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elucere · 3 years

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Sad Late August Quarantine Thoughts 2.0

Last year, I wrote this. Basically my thoughts on how I felt in my life up to that point and what quarantine had illuminated. It felt cathartic then, so hopefully it’ll feel cathartic now. A part of that probably had to do with the fact that the last part was complete bullshit, but we’ll get into that later.

At nearly the slightest inconvenience now, I’ll say “I’m at my limit”. Technically, that isn’t really true because if I was really at my limit, at the next inconvenience I would completely lose it. But no, I’m just simply reminding myself that while I’m constantly met with a series of unfortunate events, I haven’t broken down yet. I might feel like I’m there, but I’m not. I’m just at my limit. Things are bad, but they aren’t the worst they could be yet. So keep in mind, I am very much at my limit as I’m writing this.

Last year I talked about my struggles with my job. Yeah, I got fired in February. It was not pretty either. I knew I wasn’t doing well performance wise, and they invited me into a zoom call that they said was a project meeting a week before my year anniversary and fired me. My supervisor (or I guess, ex-supervisor) cried on call. I didn’t cry until afterwards. It was an entire year of me trying to get better, him promising that it’ll come with time, and then getting sacked because “we didn’t see improvements”. Really, really fucking sucked. And it messed with me for a long time because I kept replaying those last few weeks, trying to decipher what I could’ve done differently to prove my worth and keep my position. There was a lot. I felt really guilty.

I think the worst part is that I got a performance warning in December and realized at that point I’d become so apathetic about my job that I needed professional help. I’d been trying to go to therapy for a long time, but it never panned out. My mom forbade it when I was in high school, it was practically impossible to get an appointment at my college’s mental health facility unless you were considered a threat to yourself and others (which I most certainly did not want on my record), and after school life happened so fast with the pandemic and the fact that I live in a 2 bedroom apartment with my mom and my brother with very little privacy. Even now that I’ve convinced my mom that therapy is okay, actually, she still highly disproves and sees it as some sort of psychological failing on my part. Which is. Sure. Whatever. Why not.The reason I did not enroll in therapy that December is actually because my dad lost his job and with it, his health insurance, and with that, my health insurance. That means I had to enroll in a health plan through my employment, which became an unanticipatedly long process. I actually got my new-but-useless health insurance card in the mail a few days after I got fired. They actually fired me on the last day of the month, so my benefits wouldn’t extend beyond that month. That’s a bit of fun irony.

To quite a few of my friends, this story solidified the idea that insurance=therapy. As soon as I got insurance again, I’d be able to finally get some help. This was a couple of people’s first response to me when I got hired again (yay, I know I don’t have to worry about that anymore but I’m also afraid that I’ll just inevitably be fired again so I don’t let myself have the victory). I know my friends only want the best for me, and I can’t expect them be able to emotionally support me like a professional, but I’m afraid that they think that therapy will be some sort of magical fix of sorts. I don’t mean in the sense of just getting better mentally, but I think being a tolerable person. I know that sounds like I’m just being self-depreciating, but let me explain.

A few years ago I was at dinner with one of my friends. I don’t remember exactly what we were talking about, but she goes “name three things you actually like” because I was probably being negative or something. I said a few things and whatever, but that comment stuck with me for a long time. I thought it was especially poignant or something. Am I so unhappy all the time because I fixate on things I don’t like? It could be connected to the attitude of social media to be outwardly negative. Casual wisdom, you know.

Well, that was the fact until I was out with that same friend and we visited Barnes and Noble. I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading this year and got more involved in the book community, so I have many Opinions. Some are good, some are bad, some are just me being annoying. After an hour of browsing the shelves, we drive home. I start talking about a series I really like in the car and she goes “It’s nice to hear you talk about a book you actually like.” Which kind of stunned me because I had just did a lot of talking about books I liked. How happy I was that kids were still reading Rangers Apprentice, going out of my way to see how many Brandon Sanderson books I could find in the Adult Fantasy section, and more reminiscing in the Young Adult section about books I liked recently or as a teen. The truth is, I talk about stuff I like all the time to people who will listen. Ask me about my favorite books! My favorite movies! My favorite musicals! I promise I will not shut up. It’s one of the few things I have that lift my spirits when I talk about it, I just don’t get the opportunity to much because it’s hard to find people who want to listen.

The thing is, I’m naturally a critical person, I think. I love tearing things apart, in good and bad ways. I also love gossip. I’m an okay gossip, but I know at this point that I’m a good critic. I’m really good at identifying faults and commenting them on an insightful or constructive way. I edit a lot of my friends’ writings for this reason. I don’t find that to be anything negative, it’s just something that’s interesting to me. Basically what I’m saying is, what if it’s not mental illness and I’m just annoying and I’ll not be able to meet the expectations of other people’s idea of progress for me and I’ll be a disappointment. I’m kind of tearing up while typing that out while listening bopping to Disturbia by Rihanna but this is the third time I’ve been on the verge of crying today so yaknow maybe it is just mental illness.At this point, I can either talk about criticism in relation to the particular way I dish it, or I could talk about how I want to receive it. I think the former will take less time to elaborate, so I’ll start with that.

I mention last year how I got an unpaid gig as a critic for DiscussingFilm. Embarrassing at times, I joke with my friends that “DiscussingFilm Writer” is a slur, but it’s cool at times as well. I got a press pass to go to Sundance and gorged on an entire family sized bag of peanut M&Ms while I watched like 14 movies in one weekend. I’m trying to say positive things about this until I start ragging to prove that I’m not an overwhelmingly negative person, but I don’t think that’s working well. Whatever. The point is, if I didn’t like it I would quit, but if I did quit it wouldn’t be because I didn’t like it. It would because there was an…event. I had quite a falling out with one of the higher-ups that run the site and in response my work has taken a hit. I won’t go into too much detail, but I don’t get assigned anticipated releases anymore. My work is often delayed going out and, in turn, I feel less motivated to turn in my work on time. And then on top of that, it’s rarely promoted. I have examples on top of examples, but this stupid thing is getting long enough. To summarize the DiscussingFilm situation, I feel like shit. I have one of the lowest view counts on the site. I’m told that my work is good and it’s valued, but not enough to get reposted, I guess! Why bother. And also because the person I do not work well with is quite up in the food chain, I’ll never see a promotion. I wanted to become an editor so bad (I do editing on the side for my friends and enjoy it), but now it will never ever happen. I don’t have the opportunity to prove myself, it’s just completely off the table by nature of leadership. Ass. Complete ass. I’m doing quite a bit of work for DiscussingFilm including creating the standard for the Instagram, making graphics for the Instagram, performing interviews and writing reviews for the site, and co-hosting a DiscussingFilm branded podcast, and I will never see neither a dime for my work or recognition in any meaningful or significant way. I don’t have a say in anything, and I feel like an insignificant cog whose opinion does not mean much.

I still get insecure with my reviews, but not as much anyways. Sure, I can’t compare to the great writers at trades who do this for a living and have been doing so for years. But, I am better than a lot of writers at my level. Sometimes I try pitching to other publications, but so far I’ve only been met with rejection. It kinda stings to know that my work is not worth enough to be paid for, but I’m kinda over it. I still pitch. I try my best. That’s the thing about me, I just keep going. Rejection hurts like a bitch, but whatever. I don’t want to quit just yet, so I guess I won’t. There isn’t anyone in my corner who’s actively spurring me to keep going, I’ve just decided that I’ll get paid for my work one day and so now I will.This connects with the criticism I want to receive which unfortunately very much is not of the nonfiction variety. Ew I fucking hate talking about this but I need to get it off my chest.

After I got fired, I was slipping into quite a bit of a depression. I started a podcast at this time with my friend to try and prevent that, but I knew that I probably needed another project. I wasn’t watching movies anymore, DiscussingFilm was not publishing my shit, and all I was doing all day was reading (which I don’t anymore, I’m in a slump and it’s definitely connected to the idea I have in the next sentence). So I had the brilliant idea of “hey, I could do that. I could write a book. I should do it to do it.”You see, this has not been my only attempt at writing a proper book. I tried when I was 13, I tried when I was 15 and into online literate roleplay, I tried when I was 18 by doing NaNoWriMo in college (also, I was actually more depressed then). I also tried to get into a short story class in college that you had to submit a story to get into and didn’t even make it on the waitlist. Nothing stuck. But hey, I was unemployed and I came up with a funny premise that I wasn’t too attached to, so why not?

The book is not funny. It was supposed to, but it’s changed a lot. I’m very comfortable writing in camp. It’s difficult because I know sometimes I have my moments, but often I don’t. I also chose to write it in a genre I’m not super familiar with (Young Adult contemporary, I read Young Adult and Adult fiction primarily). I didn’t expect it to be easy, but the things I thought would come easily did not come easily. I have a lot of male friends, so I could certainly write the male characters as real people, right? Right? I’m funny, so the humor would come across well, right? Did I anticipate that after years of pretty much only analyzing films critically I’d subconsciously structure my story using dialogue-driven storytelling similar to a screenplay? No! Not at all, actually! This journey of self-discovery has been ass at every corner!

I recognize that first drafts are shit and authors hate their writing, but also I’m built different, your honor. By 15k words in, I realized I needed an outside perspective. I hated my own writing and I was afraid none of the characters were coming off right. I needed feedback, and I still do. But I hate being perceived. As long as no one reads my writing, they think that I know what I’m talking about and value my opinion on their writing, but once they figure out I’m just an Imposter then it’s game over. They’ll lose respect for me. Logically, I know this isn’t how this works, but I feel physically nauseous whenever someone reads my writing.

Anyways, back to my much-needed criticism. To make a long story short involving several English teacher that caused me to quit pursuing writing altogether in my formative years and decide to switch to a STEM track, I have very little tangible self-awareness of my own writing and how to improve it. I need the outside feedback, or at least I did. I’m 60k words into my first draft now and I’m cripplingly self aware of all my errors, but it feels too little too late. 60k words are a lot of words, and it feels not great knowing that most of them are trash. I really needed this kind of feedback earlier in the process so I could make tweaks early on. I know that writing is like a muscle and you need to work it out and practice to get stronger, but fuck man, FUCK. 60k words is a LOT of words. And I still need people to read it and give me feedback and I’m literally willingly asking people to read shit. It’s so humiliating. I guess I’m just at a point where I wish I could look at it and find something of value in what I’ve written.

I see other authors and I get so jealous. At their confidence, at their lyricism, their mastery of the art, their enthusiasm for their story, their love of their characters. I don’t have that. I’m not even talking about imposter’s syndrome. I know what that feels like. This is something else. I just wish I was the kind of person who could openly be creative without wanting to die. I’m 100% sure if I could be enthusiastic about the story I want to tell, the entire thing would be better. It’s crazy how I noticed that I’m not writing any metaphors into realizing that’s directly connected with my inability to be vulnerable and that I’m detaching myself from my work. That, and the fact that I’m fucking shite at writing metaphors apparently.

It also doesn’t help that I don’t have a writer group of friends and very little people to talk about this with, none of which are like… enthusiastic. It’s not their fault. I attract people into my life who are very much like me. They’re supportive and wonderful but I need someone who’d be excited to talk to me about it. I just feel like such a huge burden all the time. Everytime I bring it up I feel terrible, but it’s occupying so much of my brain space and I have no outlet. But also, getting that group of friends would require me to be vulnerable online and be willing to share what I have so far which I might actually throw up.I think it’s very fun that “crying and throwing up” has become a saying on Twitter considering that I’ve counted a countless amount of times this year and thrown up from stress four times since last November. It might also be connected to coffee consumption, but if that’s true I’m ready to off myself because coffee is one of my few joys. Honestly, it’s probably a mix of both. I’m very healthy, very much okay.

I don’t know. Last year, I ended my little essay on a hopeful note. Here’s the thing, this may seem like very much just stream of consciousness bullshit but there is quite a bit of structuring I do and omissions I make. I didn’t talk about my struggles reconnecting with people and subsequently taking their irregular replies, because there’s a lot to get into there. There’s a lot I could’ve talked about, but no room. There’s a very specific flow, and I feel like any story, it needs a conclusion. So last year, through tears, I wrote a hopeful ending. It was as much for me as it was to the people reading it. Unfortunately, I don’t have it in it for me to conclude in the same fashion this time around.

The truth is, I need to feel okay. I need to feel like I’m good at something, anything, and be recognized for it.

Life is suffering and I’m just constantly going through the motions. I promise you, this stupid thing is 3k words and the second I’m done I’ll go back to working on my b**k even though today I literally started crying thinking about how shit it is. I’m just a tenacious individual. I persist. I don’t feel good about it, and I’m done with being genuinely hopeful, but there’s nothing to do but keep moving. I don’t know if my writing will get better or if I’ll ever get published or if this story is worth it. I don’t fucking know anything and I feel like shit. But what else am I going to do? I’ve been holding onto this hope that I’ll feel better about things for just so long and it hasn’t happened. But I’m not giving up lmao I’m just working with what I have. I am at my limit.

#mine #bean spews

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aboveallarescuer · 4 years

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Daenerys Targaryen in A Storm of Swords vs Game of Thrones - Episode 3.10: Mhysa (& 5 things to understand why Dany's character and storyline matter)

In this series of posts, I intend to analyze precisely how the show writers downplayed or erased several key aspects of Daenerys Targaryen’s characterization, even when they had the books to help them write her as the compelling, intelligent, compassionate, frugal, open-minded and self-critical character that GRRM created.

I want to make it clear that these posts are not primarily meant to offer a better alternative to what the show writers gave us. I understand that they had many constraints (e.g. other storylines to handle, a limited amount of time to write the scripts, budget, actors who may have asked for a certain number of lines, etc) working against them. However, considering how disrespectful the show’s ending was to Daenerys Targaryen and how the book material that they left out makes it even more ludicrous to think that she will also become a villain in A Song of Ice and Fire, I believe that these reviews are more than warranted. They are meant to dissect everything about Dany’s characterization that was lost in translation, with a lot of book evidence to corroborate my statements.

Since these reviews will dissect scene by scene, I recommend taking a look at this post because I will use its sequence to order Dany’s scenes.

This post is relevant in case you want to know which chapters were adapted in which GoT episodes (however, I didn’t make the list myself, all the information comes from the GoT Wiki, so I can’t guarantee that it’s 100% reliable).

In general, I will call the Dany from the books “Dany” and the Dany from the TV series “show!Dany”.

Because I'm about to review one of the most controversial scenes in show!Dany's journey, I think it's important to take a holistic look into her character and storyline first. So, before I start talking about what happens in the episode itself, I am going to address five key things that need to be understood in order to fully appreciate Dany's character and storyline in the books:

Dany's abolitionist crusade's humanitarian importance.

Dany's character motivations.

Dany's background and identity.

Dany's storyline's historical inspirations.

A holistic view of ASOIAF in order to avoid double standards against Dany.

Ultimately, the show writers didn't understand any of these points, which informs their mistakes in their adaptation of Dany's storyline in this episode and beyond.

1) Dany's abolitionist crusade's humanitarian importance

Time and again in the books (particularly in ASOS and ADWD), GRRM reinforces that slavery is wrong by displaying what became normalized during the thousands of years it persisted. Examples include:

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to say that the Unsullied aren't men and to take measures to dehumanize them.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to force five-year-old children to train every day from dawn to dusk, to the point of only one in three surviving such harsh conditions.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to force the Unsullied to stand for a day with no food or water to prove their discipline and strength.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to change the Unsullied's names every day so that they lose their sense of individuality.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to force the Unsullied to go to the slave marts to kill a baby before its mother's eyes to prove that they are not weak.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to make the Unsullied drink the wine of courage to feel less pain and endure any torture, such as having their nipples cut off.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to give the Unsullied puppies only to kill them a year later (and, if they don't, they are fed to the surviving dogs).

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to casually whip people when they mildly annoy them.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to send a girl of nine to kill bulls and to send three small boys (one rolled in honey, the other in blood and the other in rotting fish) to confront a bear in the fighting pits.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to leave the Astapori starving, which led them to eat cats, rats and leather.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to hunt down the Astapori and burn the entire city.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to open a slave market.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to whip people until there is only "blood and raw meat" in their backs.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to command two dwarves to breed.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to force a teenage girl to be naked publicly so that they can sell her at a better price.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to actively spread the bloody flux through Meereen by throwing infected corpses.

Meereenese slavers thinking that it's okay to burn the fields and crucify one hundred and sixty-three children to intimidate Dany.

Meereenese slavers thinking that it's okay to target and murder freedmen to intimidate Dany.

Meereenese slavers thinking that it's okay to pay freedmen low wages and then complain a) about how there are too many beggars, thieves and whores in the city or b) about how the rights and customs of the craftsmen's guilds should be respected.

Meereenese slavers thinking that it's okay to reopen the fighting pits and abuse the freedmen for the nobility's entertainment.

Meereenese slavers thinking that it's okay to send two dwarfs to "fight" against a lion.

Meereenese nobles thinking that it's okay to scourge and rip out the tongues of people who disagree with or know something that it's convenient for them.

And this list only covers human rights abuses that take place in Slaver's Bay (which was the center of slave trade until Dany's arrival). Unfortunately, slavery is so widespread that it helped to build almost the entire continent's economy. The Dothraki and the corsairs of the Basilisk Isles enslave and sell people from different lands to Slaver's Bay. In Volantis, it's estimated that four of every five men are slaves. People from multiple places of Essos are sold into slavery, from Slaver's Bay itself to Qarth to the Dothraki Sea to Lhazar to the Free Cities.

In such an oppressive and devastating scenario, Dany's abolitionist campaign is essential to guarantee that people are no longer desensitized to and systematically allowed to dehumanize others. In-universe, that's why the vast majority of the former slaves love her and why later we get an entire storyline showing what the slavers would do if Dany chose not to be as forceful as she was in ASOS. Doylistically speaking, that's why her actions against the slavers are linked to her upcoming part in the War for the Dawn and to her messianic role as Azor Ahai (as this edit and its quotes excellently illustrate): Dany's war is one that should also involve all of humanity.

Are the show writers aware of this?

Nope.

They may have succeeded in depicting the amount of brutality and suffering that comes with the training of the Unsullied, but, in light of the show's ending, I think that was accomplished mostly because they were interested in shock value rather than in making the audience recognize that show!Dany's crusade was altruistic at its core. This was clear in their interviews: instead of focusing on how vital Dany's actions were to promoting human warfare, Benioff focused on her so-called ruthlessness and ambition when he talked about why she sought an army in Astapor and Weiss focused on her capacity for cruelty when he talked about her attack against the Astapori masters. I've already addressed in which ways these statements about Dany are inaccurate (and detrimental to the understanding of her storyline) in my reviews of episodes 3.3 and 3.4, so I won't belabor the point; instead, I'm only bringing them up here to emphasize that D&D were never (fully) aware of the humanitarian importance of Dany's crusade. That's why they didn't add the moment where Dany says she remembers what it was like to be sold and feel afraid. That's why they didn't show the Unsullied choosing not to side with the slavers when Dany gave them another option. That's why they didn't include the Astapori freedmen who chose to follow Dany in their adaptation. That's why they didn't remember that Dany's main problem prior to the battle of Yunkai was to find a way to take the city and spare freedmen's lives at the same time. That's why, on season four, they will only bother to depict political decisions that paint show!Dany in a negative light (and leave out all of her successful ones). That's why, on season five, they will make her storyline's lesson be about the need to conform to the Meereenese (i.e. slavers') traditions rather than about the need to carry on with her revolution like in the books. That's why, by the end of the show, they will say that Dany burning of King's Landing and its citizens was "a natural outcome of that [...] willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies" and how "her brand of revolution" stems from her "not seeing the cost". That's why they think there isn't any negative implication in arguing that burning slavers is a slippery slope to burning innocent people: they completely missed the point of her storyline and turned it into slavery apologism. Dany conquered these cities because there was no other way to free the slaves (as ADWD reinforces). Dany conquered these cities precisely because she saw the cost, even in the show (but then, they are such bad writers that they often misunderstand the implications of what they depicted).

And what I said above doesn't even take into account that they completely ignored (and I suspect probably never realized in the first place) the connection between her crusade in Slaver's Bay and her messianic destiny. It's no secret that they've always downplayed the magical elements of the books in the show as a whole. When it comes to Dany, that removal was particularly detrimental because the magic was used by GRRM to emphasize that Dany's actions were righteous.

2) Dany's character motivations

Here, I want to explain why Dany a) fought against the Ghiscari slavers and b) will fight for the Iron Throne in Westeros. This will only cover what's necessary to make my point clear; for more on Dany's intentions, see here and here and here and here and here.

a) Why Dany fought against the Ghiscari slavers

I've argued before that Dany is an accident revolutionary for a couple of reasons. She went to Slaver's Bay because she wanted an army (something that her detractors often use to harshly criticize her), yes, but what was primarily driving Dany was not self-interest/ambition (and it wouldn't matter if it were in the grand scheme of things, considering what other Westerosi feudal lords have done in the name of power), but rather her previous experiences with poverty, which understandably enhanced her desire to have agency. Additionally (and perhaps most importantly), she didn't know how the slaves were being mistreated; if she did, she most likely wouldn't have chosen to turn to Astapor in the first place. But that's partly why her storyline resonates with so many readers: as she gathers more information about the world and its problems, her moral and political values change along the way too. In this case, after finally witnessing the Unsullied's training and being confronted with the dilemma of buying them or leaving them, Dany chose another option: freeing the Unsullied and fighting against the masters instead.

Afterwards, Dany stayed in Slaver's Bay solely because she wants to abolish slavery. If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have questioned on what grounds should a monarch rule. If her intentions weren't selfless, she would have taken the Yunkish masters' wealth for herself rather than just demanded that the slaves were compensated for their unpaid labor. If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have been so hard on herself for her mistakes on Astapor. If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have given the nobility and the freedmen equal voice at court (and her desire for equality was pointed out by GRRM himself). If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't be so insistent on reforming Meereen (which is an expensive endeavor). If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have provided medical aid to the Astapori refugees. If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have given food to the poor. If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have sacrificed her own personal happiness and bodily autonomy. And so on. Again, I'm not trying to be thorough here, I'm just offering key examples that prove that Dany's campaign is driven by genuine compassion.

b) Why Dany will fight for the Iron Throne

I've said before that Dany doesn't want power for its own sake, but rather because it's a mean to the ends that she actually desires: home and duty. These two essential goals aptly inform why she wants to take back the Seven Kingdoms.

Dany's sole aim that can be considered selfish (i.e. that only focuses on her own benefits) is her desire to find a home, be it somewhere to belong to or someone to rely on. Even then, though, that's more than understandable considering a) that she is an exile who never got to stay on one place or trust her caregiver, b) that everyone in the continent where she was born believes in birthright and c) that every feudal lord is willing to wage war to retain their influence and wealth (more on that in item 5).

Dany's duty, on the other hand, refers not only to her (self-imposed) duty to the helpless (already laid out above), but to her ancestors too. So, even if her upcoming war in Westeros won't be primarily motivated to help the underprivileged (though she still has them in mind), it is still largely self-sacrificing as well (and far from being enough to describe her as power hungry like her detractors do).

Are the show writers aware of this?

Nope.

When it comes to her fight against the Ghiscari masters, Weiss did say that Dany "is driven by a kind of a deep empathy, a much deeper empathy than probably anybody else in the show" back in season four. On the other hand, that statement is rendered moot by the fact that D&D dismiss her actions in Slaver's Bay as a "willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies" and as a "brand of revolution" that stems from her "not seeing the cost" by the end of the show. In other words, they a) made her anti-slavery crusade about her so-called ambition, b) downplayed her selfless goals and its humanitarian importance (failure in item 1) and c) turned her storyline into slavery apologism.

When it comes to her fight for the Iron Throne, there's never any interview where they focus on her desire for home and belonging or on her duty towards her ancestors, which also explains why these motivations were rarely shown onscreen. That they villainize her for pursuing the Seven Kingdoms displays their failure to understand item 5 (below).

3) Dany's background and identity

Dany isn't a typical queen. She is the only one who lived in poverty, began the story as a sex slave and then turned into a revolutionary thanks to her own choices. She is the only female character whose power isn't derived from her male relatives; in fact, she is specifically set apart for overcoming hardships that they didn't. She is the only queen whose political power is intertwined with her magical destiny (which is partly realized thanks to her actions). She is the only she-king/queen regnant/independent female ruler of the story. She is the only female ruler a) who received an arc that we got to see unfold through her perspective and b) who was depicted as politically savvy, despite having been thrown in the hardest political scenario of the series.

In relation to the Dothraki, Dany is not just a white woman among people of color. She was a child bride forcefully married to and raped by a Dothraki khal. She, like Irri and Jhiqui, was part of a family that was displaced, which led to their enslavement. She assimilated to Dothraki culture and was able to discern the good (the bond between bloodriders and a lifestyle that allows for a stronger sense of equality) and the bad (rape and human trafficking being normalized in their culture). She was the first example of female leadership to her bloodriders and khalasar and the one who set a precedent that men and women can be equals. She genuinely cares about her khalasar's well-being. She is poised to unite all the khalasars in the future. It's important to discern her character from GRRM's and D&D's writing (more on that in item 4).

In relation to the Ghiscari slavers (and not to the Westerosi nobles), Dany is viewed as a foreign monarch.

In relation to the freedmen, however, there's more to it. Like them, Dany is a former slave who was forcefully exiled from her homeland and now belongs nowhere. Unlike the slavers (who are united by Ghiscari heritage), the actual oppressed group come from many places and have different ethnicities and traveled extensively. Similarly, Dany was born in Westeros, grew up in the Free Cities, spent a significant time in the Dothraki sea and ruled in Slaver's Bay. Dany may be considered a foreigner by the slavers, but not by the freedmen, because they are all displaced people. Their connection (which the author emphasizes in both AGOT and ASOS) further shows that slavery in ASOIAF is not based on race and ethnicity (more on that in item 4).

The reasons above also explain why it is meaningful that Dany is AA/TPTWP/TSWMTW: many men (Aerys, Rhaegar, Aegon, Viserys, Drogo, Rhaego) had to die so she could become who she was meant to be, which further emphasizes that, as much as certain people want to pretend otherwise, Dany being the chosen one is not what the readership tends to expect.

I would argue that it's very important to have a basic understanding of various forms of oppression and acknowledge the multiple social groups that Dany belongs to in order to recognize her character's and storyline's significance. By being aware of them, one can understand, for example,

a) why Dany is not "too obvious" a glorified savior for her story not to have a twist by the end (That tends to happen because these detractors only see her as a white noblewoman, but, considering her identity as a whole, she is exactly someone who the readership wouldn't think of as the hero) or

b) why the story would be offensive on many levels if it ended with Dany going mad and/or becoming a villain (Why would GRRM do that to the one character who was exiled and enslaved and who, thanks to her own intelligence and compassion, got to fight against systemic oppression because she herself knows "how it felt to be afraid"?) or

c) why the theory that Dany burns King's Landing is offensive regardless of whether she does it accidentally or not (Why would GRRM have his sole queen regnant, i.e. the only woman whose power isn't derived from a man and who gets to make decisions concerning warfare like men usually do, be overly defined by violence in a way that his kings don't have to be? Why would he use her anti-slavery crusade as a device to make her care less about collateral damage and then be responsible for atrocities of such magnitude? It may still happen, but it definitely warrants criticism if it does)

Are the show writers aware of this?

Nope.

On the one hand, Weiss did previously acknowledge that Dany's past experiences inform her current attitude ("She's always been very negatively predisposed towards slavery because she knows what it feels like to be property, I mean, she was a very fancy slave for all intents and purposes, she was somebody who was sold to another man, taken against her will and I think that her feelings about slavery have started to really inform her reasons for wanting the Iron Throne").

On the other hand, if they really understood the significance of her background, they wouldn't have made the northmen hate her for being a foreigner and portrayed her being in the wrong. If they really understood the significance of her background, they wouldn't have thought that show!Arya killing the Night King (which wasn't supposed to have happened) or show!Sansa becoming queen (which made no sense since that would motivate other regions to demand independence from the crown as well) would be interchangeable with show!Dany's downfall and prevent them from receiving criticism regarding the misogyny in their writing.

4) Dany's storyline's historical inspirations

In the words of the author himself,

The Targaryens have heavily interbred, like the Ptolemys of Egypt. As any horse or dog breeder can tell you, interbreeding accentuates both flaws and virtues, and pushes a lineage toward the extremes. (x)

The Dothraki are partially based on the Huns and the Mongols, some extent the steppe tribes like the Alvars and Magyars. I put in a few elements of the Amerindian plains tribes and those peoples, and then I threw in some purely fantasy elements. It’s fantasy.

Are they barbaric? Yeah, but the Mongols were, too. Genghis Khan — I just saw an interesting movie about Ghengis Khan, recently. I’ve read books about Genghis Khan, and he’s one of history’s more fascinating, charismatic characters. The Mongols became very sophisticated at certain points, but they were certainly not sophisticated when they started out, and even at the height of their sophistication they were fond of doing things like giant piles of heads. “Surrender your city to me, or we will come in and kill all the men, rape all the women and make a giant pile of heads.” They did that a few times, and other cities said, “Surrender is good. We’ll surrender. We’ll pay the taxes. No pile of heads, please.” (x)

And meanwhile, you've got Daenerys visiting more Eurasian and Middle Eastern cultures.

And that has generated its controversy too. I answer that one to in my blog. I know some of the people who are coming at this from a political or racial angle just seem to completely disregard the logistics of the thing here. I talk about what's in the books. The books are what I write. What I’m responsible for.

Slavery in the ancient world, and slavery in the medieval world, was not race-based. You could lose a war if you were a Spartan, and if you lost a war you could end up a slave in Athens, or vice versa. You could get in debt, and wind up a slave. And that’s what I tried to depict, in my books, that kind of slavery. (x)

These interviews show that Dany's storyline's historical parallels are mainly ancient civilizations (which explains her parallels with Cleopatra or the Ghiscari pyramids' closeness to Egyptian pyramids or how the duels in the fighting pits resemble the Roman gladiatorial games or the similarities between the Unsullied's training with Sparta's training of young boys or why tokars are togas), which, in turn, prove that GRRM is not attempting to write a critique of white saviorism. Indeed, that he reduces the Dothraki and the Mongols to being "barbaric" and refuses to give any individuality to his Dothraki characters confirm that he's the racist one here. Even the parallels that he draws between Dany's storyline and the American Civil War and Reconstruction are non-racialized in nature.

Also, even if GRRM and D&D weren't racists, the racist imagery in Dany's storyline (especially show!Dany's) doesn't make Dany herself a white savior; as @yendany explained before, white saviorism is about:

a) glorifying whiteness/western culture or an individual white person at the expense of people of color. Neither version of Dany fulfill this requirement because Dany was raised in Essos and doesn't force Ghiscari people into adhering to Westerosi or Valyrian culture and slavery, again, isn't race-based (which is why the Dothraki are portrayed as oppressors). The show ending only reinforces the latter point (more on that later).

and/or

b) a white person providing help to people of color in order to serve their own interests. Neither version of Dany fulfill this requirement because their compassion and humanitarianism are genuine (and necessary), as shown in items 1 and 2 above.

Are the show writers aware of this?

For the most part, nope.

On the one hand, they were involved in the show's production, so they had to be aware of the obvious parallels between Dany's storyline and the Ancient Mediterranean world (though not enough to hire extras of multiple races and ethnicities or to let show!Dany wear togas). Also, Benioff once stated that "there always seemed to be this sense of manifest destiny with Dany", which implies that they were aware of the white savior criticism surrounding her character and storyline (though probably not enough to question its validity based on her characterization).

On the other hand, they never cared about making any improvements from the racism in the books, and the ending is clear proof of that. Before season eight, I'd seen many people argue that the Unsullied and the Dothraki were used as show!Dany's props to emphasize her "goodness". Instead, it's the other way around: they were never meant to be "good" on their own, in fact, they were only portrayed as "good" because of show!Dany; by the end, when show!Dany was villainized, they were as well. Indeed, people of color like show!Missandei and show!Grey Worm suddenly became more aggressive while the white men in show!Dany's team (show!Jon, show!Tyrion and show!Varys) were portrayed as the rational/pacifist ones, reinforcing that there was never any attempt to provide race-related social commentary in the show (or in the books, for that matter). If there had been an attempt (poor and offensive as it would still be), the Unsullied and the Dothraki would have been depicted as the Mad Queen's victims (which only the Westerosi smallfolk and the Lannister armies (i.e. white people) got to be) rather than the Mad Queen's evil army.

5) A holistic view of ASOIAF in order to avoid double standards against Dany

I could mention more double standards than the four below, but my intention here is not to be comprehensive, but rather to provide some of the key examples of double standards used to criticize Dany's eventual campaign in Westeros and to accuse her of white saviorism.

Yes, Dany wants to wage a war to take back her homeland, but so did Robb when Winterfell was taken. (Unfortunately, Stannis may do the dirty work for the Starks in TWOW.)

Yes, Dany wants to take the Seven Kingdoms and the Starks "only" want Winterfell, but what matters is not the size of the area they are claiming, but rather the fact that the system that they are all working under (i.e. pseudofeudal monarchy) rewards birthright, exploits the labor of the peasants, encourages wars for petty reasons and perpetuates social inequality.

Yes, Dany will eventually be willing to use dragonfire to accomplish her goals, but fire was used by several parties against their enemies. The Ghiscari slavers used it. Stannis Baratheon used it. Tyrion Lannister used it. Jon Snow used it. The brotherhood without banners used it. If they had dragons, you can bet that they would have used them (and probably would have been less reluctant about it than Dany).

Yes, Dany's storyline has racist elements, but so does the Starks' origin story and Tyrion's storyline and the Martells' creation. In fact, if we're talking about racism, it can't be overlooked that Dany is the only white main character who interacts with, cares about and fights for people of color, while the other white characters remain isolated in Westeros and ignorant of their struggles. It can't be overlooked that GRRM wishes he had made Dany (and none of the other main characters) a Black woman. That people of color aren't given more prominence in the narrative is GRRM's fault (see item 4), not Dany's.

When all's said and done, Dany is not doing anything that could be considered morally wrong that other people didn't do, but she is taking large-scale actions solely due to her compassion that no one else is. That's because GRRM chose to set her apart from the other claimants by placing her in a storyline where she gets to advocate for the oppressed and have larger concerns than her claim or how her family was wronged. Does that make her look "too good"? Well, you just have to look at Jon to see that that's not true; both are flawed and imperfect, but still compassionate, intelligent and, ultimately, not as morally grey as most of the other characters of the series.

Are the show writers aware of this?

Nope.

I would say that the root of the problem in the show writers' depiction of show!Dany stems from the fact that they don't look at the events from the perspective of the lowborn.

If they would look at her actions in Slaver's Bay from the point of view of a freedman, they would understand why they were righteous (failure to comprehend item 1); instead, they talk about how her cruelty "grows" because she hurt people who hadn't done anything to her personally (which shows how easily they empathize with the slavers) and focus on how she is becoming a threat.

If they would look at her actions in Westeros from the point of view of a peasant, they would understand that a) every single lord exploits their labor, b) that Dany is not doing anything that the the lords wouldn't do (which is why the kingdoms constantly warred with their neighbors before Aegon's Conquest) and c) that the lords never waged war specifically to protect the oppressed like Dany did (see items 1 and 2), which is why Northern independence (or Robert's Rebellion) is not morally superior to Dany's campaign for the Iron Throne.

Because they couldn't understand any of this, they portrayed show!Dany's war effort as worse than the other characters' and ended up villainizing her for her ambition and use of violence when they never did so with the other characters, which creates offensive double standards and highlights the misogyny (i.e. controlling and punishing women who challenge male dominance) in their writing.

Now I'm going to go to the scene itself in order to demonstrate how it particularly exemplifies the show writers' failure to understand these five key things about Dany's character and storyline.

Scene 13

BARRISTAN: They will come, Your Grace. When they’re ready.

DAENERYS: Perhaps they didn’t want to be conquered.

JORAH: You didn’t conquer them. You liberated them.

DAENERYS: People learn to love their chains.

In the books, there's never any suspense about whether the newly freedmen will come out or not:

On the morning of the third day, the city gates swung open and a line of slaves began to emerge. Dany mounted her silver to greet them. As they passed, little Missandei told them that they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Mother of Dragons.

“Mhysa!” a brown-skinned man shouted out at her. He had a child on his shoulder, a little girl, and she screamed the same word in her thin voice. “Mhysa! Mhysa!” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

As we can see in the quote above, not only there's no suspense, Dany is mounted on her silver and doesn't have to make a speech to make sure that the former slaves can trust her and hail her as mhysa. Indeed, that's my biggest issue with the speech: it's built on the show writers' assumption that show!Dany needs to "[wait] to see if she is a conqueror or a liberator" in the eyes of the former slaves.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are people who dismiss Dany as a violent conqueror in the books. The Meereenese slavers (i.e., the ones who think they have the right to sell people and exploit their free labor and who suffered a major blow when Dany challenged their way of life, which doesn't exactly make them a reliable viewpoint in a storyline with something meaningful to say) do so:

“...When my people look at you, they see a conqueror from across the seas, come to murder us and make slaves of our children. A king could change that. A highborn king of pure Ghiscari blood could reconcile the city to your rule. Elsewise, I fear, your reign must end as it began, in blood and fire.” (ADWD Daenerys IV)

The Yunkish slavers (i.e., the ones who think they have the right to sell people and exploit their free labor and who suffered a major blow when Dany challenged their way of life, which doesn't exactly make them a reliable viewpoint in a storyline with something meaningful to say) do so:

“If even half the stories coming back from Slaver’s Bay are true, this child is a monster. They say that she is blood-thirsty, that those who speak against her are impaled on spikes to die lingering deaths. They say she is a sorceress who feeds her dragons on the flesh of newborn babes, an oathbreaker who mocks the gods, breaks truces, threatens envoys, and turns on those who have served her loyally. They say her lust cannot be sated, that she mates with men, women, eunuchs, even dogs and children, and woe betide the lover who fails to satisfy her. She gives her body to men to take their souls in thrall.” (ADWD Tyrion VI)

Dany herself (who, we shouldn't forget, has a tendency to be self-deprecating) also does so. It's the reason why she thinks it's her duty to stay and rule Meereen:

“Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver’s Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on.” (ASOS Daenerys VI)

However, the Yunkish envoy's vicious reaction (in both canons) to Dany's request that the Yunkish nobles free their slaves shows that Dany couldn't have freed the slaves (and become a liberator) if she hadn't taken the city (and become a conqueror). She is both conqueror and liberator and these titles don't contradict each other, they inform each other (just like mhysa and mother of dragons). That's something that the former slaves are aware of, because the vast majority of them do want freedom and are grateful that Dany intervened - we see it in Astapor, where the Unsullied chose not to obey their former masters while they were attacked because Dany gave them a choice to fight for their freedom, which they took (and the show didn't depict); we see it in Yunkai, where the former slaves embraced and hailed Dany as their mother right after they met her (and she didn't have to make a speech to prove that they should be freed because they themselves wanted to be freed); we see it in Meereen, where "the fighting slaves [...] led the uprising that won the city for her" and "cheering slaves lifted bloodstained hands to her as she went by"; we see it on Tyrion's POV, where many slaves doubt that Dany would make peace with the slavers and want her to smash the Yunkai'i. To portray them as gullible and dependent on show!Dany's speech in order to embrace freedom (when, again, that was never a question for them in the books) means:

Overlooking their motivations in the books.

Giving them less agency in comparison to the books.

Downplaying the level of human destruction that the slavers perpetrated (and which led the slaves to want to rebel), which shows their failure to understand item 1.

Equating show!Dany to the slavers as a foreign monarch in the former slaves' eyes when, in the books, she became a cult figure right from the first moment that they saw her. This also shows their failure to understand item 3; as I said above, she is not just a ruler, she is also a former slave who was banished from her homeland and doesn't belong anywhere. That makes it all the more meaningful that she, thanks to her own actions and principles, ended up becoming a revolutionary. Failing to understand this is why the show writers felt that she had to make a speech so that she could "compensate" for her actions as a conqueror (which were righteous to begin with).

Now, one might argue that I'm being too nitpicky here, but I didn't make it a secret in the introduction to these books vs show reviews that they are being written with the hindsight knowledge that the show writers will attempt to vilify show!Dany. One way that they will do so is to turn the freedmen against her in the later seasons, which is something that never happens in the books (which is why I'm wary of how her speech here already indicates that her connection to the freedmen is being downplayed). As I just said above and will reiterate: the show writers never really grasped the humanitarian importance of her crusade (item 1) or why she's seeking the Iron Throne in the first place (item 2). The show writers never really understood that the former slaves weren't united by culture or race or nationality and that they still had a connection with Dany as exiles sold into slavery (item 3). This is why they thought it was okay to make her the final villain of their series.

JORAH: You didn’t conquer them. You liberated them.

DAENERYS: People learn to love their chains.

First, show!Jorah being the one shown explaining to show!Dany that she is a liberator is really annoying since she is the former sex slave who chose to become an abolitionist and he is a slaver himself who is an apologist even in show canon.

Second, there are different ways to interpret show!Dany's line above. @daenerys-targaryen interpreted it as show!Dany referring to herself and how she fell in love with Drogo while she was his slave. @queenaryastark interpreted it as a way to express Tyrion's thoughts about how it's easy to grow accustomed to being a slave in ADWD. These are all valid readings that can coexist with my own: that the show writers only added this line in order to make show!Dany's storyline "more complex" (in their eyes). We see show!Dany having to "[wait] to see if she is a conqueror or a liberator", after all, which is a question about her "internal struggle" (which, again, makes no sense to overfocus on since Dany wouldn't be a liberator if she weren't also a conqueror) that the show chooses to hammer home in comparison to the books (where it's made clear that most of the former slaves know that they want to be freed). This added question a) undermines how significant it is that Dany is an active hero who chose to fight for the slaves when she didn't have to in a time and place where no one else cared about their plea and there was no conception of universal human rights (failure to understand items 2 and 5), b) downplays the message that the use of violence can be morally righteous (because it creates a false dichotomy between conqueror and liberator, like the fandom does with mhysa and mother of dragons; unfortunately, both showrunners miss the point - Weiss thinks that show!Dany's empathy and cruelty grow in Astapor and Benioff focuses on how she's becoming a threat; failure to understand items 1 and 2) and c) equates show!Dany to the slavers as another foreign monarch in the slaves' perspective (failure to understand item 3), which, in turn, portrays slavery as if it was merely a typical cultural practice rather than a crime against humanity like how it's portrayed in the books (failure to understand item 1). Things are definitely going to get worse in the next seasons (e.g. "mhysa is a master", the addition of a prostitute who hates show!Dany because she's "ruining" Meereenese "traditions", etc), but the cracks were already apparent in season three, which is arguably show!Dany's best season.

MISSANDEI: This is Daenerys Targaryen, the Stormborn, the Unburnt, the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, the Mother of Dragons. It is to her you owe your freedom.

DAENERYS: No. You do not owe me your freedom. I cannot give it to you. Your freedom is not mine to give. It belongs to you and you alone. If you want it back, you must take it for yourselves. Each and every one of you.

This scene plays out differently in the books:

“Mhysa!” a brown-skinned man shouted out at her. He had a child on his shoulder, a little girl, and she screamed the same word in her thin voice. “Mhysa! Mhysa!” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

As we can see, a) Dany is not shown correcting Missandei on what freedom entails like it happens in the show and b) Dany never has to give the former slaves a speech in the first place.

I'm of two minds about this speech. On the one hand, show!Dany's speech does highlight her humanitarian intentions in this endeavor: instead of seeing the freedmen as things to be sold like the slavers did, she views them as people who are able to make their own judgments and choices.

On the other hand, a number of issues were caused by the show writers' inability to be faithful to the books. The intentions behind this speech are distasteful since it seems like (the show writers think that) she needs to persuade the former slaves to follow her, which takes away their agency in comparison to the books (where, as I've repeated numerous times by now, they wanted to be freed; failure to understand item 1) and holds show!Dany to a higher standard than the other characters of the series (who, either in Westeros or Slaver's Bay, all believe in and live under an absolute monarchy, with the only difference being that their dominance over the lowborn became normalized over time in a way that show!Dany's didn't, which causes her to be judged by today's moral standards by the show writers; this failure to understand item 5 will only get worse over time, as we all know), which is particularly aggravating because it undercuts the fact that show!Dany is the only one who cares about and fights for the former slaves (failure to understand items 2, 3 and 5).

Another thing that makes me bitter about this speech is that, despite portraying show!Dany positively, it will be used (alongside all of her other speeches), in retrospect, as evidence that she was always set up to burn thousands of innocents in King's Landing:

BENIOFF: What's interesting about it is that she's been making similar kinds of speeches for a long time and we've always been rooting for her and this is kind of a natural outcome of that philosophy and that willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies and it's just not quite as fun anymore. (x)

Much has been said about how the show fell right into slavery apologism by supposing that burning slavers is a slippery slope to burning noncombatants (failure to understand items 1 and 2) and about how offensive it was that it villainized the one queen who had a particular place in the narrative due to being an exile, a former sex slave, a revolutionary and the only independent female ruler who wasn't depicted as evil (failure to understand item 3). I would also add that the vast majority of the evidence about show!Dany's "villainy" (which betrays a failure to understand item 5) was either exaggerated or invented. For example, aside from the speech that she gave to her khalasar in the first season, all of show!Dany's speeches were added by the show writers, including this one. In fact, it's ironic that, throughout the course of AFFC/ADWD, Dany was the only one of the three main political leaders who was not shown by GRRM giving speeches to the unprivileged:

Jon waited until the last echoes had faded, then spurred his palfrey forward where everyone could see him. “We’re feeding you as best we can, as much as we can spare. Apples, onions, neeps, carrots … there’s a long winter ahead for all of us, and our stores are not inexhaustible.”

“You crows eat good enough.” Halleck shoved forward.

For now. “We hold the Wall. The Wall protects the realm … and you now. You know the foe we face. You know what’s coming down on us. Some of you have faced them before. Wights and white walkers, dead things with blue eyes and black hands. I’ve seen them too, fought them, sent one to hell. They kill, then they send your dead against you. The giants were not able to stand against them, nor you Thenns, the ice-river clans, the Hornfoots, the free folk … and as the days grow shorter and the nights colder, they are growing stronger. You left your homes and came south in your hundreds and your thousands … why, but to escape them? To be safe. Well, it’s the Wall that keeps you safe. It’s us that keeps you safe, the black crows you despise.”

“Safe and starved,” said a squat woman with a windburned face, a spearwife by the look of her.

“You want more food?” asked Jon. “The food’s for fighters. Help us hold the Wall, and you’ll eat as well as any crow.” Or as poorly, when the food runs short. (ADWD Jon V)

“What is the meaning of this?” Cersei demanded of the crowd. “Do you mean to bury Blessed Baelor in a mountain of carrion?”

A one-legged man stepped forward, leaning on a wooden crutch. “Your Grace, these are the bones of holy men and women, murdered for their faith. Septons, septas, brothers brown and dun and green, sisters white and blue and grey. Some were hanged, some disemboweled. Septs have been despoiled, maidens and mothers raped by godless men and demon worshipers. Even silent sisters have been molested. The Mother Above cries out in her anguish. We have brought their bones here from all over the realm, to bear witness to the agony of the Holy Faith.”

Cersei could feel the weight of eyes upon her. “The king shall know of these atrocities,” she answered solemnly. “Tommen will share your outrage. This is the work of Stannis and his red witch, and the savage northmen who worship trees and wolves.” She raised her voice. “Good people, your dead shall be avenged!”

A few cheered, but only a few. “We ask no vengeance for our dead,” said the one-legged man, “only protection for the living. For the septs and holy places.” (AFFC Cersei VI)

In fact, the Dany of the books is never shown giving a speech after AGOT. This is not to say, of course, that making speeches on its own makes show!Dany "darker" (indeed, the show writers were often unaware of what they were writing) than Dany, I'm only pointing out that they never existed in the books.

Mhysa!

DAENERYS: What does it mean?

MISSANDEI: It is old Ghiscari, Khaleesi. It means “mother.”

First, unlike in the show (where the freedmen only shout "mhysa!"), the freedmen of the books call Dany "mother" in lots of different languages:

“Mhysa!” they called. “Mhysa! MHYSA!” They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her. “Maela,” some called her, while others cried “Aelalla” or “Qathei” or “Tato,” but whatever the tongue it all meant the same thing. Mother. They are calling me Mother. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

It's only fitting that the freedmen of the books come from different places and have different races and ethnicities (which the scene above reinforces); not only that connects them to their mhysa (in that they are all people exiled from their homelands and forced into slavery), it is a culmination of Dany's tendency to culturally assimilate, which was already noticeable with the Dothraki. Unfortunately, this doesn't come across in the show because they hired local extras from Morocco (failure to understand/depict items 3 and 4).

Second, as @rainhadaenerys pointed out to me in a conversation, show!Dany makes a speech (which, again, was added by the show writers) in Valyrian in this scene and all the freedmen understand it, which can make sense since most modern Ghiscari continued to speak in the language of their conquerors and the former slaves all probably stayed in Yunkai long enough to learn the language. On the other hand, this will later be contradicted in episode 4.6 when show!Dany will need show!Missandei in order to communicate with a goatherd. In the books, she interacts directly with all of the freedmen, to give some examples:

In the afternoon a sculptor came, proposing to replace the head of the great bronze harpy in the Plaza of Purification with one cast in Dany’s image. She denied him with as much courtesy as she could muster. A pike of unprecedented size had been caught in the Skahazadhan, and the fisherman wished to give it to the queen. She admired the fish extravagantly, rewarded the fisherman with a purse of silver, and sent the pike to her kitchens. A coppersmith had fashioned her a suit of burnished rings to wear to war. She accepted it with fulsome thanks; it was lovely to behold, and all that burnished copper would flash prettily in the sun, though if actual battle threatened, she would sooner be clad in steel. (ADWD Daenerys I)

So, while here she and her people are at least connected by the fact that they understand what she is saying, even this will be undermined later (and they don't have the budget as an excuse for this one; failure to understand items 3 and 4).

Third, as I noted in episode 3.5, why the heck do they have show!Missandei call show!Dany "khaleesi"? It makes no sense since she's not familiar with Dothraki culture and never knew Dany when she was Khal Drogo's wife.

DAENERYS: It’s all right. These people won’t hurt me.

DAENERYS: Fly. Let me pass.

There are differences in the execution of Dany's meeting with the freedmen of Yunkai from books to show. She mounted her silver to meet them and the crowdsurfing never happens:

On the morning of the third day, the city gates swung open and a line of slaves began to emerge. Dany mounted her silver to greet them. [...]

The chant grew, spread, swelled. It swelled so loud that it frightened her horse, and the mare backed and shook her head and lashed her silver-grey tail. It swelled until it seemed to shake the yellow walls of Yunkai. More slaves were streaming from the gates every moment, and as they came they took up the call. They were running toward her now, pushing, stumbling, wanting to touch her hand, to stroke her horse’s mane, to kiss her feet. [...]

She laughed, put her heels into her horse, and rode to them, the bells in her hair ringing sweet victory. She trotted, then cantered, then broke into a gallop, her braid streaming behind. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

What we also miss onscreen is that, onpage, Dany sees the freedmen as her found family and realizes that the moment fulfills a prophecy that she saw in the House of the Undying. I'm going to talk more about this moment later in the section where I comment on D&D's Inside the Episode, though.

Now, we get to this moment, which was (and still is) heavily criticized due to its racism.

An in-depth discussion of the racism in Dany's storyline and in ASOIAF in general goes beyond the scope of this meta; I recommend that you read @yendany's metas instead. It must be acknowledged, of course, that this is a racist scene for employing Moroccan extras as former slaves in order to prop up a British woman and being completely insensitive to Africa's colonial history. However, that's the show's production's fault, which continued to be tone-deaf about race-related issues and diversity in general through the years.

That being said, my main purpose here is to address in which ways the TV series diverged from Dany's character in the books and, consequently, undermined show!Dany. So, instead of talking specifically about the racism in Dany's character and storyline (about which people have already discussed a lot elsewhere), I want to focus, instead, on the ways that the discussion centered around the racism in Dany's character and storyline tends to be uninterested in analyzing the merits of Dany's character and storyline. This reinforces that these detractors' problems most often relate to a) either GRRM and the show's writers and producers rather than to Dany's character herself or b) their own biases:

Dany's abolitionist crusade's humanitarian importance: Do they remember in which ways the slaves were being mistreated, exploited and dehumanized before Dany's interventions?

Dany's character motivations: Do they know that Dany conquered cities just so that she could end slavery rather than because she wanted to exploit Slaver's Bay in any way? Are they aware of the many sacrifices that Dany made in order to free the slaves and rule in Meereen? Do they know that Dany doesn't want the Iron Throne for its own sake, but rather that she wants it so that she can find a home and fulfill her duty towards her ancestors?

Dany's background and identity: Do they take into account that Dany is not just a white woman, but also a former sex slave and a refugee who was forced to culturally assimilate in order to survive and who now belongs nowhere just like the people that she's freed?

Dany's storyline's historical inspirations: Do they know that the slavery that GRRM wrote is primarily inspired by the ancient world and, therefore, is not race-based? Do they know that GRRM himself is tone-deaf about race-related issues and that this is apparent in all of his story?

A holistic view of ASOIAF in order to avoid double standards against Dany: Do they take prevailing cultural norms and other characters' actions into account when they judge Dany's ambition and use of violence negatively? Do they also take into account how Dany's selfless deeds compare to most of the other characters'? Do they also acknowledge and criticize the racism in other characters' storylines?

The vast majority of Dany's detractors (which include D&D) don't take these questions (which do not exhaustively cover all of the misconceptions surrounding her character by any means) into account and/or don't know the text well enough to answer them properly, which means that they are prone to grossly distorting her motivations and/or her storyline's thematic messages in order to address racial issues that should not be used to judge Dany's character because the author himself is unaware of them and does not intend for them to come across. As a result, people lose track of Dany's actual characterization and her storyline's intended social commentary and forget that she is a part of several marginalized groups herself, leading to pretty nonsensical takes in the fandom, such as "Rhaenys should have been Dany".

So, because a) the issue of racism in Dany's storyline was already well-covered elsewhere and b) fandom climate has proven that many people who talk about this issue tend to do so in bad faith, I consciously decided to focus on these five things that should also be remembered in this discussion (and that have more to do with the purpose of this meta anyway).

My comments on the Inside the Episode 3.10

Benioff: We see her get an army in episode four, and here in the finale you see her get her people, really, because she's got, she has her Dothraki followers that don't number very many, and she's got the people she's freed from the other cities, but now she is, it's not just - it's something even more, something almost even more religious about it than just a queen, I mean, she's the mother of these people.

Weiss: And it creates a whole new dynamic between her and the people that she's fighting for that she's gonna have to deal with in the future.

Benioff: The way they treat her, the way they lift her up and she is... something that has its... A revelation from a prophecy and that glorious destiny is coming true.

Weiss: Here it seemed like it was really important to let us know just how many people were counting on her to see the full extent of, mostly, the full extent of her army and the tens of thousands of people who flooded out of these gates to pay tribute to her. And then, keeping the dragons in play because they're always such an important part of her identity, we just want to tie all of that together in one great shot.

There's a lot of wrong here, so let's unpack this statement by statement.

We see her get an army in episode four, and here in the finale you see her get her people, really,

As I already noted in episodes 3.4 and 3.5 and will repeat: the show writers seem to have forgotten that thousands of refugees from Astapor chose to follow her to Yunkai, so she had already "[gotten] her people":

Yet even so, tens of thousands preferred to follow her to Yunkai, rather than remain behind in Astapor.

[...] Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged. I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

Indeed, her main struggle during the battle of Yunkai was to find a way to take the city and free its slaves and prevent too many of her freedmen from becoming casualties:

Dany considered. The slaver host seemed small compared to her own numbers, but the sellswords were ahorse. She’d ridden too long with Dothraki not to have a healthy respect for what mounted warriors could do to foot. The Unsullied could withstand their charge, but my freedmen will be slaughtered. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

she's got, she has her Dothraki followers that don't number very many,

Dany still considers her Dothraki followers a khalasar in the books and finds their support invaluable despite its small number and what the show writers had her think in the S3 premiere (i.e. that she doesn't have a true khalasar):

Her khalasar was tiny, some thirty-odd mounted warriors, and most of them braidless boys and bentback old men. Yet they were all the horse she had, and she dared not go without them. The Unsullied might be the finest infantry in all the world, as Ser Jorah claimed, but she needed scouts and outriders as well. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

she is, it's not just - it's something even more, something almost even more religious about it than just a queen, I mean, she's the mother of these people.

And it creates a whole new dynamic between her and the people that she's fighting for that she's gonna have to deal with in the future.

Dany was already acting as mhysa way before she was considered one, which we saw from the way she cared about the Lhazareen women to her bloodriders to the slaves in Astapor:

“You heard my words,” she said. “Stop them.” She spoke to her khas in the harsh accents of Dothraki. “Jhogo, Quaro, you will aid Ser Jorah. I want no rape.” (AGOT Daenerys VII)

“Sheath your steel, blood of my blood,” said Dany, “this man comes to serve me. Belwas, you will accord all respect to my people, or you will leave my service sooner than you’d wish, and with more scars than when you came.” (ACOK Daenerys V)

“...Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?”

“Some kings make themselves. Robert did.”

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice ... that’s what kings are for.” (ASOS Daenerys III)

One might argue that this event strengthens the sense of responsibility that she already had for these people, but it's not true that there was a radical change in their dynamic after this moment... In the books, it was simply a culmination of what Dany was already doing the whole time.

The way they treat her, the way they lift her up and she is... something that has its... A revelation from a prophecy and that glorious destiny is coming true.

The way that Benioff puts it makes it seem like show!Dany expected the devotion of these people (in a way that seems related to what they assume to be her self-interest and entitlement), which irks me in hindsight knowing that a) they will use this assumption to tear her apart in the last season (after all, one reason why they had show!Dany fall was that she found no love in the North) and b) it's not accurate for her book counterpart.

Is it true that she notices that one prophecy was realized in this moment in the books? Yes.

Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands as she raced by on her silver, riding like the wind. “Mother!” they cried. “Mother, mother!” They were reaching for her, touching her, tugging at her cloak, the hem of her skirt, her foot, her leg, her breast. They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them ... (ACOK Daenerys IV)

Ser Jorah urged her to go, but Dany remembered a dream she had dreamed in the House of the Undying. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

When it comes to Dany's motivations, though, one must take into account that a) Dany herself is not aware that she has a great destiny (nor does she want to have one) and b) the prophecies are most often intertwined with her desire to find a home, a family, companionship, belonging. This scene is no exception; before it happened, Dany had reflected on how her House would end with her due to her infertility:

She felt very lonely all of a sudden. Mirri Maz Duur had promised that she would never bear a living child. House Targaryen will end with me. That made her sad. “You must be my children,” she told the dragons, “my three fierce children. Arstan says dragons live longer than men, so you will go on after I am dead.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

Fittingly, then, the chapter ends on a more positive note: her found family is now not only composed of dragons, but of thousands of people who she is delighted to meet:

“What are they shouting?”

“It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means ‘Mother.’”

Dany felt a lightness in her chest. I will never bear a living child, she remembered. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have, because the man grinned and shouted again, and others took up the cry. [...]

Ser Jorah urged her to go, but Dany remembered a dream she had dreamed in the House of the Undying. “They will not hurt me,” she told him. “They are my children, Jorah.” She laughed, put her heels into her horse, and rode to them, the bells in her hair ringing sweet victory. She trotted, then cantered, then broke into a gallop, her braid streaming behind. The freed slaves parted before her. “Mother,” they called from a hundred throats, a thousand, ten thousand. “Mother,” they sang, their fingers brushing her legs as she flew by. “Mother, Mother, Mother!” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

As I said before, this scene is interesting because it associates Dany's role as a queen to her role as a mother. This connection arguably not only relates to gender issues, but also to how Dany's empathy runs so deep that she goes as far as to consider all of the ones who can't protect themselves her children: because she knows what it is like to be in their position, she will be the one who, instead of focusing on heritage and feudal ties and lands, empowers them and keeps them safe as best as she can.

Unfortunately, the show writers never understood any of this because of a) their lack of knowledge of the source material and, in particular, Dany's character, and b) their misogynistic assumption that a powerful and revolutionary woman must be, deep down, vain, selfish, unhinged and reliant on the men around her (even while they're unable to depict her as one).

And then, keeping the dragons in play because they're always such an important part of her identity, we just want to tie all of that together in one great shot.

While it's not untrue that the dragons are an important part of Dany's identity, I can't help but look askance at this statement. D&D thought that it was important to portray show!Dany as helpless without her dragons in season two, after all:

Benioff: Dany is so defined by her dragons, they're so much a part at this point, they define her so much that when they're taken from her, it's almost like she reverts to the pre-dragon Daenerys, you know, everyone is a bit defined by who they were when they were an adolescent, you know, no matter how old you get, no matter how powerful you get, and Daenerys was a scared, timid, abused adolescent and I think when her dragons are taken for her, all those feelings, all those memories and emotions are triggered and come back and all the confidence that she's won over the last several months, it's as if that just evaporates and she's back to being a really frightened little girl. (x)

In the books, Dany doesn't need to be humbled by having her dragons taken from her. Her lesson is the opposite one: she learns that, despite having dragons (which are never taken from her), they are not going to be of help if she wants to gain people's loyalty. Instead, she is going to have to earn people's loyalty, which is why GRRM has Dany's perspective front and center in the books - she is the one who deeply empathizes with the slaves based on her past experiences, she is the one who chooses to start an anti-slavery campaign, she is the one who concocts the battle plans to conquer the cities, she is the one who decides to stay and rule Meereen and so on. The dragons served as the bait to deceive the Astapori masters, but her plan went way beyond the dragons, as well as the ones she made in Yunkai and Meereen.

On HBO, they think that show!Dany is "so defined by her dragons" and that "they're such an important part of her identity" to the point of portraying her as incompetent without them, which they will do again in seasons four and five with their poor adaptation of her ADWD arc (where the dragons were shown as a hindrance and Dany still held things together really well considering the huge problems that she was dealing with). And then, in the end, as we know, they will turn the draconic imagery that once meant freedom in the books (and arguably in this scene as well) into another sign of her villainy in a wing shot that, iconic as it has become, is as subtle as adding devil horns in her head.

Show!Dany's clothes

Does anyone know why is show!Dany using this accessory with her dress? I assume it's a chest pad, but I'm not sure. If anyone has any ideas, please share them with me.

#daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #asoiaf vs got #asos vs got #a storm of swords #s3

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writingonesdreams · 3 years

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Reading update

He maybe I could keep these up every week.

I gathered another 20 books (help why am I collecting them) to choose from. Probably cause they are ebooks and I can't read them before I get them. Starting with the first chapter is proving more reliable than reviews. I'm still not sure how much to give a book before deciding to dropping it. 50 pages? 100? I'm keeping 20% if I really like the premise or idea behind it. If the first chapter doesn't catch me I'm moving them on the waiting list (only has about 126 books in there).

Reading

Scythe - I love the writing and the characters. But it's such a heavy topic to be following executions by enlightened Jedi like people who think they are doing something noble. Killing people so needlessly. It's too heavy and I couldn't make myself read this for 5 days. I'm sorry book, you are really cool. The next books seem to focus more on new characters and some kind of god like AI? I don't like AIs acting alive, it's a personal taste thing. But I may have something for vigilant characters.

Way of shadows - This is ironically way too much about death and brutality to be a relief book. But at least the people don't act like they are super noble when they kill, they suffer and kindness is even more precious. The deciding factor was really that I wanted to read the first chapter and breathed out after chapter 5. XD That's a very good sign. Also there is magic and a fake friendship with a noble noblekid and the assassin in training. I love these unlikely friendships.

Unlikely escape of Uriah heep - The premise about reading characters into life. It has brothers as central characters. The first chapter was amazing. Start with conflict 👌.

Promise of the wolves - Wolf packs and wolf pov? War and peace with humans and forbidden friendships? Wow. Loved the first chapter so far.

Through wolf's eyes - About a girl raised by wolves, right with very nuanced interaction and communication with words. The pack relationships and dynamics are so cool! The only minus are the switches to some human povs looking for the girl cause she is some kind of heir. Ohh the annoying humans. So boring.

Interested

Mr Fox - writer process and writer life with an OC visiting an author. The first page is amazing but didn't get further yet.

Library of the unwritten - Books converting into characters and running around trying to escape to shake their writers into finishing them. This concept is too hilarious.😂

Midnight library - alternate lives. Philosophical beginning.

Half a king - Prince with only one good hand who has to use his intellect instead of fighting skills. Starts with his family dying. A bit cliche beginning. Supposedly had good found fam though.

Declaration of rights of magicians - starts with tragedy after tragedy against mages, being enslaved or hurt in various ways. Gripping for sure. Didn't get to a central character yet cause it keep switching.

Jade City - Godfather about a young crime family in a city controlled by trade of magical jewel. Just stick brothers and magic somewhere and I'm reading.

Blood song - This is my backup if I didn't like Way of shadows. I like it, so it's a backup after it's finished.

Emperor's soul - didn't start yet but it's about reconstructing the human spirit of a dying emperor. And it's Sanderson. I want to read a book from him where no one dies. Please.

Grace of kings - Ruthless noble and carefree thief form a friendship, overthrow a government and then become enemies. I'm not sure if this has a happy ending.

Age of assassins - prologue was more interesting than the first chapter so I'm pissed off. But competent characters instead of endless learning arcs is a fresh change.

Rage of dragons - Revenge story. Interesting start but then a prologue again! Damn I liked these characters.

Waiting

Crown duel

Midnight thief

All the starts and teeth

Name of the wind

Falling kingdoms

Lady of Rivers

Addie LaRue

Magic bites

#writeblr #bookblr #writeblr community #reading update #fantasy #fantasy books #political fantasy

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hollymbryan · 3 years

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Blog Tour + #Review: RADAR GIRLS by Sara Ackerman!

Welcome to Book-Keeping! I’m thrilled to be taking part in the Harlequin Trade Publishing Summer 2021 Blog Tour for their historical fiction titles! Today I am featuring Radar Girls by Sara Ackerman, and below you’ll find all the info on the book and author and my review. Enjoy!

About the Book

title: Radar Girls author: Sara Ackerman publisher: MIRA release date: 27 July 2021

WWII historical fiction inspired by the real women of the Women’s Air Raid Defense, RADAR GIRLS follows one unlikely recruit as she trains and serves in secrecy as a radar plotter on Hawaii. A tale of resilience and sisterhood, it sees the battles of the Pacific through the eyes of these pioneering women, and will appeal to fans of Kate Quinn and Pam Jenoff.

An extraordinary story inspired by the real Women’s Air Raid Defense, where an unlikely recruit and her sisters-in-arms forge their place in WWII history.

Daisy Wilder prefers the company of horses to people, bare feet and saltwater to high heels and society parties. Then, in the dizzying aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Daisy enlists in a top-secret program, replacing male soldiers in a war zone for the first time. Under fear of imminent invasion, the WARDs guide pilots into blacked-out air strips and track unidentified planes across Pacific skies.

But not everyone thinks the women are up to the job, and the new recruits must rise above their differences and work side-by-side despite the resistance and heartache they meet along the way. With America’s future on the line, Daisy is determined to prove herself worthy. And with the man she’s falling in love with out on the front lines, she cannot fail. From radar towers on remote mountaintops to flooded bomb shelters, she’ll need her new team when the stakes are highest. Because the most important battles are fought—and won—together.

This inspiring and uplifting tale of pioneering, unsung heroines vividly transports the reader to wartime Hawaii, where one woman’s call to duty leads her to find courage, strength and sisterhood.

About the Author

USA Today bestselling author Sara Ackerman was born and raised in Hawaii. She studied journalism and earned graduate degrees in psychology and Chinese medicine. She blames Hawaii for her addiction to writing, and sees no end to its untapped stories. When she's not writing or teaching, you'll find her in the mountains or in the ocean. She currently lives on the Big Island with her boyfriend and a houseful of bossy animals. Find out more about Sara and her books at the links below.

Connect with Sara: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

My 3.5-Star Review

I was really excited to read Radar Girls when I saw it was one of the titles featured in the HTP summer blog tour, as I love historical fiction and had not yet read a book by Sara Ackerman. I was sucked right in as soon as I started reading, and read the first 60% in one sitting and the last 40% in another. The story flowed and was easy to read, and the characters were also easy to root for. I loved learning a little more about the Women’s Air Raid Defense, and how women were recruited for jobs in the military normally done by men when the men were all required to ship out for war.

At the same time, there was something missing for me, as the story felt very surface-level and not very deep. Granted, the historical fiction I am used to reading is more like that from Sharon Kay Penman, which is very in-depth and very long, so perhaps that is why I felt that way. I just would’ve liked to learn even more about the WARD, just a little more depth to the story. Also, there was one thing that was problematic for me, an action that Daisy and Betty took without the permission of their friend, and that really bothered me. And that whole event was kind of glossed over and wrapped up way too easily, more easily than I imagine it probably would have been at the time.

Overall, this was a relatively light, quick historical fiction read that I enjoyed. I am glad to have read my first Sara Ackerman book! Thanks so much to Harlequin Trade Publishing for having me on the tour.

Review: 3.5 stars!

**Disclosure: I received an e-ARC from the publisher for purposes of this blog tour. This review is voluntary on my part and reflects my honest rating and review of the book.

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danwhobrowses · 3 years

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AEW Women’s Eliminator Tournament - Full Review

So as of tonight’s Dynamite the winner of the Eliminator Tournament is in the books, either Nyla Rose or Ryo Mizunami have overcome the other to earn the right to face Hikaru Shida at Revolution on Sunday

But now is time to look at the tournament as a whole and review how well AEW’s latest ambitious Women’s Division Project would/should be received

Warning: There will be immediate spoilers for the Winner under the ‘Keep Reading’, if you do not wish to know the Winner do not read until you have

So when the smoke cleared and the dust settled, Ryo Mizunami came out on top having pinned Nyla Rose for the win, claiming the spot at Revolution and the tournament.

Boy was my prediction wrong eh?

After being given the trophy by Shida however, Aniki refused to let go of the champion, trading and inviting blows from each woman until Shida was able to knock Mizunami down and raise the title aloft.

Was she people’s first choice to win? Probably not Is she an unworthy winner? Absolutely not

Mizunami is extremely experienced, her charisma can reach all ages, she has a genuine love for the wrestling (her sunglasses even have ‘I <3 AEW’ on them), she has aforementioned history with Shida and she went through 2 Fan-Favourites, the legendary Aja Kong and finally the previous Women’s Champion and No.1 Ranked Woman to get here.

And while we are on that topic, to the people who immediately condemned and criticized the tournament when Nyla made the finals: Don’t you get tired of being worked so easily? Honestly we had the exact same thing with the Deadly Draw, people don’t want competitor A (Nyla/Brandi and Allie) to win: so AEW put them in the finals so they root for competitor B (Aniki/Diamante and Iveliesse). Ye of so little faith

I also like to mention that it’s quite nice of Mizunami to be this rewarded by AEW and Shida given how she appeared on their first show at Double or Nothing, I didn’t know it at the time of my bracket rundown but apparently Mizunami was about to retire after DoN, but the crowd and energy of the match inspired her to keep going and push to reach a wider audience - which AEW is now letting her achieve.

Get it out of the way - The Negatives Make no mistake this tournament was great, but it doesn’t mean it was perfect. Of course my earliest criticism was that we could’ve had more, a bittersweet feeling I got when I realised the tournament was nearing its close. While yes it would’ve been nice to see the likes of Big Swole, KiLynn King, Allie, Penelope and perhaps even some debuts/returns, we cannot slight AEW too much for keeping the bracket small.

Time however was a bit of a constraint on AEW’s part. Having revealed late that the winner will face Shida for Revolution, the tournament matches started coming out fast...but on Youtube. Personally, I had no problem with the matches being a sole focus stream on Youtube, but I can also understand why not putting at least the entire American bracket on Dynamite would’ve hurt the tournament. If the tournament had more time I do believe that each match would’ve had a Dynamite showing and not a broken BR Live stream (but please note that BR Live were the problem there, not AEW).

A non-AEW criticism as well for Injury screwing over Anna Jay right as she was about to have her match, extremely rude of the world and we hope her shoulder heals up faster than usual.

The final criticism is probably with the BR Live US Bracket Finals video, simply put it was lacking compared to other streams. Madi vs Leva and Leyla vs Alize didn’t shine as much as Riho vs Rosa and the 6 Woman Joshi tag did in the prior stream, we could’ve probably gotten better matches out of that.

Why I loved it - The Positives I will look at anyone who says that this tournament was a waste and meaningless dead in the eye and tell them they are wrong, and they will be shocked to find that I am not lying.

The tournament not only put a lot of attention on the competing women but became a platform for AEW to show that they have some impressive women on their roster. The returns of Yuka, Emi and Riho paired with the stalwart performances of Baker, Rosa and Nyla as well as the bright showings of Madi, Anna, Tay Conti and Leyla shows that AEW still have a really good Women’s Division - I mean I love WWE but you have to admit their NXT women’s division bought many of their stars ready-made; Io, Toni, KLR, Meiko and Candice were already established names before WWE. Stack that on top of impressive performances by Red Velvet and Jade Cargill last night and the ranks of Big Swole, Allie, Penelope Ford, Kris Statlander, Shanna, KiLynn King and Tesha Price and you still have a strong division.

The tournament proved its worth also by the fact that there was not a single bad match on there, we had some bangers on each stage ranging from Yuka vs Emi, Rosa vs Riho, Nyla vs Baker and Leyla vs Rosa, among several others. The tournament succeeded in giving us great wrestling even with different formats of face vs face, heel vs heel, speed vs power, technique vs power, and even some new shades to the women such as heel Sakura and face Nyla.

I cannot praise the tournament without heaping a ton of praise on the Joshi. Shida and Kenny had always been adamant to show that the Joshi can be a revelation to Western audiences and they were paid in kind in that regard. All six Joshi brought out their A-Game to the point where several are asking for them to be signed, Sakura’s heel ‘Killer Queens’ faction rose interest with a fantastic entrance, while VENY dazzled with their gymnastic talent (and their wearing of the late Hana Kimura’s kimono), Mei Suruga and Yuka Sakazaki lit up the room with their speed and fun and Maki Itoh continues to be adored by the wider world into megastardom. The six woman tag as well was a nice cherry on the top to once again showcase the women, including Rin Kadokura who was fed to Aja Kong in the tournament, every bit of energy and charisma from the Joshi landed on the mark, it has opened several new fans to their home brands (TJPW however did kinda give away that Yuka wouldn’t win given how she was booked for one of their shows, but they’re still great) and have us gasping for more of those six and perhaps some extra, Miyu Yamashita for instance? Think about it TK

One thing that can really harm a tournament too is predictability, which this tournament did not have. You have to commend the balls of AEW to set up 5 fan favourite choices to win and have them each be felled and swerve the entire fanbase. It was for the most part good swerves as well, leading up to the Nyla work included, and actually made me feel like this tournament had big stakes for each member. People will criticize its unpredictability but I won’t be one of them, just because it didn’t go how you personally predicted it doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Also a stand out yes for Rosa’s several gear, especially the Selena one against Riho, and Hikaru Shida herself slaying it in the white suit, like lord almighty thank you for this food.

Was it worth it? - Conclusion This is an emphatic yes for me. AEW will always have its critics, fair and unfair, but if you have to wonder whether this tournament is a success you have to simply look at it this way

Were you entertained?

For me yes, there was a 100% consistency in good to great matches in this tournament paired with genuine surprises that got people talking and invested in the tournament itself.

Did it give you something fresh?

A dark horse winner who earned her way to face Shida for the 5th career time and 1st time in an AEW ring through outwrestling, outpowering and outwitting their previous opponents, unique heel/face changes and a showcase of new wrestlers and matchups? I’d say that’s a yes

Did anyone get over?

You ask anyone before this tournament was announced who Ryo Mizunami, Maki Itoh, VENY or Mei Suruga was and you’d likely get blank faces, thanks to AEW they are known and commended by several fans outside of Japan. You ask people if Tay Conti can bring a physical match to Nyla and almost win and you’d get a few murmurs, if you asked people if they though Kenny was valid for his push to bring the Joshi into a wider audience prior to this may’ve said no. Those minds were changed because these women got over. In addition to that the popularity of Thunder Rosa, Riho and Yuka Sakazaki has continued to rise as some of AEW’s top babyfaces, Leyla Hirsch, Emi Sakura and Tay Conti’s stock have rose thanks to the tournament and Nyla and Baker have delivered on strong match performances.

When you consider those three, there is no way you could call the tournament a failure or a waste, people benefitted from it in a good way which means it was a good tournament.

I for one will look forward to seeing Shida take on Aniki and see how it unfolds at Revolution - which I hope to do a review for, I’m also guessing that Paul Wight’s aquisition is either Christian or Okada. Many will of course assume that this is an easy retain for Shida (and act like winning the tournament means you should win the following match as if people don’t win the Royal Rumble/MITB/KOTR/Dusty Classic and lose in their title shot), but how many of those people thought that Itoh, Kong, Yuka and Nyla would beat Mizunami? She keeps on extending the party and coming out on top, you cannot underestimate the tournament winner, Shida produced this tournament, she’s picked her winner now she needs to fight them.

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theartofreadingbykyla · 3 years

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ARC Review: The Rancher's Fake Girlfriend

No one has ever taken Chad Radford seriously—not even himself. But when folks in town think he's running for the board of the cattleman’s union is nothing more than a joke, he realizes it’s time for a change. When the opportunity comes for him to be the hero to new-in-town single mom, Hannah Smith, who’s being harassed by a persistent ex, he takes it as a chance to prove to the locals and his family that he can be responsible and trusted. To keep the creep away, Chad agrees to be Hannah’s fake boyfriend, and even he’s surprised how quickly people’s opinions of him change. This boyfriend stuff is pretty useful. Not to mention kind of nice.

All Hannah wants for her and her daughter is a quiet place to live, far away from the complete mess of her past. Trading in her high-powered career as a communications director for a job as a waitress is perfect. Everything is simple and straightforward until a sexy cowboy comes into her life. Being in a fake relationship with Chad is far more difficult than she’d thought it would be—especially when it starts feeling all too real. When her past starts to threaten her present, though, Hannah is faced with the most difficult decision of her life, one that could break the tenuous trust of a man she’s falling in love with…

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. ARC provided by Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op

ꜱᴇᴇ ʀᴇᴠɪᴇᴡ ʙᴇʟᴏᴡ:

Chad wanted to run as a board of the cattleman's union but everyone did not take him seriously. Hannah wanted nothing but to get away from Tripp's possessiveness and run away from her past. In order for them to succeed, the two of them agreed to fake their relationship. With Chad to protect her from Tripp and Hannah to help him with his campaign, they both act passionately and almost real into their fake relationship. Will they be able to get what they want without falling for each other? Or will one of them fall in love and ruin the plan?

This story is actually good and I love the characters!! It is easy to read and quite short so if you're in a reading slump this will be the perfect story for you to read. The characters are lovely and perfect. The connection between the male lead, the female lead, and her daughter is amazing! I love a man who's great with kids, don't we all though? It is sexy and attractive when men are good at handling kids and having fun with them. The spiciness of this book is 2.5 out of 5 for me, I love the sneakiness of the main leads but this book doesn't show many details so it's kind of minor friendly which is great too! But I also have questions in mind about the plot but I'll keep it to myself for now because I don't wanna spoil so much. Overall, I still enjoyed the book!

You can get the series here.

I give this book 3.5 out of 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐

If you like general fiction (adult) and romance, I would recommend this book for you.

About the Author:

Leslie North

Leslie North is the pen name for a critically-acclaimed author of women's contemporary romance and fiction. The anonymity gives her the perfect opportunity to paint with her full artistic palette, especially in the romance and erotic fantasy genres.

The truth of the matter is she loves her fictional persona, Leslie North, more than her normal, day-to-day persona! Her bestselling books focus on strong characters and particularly women who aren't afraid to challenge an alpha male. Inspired after years of travel, her stories are set all over the world, from the tough streets of Russia to the beautiful beaches of the middle east.

Leslie fell in love with romance when she first picked up a scrappy, dog-eared romance book from her local library. She began writing soon after and the rest, as they say, was history. She now lives in a cozy cottage on the British coast and enjoys taking long walks with her two Dalmatians, George and Fergie.

Read SIX full-length novellas by USA Today best-selling author Leslie North for FREE! Sign up for free books here: http://leslienorthbooks.com/sign-up-for-free-books.

#books & libraries #book review #best seller books #bookaddict #booklr #book #book quotes #bookshelf #bookstagram #bookish #book blog #romance #generalfiction #netgalley #netgalley review #beautiful #the rancher's fake girlfriend sneak peak #the rancher's fake girlfriend

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zevveli · 4 years

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My thoughts on the new Star Wars (possible spoilers)

Okay, so I saw the new Star Wars Movie tonight (mostly because I’ve already seen people complaining about it and knew it was only a matter of time before someone broke the spoiler embargo.) And I have some thoughts.

So first I want to talk about what I refer to as “inadvertent spoilers” basically this is when you are trying to avoid posting a spoiler, but because you refer to certain things you accidentally spoil things that either you don’t think is a spoiler or you spoil it in an unrelated manner. For example, in a book series I was reading there was a certain degree of ambiguity if a character was alive or not, in a popular TV show based on those books scenes posted of that character were a major spoiler (even if it was completely plot irrelevant) because it proved that that character was still alive. In another case I was watching a series based on a syndicated publication, and a person who had read the series it was based off of told me that “you’re going to meet a new character next season you’re going to love...and then get REALLY pissed.”

Now in terms of inadvertent spoilers, another form it can take is in “spoiler free reviews” but inadvertently giving away points based on other posts the person may have made. For example, if a person were to complain about the over-usage of the “fridging the woman” trope, and then in a review of a highly anticipated movie, began complaining about things in a way reminiscent of those rants, then that can imply that someone gets “Fridged.” And after watching this movie I can see how some obvious inadvertent spoilers might pop up.

So in Star Wars there is a standard way that the trilogy blocks go, In part 1 the looming threat to the galaxy appears, the heroes struggle and ultimately the main character appears bringing hope to fight against the looming threat. In part 2 the threat comes to its greatest head, the heroes struggle against and finally achieve a victory that is ultimately, pyrrhic, as the forces of evil gather and loom. In part 3 the heroes rally, face the insecurities acquired in part 2, and ultimately triumph (yes I know Episode III didn’t truly end with victory, but that’s because it was tied in with Episode IV already established, and it did if you consider that a) victory was the defeat of the Trade Federation, not the defeat of the Empire, b) victory was securing the safety of Luke and Leia and c) Obi Wan was the hero of the prequel trilogies, not Anakin.)

But the sequel trilogy did not follow that pattern, not normally. Because Episode VIII was given to a different director. And that director did not want to direct episode VIII, he wanted to direct episode VII, and that’s what he tried to do, He threw out what he could, changed what he couldn’t, introduced what he wanted, and generally tried to make it HIS. And then it was given back to the original director, who had an arc in mind, but had it rudely interrupted. So now he was forced to fix the damage the other director had done, and complete the arc, and inevitably, this is going to cause some complaints. Complaints that I can certainly understand (And some of which I have already seen.)

So looking at episode IX there was one unexpected thing that changed the plot (the death of Carrie Fisher) but not greatly, by looking at it, you can see that her part was assumed by other people, it’s very well hidden, and I wouldn’t have noticed at all if Mark Hammel hadn’t tweeted out that it had been done in response to fan concerns after her death. But I can see potentially two other things that tripped up what was originally planned. Namely the death of Phasma and the introduction of Rose in Episode VIII. There is one character in the movie whom I am fairly certain was originally supposed to be Phasma, but Rian Johnson killed her off, so J.J. Abrams had to improvise. As to Rose, well, as I said in a previous rant back when Episode VIII came out, Rian Johnson spent half of his movie trying to make J.J. Abrams’ characters into HIS characters. Abrams didn’t want to do that so he just, did nothing with her. He basically just shelved her, he gave her a few lines in conversations that basically boiled down to “I’m acknowledging your existence, but I really don’t know what to do with you so go over there.” Now is that a waste of her character? No, not as far as I’m concerned, because Abrams essentially said “I don’t think I can do this character justice, and I don’t want to get rid of her because I understand how important she is to some of the fans.”

DISCLAMER: I AM PROBABLY BEING OVERLY-GENEROUS IN MY ASSESSMENT HERE, IT IS POSSIBLE I’M WAY OFF THE MARK BUT THIS IS JUST MY IMPRESSION FROM THE MOVIE, I HAVE BEEN INTENTIONALLY AVOIDING MEDIA INTERVIEWS FOR THE EXACT REASON LISTED IN MY OPENING PARAGRAPH!

So now that those two issues are dealt with, now what? Well, Abrams crams two movies into one, he does it pretty well in my opinion. The action and development of the plot feels neither rushed, nor drawn out, but the interpersonal relationships and character development...that is.

I could see so much potential in the characters, it was like the plans for a grand building. You could see that the architect had drawn up magnificent blueprints, that the crew had carefully leveled the field, and laid the foundation, the framing and walls were all up and...the funding ran out, slap a roof on it and call it done. Each character reached the end of their arc, but for most of them it felt rushed, hollow, like they grew only because they were supposed to and not because of compelling narrative growth, only one had a completely fleshed out arc and even theirs felt rushed towards the end.

Overall, I loved the movie, I loved it for what it was, and I loved it for what it did, and even for what it tried to do. I can see the imperfections, and know what I would have done differently, but I doubt I could have done the rest of the movie justice, that’s why I’m sitting here on my bed, and not in a studio writing out scripts. But that’s just part of being a fan, that’s just part of enjoying the movie, that’s just part of enjoying the franchise.

#Star Wars #Star Wars Episode ix #Star wars episode ix the rise of skywalker #star wars the rise of skywalker #The Rise of Skywalker #TROS #TROS spoilers #Star Wars Spoilers #Star Wars Episode ix spoilers #The Rise of Skywalker spoilers #spoilers #I've tried to tag this with every possible tag related to this subject and spoilers I can think of #if you see this it's your own fault at this point #long post #god I hope the read more lines work here #lots of tags #hastag

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oosteven-universe · 4 years

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Cold Dead Hands #1 Advance Review

Cold Dead Hands #1 Advance Review Source Point Press 2020 Written by Garrett Gunn Illustrated by Lee Milewski Lettered by Justin Birch Aspiring mercenary, Kit Kelso, comes wrist-to-wrist with the deadliest hands in history. Oh yeah if you aren't familiar with Garrett and his writing you need to find the opportunity to introduce yourself to it. The man has a nice way with words, at least on paper, and the sheer raw talent, ability and creativity with him is exciting to see. From what I see right off the bat this is a mature audiences title just from the language and violence we see and considering the subject matter and the chosen profession of young Kit Kelso it's only natural. So if you want to read a story with some truly out of the box thinking then this is something you'll have to make sure your shop is going to have. The more I read this more intrigued I became and that is precisely what it is supposed to do. Start off with an eye catching moment and work our way to why that is occurring and then following things from there. The way we see the books structure is fantastic and the tools of the trade are here and subtly show us it's building blocks. The idea behind the story and how we see this and how we meet the characters is done superbly. You literally cannot get enough and you want more kind of immediately because suddenly you've been thrust into a world that is intriguing, fascinating and in frank honesty full of characters you want to know and or be. The way that this is being told is exceptionally well done. The story & plot development here as seen through how the sequence of events unfold and how the reader learns information pulls you in, gets your imagination fired up and thoroughly engages you in what's happening. The character development is phenomenal and I like that the whole tough guy routine is thrown out the window, okay the stereotype Goodfellas is anyway, and instead we see these men as real folks who have a job to do and then talk about mundane stuff. This allows the reader to be able to relate to them in some context or another. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists and turns along the way we see how the story unfolds and how everything works together to create this near perfect ebb & flow to the story. The interiors here are cute. The linework is interesting and it's thick and there isn't too much attention to detail but there is this certain charm and charisma to it that I find endearing. It wouldn't surprise me either if a few characters were based on this creative team either. I am also impressed with the way we see imagery in the backgrounds. The warehouse for example and the shadows that fall across the floor from the moonlight outside is sensationally well rendered. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a superb eye for storytelling. The way that we see this even without the utilisation of backgrounds, which I want to see more of and think we need to see more of, we still get this nice sense of depth perception, scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the book. The colour work is pretty. The colour choices are sensational and the way we see the various hues and tones with the colours create the shading, highlights and shadow work through colour blocking is exceptional stuff. I love this already and I cannot wait to get my hands on a physical copy. Seeing the events occur how they do and seeing how things are coped with will surely entertain you. This is unlike anything you've ever read before and that is a feat unto itself as this kind of originality is harder and harder to find. Once again Source Point Press proves they are among the top houses for amazing storytelling.

#comic books #comics reviews #source point press #garrett gunn #lee milewski #justin birch

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thecomicsnexus · 5 years

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GREEN LANTERN #198-200 (FINAL ISSUE) MARCH - MAY 1986 BY STEVE ENGLEHART, JOE STATON, BRUCE D PATTERSON, MARK FARMER, BOB SMITH AND ANTHONY TOLLIN

SYNOPSIS (FROM DC DATABASE)

Sinestro explains to John Stewart and Katma Tui that Hal Jordan and Guy Gardners mission to blow up the moon of Qward where the Anti-Monitor was born must be stopped at all costs. Using the displaced energy produced from contact between Green and Yellow energies, Stewart propels himself to Oa to confront the Guardians much faster than he would normally be able to.

Gardner and Jordan assemble the army of villains they've gathered on one of the moons of Pluto, preparing for their assault. The two discuss the grudge Gardner has against Jordan, and while Hal is actually glad to see Guy finally a Lantern, Guy calls him a jerk.

On Oa, Stewart arrives to find assembled remaining members of the Green Lantern Corps, including Tomar-Re, K'ryssma, Apros, Arisia Rrab, Ch'p and Xax. Although it is discovered that Sinestro had been lying to gain access to Oa, the danger he explained was very real, unbeknownst to him. The Central Power Battery, speaking through Tomar-Re explains that the destruction of the Anti-Monitor's birthplace will remove his tethers to the mortal world, and in effect make him much more powerful than he had ever been before. The Guardians launch a counter-strike composed of all active members of the Corps to stop Guy Gardner's team in the Antimatter Universe.

Gardner's team, which also consists of the Shark, Sonar, Goldface, Throttle and Blindside arrive in the Antimatter Universe and are attacked by the Weaponers of Qward. For disobeying orders, Gardner hits Jordan over the head and takes the ring he was temporarily given. Hal is able to survive by grabbing the life support systems of a nearby Weaponer.

When Gardner's villains and the rest of the Corps meet, they clash and there's a gigantic battle in the Antimatter Universe! During the fight, Xax is murdered and Tomar-Re is fatally injured by Goldface. As Gardner prepares to destroy the Anti-Monitors' birthplace, he is confronted by Stewart, the last man standing between him and the unintentional destruction of the universe. They engage in a battle of wills, and Stewart, the more experienced Lantern, wins with sheer power.

Elsewhere, as the Anti-Monitor dies, somehow all fighting are able to sense it, and the combat is ceased, while the fighters collect their dead and injured, simply glad that the Crisis is over. Tomar-Re dies, and his Ring is passed on to John Stewart, who is able to give the ring he's been using (originally the ring of Abin Sur back to Hal Jordan. Hal Jordan becomes an official Green Lantern once more.

Hal Jordan and several other Green Lanterns track down Goldface.

The entirety of the Green Lantern Corps is called back to Oa for a special announcement. Dozens of Lanterns return from their respective space sectors carrying various super-villains in tow.

On Zamaron, Guy Gardner engages in combat against Star Sapphire. The two enemies trade shots with one another, until they both find themselves the victim of Hector Hammond's mental manipulation. Guy and Sapphire both have reason to hate Hal Jordan, and they agree to work together with Hammond to bring Jordan down.

Hal Jordan meanwhile, finds himself on a desolate moon where he meets his close ally the Flash. The Flash has been missing since the Crisis and he even tells Hal that he fears he may actually be dead. The image of the Flash fades only to be replaced with that of another deceased comrade Tomar-Re. Hal doesn't understand what is going on. Tomar-Re fades away, and in his place is Carol Ferris. At first, Hal thinks that this is merely another illusion, but the illusion proves to be real as Carol switches into her Star Sapphire identity. Guy Gardner is present as well, and both follow Hector Hammond's instructions to attack Jordan. Jordan's willpower proves momentarily stronger than Hammond's, and the psychic feedback is enough to make Hammond's physical body (still located on Earth) fall over unconscious.

Meanwhile, John Stewart and Katma Tui are soaring through space, bringing the former Guardian Appa Ali Apsa back to Oa. The Weaponers of Qward arrive and attack their vessel. John goes outside to deal with the threat head-on, leaving Katma Tui inside to navigate the ship. Appa manages to use his former Guardian status to momentarily distract the Weaponers, thereby giving John and Katma the upper hand. The Qwardians know that the cause is lost and retreat.

Before long, everyone arrives on Oa. All of the Lanterns are gathered into the main citadel and Appa joins the ranks of his fellow Guardians. Also in attendance is a contingent of Zamarons. The Guardians open the assembly and declare that their race has become stagnant and that it is time for them to move and evolve. They are leaving Oa, and enabling the Green Lantern Corps the ability to police themselves. As the Zamarons are the female counterparts to the Guardians, they are expected to journey with them. Nadia Safir, leader of the Zamaron armies disagrees with the Guardians and challenges them to a trial by combat. Nadia faces the Guardian Herupa Hando Hu, but loses. In defeat, the Zamarons agree to accompany the Guardians, and they will evolve together in an effort to produce the next generation of immortals. As the Guardians prepare to leave, one of them notices that his "brother" is an imposter. Sinestro managed to escape from his Sciencell and impersonated one of the Guardians, Pazu Pinder Pol. He intended on leaving with the Guardians to serves as a "snake in their garden of Eden". The Guardians quickly subdue him and return Sinestro to his Sciencell. With that, they bid goodbye to the Green Lantern Corps, and the Guardians and Zamarons disappear hand in hand through a spatial rift – never to return.

REVIEW

But when I say final issue, it actually means, with this title, as the book then becomes Green Lantern Corps.

Maybe I am misunderstanding something. But the battle on the moon of Qward cannot happen at the same time that the Anti-Monitor is defeated... because he was defeated on the moon of Qward.

But I can let this error go, because Englehart managed to close a lot of loose ends in these issues and created a new status quo just in time for a new earth. And this will be a long story as well, as it will lead to a future event: Millenium.

Millenium will be the next big event after Crisis (and after Legends, but Legends happens just before the relaunch of many books, it doesn’t even include the Batman we will know as “post-crisis”, so it is Millenium that actually crosses over the new titles). DC must have had a good reason to trust Englehart with that event, so I am guessing Green Lantern Corps was selling well.

It is also interesting to see how Star Sapphire and Guy Gardner get back to the fold with a slap on the wrist. Guy has a lot of learning ahead, and it is going to be a hard road for him.

I give this story a score of 8

#joe staton #bruce d patterson #walt simonson #crisis on infinite earths #dc comics #comics #review #1986 #modern age #green lantern #green lantern corps #hal jordan #jhon stewart #guy gardner #katma tui #star sapphire #zamarons #millenium #tomar-re

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chrysalispen · 5 years

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kissing prompt: ‘a kiss meant to seduce’

not answering these in any particular order but tbh i’m trying to get these nero/WoL wips out the door so have another prompt response. more or less a lead-in to this fic i wrote which i don’t hate quite enough to take down.

not explicit, but probably a T/M rating on AO3 for mention of dirty talk etc.

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All told, no one had seemed to be in an agreeable mood on the way down to the Find from the Crystal Tower courtyard, or after they'd arrived. Cid's expression had been positively thunderous, blue eyes dark with his agitation, and the overall feeling from the other Ironworks engineers on site ran the gamut between confusion and suspicious resignation.

Well. Almost no one. Their sudden interloper seemed quite cheerful about the entire circumstance, as though all of this were going exactly the way he had wanted and they were all just cogs in some machine he'd set in motion.

That idea was absurd, of course; Nero tol Scaeva couldn't have had much more of an inkling of what was behind those doors than anyone else here, surely. But the calm, self-assured way he moved told her he did know something, and more to the point, that he had some plan in mind for it once they’d bypassed all the security for him.

That alone was more than enough to make her wary.

She glanced from side to side, looking for Cid, but he appeared to have quit the Find in a fit of pique (not that she particularly blamed him). The other engineers were just as busy, and G'raha was animatedly chattering to Unei and Doga who were both attempting to answer his flood of questions as best as they could manage.

Everyone seemed to have quite forgotten her presence now that her ability to brute-force the doors to the Labyrinth open was no longer necessary. She wished she could feel even slightly surprised, but that was what she was here for, she supposed. The muscle, the good luck charm.

With a sigh, Aurelia approached Rammbroes' study pavilion and lifted the tent flaps, letting herself inside. If the scholar or one of his fellows -- or better yet, Cid -- was there, she could talk with them, feel out if there was anything that they ought to be concerned about before venturing into the tower should Nero's timely appearance be subterfuge for something sinister...? But the tent was---

---the tent was not empty, as it had appeared from the outside. A familiar figure turned towards the sound of her entrance, a leather-bound book clasped in one hand.

She immediately reached for her weapon, snapping, "What are you--"

Nero tol Scaeva lifted his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

"Before you cut me down in cold blood, the journal is mine own. I was attempting to compare my notes with that of your associates here."

Aurelia's eyes narrowed but the tribunus only stared back, a look that was both coaxing and challenging at the same time, as if waiting to see what she would do. Finally she relented, tucking her staff back over her shoulder. While it was obvious he'd come in here by himself to rummage through papers, it seemed that he hadn't been here much longer than she had. So it wasn't as though he had had sufficient opportunity to do anything.

Nothing she could prove at the moment, anyroad.

"And the tomestones? I can't imagine you'd want to leave those behind without having a look for yourself."

"They're welcome to them," Nero said with a dismissive shrug.

She blinked. “That was... not the answer I expected.”

"Personal experience from the Ultima Project. The majority of those tomestones will be naught more than particularly expensive paperweights; what useful data exists on them has quite likely been eroded due to time and exposure. As counterintuitive as it may seem, their decision to keep written documentation of the dig may be the wiser course of action." His pale blue eyes had not tracked away from her face the entire time he had spoken. The gaze he’d leveled upon her was sharp, scrutinizing, intense, and this time she didn't have the benefit of his magitek armor to hide that interest from her sight.

Not that he was bothering to hide it in any way. What game was he playing...?

She broke eye contact, feeling ill at ease as she glanced at the entrance to Rammbroes' tent. She'd backed up against a nearby worktable; heavy and sturdy, it sat just below her waist, at hip height. Perfectly appropriate for a roegadyn sitting down to pen missives or peruse dusty old texts or review Allagan tomestones.

Nero was smiling but he still hadn't said anything, and that made her uncomfortable enough to finally break the silence between them with a defensive "What?"

"Any particular reason you happen to be blushing?"

"Wh- I'm not blushing."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

The right corner of his lips tugged slightly upwards, just enough to reveal a flash of canine. She chewed on her lower lip, grasping at the table for a sense of purchase and trying not to think about things she... really should not be thinking about. Really shouldn't. Like how in the seven hells a man was born with a mouth like that. It was- it was unfair.

His answering chuckle made her realize, much to her chagrin, that she had spoken aloud.

He braced his hands against the table's surface and leaned his weight back against it, slotting himself in the open space at her side. Unconsciously, Aurelia shifted herself to put a few ilms of space between them, trying not to think about the difference in height that was somehow far more noticeable now. Nero tol Scaeva was damnably tall; she was average height for a Garlean woman and still barely came up to his shoulders when they stood side by side, let alone in a position like this.

"To that end I've a question for you, eikon-slayer,” he continued smoothly, “if you would be so kind as to indulge me."

"About...?"

"I find it passing strange that a woman who can slay gods without blinking should find my presence in any way disconcerting. An artifact of your upbringing, I assume?" He was baiting her, she knew; the tone of his question was decidedly mocking. But that smile-- that had turned into something speculative and dark. Combined with the intensity of his stare, it set alight a strange, pressurized heat in the pit of her stomach. "Does Garlond elicit this reaction?"

"Cid? Hardly." Aurelia wrenched her gaze away from the movements of his lips to stare over his shoulder at the tent opening. Scholars and Ironworks engineers were passing to and fro just outside; she could see the shadows they cast upon the tarpaulin. "Cid also doesn't stand two ilms away from my face and stare me right in the eyes like he's about to devour me, so take that as you will, I suppose."

" 'Devour' you? What an interesting turn of phrase. Although I must admit you make a salient point. I cannot imagine that you are embarrassed by the slightest of his attentions as you are mine."

Was... was he trying to do what she suspected he was doing? The idea seemed laughable on its face -- Eorzea had no shortage of beautiful women, so who on earth would find her appealing? -- but the problem she currently faced was that it was actually working, damn him. It didn’t help that it had been... she couldn't remember how long since anyone had taken any sort of prurient interest in her, now that she thought about it.

Assuming of course that she wasn't just overthinking this and he wasn't putting her wind up for fun. Either way, she had to put an end to this now before it escalated any further.

"Unfortunately for you, I am not interested.” Calm, collected, and to the point. Yes, she thought; very well done.

She'd hoped that her bluntness would deter him, but that smile only widened, the maw of a hunting predator about to strike.

"Something tells me you are perhaps not being forthright with me." His tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth. "Shame on you, hero."

"I mean it. I am not interested," she repeated, this time with more resolve. "After what you did in the Prae-"

"Ah, you're concerned that I might turn on you all like a rabid dog, as it were. Worry for Garlond? Thinking I might sabotage his precious Ironworks or somesuch?"

"Not---no, none of those things, not as such, but to say I trust you would be a stretch. Not a word in all these weeks and suddenly you turn up, unannounced, as thought naught had transpired?"

"Your concern is unwarranted. Merely do I find myself with a plethora of free time in the wake of my sudden discharge from military service.”

“You-,” she began, but he was not finished.

“Lest you labor beneath the assumption that I intend you any sort of bodily harm, for a long while before we were... shall we say ‘formally introduced’, I had this recurring dream about you, me, and an interrogation chair-" At the wide flare of her eyes, he paused, only to grin at her: "...Now that, eikon-slayer, is a very interested look."

She tried to scoff at him, but it came out as a short, sharp, nervous bark.

"What look? I didn't give you any look."

"You most certainly did."

"You're reading intent where none exists-"

"Am I? Couple that with the fact you're mortified by the slightest hint of insinuation on my part and it's quite telling."

"Scaeva, I was in the legions myself once. Do you seriously think I'd not been exposed to the odd bit of barracks chatter?" She scowled at him. "I'm a chirurgeon by trade. I think I know enough of the human condition not to be easily embarrassed by such things."

There it was--the look she'd seen him pass Cid every time he was wont to needle the man in the space of a single conversation, coupled with the upwards arch of one eyebrow. She’d not realized how aggravating it was to be on the receiving end of that look until this moment, now that she was the subject of Nero's condescension.

"I'd wager that what you believe passes for 'barracks chatter' is overwhelmingly tame. You've not heard the half of it, I assure you. Even the worst among the rank and file will behave themselves around a skirt, especially if the lady in question is a pureblood."

"Perhaps if the lady had seen no military service. I imagine there is precious little they could say that would shock me."

He pushed himself upright and turned to face her, bracing his hands on either side and giving her precious little in the way of an escape route.

“I am very willing to test your hypothesis."

"I'm sure you are.” She kept her voice steady with some considerable effort. His mouth now lingered but a bare hairsbreadth apart from her own, and trying not to think about that fact was only causing her to hyperfocus on it.

"No time like the present,” he said, “and I am a man of science. Call it professional curiosity, if you like. May I?"

He'd called her bluff, and after her own assertion she felt she had little choice but to accept the consequences. At last Aurelia nodded, stiffly, trying to ignore the faintly triumphant curl to his answering smile.

His hand cupped her jaw, warm and callused fingertips trailing the shell of her ear, palm just barely cradling the soft skin over her throat. If he wished he could close his grip and tighten it, squeeze until she had no air to breathe- but the Echo would have warned her of any killing intent. Although it gave her no indication of any danger from him, it took a conscious effort not to bolt under his arm and flee the tent. Tension thrummed through her frame like a live wire.

Nero leaned inward until they were cheek to cheek. Her breath hitched for the briefest of moments when she felt the light scrape of stubble and caught his scent: some kind of aftershave perhaps, a bit stringent but not unpleasant, and the heat in her belly clenched tight. Lips lingered at her ear and she could feel the tribunus' warm breath fanning very lightly across her skin.

Then he began to speak.

Sotto voce, in their native Garlean tongue. A soft, soporific rumble, breath just slightly uneven- and not the mildly suggestive banter or off-color jokes she’d expected but a soldier's words of coupling, rough and lascivious and filthy.

All of it aimed at her.

Her grip on the table tightened as she willed herself to remain still through the impulse to slap him or shove him away in shocked mortification, as he well knew a proper young lady of gentle birth would have been expected to do. He knew, too; could sense her dismay, how much it cost her just to maintain some semblance of composure, and he wasn't fooled by it.

He was laughing at her, the bastard: she could hear the soft, breathy chuckles woven through his unending stream of vulgarities. Her face felt as though he had set it afire and she knew she was probably bright red right down to the roots of her hair---and then she felt the press of his mouth, a light kiss along the juncture of her jaw just beneath the earlobe.

A hot shudder of anticipation warped its way down her spine.

"So the eikon-slayer is undone by a bit of bawdy talk after all." He had not moved his lips away from her skin before speaking. She could feel the heat of his breath against her, warm and velvet and damp and gods, he was practically purring in her ear- "It would appear your theory has been disproven, hero."

She found herself unable to respond, mouth feeling suddenly very dry, swallowing with some effort. The clicking sound her throat made in her ears as she did was so, so loud.

And before she had quite managed to gather her wits again, Nero tol Scaeva straightened his posture and backed away from her position against the table with a mocking bow before tucking the journal in his coat pocket and strolling towards the tent flap. Turning his back on her, quite deliberately, and making his exit.

As though the entire exchange had never occurred.

She let out the exhalation she hadn't realized she was holding, sagging back against the sturdy oak surface of Rammbroes’ makeshift writing desk and attempting to ease her breathing into something resembling an even pace. He'd left her rattled and flustered and... burning. There was a deep, aching knot of tension that had formed in the base of her belly, one that would not fade quickly.

And she suspected that like as not, he’d only done it to prove a point, namely that his wits were malms beyond hers and her victory in the Praetorium had been but a simple fluke, a stroke of blind luck.

Small wonder Cid's hackles had been raised by his mere presence. Hells take him, the man was utterly insufferable.

After some time had passed (and the heat in her cheeks had faded), she slipped out of Rammbroes' "study" and saddled her chocobo. She had to talk to Cid about this, she decided, regardless of how sour his mood might be. Someone was going to have to keep an eye on Nero once they set foot in the tower, and given everyone else’s relative importance in the grand scheme of things, it might as well be her; she could endure his baiting so long as she made sure they had an understanding.

Aurelia didn’t see any sign of him on her way out of the camp. Doubtlessly he’d gone in search of someone or something else to act as his temporary source of entertainment until the expedition into the Tower was underway, she thought. She could not well decide if she was disappointed or relieved.

But if he planned to behave this way the entire time, it was going to be a very, very long expedition indeed.

#nero/wol #nero tol scaeva/warrior of light #another wip bites the dust #i'll leave what he actually said to your imaginations #stupid sexy garleans

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cromulentbookreview · 5 years

Text

Just Friendly Crustaceans

Under the sea! / Under the sea! / There’ll be no accusations / just friendly crustaceans / under the sea!

That’s Homer’s solution to everything, to move under the sea. It’s not going to happen.

The Light at the Bottom of the World by London Shah!

Leyla McQueen lives under the sea (under the sea! Sorry, I really can’t help myself). Anyway, Leyla lives in a world that was flooded as a result of an asteroid strike. Society has rebuilt itself, somewhat, under the water, despite the fact that living underwater isn’t exactly great for humans. I mean, just think of the mold! Euch. Or, well, in Leyla’s case, it’d be mould, because she lives in Underwater London which is either awesome or horrifying, depending on how you look at it. Leyla is a driving instructor by trade, teaching others how to pilot their submersibles, but in her free time, she loves a good race. In fact, we get our first introduction to Waterworld London via an unofficial road race which Leyla wins. Which is great, because she can really use the prize money to help pay for a lawyer to help her dad - see, Hashem McQueen has been arrested for supposedly helping depressed people suffering from an all-consuming sadness called the Seasickness kill themselves. Which is weird because I’m pretty sure that, even without his help, those people would’ve figured out a way to kill themselves anyway, but whatever. Either way, the charges are bullshit, and Leyla has been doing her damnedest to prove it, but keeps hitting roadblocks (waterblocks?) every step of the way.

Until she gets the chance to race in the London Marathon, the top prize of which includes a single personal request from the Prime Minister. If she wins the Marathon, she could ask for her dad’s freedom and it’d be granted, easy-peasy, right?

Right?

Yeah, it’s not that easy. Nothing is ever that easy when you live under the sea (under the sea! Damn it!). Especially when there’s these weird, genetically modified humans called Anthropoids running around, committing acts of terrorism. Anthropoids were created to survive under the water, and survive they can - but apparently Anthropoids also went insane and hate normal people so much they just want to kill anyone who isn’t a fellow Anthropoid. London is supposedly safe from the Anthropoids, but this is a YA fantasy action/adventure novel so you know that won’t last long.

Anyway, Leyla competes in the London Marathon, but things absolutely do not go as easily as she’d hoped. I mean, the book would be pretty short if things went easily. After the race, Leyla is given a chance to leave the safe, familiar waters of London for the world beyond - and, possibly, a chance to rescue her father herself. Along with Ari, the infuriatingly handsome son of one of her grandfather’s friends, and her Maltese puppy, Jojo, Leyla leaves London and heads into the dangerous unknown. Under the sea. Under the sea. Darling it's better / Down where it's wetter / Take it from me...

Maybe it was just me, being a weird loner kid whose best friend was her imagination, but I loved imagining what life would be like if the world were entirely underwater. Getting to swim through your school, going from house to house on a canoe, diving for old-world treasures, riding a walrus to work, you know. All that fun stuff you can experience, unless Jasper Johns steals your boat. Because, seriously, life under the sea does sound awesome. Well, except for the cold. And the wet. And the pressure. And the dark. And the ability to, uh, breathe. And, I mean, we’d better get used to the idea as soon as Greenland and Antarctica melt. But anyway, the concept of an underwater London meant I was absolutely going to read this book. Shah brings the setting to life, with all the wonders/terrors of the sea. The writing is lovely, but story-wise, yeah, this is definitely the first book of a series, meaning: you have 10,000,000,000 questions, but this book won’t be answering all of them, so be prepared to wait.

Character-wise, Leyla has an optimism about her that borders on naiveté - but even as she goes through some pretty harrowing experiences and learns her world isn’t what she thought it is, she remains optimistic. I love this - it would be easy for a YA protagonist to become cynical and bitter (adolescents, am I right?) but Leyla perseveres, despite her fears. It’s pretty clear throughout the book that Leyla suffers from anxiety, and Shah’s descriptions of Leyla’s feelings of panic and stress are absolutely spot-on. How she can maintain such a positive attitude living under the sea with her father behind bars and an anxiety disorder without prozac is a mystery to me.

Ari, meanwhile, is much more of a cipher - he’s handsome, he annoys Leyla at first, but they grow on each other after a while, making eyes at one another...but pretty much all of Ari’s backstory is veiled, and I get the distinct sense that Shah is making us wait until the sequel to give us his full story. This is the problem of getting suckered into serieses instead of standalone books.

By the way: I do not recommend reading this at the same time as listening to the audiobook of Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire’s Into The Drowning Deep, because the events of both books will start to blend together in your head and you’ll get some pretty weird nightmares about living life underwater and weird merpeople/sirens/anthropoids. I figured, hey, both these books are about what it’s like under the sea, they can’t be so different, I’ll read one and listen to the other! Except they are. One is an optimistic YA fantasy action/adventure, the other is a straight-up horror novel in which scientists can be super smart, but also really, really stupid. Like, fatally stupid.

Also, and this is no offense to the action scenes of The Light at the Bottom of the World (which are awesome, by the way) but: how can you have flames and explosions underwater? I mean, you can definitely have an underwater explosion, but not with flames, right?

Eh, if they can do it on Spongebob and in the Aquaman movie then that’s fine with me.

The Aquaman movie is very much OK with me. For. Uh. Reasons.

Yes. Reasons.

Hi there, Jason Momoa...

Where was I?

Oh. Yes. Light at the Bottom of the World by London Shah. Jason Momoa could be the light at the bottom of my world any day...

OK, back to the review, I swear. I didn’t intend for this to just become an Aquaman gif fest. (OK, maybe I did a little).

Seriously, I can’t believe that once again I’ve found myself suckered into another series. Because of course this couldn’t be a standalone. Everything is a series these days. I mean, things tend to just go with this picture I saw on Brittany Cavallaro’s Twitter:

Every. Single. Time! Bah, I says. Oh, well. What’s next on my to-read list?

*checks to-read list*

Damn it, it’s all sequels!

RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone who has ever dreamed of what life would be like if we all lived under the sea, Aquaman, any literate dolphins out there.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone who knows anything about what life would be really like if you lived under the sea; non YA fans, literate jellyfish.

RATING: 4/5

RELEASE DATE: October 29, 2019

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR SEQUEL: Mauna Kea

GRATUITOUS JASON MOMOA GIF:

AQUAMAN RATING:

JUST ONE MORE LITTLE MERMAID REFERENCE AND I’LL BE DONE, I SWEAR:

#the light at the bottom of the world #london shah #under the sea #london #underwater london #waterworld #young adult #young adult fantasy #young adult action/adventure #submarine #underwater action #aquaman #underwater explosions #the little mermaid #jason momoa

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awake-and-strange · 5 years

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This obituary by Janis Ian about Anne McCaffrey is very A Passion for Friends:

There've been so many mentions of Anne McCaffrey in the post below, I thought to post this homage I wrote for Locus Magazine when Annie died. I miss her, a lot. I kept a few of the most precious books she gave me, but last time I opened one I burst into tears... I feel fortunate to have loved someone so wonderful, to have been loved in return, and to miss her this much. From Locus Magazine: THE MASTERHARPER IS GONE "I have a shIelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me or something untoward happens." —Anne McCaffrey I miss her fiercely, more than I have any right to miss her. I remind myself of this whenever I run into her at the library and am stricken with tears. She was not kin, was not connected to me by family ties, not even a distant cousin. Not even Jewish. I have no right to miss her this much. And once in a while, when I chide myself for my silly sentimentality, the sudden lightning that pierces my heart gives way to a duller, deeper pain. One I can live with, perhaps. Like today, waking to a terrible cold, with headache and foggy brain I reach for solace. Put on my red flannel comfort shirt, add my favorite PJ bottoms, then a pair of fleece-lined slippers. Make my favorite tea, cover myself with an old patchwork quilt, and reach blindly for a book on my “comfort shelf.” Of course. I can’t escape her. Hours later, still miserable, I finish "All the Weyrs of Pern" for the umpteenth time, and scold myself for the tears that fall – first, because she is gone, and second, because I never really succeeded in telling her just how much she meant to me. I’d never heard of her when I stumbled across for "The Ship Who Sang" at my local library. I wrote to her, saying that it had moved me profoundly, wondering how a prose writer could have such a clear understanding of a musician’s soul. Being one myself, I said, a musician that is, and would like to send a copy of my last record in gratitude. She responded with a laugh that she had never heard of me but oh my, her children had, and could we trade books for recordings? And so, we began. I raced through everything she sent – such generosity, so much that it took two large boxes to ship it all. She, in turn, told me that while she appreciated the beauty of my “Jesse” and the clarity of “At 17”, she was writing her current novel to the beat of my one disco hit, “Fly Too High.” I laughed aloud because it made an artist’s sense to me – dragons flew, and Anne flew with them, regardless of the beat. It was the third or fourth email that she began with the salutation “Dear Petal,”. Petal. Me? I responded that of all the things I’d been called, no one had ever dreamed to name me “Petal”. She answered briskly that obviously, they’d never seen me bloom. From that day forward, I was her Petal, and she my Orchid. We corresponded ferociously, both all-or-nothing no-holds-barred types, Aries to the hilt. Weekly, daily, sometimes hourly. Dropped out at times when one of us was “on tour”, came back to it as we could. The time passed. Her beloved agent died. My parents passed away. She got a scathing review; I sent a few of my own. She was stuck on a chapter, I was stuck on a verse. We got unstuck, stuck again, and through it all we talked, comforting one another as only a “good hot cuppa” can. She picked me up herself in Dublin, leaning on a cane, nervous to meet in the flesh until I ran into her arms and smothered her with hugs. She drove between the hedgerows with complete abandon, a total disregard for ruts or speed limits, while I clutched the seat and wondered who’d get the bigger headline if we crashed. Annie, I decided, for she was truly a two-column, bold print kind of gal. By then, she was always “Annie” to me, or “Annie Mac”. My larger than life friend, who consorted daily with dragons and starlight, her own luster never dimming beside them. Once, after she showed me the rock cliffs of the Guiness Estate and explained that Benden Hold looked just like that, she asked if I would write a theme for it. For the movie? I said. “Yes”, she said, “A theme. Because if Menolly came to life, it would be with your voice.” I say this not to brag, but to indicate the trust between us – such trust that when I got home, with no film in sight, I began sketching out some notes for “Lessa’s Song”. I wanted it to be haunting, the way her words haunted me. I wanted it to be sweeping, like the thrust of dragon wings. I wanted it to be everything I could bring to her, a gift for someone whose words took me out of my world and into hers. As she said herself, “That’s what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.” I hope someday to finish that melody. I hope it’s good enough for a MasterHarper to sing. I hope she regarded me worthy of the title. Because that’s what she was for so many of us – the MasterHarper, singing in prose, songs that reminded us of where we’d been, and what we could become. She came and stayed with us in Nashville, bringing a broken shoulder and trusting me to care for her. We visited Andre Norton, Annie insisting I not just drive but sit with them and listen to “a bit of gossip”. These two women—one writing at a time when pseudonyms were necessary for a woman to get published, the other cracking the New York Times bestseller list with, of all things, a science fiction book, and by a female at that!—talked of publishers, rumors, scandals old and new, while I sat as silent as an unopened book, wishing I’d thought to bring a tape recorder. At first, as her health declined, she bore it cheerfully. “I’m bionic now, Petal, complete with metal knees!” she declared. “Better than ever, and no pain.” She kept to her writing schedule, doing what she could to help her body retain its youth. Swam every day, bragged about her granddaughter’s accomplishments at school – “First prize, don’tcha know!” and commiserated over our various surgeries. We sound like a couple of old Yiddishe mamas, comparing whose surgery was worse! I laughed, and she laughed along with me. Neither of us reckoned on the psychic toll. “Old age is not for the faint of heart,” she quoted, as her energy began to leech away. How is it we artists always forget just how hard it is to write? how much work it is? How can we ignore the vast psychic drain that accompanies every act of creation? We both knew it from her Pern books, when going between enervated even the hardiest of dragon riders. But somehow, we never expected it in “real” life. It’s only when we lose that effervescence, through age, through illness, through sheer attrition, that we realize how necessary it is to our work. How fundamental to our beings. “I can’t write.” She confessed the shameful secret to me not once, but dozens of times, as if repetition would prove it a lie. At first, playing the friend, I tried to reassure her. Then don’t! Take some time off, Annie. Restore your body, and the brain will follow. Talent doesn’t just disappear, you know – it lies in wait. But she knew better. “I'm still not writing. I think I know how Andre Norton is feeling, too, because I suspect that she's finding it very difficult to write, as the wellspring and flexibility that did us so much service is drying up in our old age. And no false flattery. AT 76 I AM old, and she's in her nineties. It takes a lot of energy to write, as much as it takes you to keep on adding flavor to your song presentation. Sorry to blah at you but you're one of the few people who does understand the matter when an artist questions their output.” I responded in kind. "No worries talking to me about not writing... I sure as hell know the amount of energy it consumes. Every time you sit down to write, it's a performance. Only you don't have the luxury of props - no lights, sound, other actors to step behind when the inevitable fatigue hits. Heck, Annie, I'm feeling it more and more now, and you've got a quarter century on me. I notice it mid-show; two hours used to be a piece of cake. Now I feel myself flagging at 45 minutes, and I really look forward to that 20 minute intermission, if only so I can have some water and sit for a few minutes. "Same with writing, for me. Used to be able to sit and write for 6 hours at a stretch. Now I'm good for two if I'm lucky. Part of it's my back, but most of it is - I fear - just that I'm older. It sucks." And she wrote back. “Must write. There are IRS problems. You wouldn’t believe. Mouths to feed, people depending on. Advances already spent and gone. Must write.” And so, she wrote, but for a while there was no joy in it. Still, I loved what she wrote, and told her so. I was proud of our friendship, not because she was so damned famous, but because she was so damned good. She even used my name in a book – Ladyholder Janissian in Skies of Pern – and roared with laughter when I admitted I’d been so wrapped up in the story that I hadn’t even noticed. But she knew – as artists always do – that while her ability to plot continued apace, the actual writing of it was becoming an endurance contest she couldn’t hope to win. “Turn more of it over to Todd,” I argued. Her son had a real knack for a sentence, but it was hard for Annie to let go. Of course. What artist can? “His words may not sing the way yours do – yet. He doesn’t have your lyrical grace – yet. But he will, Annie, you’ve just got to let him breathe!” I said it and said it and said it, to no avail. Then came a day when, 25 years younger and an ocean away, I finally lost patience and angrily berated her. “Damnit Annie, quit complaining and just stop! By God, you have created a mountain of work, an incredible legacy that will endure and be read by zillions of people long after both of us are gone – so quit whining about what you cannot do and start looking at what you have done. It’s time, Anne. Take this unbearable weight off your shoulders and stop!” I sent the email off and waited for her response, fearing I’d gone too far. A day. Then another. Finally, sure I’d lost a friend, I called to ask just how angry she was with me. Oh, no, not at all, she’s “in hospital.” She took a fall. She’d write soon. And she did, quoting me and saying “I knew you, of all people, would make sense.” A sweeter absolution I’ve never had. We continued our friendship, bitching about our bodies, menopause, the inevitable “drying up” of everything that comes with the feminine mystique. You cannot imagine the luxury, for me, to have a compatriot a quarter-century older. As an artist, I admired her work. But as a woman, I was relieved to have someone relentlessly honest about what was to come in my own life. We traded constantly. I sent her Lhasa de Sela, Sara Bettens. She sent stories about her animals, and the garden. One spring she changed my salutation to “Dear Crocus Petal – there are eight coming up now!” We planned to visit Prague together in September ’01, but then came 9/11, and I chickened out. To be brutally honest, I was afraid to fly. Annie gently took me to task, then went off with someone else instead. I will regret that for the rest of my life. She went into the hospital for the last time while I was touring the UK – just a ferry boat and an ocean of commitments away. Knowing how out of touch she’d feel, how fretful she’d be, I tried to call every day. We fell into a pattern – I’d wait until I was in the van, then phone her up and tell an off color joke, a bawdy story, a bit of kindly gossip. Sometimes about people we knew in common, Harlan perhaps, or Scott Card, whose work she admired. Sometimes just a silly series of puns I’d found on line. Whatever it was, I wanted to make her laugh, because I loved to hear her laugh. She died while I was on vacation, just days after the tour’s end. I’d brought a copy of Dragonsinger with me because on vacation, I always brought a few “comfort re-reads.” I’d fallen asleep over it, waking to an email from Gigi. Please keep it quiet until I can reach everyone, she asked. My older brother Alec is still in flight, and we don’t want him seeing it in the paper before I can reach him. I called with sleep still in my eyes and heard the hum of people behind Gigi’s answering voice. It was fast, it was painless, it was everything Annie had wanted. No lingering. A “good death” for her. But not for me. It’s hard to open my computer knowing there will be no “Dear Petal.” It’s hard, after knowing such a warm and giving shelter, to go without. Sometimes I run across a sentence that sings to me, and jot it down to show her. And sometimes, when she leaps out at me from the cover of a book, I remember she is gone, and it hits me like lightning, fast and lethal and completely unexpected. It stops my breath, until I remind myself that she is gone, but I am still here. When the lightning hits, I comfort myself with this. The beauty of Anne’s writing is that she makes it all seem, not just possible, but normal. For men to go dragonback. For women to become ships. For young, unwanted girls to become MasterHarpers. For brains to pair with brawns, and sing opera under alien skies. And for an unlikely friendship to bloom, a pairing no one could have imagined, between a petal on earth, and an orchid in flight.

#a passion for friends #janis ian #anne mccaffrey #petal and orchid

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mysticsparklewings · 5 years

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Arteza Watercolor Polaroids

On a bit of a roll with the painting stuff lately, aren't I? I mentioned in my last piece that I had a specific piece coming up to talk about the supplies I used, and this is it! So let's talk about the 60 set of Arteza Watercolors, shall we? Boring stuff out of the way first: I purchased the set from Arteza's website while it was on sale for $35, and signed up for their email to get an additional 10% off discount code. I was too cheap to pay $4 for express shipping, but the paints arrived about 4 days later, so the wait wasn't so bad. The set comes in a sturdy paper/cardboard box, and the paints are 6-tubes to a little plastic tray, five trays deep in two columns. I was a little confused at first because my assumption was that the paints would be laid out with the first ten in the first top two layers, but actually, you make your way down the column on the left for the first half of the paints, and then down the second column for the second half. It doesn't make much of a difference, it just took me a minute to figure out that's how they were arranged so that I could swatch them in the correct order. The tubes are 12 ml each (which seems like a fairly standard size watercolor tube from my experience), and each one has a label around the top indicating the color, with the color name printed on it. Just a note that I did have one tube, my Ice Blue, that had a little bit of this sticker/label that had ripped off at some point--I assume while it was still at Arteza's factory since the missing piece was nowhere to be found in the box. This also isn't a huge deal, but I think it's worth mentioning since this combined with my experience with Arteza's colored pencils proves that they do have a few minor quality control issues that pop up from time to time. Here's where things get a little more interesting, as when I swatched the 60 colors out initially, I was also testing for something else beyond color selection. (Incoming tangent on the way paint dries, presented in small text so you can skip over it if you have no intention of letting the paints dry and then reactivating them or otherwise don't care.) The price for these is awesome--$30 or $40 (depending on where you buy from and sales & such) for 60 colors that have proper pigment and lightfast information is a great deal, considering some other brands of student quality paint can cost upwards of $30 for as few as 10 or 12 colors, and professional quality paints can cost over $10 for one 5 ml tube--However, I initially passed on buying these because when I first started looking at them (not long after I'd only just started getting into watercolors) I was big into the idea of converting the paints from tubes to pans in a travel palette, but a lot of the reviews on Amazon and from more experienced artists that I value the opinions of made it pretty clear that these paints don't seem to like doing that. They dried funny, or weird, or somehow "wrong," to make them into pans. And so I wondered, is that why they're so inexpensive? To swatch the paints, I squirted a teeny tiny drop of each color onto a piece of plastic I was just going to throw out anyway instead of mucking up a nicer plastic palette and having to clean it off if the paints did indeed dry in such a way that they were unusable. (I.E. couldn't be reactivated and used again like most watercolors.) I swatched twice; once on a piece of watercolor paper that I cut so it fits comfortably in the box with the paints, and again on a thicker piece of regular paper that went in my swatch book for quick color reference. I had a decent portion of each drop left, and so I sat the "palette" aside and let it dry overnight. Being the skeptic that I am after other art supply experiences, I just had to see what they would do. The next day, sure enough, the dried paint looked pretty sad. The dots were exceptionally dry (even for dried watercolor), some looking like colorful desert rocks, and some had dried so much that when my faux-palette was bumped they completely detached from the thin plastic, either in one whole chunk or some in smaller pieces. I was thinking I was going to find what I'd heard to be quite true. Still, I had to try just to be sure. It was a little weird though; the first time I tried reactivating the paints, I made a little Artist Trading Card (more info on those here) with my usual black-tree-silhouette-sunset look, and at that point, I noticed it seemed like the darker a color was the more water it needed to reactivate and the less well it did when reactivated. Granted, I only used maybe five colors at most, and it was a pretty small piece. Then I went on to make my Mon Cher painting with paints fresh from the tube on a proper palette, deciding the little dots I had leftover wouldn't be enough or offer enough pigment/color coverage for what I had planned. Naturally, I had no issues there. But I chose not to clean off the paint from the palette right away. Just out of curiosity, I tried closing up the palette in a ziplock bag to see if that would slow or stop the drying, and even if it didn't, I still wanted to keep trying reactivating the paints because I wasn't satisfied with just the one test. The bag seemingly did nothing as the paints still fully dried, but that may have been that I needed a newer bag since this one I had used before for other things and could have very well had an airhole in it I didn't know about. I had already decided that I wanted to make some more art as my "review/first impressions" piece on the Arteza watercolors since I was so happy with how the Mon Cher piece turned out that I wanted to focus on the painting itself, rather than talking about the paints that made it, and so I ended up slicing up a large piece of Canson XL watercolor paper into Polaroid-sized pieces (yes, official Polaroid size! I looked up the dimensions and measured accordingly!) and figured I'd make however many I felt like out of the nine pieces I'd cut, and then upload them as a set and talk about the paints there. Which brings us to where we are now. For all four of these, I used whatever dried paint I had left; both from the not-palette and the remnants from the Mon Cher painting. No fresh paint squeezed out at all. This time, the results were noticeably better, except on the last one where I was starting to run low on some of the colors and I think I got a little carried away with the water since the piece wasn't turning out the way I'd pictured it in my head. My conclusion on the state of the dried paint alone is that while I don't think I'll be procuring a specific palette to convert these into pans, I can definitively say that they aren't totally useless once they've dried, and that was really all I wanted to know. And just as an aside, if you do want to convert these into pans, you can try added a couple of drops of Glycerin (which you can usually find with soap-making supplies in craft stores), or a little bit of honey (or both if you're feeling adventurous). Both are used in watercolor formulas to help the paints retain moisture; even some professional quality brands like M. Graham specifically use honey in their watercolor formula. I haven't ventured that far yet, but I may try some things in the future and if I do I'll let you guys know how it worked out! Now on to something about the paints besides how they dry in the palette I noticed right away in my swatching and on my Mon Cher painting that these watercolors lean on the more opaque side, which to some watercolorists may be a problem, but it usually isn't to me, as there are some effects and details I like to work with that instead of having to pull out other supplies. You can probably see this exhibited best in the first one, which I think almost looks like a gouache painting, rather than watercolor. You can also see this effect pretty good on the third one, especially since most of the black on that one is watercolor as well, unlike the first and fourth ones, where the black portions are either stamps or pen. This also means that the color spread pretty far without much paint with the more water you add to it. But they also water down pretty nicely, as seen in the Mon Cher piece and as you can see somewhat on the second one here. And likewise, they layer up pretty nicely too. I was also pretty surprised that these watercolors didn't seem to mind having other supplies put over top of them; My white gel pens and black pens didn't fight me really at all with them. And I did use a little pale yellow PanPastel around the moon on the second one since I was afraid I'd end up with a harsh water line if I tried to use yellow paint to glaze it. It wasn't all peaches and cream, though. On the fourth one (the one with the snowy evergreen trees), I'm not really sure how much of it was the paint and how much of it was the paper (as this Canson XL watercolor paper is lower quality than the Canson Heritage L'Aquarelle paper I did the Mon Cher painting on, and lower quality watercolor paper that isn't 100% cotton can have issues with certain techniques) and how much of it was just user-error. But as you can see, what was supposed to the Northern Lights did not turn out as pigmented or as nicely blended and arranged as I had envisioned in my mind. To be fair, I was starting to run low on the blues and the pink I wanted to use, so that may have contributed to me making personal errors in fear of completing running out and being stubborn in not wanting to put any more out for this one last small painting. I ended up trying to use my white gel pen to save that last one, and if I'm honest I'm still not sure how I feel about the final product. I feel like it is kinda pretty, but I think the reason it just doesn't work for me is that, as I said, it's almost nothing like what I had pictured in my head. I'll have to try this look/technique again and try different paints, different paper, etc. and see if I can get closer to what I see in my mind's eye. I supposed I should also mention that on the second/pastel moon one I also had some trouble getting the clouds exactly how I wanted them, but that comes down more to A. me being very particular about the clouds and B. the ever-present unpredictably of watercolor. At the end of the day though, I really like how these Arteza watercolors handle, and I'm pretty eager to do more with them. And, I don't normally say one way or the other on my watercolor opinions, but this time around I feel comfortable saying that I think these would be a good choice for a beginner, even the smaller set options and not just the full 60 set like I got. And this is where I'll talk about the color selection: You can kind of tell when you swatch these out that the first 24 colors are probably the exact arrangement you'll find in the 24 set, as you've got a fairly basic color layout: White, a few yellows/ochres, orange, a few reds, a rose/magenta color, a couple of purples, a few blues, a couple of greens, a couple of browns, and a black. From there the color layout seems pretty randomized to me, including a Neon Pink kinda all by itself and some really pretty pastel colors, and some really nice muted pale earth tones too. I think this is one of the first times where I've felt like the color selection is really well-rounded and there aren't really any major switches I would make if given the choice. If anything, I can think of some colors I'd love to add on to the set (some more Neon colors since the pink is one of my favorite colors to work with so far, and I'd love to see some metallic/shimmer shades with the same formula), but as of right now I can't say I'd replace any of the existing choices with them. One more thing I will mention: The paints do have identifying number codes, much like the Arteza Expert colored pencils do. And while I figured not all of the colors would match/have colored pencil counterparts, I was surprised to find that seemingly none of them match up, even ones that have the same name. For example, in the colored pencils, "Noir" (black) is A012, but in the watercolors, it's A163; likewise, Apricot in the pencils is A034, while the watercolor is A212. I'm not really sure what's the deal there, and I don't have much else to say about it other than it was just kind of weird to me. (Then again, I don't know why that surprised me; Prismacolor has both alcohol markers and colored pencils, many of which are named the same and look pretty much the same, but the numbers for those don't match either. So I don't know why these should be any different.) Regardless, I do really like them and this honestly makes me want to try their 60 sets of Gouache and Acrylic paints a lot too, since these turned out so nice, I've been wanting to try gouache, and if you've been paying attention to me lately you'll know I've been dipping my toes into acrylics lately. I'm closer to getting the acrylics than the gouache partly because I have technically used those before and they're cheaper, and I do have my eye on another, cheaper set of gouache I think I'd rather have as my first set to see if the 60 set would even be worth the investment anyway. The point I'm trying to make: I like the Arteza tube watercolors, and as long as you don't mind dealing with the drying issues (in/on a palette; on paper they dry just fine ) that I mentioned at the beginning of the description in small text, then I think if you want to give them a try you're in for a bit of a treat. They may not technically be professional quality, but I'd say they make a pretty good stand-in if the idea of paying $10, $15, or more for one tiny tube of paint (or over $100 for a much more limited palette) is entirely too much for your wallet to even think about. Speaking which, there may or may not be another watercolor piece on the horizon made possible only by the magical power that is clearance stickers at the art supply shop, so stayed tuned for that. ____ Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings ____ Where to find me & my artwork: My Website | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | dA Print Shop | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

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