind it to the beginning, due to what follows making a complete and terrifying 180…

Night on Bald Mountain – Modest Mussorgsky / Ave Maria – Franz Schubert

At last we come to our final part, two radically different classical works that blend perfectly into each other. And brother, what a note to end on.

Composer Modest Mussorgsky passed away before completing his masterwork “Night on the Bare Mountain”, a tonal poem depicting a witches’ sabbath from Slavic mythology. His friend, the great Rimsky-Korsakov, finished it for him while adding his own personal touch. The result is some of the most iconic and terrifying music ever created, and the accompanying animation, with the exception of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, is the most faithful to its source material.

The scene takes place on Walpurgis Night, which is the closest thing Europe has to a real-life Summerween (those lucky so-and-so’s), on the titular mountain. The mountain’s peak opens up revealing Chernabog, the Slavic deity of darkness.

Chernabog is a masterclass in design and form. It’s easy to mistake him for Satan himself – Walt Disney and Deems Taylor both refer to him as such – though considering he’s technically Slavic Satan, there’s not too big a distinction. Chernabog radiates power, terror and pure darkness from his intro alone. You can imagine him influencing all other Disney villains to do his will, essentially filling in the horned one’s hooves. Chernabog was skillfully handled by Bill Tylta, an early Disney animator with enough talent to create characters as diverse as Stromboli and Dumbo. Bela Lugosi, the original Dracula, posed for reference pictures in the early design stages, though Tylta ultimately discarded them in favor of some different inspiration – sequence director Wilfred Jackson as model, and Tytla’s own Czech heritage. He grew up with folktales of Chernabog, which served him well during the production.

“Soon, master. The one known as Jackson shall take up your mantle and we shall feast upon humanity yet again.”

Chernabog unleashes his might on to the sleeping village below and raises the dead from the cemetery. A cabal of witches, wraiths and demons gallop on the wind and take part in his infernal revelry. Yet they are but playthings to the evil being. He transforms the creatures into alluring sirens and wretched beasts, sics harpies on them, condemns them to the flames, and lustfully embraces the hellish blaze. It’s an in your face pageantry of pure malevolence that you can’t look away from

Things Fantasia Fans Are Sick of Hearing #6: “This is too scary for kids!! What the hell were they thinking?!”

I think it’s time we made one thing clear: Fantasia was NOT made for children – or to be more accurate, not EXCLUSIVELY for children. While Disney movies are made to be enjoyed by both kids and adults, Fantasia is the only one who dared to appeal to a more mature audience, and Night on Bald Mountain is proof of that. It had the audacity to explore some of the most darkest, ancient depictions of evil in a way that no Disney feature has before or since. Most importantly, it’s not done for shock value like any random horror movie you could name. It’s meant to show the juxtaposition between the darkest depravity and purest good; combined with Ave Maria it makes for the perfect symbolic climax to Fantasia. Light versus darkness, chaos versus order, life versus death, profane versus sacred, and the quest to master them all are the themes that unify the seemingly disparate sequences, and this finale is the apotheosis of that.

I stated in my Mickey’s Christmas Carol review that Bald Mountain was one of my first introductions to the concept of eternal damnation at the tender age of…I wanna say four, five? It was easily one of the most petrifying things from my childhood, but at least I could avoid some exposure to it thanks to its position at the very end. Though now I adore Night on Bald Mountain for how bold and striking it is. Tytla’s animation, Kay Nielsen’s stunning demon designs, and Schultheis’ effects culminate in harmonious diabolical artwork that’s impossible to extricate from the music. It’s a shame Schultheis left the studio after Fantasia. He met a mysterious, tragic end in Guatemala, right around the time Bill Tytla left too as a matter of fact…

“He knew too much…about the secrets of animation, I mean. Nothing at all about das vampyr walking the earth. No sir.”

Yet at the height of his power, one thing stops Chernabog cold – the sound of church bells. Disney historian John Culhane saw Fantasia during its original theatrical run (lucky so and so…) and he recalled how much having FantaSound affected his screening: when the bells rang, he could hear them coming from the back of the theater and slowly course their way up front as their power grew. It was an awe-inspiring moment that took the Bald Mountain experience one step further into reality.

The bells and the rising sun drive Chernabog and his minions back into the mountain and the restless spirits return to their graves. In the misty morning a procession of pilgrims glides through the woods like a parade of tiny lights, and thus the Ave Maria begins. It’s one of the rare times Disney has gone overtly Christian. Maybe Walt wanted to get back into the God-fearing American public’s good graces after the sorcery, paganism, devil worship and evolution theory we’ve witnessed in the past hour and fifty minutes. It does relieve the tension from the previous turn of events.

The first pitch had the march enter a cathedral, but Walt didn’t believe recreating something people can already see in Europe. So instead they move through a forest with trees and natural rock formations resembling the Gothic architecture of a cathedral. It’s the stronger choice in my opinion. The implication speaks greater volumes than a specific location, subtly connecting nature to the divine. It’s difficult to make out most of the hymn’s words, but regardless it sounds beautiful, especially those final triumphant notes as the sky lights up over a view of the verdant hilltops.

“When the sun hits that ridge just right, these hills sing.”

And with that, Fantasia comes to a close.

Really, what else can I say about it at this point. I keep forgetting this movie came out in 1940. It’s virtually timeless, and a must-see for anyone who loves animation and classic film and wants to jump into either one.

Fantasia was a critical and box office success…sort of. Despite the praise and high box office returns for the time, it sadly wasn’t enough to make up for the cost of putting it all together. Like Pinocchio before it, the war cut off any foreign revenue. And not every theater was willing or able to shell out for that nifty surround sound so the effects were lost on most people. Then there’s the audience response, which is the most depressing of all. The casual moviegoers still viewed Walt as the guy behind those wacky mouse cartoons and called him out for being a pretentious snob, while the highbrow intellectuals accused Walt of debasing classical music by shackling it to animation. The poor guy just couldn’t win.

Fantasia marked the end of an era. Never again would Walt attempt a feature so ambitious. His plans of making Fantasia a recurring series, with old segments regularly swapped out for new ones, would not be seen in his lifetime. There’s been the occasional copycat (Allegra non troppo), a handful of spiritual successors (Make Mine Music, Yellow Submarine), and of course the sequel which I’m sure I’ll get to eventually, but through it all, there is only one Fantasia. And no amount of my ramblings can hope to measure up to it. Fantasia is one of those movies you simply have to experience for yourself, preferably on the biggest screen available with a top of the line sound system. I know it’s a cliche for Internet critics to name this as their favorite animated Disney movie, but…yes, it’s mine too. It opened a door to a world of culture and art at a young age. The power of animation is on full display, and it’s affected the way I look at the medium forever. Fantasia was, and still is, a film ahead of its time.

Thank you for reading. I hope you can understand why this review took me nearly three months! If you enjoyed this, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Patreon supporters get perks such as extra votes and adding movies of their choice to the Shelf. If I can get to $100, I can go back to making weekly tv show reviews. Right now I’m halfway there! Special thanks to Amelia Jones and Gordhan Ranaj for their contributions.

You can vote for whatever movie you want me to look at next by leaving it in the comments or emailing me at [email protected]. Remember, unless you’re a Patreon supporter, you can only vote once a month. The list of movies available to vote for are under “What’s On the Shelf”.

Artwork by Charles Moss. Certain screencaps courtesy of animationscreencaps.com.

To learn more about Fantasia, I highly recommend both John Culhane’s perennial book on the film and The Lost Notebook by John Canemaker, which reveals the long-lost special effects secrets which made Fantasia look so magical.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be spending the rest of the month with my handy dandy garlic, stake and crucifix and pray Bill Tytla doesn’t visit me this Walpurgis Night. I suggest you do the same.

March Review: Fantasia (1940) And now we come to the final piece of Walt Disney's original animation trifecta, Fantasia, and it's one I'm both anticipating and dreading.

9 notes · View notes

redorblue · 5 years

Text

Three daughers of Eve, by Elif Shafak

This book is absolutely brilliant and quite possibly one of the best I’ve ever read. I’ll get to my arguments later, but I just have to start with the gushing and the hyperbole because I’m in love with the book, and I’m in love with the author. It’s everything I ever wanted in several (sub)genres at once: dark academia, feminist fiction, in-depth study of a society/milieu, and religion in fiction. It’s also beautifully written with just the right amount of flowery language and magical realism. If anyone’s interested in any of the above, I can’t recommend this book enough to do my enthusiasm justice, and all these feelings have to go somewhere, so let’s get into it (careful - spoilers).

The story has two narrative threads. One is set in Istanbul in 2016 and tells us about a single evening in the life of the protagonist Peri, a housewife with two kids and a rich husband who attends a dinner party for Istanbul’s nouveau riche. It starts with an unfortunate encounter between Peri and a mugger that triggers memories which Peri would have preferred to suppress for the rest of her life. The other thread recounts key events from her life: how she grew up in a family that was split between her father’s strict atheism (and accompanying drinking problem) and her mother’s equally strict insistence on her faith; how she went to Oxford at age 18 to study and promptly ended up in a similar position between her two friends Shirin (who has a hostile attitude towards religion and especially Islam) and Mona (who is a practising Muslim); and how it all falls apart when Peri becomes infatuated (obsessed, really) with her enigmatic teacher, Professor Azur. The story of Peri’s life is woven through shorter chapters that recount the events of the dinner party and how she finally gets to grips with her past and the people she met in Oxford.

Now why is this book a great read for fans of dark academia? I love dark academia and I’ve read my fair share of it, so I feel confident in saying that most of us probably read it because of those exquisitely messed-up characters, not in spite of it. Three daughters of Eve has that, too - the main characters in this narrative thread (Peri, Shirin, Mona, Azur) - are all very much shaped by their families, their pasts and presents, and that doesn’t always lead them to make good decisions. For me, the characters never got to the level of annoyingness or just plain shittiness that people from The Secret History or The Lessons reach, but some of them can be very hurtful and manipulative when it serves their purpose/emotional state. What sets this book apart for me is that 1. they’re not actively trying to be sophisticated, misanthropic, alcohol-abusing misfits, which is nice for a change because it feels more natural and doesn’t take away at all from the fun of interpreting their actions and motives; 2. the students are all female (at least those that get more than a few lines), which is always nice, but especially in this genre because it’s so full of men; and 3. the teacher is not an abusive piece of sh** and actually cares for his students. He may not always be good at it, he’s still pretty self-involved, and generally I don’t approve of teacher-student affairs, but in this case I’m okay with letting it slide because Shirin is someone who can make her own decisions and stand up for herself - and because Shirin is a grown-up, obviously. We don’t get to see much of the relationship between Shirin and Azur, but from the glimpses we’re offered it doesn’t seem like there’s a power inbalance between them. Rather it seems like these are two personalities that just click, and that happen to possess two bodies capable of giving the other what they need at that moment. Eventually, the affair ends on its own and transforms into a lifelong friendship, which made me think that this is one of the rare cases where I don’t mind this kind of relationship - if the difference in age and status really is just a coincidence and not the defining factor. Of course, if Peri had got her will, things would have been completely different (bad different) which is why I’m very, very glad that the author didn’t go there.

But the book is not only a great example of dark academia. It’s also about the intersections of religion, tradition, feminism and modernity, and it has a very distinct way of studying how these fields act with or against each other. The story that’s set in the present uncovers how, despite all their efforts to appear Western and secular and enlightened with regards to women, Istanbul’s high society is still very much bound up in traditional and restricting gender roles. A telling example of this is when after dinner, the guests split up: the women go to the living room to exchange gossip and beauty tips while the men stay put to talk about politics and the economy. Mixing is not appreciated. This is not meant as an accusation against Turkey - I doubt that this scene would read differently if it was set in London - but as a very accurate (I guess) analysis of how talk of women’s emancipation only goes so far. What really needs to change is the underlying preconceptions about (binary) genders that have been embedded in both women’s and men’s minds - otherwise there’s no real equality or liberation, no matter how short the dresses are becoming.

In Peri’s backstory, the topic is not so much (Western) feminism but the tensions between tradition and/or religion on the one hand and a belief in women’s equality and rights on the other - without any particular affiliation, Western or otherwise. Peri, Shirin and Mona (to whom the title, Three daughters of Eve, alludes, by the way) each have their own way of uniting these two value systems: Shirin (”The Sinner”), whose family fled Iran shortly after the Islamic revolution because they didn’t want the new regime’s values forced onto them, completely rejects religion and Middle Eastern/Iranian value systems in favor of secular Western feminism. Mona (”The Believer”) uses a feminist reading of Islamic sources to justify her belief in women’s rights, while staying in touch with aspects of her cultural background that fit into her worldview, like abstinence before marriage (for men and women). Mona is actually one of only very few characters that I know of who give a clear and accurate picture of Islamic feminism, which makes me love her (and Elif Shafak) even more. Peri (”The Confused”) is exactly that - confused. But her confusion stems not from ignorance but from a critical mind that can’t help but question both the values that were instilled into her in Turkey and those that she witnesses in Oxford. This questioning means that she never settles on anything, never stands still long enough to form a coherent worldview although that is what she’s desperately searching. It’s terribly uncomfortable for her, but it also means that she has a very keen eye for injustices done to women, however they may be justified.

#Elif Shafak #Three daughters of Eve #book review #dark academia #islamic feminism #2018

33 notes · View notes

calvin-af-crone · 5 years

Text

Giant Deconstructed

This video is quite simply an artistic masterpiece on multiple levels. If you haven’t yet, I urge you to view the video in expanded view on a big monitor to get the full effect. Most viewers immediately feel emotionally affected & recognize its greatness w/o understanding why or how they’ve been affected. Allow me to break it down for you. Understanding how Emil Nava’s magic tricks are done should heighten instead of diminishing your appreciation.

On a meta-narrative level, the story being illustrated is a classic Hero’s Journey. A boy suffers despair over his sickly mother. A mysterious deity summons him into a magical realm. By determination & perseverance, he confronts his personal deity & receives spiritual wisdom. Then by the power of music & dance, he attains his inner strength. This is essentially the narrative told by the lyrics of the song & the music builds to a emotional peak before shifting into a potent primitive chant ending w/ triumphant affirmations.

One of Nava’s favorite visual tricks is subliminal messaging. These visual affects flash an image at the viewer so quickly the effect of the image slips beneath conscious awareness & triggers a subconscious emotional response or unconscious reflex. Diabolical subliminals last less than a fraction of a second. The viewer is entirely unaware of receiving them & these can be regarded as an attempt at mind control. Putting them in commercials is actually illegal.

Nava’s subliminals last almost a full second. You do see them but aren’t given enough time to consciously figure out what you’ve seen. However, your subconscious definitely does see the content of the image & responds emotionally. Sometimes, he aims deeper & sets off an unconscious instinctive reflex. All of these flash edits are benignly intended to heighten your experience during the video & subtly manipulate your emotions. On a practical level, the feeling that you’ve missed something tends to generate a million views in a day.

Nava also heavily uses symbolism to sneak resonant ideas into your viewing experience. I’ll deal w/ examples as they arise in the breakdown. But, let’s start w/ the surface imagery & what it shows our consciously aware minds. Nava quickly establishes a real life scenario that most viewers immediately understand. A boy living w/ his dysfunctional mother suffers the burden of responsibility all children feel for a sickly parent. He’s going thru his ordinary life carrying a weight of despair. The scenes are cast in shrouded dismal tones of blue & gray like the boy’s outlook on life. He’s even dressed in blue—a color symbolically associated w/ sadness.

Then we’re only 9 seconds into the video when Nava hits us w/ a what-the-fuck-was-that flash of red expertly timed to hit simultaneously w/ the strike of a sharply high-pitched chord. That timing is another layer of perfection thru-out this short film. Every action is synchronized like in a ballet to land w/ the beat, flow on the bass line, or enforce primary chords in the music.

I had to adjust the brightness of the image to identify feet dancing in mud puddles. Red symbolizes passion & energy. Consciously, we see the red flash as a burst of energy & hope. Unconsciously, we’re getting a flash forward & are being prepared for Dance Music to literally change the boy’s life.

The next red flash forward hits at the 0:25 mark, shows rave dancers, & lasts long enough to actually be perceived unless you blink & miss it.

On the surface, we see the boy looking at a photograph of a plant & that’s overt foreshadowing. Then at 0:33 thru 0:37, we’re hit w/ a major scene shift at the very moment Rag’n’BoneMan first declares, “I am a giant!”

In sharp contrast to the boy’s life, we’re transported to an idyllic lake in a misty forest & see a figure dressed in sun yellow standing in a boat. Bright pure yellow symbolizes the sun. Consciously you think “oh, there’s Calvin”. Subconsiocusly you recognize a solar deity. This scene shift establishes an alternate location in the narrative.

Then we’re back to scenes of the boy’s dismal & at 0:43, we’re back at the lake & stay for an 2 entire seconds, long enough to watch birds flying from left to right over the left shoulder of the figure in yellow.

Back w/ the boy, we see more scenes of his unhappiness & note his mother’s problem is drug addiction or she’s chronically ill & requires medication. He is shown sitting morosely on the back of a park bench & Nava pulls off a lovely example of symbolic visual echoing. The birds that flew in the scene at the lake seem to arrive from left to right over the left shoulder of the boy & land in front of him. You can see this clearly in the video but its impossible to see in this still.

Go watch the video again because one second after being visited by the birds at 0:51, the boy is motivated to move w/ a sense of purpose. We get quick scenes from home w/ his mother now bathed in a warm, hopeful glow interspersed w/ action scenes as he goes thru a gate & starts running. His face shows determination. He is not running away from his problems. He is running towards... something. Just when we start to wonder, “where’s he going,” the scenes quickly cut back & forth between the man in the boat & the boy’s effort.

From 1:17 thru 1:21, there’s a scene at the lake that made me bark out a laugh the first time I saw it. Up until this moment the narrative has been rooted in reality. Now it’s surreal! If you missed the clue of the birds being sent to summon the boy, if you thought the man in the boat was only DJ Calvin Harris, this scene ought to startle you. Fish leap out of the lake in response to a god of Nature!

At 1:21 thru 1:28, the camera pans over & into a forest. We see a doe lift her head at a sound & the boy is seen running as fast as he can into a misty magical realm. There is nothing real about this! The boy could not have run far enough to leave a city & enter a real forest. It’s physically impossible, even for someone in good shape, to continue running a peak speed for miles.

Again the narrative shifts back & forth between the god & the running boy. The god takes off his yellow jacket to dig up a potato. The boy keeps running. The god is gathering herbs & mushrooms, suddenly dressed like Prince Harry on a Nature ramble. What could be more magical than that? LOL! During the video, the unidentified deity goes thru five elegant costume changes. He’s not some hobo in the woods or a wild nature god like Pan. He looks like a British lord...

At 1:44, we are confronted by five riders on horseback coming straight at us & most viewers will feel deep emotion in response, maybe even a tiny surge of fear. Let’s pause for a moment to consider Nava’s peculiar affection for images of riders on horseback. He drops these symbols w/o any logical reason into videos every chance he gets to give viewers a cheap surge of vicarious exhilaration. Symbolically, seeing a person riding a galloping horse represents Power & Freedom. It is both a symbol of the human will triumphing over Nature & conversely the union of a horse & rider represent harmony with Nature.

In the same way no one taught you to leap away from the sound of a hissing snake, you have an instinctive reflex to seeing riders on horseback, especially if they are riding towards you. Aboriginal humans reverently made cave paintings of horses 25,000 years ago. Deeper than cultural symbolism, our response to riders on horseback is hardwired into our brains. This time—bless his heart—Nava staged a video that uses horseback riders for maximum effect to whip up anxiety & awe along w/ the music’s turbulence.

I probably don’t need to explain the symbolism of the riders wearing exercise togs exactly like the boy’s, except in red. Blue symbolizes water & sadness. Red is the color of fire & energy. These are the minions of the solar deity, elemental spirits like flames in the mist, & they come galloping like an opposing army. But we only have a few seconds of dread before we glimpse a rider in the mists going in the same direction as the running boy. In later scenes, it becomes clearer they are escorting or herding him towards his destination.

After these quick action cuts, at 1:53 we arrive at a static scene.

Your subconscious mind is fully capable of counting 12 passive creatures dressed in red & realizes the magical significance of the boy in blue adding up to 13 pairs of sneakers on the ground.

From 1:59 to 2:04, we are reminded of where the boy came from & at 2:05 we are reminded of his destination—the elegantly dressed deity. There are more frantic scenes of riders and the running boy between scenes from home, now glowing w/ yellow light then red-lit as the boy dances in his room. Did the kid even leave home? Is he tripping out in his room? Does it matter? I say it doesn’t because the effect on him will be the same.

There are more quick cuts between galloping & running interspersed w/ scenes starting at 2:28 of the deity by a campfire in the forest, preparing a feast for his guest. At 2:39, the five riders come out of the mists directly at us triggers another surge of dread. Supernatural pairs of eyes glow in the darkness behind them. This ominous visual moment is perfectly timed to coincide w/ the music shifting into a guttural tribal chant. The first time I heard the song I thought this part of it sounded like a primitive pagan ritual & the lyric was an incantation to disperse negativity.

Apparently the song gave Nava the same visual because here we are at 2:46 w/ the boy in a forest clearing in the dark of night w/ red-clad nature devas standing like flames. The five riders might represent the five sacred elements—earth, water, fire, air, & spirit. Over all this imagery, the music spins a potent magical spell. Rag‘n’BoneMan stands at the center of a circle of hay bales looking like a modern day skinhead shaman. Lightning flashes in the sky like supernatural energies are being aroused. At 2:49 for less than a second, an owl—symbol of wisdom—is shown on a tree branch. The horseback riders start circling the boy & fire spirits where they stand immobile.

For one second at 2:53, we get a subliminal of the deity—now wearing a garment stripped in blue, red & the purple of royalty—standing still beside a black stallion. Then for less than a second a red-hooded skull-like face impacts our subconsciousness before the boy stomps his foot on the ground at 2:55 when the compulsion to dance overcomes him.

To leaven the tension, Nava unfurls a Scottish flag for amusement as the boy’s dancing becomes positively demon-possessed. One second, he’s in the circle at night, the next second he’s in his room at home, & the next, he’s dancing in the day-lit forest. The imagery flows on w/ exhilarating & dizzying speed.

After another rabble-rousing wave of the Scottish flag, the action freezes at 3:11 in a tension-inducing static shot—the boy in blue faces off a girl in red w/ her cohort standing by & it’s raining! Emotion is literally drenching the scene! A subliminal of the boy’s mother & her medications flashes by then one second each of the boy looking thru flames & the deity solemnly regarding him. These two moments symbolize the transfer of power from the god to the boy.

It’s a relief when everyone starts dancing in the rain and stomping in mud puddles at 3:19. There are more quick cuts back & forth to the boy dancing in his room, the stand off w/ the girl as a lightning flash divides the sky, & the rave in full revel. A subliminal second of the boy & girl standing closer then another of him dancing in his room.

And we are suddenly transported back to the scene of the deity standing beside his horse for a full 2 seconds to absorb the fact that a light snow is falling. The god exists apart from the rave. The imagery cuts back to dancing bodies & horses rearing then the boy stands alone for a second at 3:37 in falling snow & this subliminally puts him on the same plane of existence as the deity. After another couple seconds of rave dancing, we get slightly over a second at 3:40 to fully absorb snow falling on the diety & his horse w/ a halo symbolizing divinity behind them.

The video concludes w/ 2 seconds of the boy facing the girl in the rain, one solid shot of Rag’n’BoneMan’s face w/ snowfall & then a bright flash of green light!

Thru-out the video, we’ve seen scenes tinted blue, yellow, & red but this is the only shot of bright green & it’s flashed at the viewer like a piecing ray. Green symbolizes the Earth, growth, & as the mid-point in the color spectrum it represents balance. Green is also the color of the metaphysical Healing Ray of Light. And that’s what it represents in the context of this narrative. Summoned & guided by a deity, empowered by the magic of music & dance, our boy hero has been healed of his malaise. In the last moments, we see him standing alone, strong & resolute, looking up in wonder as snowflakes drift down upon him. This is a lovely conclusion to the tale.

8 notes · View notes

asknightqueendany · 5 years

Note

The Big Five (Bran, Arya, Jon, Dany, Tyrion) who will survive is only something that George R. R. Martin wrote in a letter about the upcoming series in 199-fucking-3. It was supposed to be a trilogy. There was supposed to be a love triangle between Tyrion, Arya and Jon. Also dany wasn’t supposed to have dragons in that outline so STOP using the big 5 to justify that Sansa isn’t an important character! It’s getting old and transparent.

I’m cracking up. Have you people even READ the original outline? No? I highly suggest you check it out before sending me asks on it again. You can see the original photos and transcribed texts HERE.

But let’s go through it because it’s a glorious Friday afternoon and I feel like taking some people down a notch.

The things I seem most about GRRM’s original outline as reasons why it shouldn’t be taken seriously are: 1) it was supposed to be a trilogy and 2) there was supposed to be a love triangle between Jon, Arya, and Tyrion. I don’t know where you got the whole, “Dany wasn’t supposed to have dragons” thing anon because according to the outline, there be dragons:

But let’s take a look at the letter. George states, “There are three major conflicts set in motion in the chapters enclosed. These will form the major plot threads of the trilogy, intertwining each other in what should be a complex but exciting (I hope) narrative tapestry. Each of the conflicts presents a major threat to the peace of my imaginary realm, the Seven Kingdoms, and to the lives of my principal characters.”

The first threat, George says, is the Lannister/Stark conflict.

The second threat is the Dothraki invasion, led by Daenerys in what George thought would be his second novel - A Dance With Dragons.

And the Third and final threat to Westeros would be the Others in his presumed last novel - The Winds of Winter.

Now, right off the bat, George has already used all the book titles, with TWOW in progress. On the show, we’ve already seen the play out and conclusion of the Lannister/Stark war. Daenerys/Dothraki invasion of Westeros has happened in the show. And the Others had begun invading the Seven Kingdoms at the end of Season 7.

So all of what George first said has come to pass, just eight seasons and seven books, not a trilogy.

In AGOT, things George said would happen was that Ned and Cat were doomed (✓), things for the Starks would get worse before they got better (✓), Ned would find out what happened to Jon Arryn (✓), Robert would have an accident and the throne would pass to Joffrey (✓), Ned would be accused of treason (✓), and Ned would help Arya and Catelyn escape to Winterfell (did not happen). HOWEVER - Cat never needed escaping from King’s Landing AND Arya did escape King’s Landing after Ned’s beheading - she just didn’t receive help from him.

George says of Sansa: she will wed Joffrey (no) and bear him a son (no), “and when the crunch comes she will choose her husband and child over her parents and siblings, a choice she will later bitterly rue” (✓ - Sansa DOES choose Joffrey over her family in the Riverlands and then again in King’s Landing by going behind Ned’s back to tell Cersei of his plan to send them back to Winterfell and willingly volunteers to write the letter to Robb so that she can still marry Joffrey (not because Cersei made her write it, she did it for Joffrey). Tyrion befriends Sansa (✓) and Arya (no) and becomes disillusioned with his own family (✓).

I’m just going to quote the whole letter from now on because I’m too lazy to type…

“Young Bran will come out of his coma (✓), after a strange prophetic dream (✓), only to discover that he will never walk again (✓). He will turn to magic, at first in the hope of restoring his legs, but later for its own sake (✓). When his father Eddard Stark is executed, Bran will see the shape of doom descending on all of them, but nothing he can say will stop his brother Robb from calling the banners in rebellion (✓) . All the north will be inflamed by war (✓). Robb will win several splendid victories (✓), and maim Joffrey Baratheon on the battlefield (no), but in the end he will not be able to stand against Jaime and Tyrion Lannister and their allies. Robb Stark will die in battle (no), and Tyrion Lannister will besiege and burn Winterfell (no - kinda).” - Winterfell does get besieged and burned, only not by Tyrion, by Theon and Ramsay. And of course, Robb will die during his war against the Lannisters, just not in battle.

“Jon Snow, the bastard, will remain in the far north (✓). He will mature into a ranger of great daring (✓ - kinda), and ultimately will succeed his uncle as the commander of the Night’s Watch(✓ - kinda). When Winterfell burns, Catelyn Stark will be forced to flee north with her son Bran and her daughter Arya (no - kinda). Wounded by Lannister riders, they will seek refuge at the Wall, but the men of the Night’s Watch give up their families when they take the black, and Jon and Benjen will not be able to help, to Jon’s anguish (no). It will lead to a bitter estrangement between Jon and Bran (no). Arya will be more forgiving … until she realizes, with terror, that she has fallen in love with Jon, who is not only her half-brother but a man of the Night’s Watch, sworn to celibacy (no - kinda). Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy, until the secret of Jon’s true parentage is finally revealed in the last book (no - kinda).” - though Jon isn’t a ranger, he goes on a ranging and is pretty daring. He does become LC but not succeeding Benjen, succeeding Mormont. Bran does flee to the Wall, but to go beyond it. Arya tries to flee North/to the Wall but doesn’t make it. Jon is tormented by a love because of his NW vows of celibacy - Ygritte - and does develop feelings for his kin - Daenerys.

“Abandoned by the Night’s Watch, Catelyn and her children will find their only hope of safety lies even further north, beyond the Wall (no - kinda), where they fall into the hands of Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall, and get a dreadful glimpse of the inhuman others as they attack the wildling encampment (no - kinda). Bran’s magic, Arya’s sword Needle, and the savagery of their direwolves will help them survive, but their mother Catelyn will die at the hands of the others (no - kinda).” - as stated, Bran does go beyond the Wall, Jon is the one who falls into the hands of Mance Rayder, Jon does get a glimpse of an Other attack on a wildling encampment (Hardhome), and Bran’s magic and direwolf do save him from the Others (The Door - Hodor).

“Over across the narrow sea, Daenerys Targaryen will discover that her new husband, the Dothraki Khal Drogo, has little interest in invading the Seven Kingdoms, much to her brother’s frustration(✓). When Viserys presses his claims past the point of tact or wisdom, Khal Drogo will finally grow annoyed and kill him out of hand, eliminating the Targaryen pretender and leaving Daenerys as the last of her line (✓). Danerys [sic] will bide her time, but she will not forget (✓). When the moment is right, she will kill her husband (✓) to avenge her brother (no), and then flee with a trusted friend into the wilderness beyond Vaes Dothrak (✓ - kinda). There, hunted by Dothraki bloodriders (✓) [unclear] of her life, she stumbles on a cach***e of dragon’***s eggs (✓ - kinda) [unclear] of a young dragon will give Daenerys the power to bend the Dothraki to her will (✓). Then she begins to plan for her invasion of the Seven Kingdoms (✓). - Daenerys does wander the wilderness beyond Vaes Dothrak (after she hatches her dragons) with her Khalasar in the Red Waste. She does get dragons eggs, just given to her at her wedding instead of stumbling upon them (really, that’s just better storytelling on George’s part. If she had just randomly found them, it would feel too coincidental). Dany did kill Drogo but not to avenge Viserys; it was to put him out of his misery. Dany does use her powers to bend the Dothraki to her will (burning the Khals to become TSWMTW).

“Tyrion Lannister will continue to travel, to plot, and to play the game of thrones (✓), finally removing his nephew Joffrey in disgust at the boy king’s brutality (no - kinda). Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms (no - kinda), by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and blaming his brother Tyrion for the murders (no - kinda). Exiled (✓), Tyrion will change sides (✓), making common cause with the surviving Starks to bring his brother down (✓ - kinda), and falling helplessly in love with Arya Stark (✓ - kinda) while he’s at it. His passion is, alas, unreciprocated (✓ - kinda), but no less intense for that, and it will lead to a deadly rivalry between Tyrion and Jon Snow (yet to be seen).” - Joffrey is killed and Tyrion is accused though he wasn’t guilty. Cersei follows her son to the throne after Tommen’s death (which was her fault so she essentially killed him), Tyrion joins Daenerys to bring down Cersei, he falls in love with Dany (according to all of Peter’s interviews about his feelings for Daenerys), as Dany is in love with Jon, it seems Tyrion’s affections are reciprocated, and we don’t yet know if Tyrion and Jon will fight to the death. It’s possible.

So anon, I’d say so far as George’s predictions go for the entire series, he’s gotten it closer to his original outline than not. So please, for the last goddamn time, leave me alone with this bullshit that the Original outline doesn’t mean anything so far as Sansa’s character and I should stop referring to it. Almost everything George predicted he’d write, has come to pass. Perhaps not how he originally thought…but largely, it’s all happened.

Wanna know why Sansa’s a “major character” in the show? Look:

And it’s because of Turner’s strength, Benioff continued, that it made sense to give Sansa a dramatic storyline this season and to use Ramsay’s engagement for that very purpose. In fact, the showrunners first thought about putting Sansa and Ramsay together back when they were writing season 2. “We really wanted Sansa to play a major part this season,” Benioff said. “If we were going to stay absolutely faithful to the book, it was going to be very hard to do that.

D&D wanted it. It’s not George’s story or George’s plan. Dan and Dave like Sophie’s acting and wanted her to play a more major role. So they gave her that. It has absolutely nothing to do with the series as a whole or the endgame. Sansa is not a main character and she will matter very little to the endgame.

6 notes · View notes

creative-type · 6 years

Text

Several months ago someone asked what I thought about the Warlord system in One Piece and how Oda integrated it into the story as a whole. The short answer was that I thought it’s been pretty fantastic thus far, but it’s something that I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while now and I’d like to expand on my reasoning a bit.

I know I’m in the minority on this, but as a general FYI I will be using the English translations for all titles and epithets. I have a difficult enough time with spelling as it is and don’t really see the appeal of using Japanese when there’s a perfectly serviceable translation available.

So without further ado, let’s talk about Warlords.

In Service of World Building

As many already know, when Eiichiro Oda conceptualized One Piece the series was only supposed to last for five years. It seems silly to think that now, but when you look back and see how quickly Oda breezed through the East Bue arcs it almost seems as if that original estimate was possible.

What you may not know is that according to an interview in the 23rd log book, Oda came up with the idea for the Seven Warlords of the Sea after the Four Emperors. And while I have no proof, I would go so far as to argue that the decision to make Mihawk a Warlord was a retroactive one, as the term “Seven Warlords of the Sea” wasn’t introduced until chapter 69 when Mihawk made his debut in chapter 49.

Chapter 69, incidentally, is also when we get our first hint of the Emperors, as they along with the World Government and Warlords make up the three great powers that rule the Grand Line.

So the Warlords were a relatively late addition to the world of One Piece, though their role and place within the story come hundreds of chapters before the influence of the Emperors or the World Government is fleshed out. Credit goes to Oda for seamlessly integrating a new idea into his rapidly expanding story.

I’ll go into the importance of the Warlords from a narrative standpoint after a while, but first I want to point out that the Warlords make sense. Privateers were totally a thing during the Golden Age of Piracy and had a profound impact on real world politics. One Piece’s Warlord system is a broad reference to these privateers, but grounding the more fantastical elements in the series in something the audience can understand helps make the story feel real. Transforming the mundane into the fantastic is one of the hallmarks of a great fantasy series.

Even if the reader doesn’t have any foreknowledge of real world privateers, the in-universe logic pans out. It makes sense that the marines would be overwhelmed by the pirate boom caused by Roger’s death. It makes sense that the World Government would be willing to make deals with their sworn enemies to help stop the bleeding. It makes sense that selfish, amoral criminals would take advantage of the privileges offered to them by the World Government, or that less scrupulous individuals would seek out that power to further their own ends.

(Not a whole lot is known about the initiation of the Warlord system, but I work under the assumption that it’s a relatively new organization. As far as I’m aware Crocodile was one of the longest-tenured Warlords and joined in his mid-twenties, which matches up nicely with the beginning of the Great Pirate Age. If there’s evidence that suggests they’ve been around for longer I’d be happy to hear it.)

As for why Seven Warlords instead of five of ten or any other number, Oda himself is on the record for saying he thought it was cool, but in-universe it stands to reason that the marines and World Government wouldn’t want to give out too many pardons for fear of losing control over the Warlords (which ends up happening anyway, but we’ll get to that later) while still having enough of a force at their disposal to counter the Emperors if need be, as seen during Marineford.

All this to say that as a concept, the Warlords work. They serve a greater purpose within the world of One Piece than fodder for the Straw Hats to face. One of One Piece’s greatest strengths is that the characters always feel like they have lives outside of what we’re shown. Even minor antagonists like the Baroque Works agents are shown to have dreams outside of Crocodile’s ambition, while characters like Hancock and Jimbe have histories that go far beyond “allies of the Straw Hat Pirates”. We are only shown tiny slivers of these characters lives, but they are all unique with different motivations, dreams, and outlooks on life while all still being, ostensibly, pirates who have made themselves dogs of the Government.

A secondary effect is we get to see how other characters react to them and their actions, particularly the marines and World Government.

Smoker says it best. The Warlords hit this weird middle ground between the Justice spouted by the marines and the Freedom the Straw Hats pursue, and in doing so reveal the corruption within the World Government and show what the Straw Hats might become should they falter in their journey.

The Warlord-World Government relationship is especially interesting. Before the Alabasta saga we had seen small-time corruption by Morgan and Nezumi, but the cover up surrounding Crocodile’s defeat goes all the way to the top. It’s the first time we see different factions within the marines and really the first time we see how awful the World Government can be.

What’s special is the entire interaction doesn’t involve the Straw Hats at all. It’s an interaction between Smoker and his superiors in reaction to what happened with Crocodile. There are’t a lot of series that can have this type of development separate from their main protagonists, but it’s another one of those things that makes the world of One Piece feel bigger than just the Straw Hat Pirates.

Service of the Straw Hats

While the Warlords are an interesting bunch with enough personality to carry the manga by themselves, their existence would be meaningless if they didn’t interact with the Straw Hats in some way shape or form. It is entirely possible to cut the Warlord system from the story with minimal interruption to the overarching plot. At the same time, you don’t introduce a powerful group and then not have them all show up. The moment Yosaku said there were seven Warlords Oda was basically forced to make sure they all appeared in some way, shape, or form (in the same interview that revealed that the Warlords were made up after the Emperors, Oda laments not lowering the number to something more reasonable, like two).

In a lesser series, this would mean having the Straw Hats fight all seven, preferably in order of ascending difficulty. Luckily for us, One Piece is not one of those series and the Warlords turn out to be as unique and variable as the world they inhabit. Some have become Luffy’s mortal enemies, others allies, and hopefully one will someday join the crew (any day now, Oda). Alliances form, shift, and break as needed to further the plot, with a few good twists thrown in along the way.

I would say that the Warlords were at their most effective early in the series, when they were acting as gatekeepers to the rest of the world. Mihawk, even though he wasn’t confirmed to be a Warlord until twenty chapters after his introduction, was the reader’s first glimpse into the power scaling of the series. The first thing we knew about him was he was the World’s Greatest Swordsman and could destroy fifty ships without breaking a sweat. Luffy and Zoro had their badass moments early on, but nothing they had done was even remotely close to what Mihawk was capable of with a knife and an afternoon to kill.

Crocodile, on the other hand, opened the reader up to the political side of One Piece. We met princesses and kings, and the fate of an entire nation depended on whether or not Luffy could overcome one of the scariest Devil Fruits of the series to date. We got a greater look into the marines and the World Government, learned of weapons capable of taking over the world, and saw the first hint of an ancient conspiracy that remains a mystery even to this day.

The Warlords of the Sea opened up the world of One Piece in a way almost nothing else could,while also fleshing it out and giving Oda a lot of freedom to maneuver. An example of this would be Thriller Bark, which might not be the most consequential arc in the series, but One Piece needed a little bit of levity between the whirlwind of Enies Lobby and the massive shakeup that would be Marineford.

The fact that the Warlords tend to represent different factions doesn’t hurt. Crocodile and Moriah are silver medalists in the Great Pirate Age, Doflamingo was a Celestial Dragon and king, Hancock a literal empress of her island and former slave, Jimbe one of the first examples of the power of allies on the highest level, and Kuma was a Revolutionary. Mihawk is the outlier here, but even he shows what the pinnacle of swordsmanship looks like in the One Piece world.

And since Oda doesn’t have a habit of killing off his antagonists we get to see the Warlords themselves receive development and play major roles in the story long after their arcs are complete. Jimbe is perhaps the greatest example of how perspectives can change over the course of the series. He was name-dropped during the Arlong arc as a probable antagonists, introduced as a defector of the Warlord system due to his loyalty to Whitebeard, only to become one of Luffy’s greatest and most powerful allies in the New World and likely tenth member of his crew.

A Crumbling System

By now you’ll probably have noticed that I’m referring exclusively to the original Seven Warlords, and there’s a reason for that. Things get complicated after Crocodile’s scheming gets him kicked out of the group. Blackbeard, Law, and Doflamingo follow in his footsteps as explicitly using their position to further their own goals. Jimbe quits. Hancock keeps her position while secretly allying with Luffy, Kuma was revealed to be a double agent until the loss of his free will. Moriah is double-crossed for being old and washed up, and Mihawk doesn’t even care.

By the time skip rolls around the mystique surrounding the Warlords had vanished, and I think Buggy’s inclusion into their ranks was the final indication that, no, we’re not meant to take them seriously anymore. And why should we? The Straw Hats have graduated from surpassing Warlords to surpassing Emperors, and the series focus has shifted from a devil-may-care attitude regarding the politics of the world to an arms race of gathering allies and picking the right moment to start fights with major players.

The people within the system are still a force to be reckoned with. Despite being fought after the time skip, Doflamingo was a beast in battle. But the system itself is shown to be broken beyond repair. The Straw Hats--and the series--has outgrown them.

Which was why I was super pleased with the ending of the Dressrosa Arc.

By all accounts the Warlord system shouldn’t exist anymore. The ridiculousness that they’ve gotten away with is absolutely staggering, and because of Luffy’s meddling it’s all starting to come to the surface. The World Government, even if they started the system with the best of intentions shouldn’t tolerate their presence any longer.

Issho and Smoker working together to bring down the system while Sakazuki butts head with the World Government makes for excellent drama and probably the only way to keep the Warlords interesting in the manga’s current state. It’s another way Oda’s evolving narrative, and I look forward to see where it goes from here.

But that’s just my take. I’d be happy to hear what y’all think, or if there are any topics you’d like me to write on next. It’s been a while since I’ve done any major One Piece analysis, and it was really fun digging back into the nitty gritty of the series.

#One Piece #Analysis #Eiichiro Oda #shichibukai #Seven Warlords #Crocodile #Jimbe #Hancock #Doflamingo #Moriah #Kuma #Mihawk #creative-type analyzes

420 notes · View notes