I’ll see your yourfaveisabadparent proposal, and raise you yourfaveisawarcriminal.

I need some official movie pics to come out so I can submit Mayor Prentiss to yourfaveisabadparent.

True, it doesn’t give him the right to torture, but Davy’s situation isn’t just rejection. It is blatant, extreme abuse, and you don’t get to escape that by just getting older. While I doubt his arc will be as painful and poignant as in the books (murdering your son is bad at any age, but it has a stronger narrative effect when he’s just a kid), it’s not like the age difference marks a clear line between victim and psychopath.

Davy is a both a monster and a victim to the point that both of those sides feed into each other. (Fantastic examples of displaced lateral violence and punching down in the face of oppression!) His age doesn’t change that. It just changes what our visceral reactions as audience members will be.

i’ve said this before but any and all redemption davy prentiss gained was because he was a literal child and now that he’s being played by grown man nick jonas i can’t feel bad for him. get the fuck over your father’s rejection nick jonas it doesn’t give you the right to torture women it makes you a psychopath

The worst part about Cillian dying was that he never got to see Todd grow out of his “cranky teen who hates the strict parent” phase. Shouting about chores and appropriate language is such a shitty note to end a father/son relationship on.

Christ, at this rate, the leads will be in their 30s by the time we get to the end of the series. 

(Please just get to the second book. All I care about is seeing my Domestic Terrorism Wife on the big screen.)

2020? Welp, RIP Chaos Walking.

todd’s accent is like either northern queensland or maybe central australia im thinking like alice springs area like maybe in another life he was a drover and manchee was his drover dog and then viola’s accent is like maybe a mixture between the soft perth accent and then the semi british adelaide accent I’m totally picturing her overpronouncing her e’s and I’m picturing someone like the mayor with a sort of sydney stock broker accent you know the one like not bondi exactly like the sort of voice where you know he’s about to head into town with the boys and snort some cocaine off a $1000 a minute stripper at kings cross and then ben and cillian both have like inner city melbourne accents like the soft sort of drugged up craft beer and then all the people from haven have the blokey country victoria/nsw accent OR they have a posh accent but i can’t decide if it’s harborside sydney or toorak/brighton in melbourne

I liked them, especially the fascinatingly fucked dynamic between Todd and the Mayor, but Mistress Coyle and the Mayor take up the bulk of my love. I cared about Todd and Viola more than I usually do the series protagonists, but generally speaking, I am a side character and villain kind of girl.

And you are def not the only one crushing on the Mayor. As a lesbian, that “I expected a war” speech still gets me all hot and bothered

Chaos walking fandom: Just out of curiosity, was I the only person who loved loved loved loved loved the series but didn’t like Todd or Viola? For some reason Viola always felt plastic to me, and Todd always annoyed me. No one else seems to share that opinion, though.

(also am I the only person who had a worryingly large crush on the Mayor?)

When Todd and Viola do this, it’s “OTP” and “earth shattering love”

but when I make a Mistress Coyle board for inspiration, it’s “arson” and “terrorism” and “Rachel, please put down the Molotov cocktail”

Todd and Viola would totally have ‘do it for her/him’ picture boards of each other.

I would say the answer is sort of (D) all of the above!

Chaos Walking plays around with the way that stories are structured in a really interesting way, and Mistress Coyle’s grey status between hero and villain shift shifts from darker to lighter like some wild optical illusion, depending on perspective. 

1) According to the overall structure of Chaos Walking as a series, she squarely fits into the anti-villain status. She wants to protect the women of New World. She wants to get a murderous psychopath out of power. All entirely valid goals. However, the means that she uses to achieve these goals are very destructive, and we see the fallout of her campaign more clearly and more tangibly than the cause she is fighting for. Also, her own fight directly clashes with our POV protagonists, which strengthens her framing as an anti-villain from the perspective of the series.

2) From her own perspective, I fully believe she would consider herself to be an anti-hero. Honestly, I think a tiny part of her loves that messy conflict. Sacrificing her own morality for the greater good is some next-level self-martyrdom. She is fully aware of her own flaws, and also fully convinced of the righteousness of her actions (even if she as a person falls short). Her mental image of herself is a textbook anti-hero.

3) This ambiguous hero/villain is addressed as one of the major questions of her character arc: What is the difference between a freedom fighter and a domestic terrorist, if not perspective? Mistress Coyle is a complicated, sticky, nuanced character. Her actions range from heroic to murderous, and her motivations range from righteous resistance against tyranny to political ambition. To call her a hero or a villain, you have to structure a narrative around her. How you frame that narrative is going to shape what side she falls on, which is the case for most people who reach the level of historical significance.

Basically Mistress Coyle is everything, and I love her, and I would die for her. 

the end

In The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness, is Mistress Coyle an anti-hero, anti-villain, or simply morally grey? I’ve been debating this for months and am still stumped.

-Anja ❤

shakespeare who?? romeo and juliet what??? sorry i only know the return and his one in particula r

Todd has two dads, and that’s awesome

So, I don’t usually get the typical empowered reaction to representation that gets discussed so often. As a lesbian, I love things with gay characters and have always been drawn to them, but it has never felt as straightforward as wanting to see myself (or what I aspire to be) in the media I consume. Don’t get me wrong: I understand the importance of representation as a direct means of reassuring marginalized people that they are not alone, that people like them have a place in the world. I just don’t usually have that direct of an emotional response. 

EXCEPT

Ben and Cillian. Specifically, the specific parental tropes that they hit. 

Parents who are willing to fight, and even give their lives, to protect their child are a mainstay of fiction. Lily and James Potter fighting an unwinnable fight to save Harry. Darth Vader finally killing Palpatine to save Luke. Katara’s mother in AtLA saying that she was the village’s waterbender in order to save Katara. Fantine trying to care for Cosette (even if that doesn’t always go so well). Motherfucking Mufasa, guys. 

Parents who offer their child unwavering, unflagging love and support. Joyce in Stranger Things. Burt in Glee (at least the first two seasons; I can’t comment past that). Hazel’s parents in The Fault in Our Stars. Iroh being Zuko’s dad because his real dad was shit. Jane’s mother and abuela in Jane the Virgin. 

Ben and Cillian being given the role of such furiously loving parents fills me with so much joy and gratitude I can barely even express it. They take Todd in after the massacre, knowing full well what this will mean for their lives. They plan to get Todd out of Prentisstown before he is forced to kill, betting their lives on keeping a secret in a world that is fundamentally opposed to secret-keeping. They teach Todd to be good. They watch him learn to talk and walk and grow into his own person, all while knowing exactly when that will have to end. They were never fully expecting to make it out of Prentisstown alive. Every minute throughout that whole 12 year period, they knew exactly what sort of heartbreak they would face. 

And then both of Todd’s reunions with Ben. That assurance and unconditional love that Ben has for Todd in spite of all the guilt he carries is just so powerful.

The love that Ben and Cillian have for Todd as parents is so beautiful, and I cannot overstate how much it means to me, as a gay woman who definitely wants kids, that the couple given that story is gay. So much of the narrative around same-gender parents that I faced growing up framed same-gender parents as inadequate at best, and predatory at worst. Discussions of marriage equality and lgbt adoption and fertility treatments would slide rapidly slide into arguments about pedophilia, and even when they did not take that dark of a turn, there was always the view of gay couples having children being fundamentally selfish and harmful to the child. Even as I know that these views are rooted in homophobia, they have stuck with me. Today, the main insecurity I have about my own lesbian-ness is how it may affect my future kids. It is the internalized crap that has its hooks deepest in my brain.

And Ben and Cillian? Their depiction for me is empowering. Reassuring. Even healing, if you want to get really cheesy about it. 

Thanks, Nessie. It means a lot.

patrick ness: i am a gay man, and here is a term used by the aliens in my books to mean true love, and it confirms that this alien and todd’s two dads are indeed gay

every cishet fan, ever: so i think the phrase “my one in particular” could totally be platonic or romantic and in the case of ben and cillian, as they are both men, it’s platonic,

30 day book challenge: day 4 - favourite book of your favourite series

it switches all the time but the amount of character development and drama and angst in the ask and answer im all for it tbh

i can’t wait until the chaos walking movie comes out and davy prentiss discourse is going to reach the masses

At some point during Monsters of Men

Mayor Prentiss: You know Todd... You don’t have a father... I don’t have a son... Interesting...

Todd: ???Whose fault??? are both of those things???

my cwss17 gift for @nerdy-is-super-cool! merry christmas! i’m so glad you said the sea of things is one of your favourite scenes, since a) same and b) i’ve been wanting to draw it for ages. I hope you like!

but like has anyone ever definitively shown he doesn't? we don't know what future space colonizer fashion looks like.

chaos walking au where everything is the same except lee has a mullet

Just, whenever you post anything that’s about chaos walking, tag it as ‘chaos walking books’ because I am SO SICK of scrolling through a thousand tom holland photos in order to see anything I actually want to see.