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radvendermenace-blog · 6 years

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here’s a list of some of radonna’s rogues gallery / super friends who she hangs out with a lot and a rating of how well she gets along with each of them because i love talking about my disaster wannabe mythbuster kids

rogues gallery:

huxley: created her with help from mother morgue, intended to create what was basically a cyborg ghost in order to bypass robotics/computers in the workforce because a ghost would just need to be programmed with the specific skillset of its job instead of the job AND human judgment skills, instead used prototype cyborg ghost (radonna) for Evil(TM), has since lost control of prototype cyborg ghost. -3/10, radonna hates his guts and wants to kill him

mother morgue: soviet-era mad scientist who has been able to maintain eternal life and is on a quest to find a way to reanimate the dead in order to bring back her family who froze/starved to death, a lot more neutral evil compared to the rest of the villains because she has somewhat of a moral compass and she’s very professional and impersonal in her supercrime but she still won’t hesitate to perform incredibly gruesome acts or hurt people. 5/10, radonna doesn’t really like her and she doesn’t really trust her but she knows she needs mother morgue as an ally in case of emergency; interestingly, mother morgue seems to respect and even care for radonna in a weird way

the author: basically kilgrave except instead of people doing whatever he says, whatever he writes comes true, did not realize he had this ability until the antagonist (antihero?) of one of his stories came to life and started terrorizing the city, has since used this ability mostly for petty non-lethal revenge. 1/10, radonna has had it up to here with entitled men in positions of power

the phantom creeper: the author’s character who came to life, kind of a victorian gothic antihero, he seeks a living body that his late girlfriend’s ghost can inhabit, when he met radonna he instantly fixated on her as the dead girlfriend’s ghost; he has the ability to be altruistic and he’s very much a tragic horror character but because the story is unfinished it’s unclear whether deep down the phantom creeper is basically a good guy who got lost in his grief and was molded into a villain by forces beyond his control (the author) or if he’s truly just a malicious villain hell-bent on getting his lady back no matter the cost. 3/10, radonna empathizes with his role as someone else’s “creation” but as long as he’s gonna pull that straight boy nonsense he needs to stay far away from her

cupid: rich girl with painfully distant parents who paid a bunch of people to create a “love potion” which she then gave to her parents to try and make them pay attention to her, later may have accidentally killed her parents when they became dangerously overprotective/possessive due to the love potion, has since become a general annoyance by tinkering with the love potion and giving it to random people she thinks need a little more love in their lives. 1/10, it’s not for sure yet but cupid may have given radonna a love potion to make her fall for the phantom creeper because cupid felt bad for him and could see that radonna was lonely, and she figured if they stopped fighting for 2 seconds and went on a date instead everything would be solved... except cupid failed to take into account the fact that radonna is a lesbian with trauma relating to losing her agency so naturally this scheme ended terribly for everyone involved

super friends:

metal betty: the leader of the super friends, is potentially invincible due to her ability to absorb heavy metals and re-purpose them as organic pieces of her body. 9/10, they are truly star-crossed loves but they have moral differences that make for great character development and terrible fights

idris, the all-seeing girl: can literally see anything in this dimension, can read minds, can see potential futures, can use x-ray vision, you name it she can do it. 7/10, idris knew about radonna’s life as liz keane practically from the moment they met but kept this knowledge to herself and even acted as an ally for radonna on more than one occasion when the rest of the super friends couldn’t understand why she was the way that she was (spoiler alert my dudes it’s because she was fucking MURDERED and she is BITTER and ANGRY?)

silver star: basically transman ghost rider, has an antique sheriff’s badge from ye olde wilde weste days that belonged to a sheriff who was also a transman, the sheriff’s ghost awoke when the guy touched the badge and now he guides the kid and can manifest a sick ghost horse and ghost guns. 7/10, he and radonna have shared experiences-- they’re both meant to be subversions of the “bury your gays” trope-- and they tend to stick together because of that; metal betty is also queer (bi), but she’s more... patient?? maybe?? with anti-queer stuff, she’s more willing to educate and discuss and give second chances whereas radonna and silver star are pretty much “i don’t have the patience or the energy to give the same speech over and over and over again to every single person who asks or demonstrates a lack of knowledge and honestly i shouldn’t even have to in the first place, society can kiss my ass”

#long post //#headcanon.

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askderynsharp · 7 years

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Prince Aleksander Ferdinand of Hohenberg and Midshipman Dylan Sharp have been my ultimate otp to end all otps since I first read Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld in the eighth grade.

This could be because they exist in one of the coolest examples of biopunk meets steampunk I’ve ever experienced.

It could be because the one of the pair is a subtextual transman so instrumental to my own gender expression that I named myself after him.

But I think that out of everything, its because the romantic aspect manages to be the center of attention without subtracting quality from the plot.

The reason that I’m so invested in these two more then anything else in the series is because the book isnt about anything else. Scott Westerfeld seems pretty open about the fact that Leviathan is supposed to be a young adult romance with the backdrop of characterature of the great war. But unlike so many romantic stories, especially those geared towards young adults, Scott uses the dual narrative to expand on both of the lead’s experience. The story could have very easily been Alek’s alone, while a major player in the world Dylan’s point of view wasn’t completely necessary if the intention was ever going to be Alek getting his throne in the end.

The same goes the other way, if it were just a story of a transman’s developing gender identity, we wouldn’t have any reason to hear from Alek. Both Alek and Dylan could easily have been shoved into a ‘supporting character’ role, but they weren’t.

Simply put, Dylan and Alek are in a love story where neither of them are love interests. They’re both player characters, people we see inside the heads of. We spend the entirety of the first book getting to know them as individuals before they even meet, we see their interactions in a non-romantic light for the first few chapters, and the romance doesn’t start to bloom until it makes sense based on what we know of the characters.

Dylan doesn’t just think Alek is hot and decide he likes him just because outta all the men on the ship theres just something about the one that happens to be the other main character (*cough* kaider *cough*)

The reason he likes Alek is because they shared a very intimate and emotionally charged scene together that strengthens their friendship and ends with with a physical embrace. Its kinda like that trope where a kid goes to a party and then sits on a patio and talks with a complete stranger about life for an hour and is convinced they’re totally in love by the end of it.

Even if this exact scenario has never happened to you, you can see how someone so young ,and in Alek’s case vulnerable would develop a little bit of a crush

But even then, its just an infatuation at first. Something dumb and stupid that Dylan dismisses as such. It’s not till they share ANOTHER couple of emotionally charged and intimate moments in Behemoth that Dylan starts to take his crush more seriously, and only in Goliath does Dylan stop dismissing his feelings altogether. There is time devoted to Dylan coming to terms with the fact that maybe the crush is a bigger deal then it probably should be, and that he cant make it go away by telling himself that its a bad idea.

The Leviathan Series is kinda a double edged sword to me. It is a love story, but done so well people dont think its a love story. When I talk other fans about it being a love story, they insist that it isnt. Its an adventure story because there’s so much action. Its a drama because the characters struggles don’t revolve around their relationship. It cant be a romance because there’s so much other stuff going on. But those elements dont mean its not a love story, those elements just mean its a competent one.

There’s a reason that the last book closes on the romance coming to a fruition instead of the peace treaty signing. There’s a reason the bonus chapter is a fanservice one shot of them basically going to prom together. There’s a reason Goliath opens with the quote: “To everyone who loves a long secret romance, revealed at last.”

Becoming emperor and ending the war wasn’t Alek’s destiny. Being an emperor at all is probably his ‘bad ending’

People make him incredibly uncomfortable, he cant take even the smallest criticism, sucks at anything to do with being in command, constantly doubts himself, and has a fundamental blind eye to gaging other people’s emotions. As a starting point the series could have easily made him overcome these things with an arc that would make him into an ideal leader, but they didnt go that rout because it wasnt important.

The war was never the real plot of the book, but rather the setting. The lesson we learn by the end is basically that you have to let go of old ambitions sometimes and open yourself up to new ones. The new destiny that Alek made required him to abandon a throne he probably wouldnt have wanted in the long run. Dylan has to leave the Leviathan, but does so gladly because he understands that his destiny is fluid. Both of the main character arcs revolve around letting things go, and their mutual attraction is what pushes them to understand that. The priority of the series has always been the romance.

The fact that we think its not a romance story because the plot and characters manage to stand on their own is rather telling about the level of quality we expect in the genre. I think by calling Leviathan a love story it demands that other love stories take the time and effort Leviathan did to flesh out its world and characters before trying to get us invested in their relationship.

I think that its incredibly pessimistic to say that if a romance story manages to execute other elements well it no longer counts as a romance. As if to say that romance as a narrative theme is so shitty that you need to dum everything else down to properly appreciate it.

So often I see people praising books solely because there’s no romance in them, or because the romance has some new dumb twist that makes it not like other romances. Boy meets girl can be interesting on its own if boy and girl have names you can remember and personalities that you want to cheer for. Just because Leviathan is cool doesnt mean its not romantic.

I’ve made no secret about my issues with the Lunar Chronicles narrative, but at least in the trainwreck of truly ludicrous cause and effect, it puts its characters first and foremost and uses the setting to its greatest advantage. It takes the time to explain why they do the things they do, why they like what they like, and even if the outcomes of their decisions are improbable, they still feel earned because the author makes sure to let you know why the plan would work in her world as opposed to ours.

Saying that The Lunar Chronicles isnt a love story is insulting to the work. You dont read those books for the sci-fi or the plot. The plot’s a joke and the sci-fi is terrible. The world makes absolutely no sense and couldn’t exist anywhere within our reality. Not only is the science impossible, but identical to the foundation of any cyberpunk setting with even the smallest bit of thought put into the way shit works. (one example includes an evil mistress who doesnt give a enough of a shit about her pet hacker to supply regular haircuts, health inspections, or clean water but was kind enough to install artificial gravity in her satellite prison and keep it running even when she herself isnt aboard.) But the rivalries and friendships between the factions are unarguably excellent, and the obvious priority of the author when she was writing these books.

And thats fine because she does it well, and if our mass perception of the quality of romance is any indication, its hard to do romance well. She is celebrated for doing the romance so well.

So why cant romances that manage to do both be celebrated as romances? Why do we have to demean the YA romance genre to praise the YA romance genre?

I meant for this post to be like a paragraph, mod out.

#dylek #aleksander hohenberg #dylan sharp

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