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autisticcassandracain · 3 years

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Oh my god i love that so much! Thank you i'll be sure to read up on it! do you have any other recs for kori reading?

Yes I do! Unfortunately, pretty much all Kori recs I have are from the 80's/early 90's, since I think the later incarnations of her character never really lived up to her characterization established in that era. I say 'unfortunately' because 80's comics (as well as other older comics) are written in a very different style than modern comics, that many people (myself included) find difficult to read. I'll rec some more modern Kori stuff later, just in case you really can't get through the 80's comics, but even the best of those are pale imitations of her character tbh. Even if you find 80′s comics difficult, I strongly recommend giving these a fair shot.

General Recs are:

New Teen Titans (1980/volume 1)

Tales of the Teen Titans #41 - 58 (technically she also appears in #59, but that's just a reprint of the first story she ever appeared in, in DC Comics Presents (1978 #26); it's not necessary to read that, imo)

New Teen Titans (1984/volume 2)

New Titans (I recommend stopping with this one when you hit the Wildebeest/Titans Hunt arc, or after if you're interested in seeing how Joey dies, as the quality of writing drastically decreases once it hits that arc. The arc starts at #71, which does have a cute Kori moment, so you can stick around for that and then skiddaddle)

Tales of the New Teen Titans #4 (this is a mini-series and only has four issues, and explores the backstories of some Titans. #4 is relevant to Kori but reading all of it won't take much time)

Teen Titans Spotlight #1-2, 19 (Side-series focusing on various Titans and Titans supporting cast; the ones listed are relevant to Kori, but it might be worth looking into the others as well. #1-2 contains necessary continuity information, and you should read it before NTT v2 #26.)

I recommend reading the New Teen Titans and the relevant Tales of the Teen Titans issues in full (for some reason, the Tales of the Teen Titans issues take place between volumes one and two of NTT. No I don't know why, yes this was deeply confusing). I've tried skipping around for the relevant Kori issues myself, but it really does end up leaving out a lot of good character moments and context that way. However, if that's (understandably) daunting, I recommend specifically:

New Teen Titans v1 #1-3: getting-the-gang-together arc, important for context reasons, but I also think this arc does a lot to establish Kori's character. Contains a few of my favourite moments with her.

New Teen Titans v1 #8: Doesn't center on Kori, but has very good character moments and establishes her modelling job. Feel free to skim for Kori moments.

New Teen Titans v2 #13: Once again, doesn't center on Kori, but this shows her among the Amazons, which is an interaction I really like. Also she rides a giant kangeroo in this one. Comes on the heels of an Amazon/Donna-centric arc in #11-12, which Kori does feature in pretty prominently, but isn't necessary to read. Feel free to skim for Kori moments.

New Teen Titans v1 #16: Kori gets a boyfriend and almost murders a bitch. First Kori-centric issue of the series, and a really good showcase of her character. Contains one of my favourite Donna + Kori moments.

Tales of the New Teen Titans #4: Expands on Kori's backstory, specifically her time spent training with the warriors of Okaara. Shines a light on her early relationship with Komand'r, so I think you should read this before the next arc.

New Teen Titans v1 #23-25, annual #1: Komand'r recaptures Koriand'r and takes her to be re-enslaved by the Gorgonians. Expands on the worldbuilding of the Vega System, where Tamaran is in, in particular the Gorgonians, Psions, and the living goddess X'hal. Also focuses on Kori's personal development and her relationship to Komand'r. Technically starts in #22, but you should be able to read this without reading that. This one is an absolutely necessary read if you want to get to know Kori.

New Teen Titans v2 #3-4: Takes places in the second Trigon arc, which is #1-5. Not Kori-focused, but showcases her greatest fear, alongside that of most of the other Titans. It's not terribly inventive (for Kori, I really liked Dick and Donna's), but worth a read. I recommend reading the whole arc, partly for context, mostly because I really like it.

New Teen Titans v2 #5: Gang deals with suddenly being beloved and famous, and goes for a group bonding session in the Grand Canyon. Not Kori-focused, but focused on the Titans' friendship, and contains one of the best Kori moments ever, imo.

New Teen Titans v2 #14-15, The Omega Men #34, New Teen Titans #16-18, #22-23: Kori finally returns to Tamaran, only to find it embroiled in a civil war, and that she is to be married to calm the conflict. Meanwhile, Komand'r is planning a coup. Expands on Tamaran's culture and Kori's family, as well as Kori's own relationship to love/marriage and Tamaran. Already wrote this one down in the previous ask, but influded for completion's sake. I'd also consider this one a necessity for understanding Kori. Technically has lead-up in #10-11, but that can be skipped, though #10 has a cute dickkory moment if you're into that.

New Teen Titans v2 #32: The gang goes on vacation! Not Kori-centric, but focuses on the friendship between the Titans in a low-stakes environment.

New Teen Titans v2 #39: Kori talks to Raven about Raven's feelings for Dick. This is honestly hands-down one of the best Kori moments of all time. It focuses on her relationship with Raven and highlights her emotional maturity and views on love. If you're interested in (NTT) Raven, this is also an absolute must-read. You can jump right in, but I recommend reading #36-37 for context on Raven's feelings here.

Teen Titans Spotlight #19: Kori teams up with a heroine I know, like, nothing about, and gets to give some life advice. Great insight into Kori's character and worldview! No clue where this is supposed to take place in the timeline though.

Some notable ones I left off were Teen Titans Spotlight #1-2, and New Teen Titans #34.

Teen Titans Spotlight #1-2 is Kori-centric, but I made the choice to leave it off the list for two reasons:

Her primary character development here is deciding murder is wrong under all circumstances. This gets quietly written out fairly quickly; I think it lasts until the end of New Teen Titans v2 at most. So although it was important character development for her, it's not development that stuck, so I don't think it's overall necessary to read and understand it.

It's an issue-focused arc on Apartheid in South Africa. While it seems to have been progressive for its time, I don't think it's held up terribly well by modern standards (or at least, not modern leftist standards), and if you want to read up about Apartheid, you're better off actually researching it.

That said, if you're interested in the history of politics in comics, I highly recommend reading it. Also, the Spotlight on Jericho arc in the same series showcases letters that the writers received in response to this arc, and as someone who wasn't alive during this time period, I found them a fascinating look into the mindset people had back then, and how little racist arguments have changed over time. If you're planning on reading the arc or letters, trigger warning for violent racism, obviously.

I left off New Teen Titans v2 #34 because it's Dickkory-focused rather than Kori-focused, and you couldn't pay me to like that ship. I know many Kori fans will vehemently disagree with me on that one, though. If you're interested in reading up on dickkory specifically, I recommend asking someone who actually likes the ship for recs. This one focuses on Dick deciding to move in with Kori. If you're planning to read this, trigger warning for domestic violence/attempted femicide and also a truly awful use narrative parallels.

If you're interested in more modern Kori recs, there's a lot less, but I'll attempt to give some. Please mind the fact that these have all been in a relatively understandable chronological order so far, which is not something I can maintain from now on, because I think some character arcs for Kori weren't great.

Modern recs:

JLA/Titans: A three issue mini-series focusing on Cyborg going completely off the rails out of loneliness. I don't particularly like it as a whole, but that's mostly because I usually don't like ensemble cast series in DC since I always have no idea who half these people are, and I also don't enjoy superhero vs superhero fights (also I think Bette Kane's characterization in this sucks and she's one of my faves so I take this personally). Nevertheless, I really enjoyed how they handled Kori's character in this one, particularly what her deepest desire (as fabricated by Vic) was shown to be, and didn't even hate the moments between her and Dick.

Titans (1999) #3-4: I really despise Kori's characterization in pretty much everything after this point in the series, hate Devin Grayson's writing and dislike this series in general, and I think the Tamaran/Gorgonian arc in this was a unique flavor of awful, but these two issues have pretty good Kori characterization, in my opinion, and were fun to read. Just disregard all other Kori characterization, specifically that line about her 'needing war', it's nonsense.

Teen Titans (2003) #6-7: This series is... controversial, which I suspect is mostly for how it writes the ex-Young Justice crew, but since I know nothing about them, I haven't hated what I've read of this series (except evil!Joey). I like this Kori better than Titans (1999) Kori, and these two issues are pretty good. In #6, she fights Wonder Woman and reads Superman the riot act, and #7 has what I consider to be the best non-NTT Kori moment. I do think her characterization in this series is more in line with early-Kori than late-Kori and leans too heavy on her warrior side, but I don't hate it.

Her plotline in 52. According to DCUguide (I'm sorry I'm too tired to double-check), she appears in #5, 7-9, 16-17, 19-20, 28, 31-33, 35-37, 41, 51. This series is a collection of stories about what happened in the year after Infinite Crisis, when Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman were MIA. Kori is stranded in space with Animal Man and Adam Strange and must work together with them and Lobo to get back home. Has issues with oversexualization, including a very uncomfortable scene of sexual harassment played casually with Lobo, and leans a bit too heavy on her warrior side for my liking, but her dynamic with the cast is good, and she has some great moments. I know literally nothing about Adam Strange and Animal Man's characters, though, so I can't speak for their characterization.

Countdown to Adventure: An 8-issue mini-series focusing on the aftermath of Kori & Co's adventure in 52. While I found the dialogue in this series awful, thought Kori's design was boring as hell, and generally wasn't a terrible fan of the series as a whole, it still ranks among the better Kori characterizations I've read. I like the idea of her losing her powers and trying to live a normal life, even if I don't think they expanded on it enough, and although I found Animal Man's half-crush on her kind of annoying, I do like how she handled it. It's short, and if you enjoyed her plotline in 52, worth a read.

Honorary mention goes to R.E.B.E.L.S #15-28, and Justice League: Odyssey.

The first gets an honorary mention because while I have some severe issues with Kori’s characterization that hold me back from recommending it, I did appreciate some of it and I REALLY loved Komand’r in this. My issues with Kori’s characterization in this are 1) an over-importance placed on her relationship with Dick, 2) an overreliance on her warrior side, 3) the blatantly wrong statement that ‘Tamaraneans fall in love for life’ when Kori has had two boyfriends she genuinely loved outside of Dick and it’s canon Tamaran practices polyamory (see also NTT v2 #39), 4) the fact that they wrote her having a friends-with-benefits relationship with Captain Comet, which she clearly established as such (which is fine!), and then proceeded to slutshame her for it and say she was ‘leading him on’, and 5) the fact that I don’t think Kori would join the crew this quickly but that’s more of a nitpick. But I did like that they how she reacted to certain revelations regarding the Psion’s society, and this is the best Komand’r has ever been, in my opinion. She’s an absolute delight to read in this series and I’d recommend it if you want to read more on her character.

The second gets an honorary mention because, while I’ve heard good things about it, I haven’t actually read this myself. I tried, twice, but I just don’t know enough DC space lore to be able to understand, like, anything at all about wtf is going on. Listen, I barely know who Darkseid is, that’s the level I’m operating under. I’ve heard good things about Kori’s characterization in this one, and I like what I’ve seen of it, so if you know more about DC’s space lore than me, give it a shot!

And you didn’t ask, but you gave me this excuse to give my opinions and I will RUN with it, so here’s some stuff you should avoid:

The New Titans #97-100: start of the dickkory break-up arc and an absolute character massacre for Kori. I dislike Kori’s characterization in the vast majority of post-Wildebeest arc New Titans, but this is its low to me. For context, the writers has Mirage, a newly introduced hero, pretend to be Kori, and while she did, Dick slept with her, not knowing it was Mirage. This is, you know, rape. Then they had the entire team victim blame him. This arc focuses on Kori doing exactly that, which is especially awful since she’s heavily implied to be a rape survivor herself (basically confirmed in R.E.B.E.L.S). This arc has glimpses of an alternate future in which this was better handled, but it wasn’t, and this whole entire arc is just a Grade A Mess, do yourself a favor and avoid it.

Titans (1999) #17-19, #45-46: #17-19 is the previously mentioned Tamaran/Gorgonian arc, where Tamaran invades the Gorgonians and Kori lies to her friends to get them to help. It’s somehow even worse than it sounds. This might actually be the worst use of narrative parallels that I’ve ever seen, and destroyed what could’ve been at least a good B-plot. Warnings for discussions of physical and sexual child abuse in the B-plot. #45 is where the aforementioned ‘Starfire needs war’ stuff comes from, and #46 has the nerve to drag the Afghan War into that. Please do yourself a favor and don’t read this.

Outsiders (2003/volume 3) #16-32: Some issues towards the end have some okay moments with her, but in general, she’s terribly underused as a character and it’s just not worth reading all of this just for her. Apparently people like this series? But I couldn’t tell you why if you paid me. Admittedly, though, I started skimming it after I realized that literally the first arc Kori featured in was centered around a child trafficking ring, and a) they didn’t have Kori react to this in any meaningful way, and b) they were using it to plug America’s Most Wanted. CANNOT stress that last one enough. So, yeah, I decided this series wasn’t worth my time. Consider this a trigger warning if you do want to start this series, though, it gets quite dark.

Titans (2008): Introduced her naked, which is how you know they really respect her as a character (/s). This was so bad I couldn’t even skim it. I tried, I couldn’t do it. The art in the second and third issues is awful. The writing is somehow worse. Maybe this gets better eventually, but when you start this bad, I’m not gonna stick around to find out.

Red Hood and the Outlaws: Disclaimer I haven’t read this, but I’ve also heard pretty much nothing good about Kori’s characterization in this. The best I can say for it is that apparently it gets better later on, and I think the issue that focused on a younger Kori was apparently decent (I think it was #33), but I’m not reading through everything else to find out. I’ve never met a Kori fan who liked this one (unless they’d only read her in this and the N52). Also this is the one responsible for that infamous art of her with what has to be a broken spine, no organs, and metal cupholders for her breasts masquerading as a hero costume.

Starfire: her only solo series. This was the the first comic I ever read, actually! She’s grossly out of character in this one, in that she’s much more in line with cartoon!Starfire’s characterization, and much too ditzy and tooth-less, if you get what I mean. This will not give you a good impression on who Starfire is.

I haven’t read everything Starfire, and I could be missing some really good modern stories, or really bad ones! I might’ve also forgotten some highlights in the NTT era. So absolutely do pull up a proper reading list/guide if you feel like getting into her. These are just my personal recommendations, which are obviously followed by my personal biases, so feel free to disagree with stuff on this list! But hopefully, for newcomers or people who are looking to get a loose grasp on her character, this should provide a good starting point. You also obviously don’t have to read everything on this list! Feel free to jump around to whatever catches your attention. Comics are supposed to be fun, not a chore!

#koriand'r #starfire #reading guide #my posts #asks #comic recs

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petra-realsnk · 3 years

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The Logics of Sessr*n: why is it successful within women?

Hi guys! Here’s the post that I promised. I will try to present some thoughts I’ve been having around the infamous ship, and some of the dynamics I think have contributed to its success. The most logical reaction would be to think that most shippers are men, since the dynamics represented do favour them, but that’s not exactly the case. Some of you have also proposed that this could be explained through self-inserting, but I would like to expand this observation a little further.

This post will be divided in sections so you guys can read the parts you find more interesting if you don’t feel like going through it all. I thought this would make it more enjoyable since it’s going to be quite long.

DISCLAIMER: I am not claiming that this is the psychological profile of the average shipper, nor do I think that this is representative of the ideology of all of them. These are just some personal thoughts and facts around some aspects that I think have contributed to its appeal. Also I apologize in advance for the quality of my expression since English is not my first language.

TW: Mentions of p*dophilia and rape.

Finally, I would like to thank @doombull for facilitating me one of the articles that I’ve used to elaborate this thoughts, and which also served as inspiration for this post.

Grab something to drink and let’s chat...

About the thrive of “Lolicon”

We are all aware that Japan does have a problem with the permissive sexualization of children.

“Lolita complex, the sexual attraction to young, pubescent girls, is woven into the fabric of everyday life in Japan. Turn on the TV and you’ll see group after group of scantily-clad teenage and preteen girls singing or dancing to music. Peek in any bookstore and you’ll find a section of photo books featuring children in swimwear. (...) During the six months from January 2016, police turned over 1,023 cases to prosecutors, compared to 637 cases for the same period in 2011 and 831 cases for the period in 2015, according to National Police Agency statistics.”

These portrayals do have impact on reality, and have been used by real life predators. Contrary to what some shippers say, there are experts in Japan speaking against this matter:

“Masahiro Morioka, a professor of philosophy and ethics at Waseda University, has delved deep into the psychology of men with Lolita complex, widely known as lolicon in Japan. (...) He says the nation’s obsession with puberty-age girls has justified sexual exploitation and crimes against them — though, of course, not everyone with Lolita complex acts on their desires and commits sex crimes. Like many people, Morioka finds the culture that tolerates lolicon problematic and wants to change it.“

Lolicon didn’t become a recognized genre until the 1970’s when fan artists depicted their favorite female characters of the time as underage girls. The reasons behind the success of this type of content is something that’s still being discussed, but some of it probably has to do with the unhealthy relationship with sexuality that some men seem to develop due to the taboo component of sex within the japanese society. Some of it might also be derived from a mismanagement of loneliness, something some of these consumers seem to struggle with. All of this is combined by some misogynistic takes on the ideal of a woman. These men find the interactions with the opposite sex to be difficult, and even menancing to their masculinity, being easier for them to project their fantasies into young girls whom are esier to shape into their needs.

Anyway, it’s not the intention of this post to really argue the reasons behind lolicon, but there’s something important to have in mind, and it’s the fact that its accessibility has made it so that there are children consuming it. Simultaneously, popularizing Lolicon is a message to girls that they are objects for consumer consumption, and that their youth (and innocence) is especially desirable in a sexual setting. This last element has definitely gotten into the way some women want to project themselves. For that matter, it’s not a surprise that some female shippers project themselves into Rin, since she’s an ideal of femininity to them.

Sources:

https://bit.ly/39QA18d

https://bit.ly/3ixPIFn

Non-offending Pedophiles | SpringerLink

Internalized misogyny:

Following the last thread, we can conclude that some girls might desire to appeal to this ideal of woman, which is absolutely normal. Gender roles are being pushed on us ever since we are kids, and it’s natural that some of them try to appeal to the male gaze in one way or another, most times even in a subconscious way. This would also explain why some shippers seem to adhere to some beliefs that have been used to justify the control over women’s sexuality.

For example, we all have seen them argue about how teenagers are more fertile and prone to survive labor. They also tend to use the “historical accuracy” argument to justify these types of portrayals. However, the imaginary of the middle ages as a place where rape and child brides where totally justified is completely modern. Sadly, these types of tropes are perpetuated by almost every historical drama, fantasy series like Game of Thrones or books like The Pillars of The Earth. It is striking how shows whose action is located in the present are reluctant to show this type of things, while when they are located in the past, they represent them in an almost sexualized way and without any scruples. Male directors do use other cultures and past times to justify this portrayals, and is something that has to be called out. How interesting is that some far right men identify themselves as vikings right? Wonder where that came from...

But why women?

After all of what I’ve said, you may think that the majority of the shippers might be men, since all of these dynamics seem to favour them. Even so, despite being a shonen manga Inuyasha had a mostly female based audience. Romance played an important part in the story, and the way it was written seemed to cater better to the preferences of girls. This is also why Sessrin is so potentially harmful… It romanticizes a relationship between a teenager and an adult in a way that’s particularly attractive to girls. We can’t lose sight of the fact that a lot of shippers probably were fans of the og series when they were young, and probably started to ship it as underage kids themselves. When they grew old, some of them left the idea of it behind but for some others it’s already deeply rooted in them.

Next I’ll explain how Sessrin it’s appealing to girls.

The polarization of masculinity and femininity: beauty and the beast

In the anime culture (and outside it) girls are represented as passive, while the male incarnates the active. Boys are the heroes, while girls are mostly portrayed as the object of desire through whatever traits the author finds the most appealing.

In the case of Sessrin we have a typical example of a contrapposition of the hyperfemenine to the hypermasculine. I have talked about this in some other posts, but in the Inuyasha lore the masculine seems to be greatly associated with the “youkai”, that tends to fall in love with a vulnerable woman. It’s also interesting to point out that female demons tend to represent traditionally negative aspects of female sexuality; they tend to lure men to their demise by their attractiveness, and also do usually have a flirty personality.

Sessrin does adjust to this type of trope that we can define as the classical beauty and the beast, not in a sense of physical attractiveness, but in the sense that it represents an aggressive masculinity that is soothed by the passive femenine. The evil spirit is incarnated by the male, while the pure girl has the role of being accepting of this nature, often changing it. This type of trope is insanely popular within women, after all, stories like Twilight and basically every other book where a normal girl falls in love with a supernatural creature seem to adjust to this dynamic to some extent. It’s the idealization of a relationship where the man is a protective figure that holds an unbelievable amount of power over their vulnerable, and often infaltilazed, female counterpart. But on the other hand, women have the ability to tame this ferocity...

What’s the appeal of the monster?

“I think with the monsters, it’s about power and danger and exoticness amped up to the Nth degree,” says Xavier. “One of the big themes in monster erotica truly is the power dynamic. The monster is big, scary, dangerous, dominating, and uses his monsterly qualities to overpower and seduce the maiden. And I think the idea of being seduced by something so wild and animal and dangerous…it’s kind of like being forced to play with fire and finding out that you enjoy it. It’s kind of this warm, fuzzy corrupted feeling.”

Interestingly enough, there have been studies on why the monster boyfriend trope is so successful. This can be somehow linked to “Teratophilia”, a term which describes the sexual attraction towards monsters or deformed people, though in this case we’ll go with the first meaning.

Among other things, it has been suggested that monsters can function as an escapist fantasy for some women, since the monster is able to embody masculine attributes without presenting itself as a man, which may embody trauma and terror in extreme cases, or aggravating patriarchal arrangements in the least.

The monster man represents masculinity through the eyes of women: it’s aggressive, unpredictable, and dominant. These stories allow them to give in into a feeling of vulnerability, they’re in control of the beast, they can even change them… It might not be a type of relationship they would desire in real life, but through these fantasies, they can experience some aspects of their sexuality and transgress the fear of man. This is very significant from a sociological point of view, these women might have been raised to desire this type of masculinity, but are aware of the threat it signifies to them. The monster guardian does protect them from the outside world, where they feel endangered, but they also are the incarnation of an “untamed masculinity” which they don’t need to fear.

All in all, Sess*in allows shippers access to this type of relationship through self inserting into Rin. However, I hope this post has managed to bring something new to the conversation. There are in my opinion more reasons why girls want to be with Sesshomaru that go beyond his attractiveness, and that may have to do with these factors…

Feel free to comment and add your opinions :)

Sources:

https://bit.ly/3o6dERh

https://tgam.ca/39ZADIS

https://bit.ly/35YH4dO

#anti sessrin #anti rinsess #anti hanyo no yashahime #anti lolicon #personal #anti-sessrin #antisessrin #anti sesshrin #yashahime

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glompcat · 4 years

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I was thinking about the Thirteenth Doctor’s era and The Timeless Child, as you do, and I was once again struck by how brilliantly it addresses one of the largest elephants in the room with Doctor Who, which is of course The White Man’s Burden.

Doctor Who has for the vast majority of its run been about how much better everything would be if a White British Man showed up and sorted out everyone else’s problems for them. To further this discomfort, throughout both the modern and classic shows we see the Doctor interact with all manner of deeply problematic figures and moments in British history and treat them with defference and respect. The Doctor is an Anglophile, the show merrily jokes to explain away the Doctor’s strange obsession and love for England even during some of the country’s darkest chapters (I recently watched it so Season 2′s The Crusade is particuarly standing out in my mind at the moment as an example of this, but it really is everywhere).

I’ve posted about it before, but I truly and deeply believe that Series 11 is where we first start to see a real questioning of the British Imperial narrative that was left unquestioned in Doctor Who for so long. The end of Series 12 on the other hand begins the vital process of recontextualizing the Doctor’s character inorder to decouple them from The White Man’s Burden.

The encounters with racism stop being ~ The Doctor punches a rich lord in the Victorian Era when he says something overtly racist that every modern audience member would comfortably be able to identify as racist without having to do any sort of self examination on their own part ~ and start instead to focus on questions of when it is and is not appropriate for outside forces to act.

In Rosa, the very first episode of Doctor Who written by a person of color since the show began in 1963, we are told that the Doctor can not and should not do anything in Alabama during the 1960s because it is not their place to coopt that momement. They may admire the courage of activists like Rosa Parks, but their role is confined to confrontations with fellow time travelers. Rather than interfere with a situation they have no buisness getting involved in they stay in their lane.

Demons of the Punjab, the second ever episode of Doctor Who to be written by a person of color, is perhaps my all time favorite episode of the show. The more I think about it, the more I love it. This unfortunately means it is hard for me to sum up in a few sentances just why I find it so endlessly brilliant. I am going to push myself to try though. This is the first episode of Doctor Who focused on issues of immigration that felt, to me as the child of an immigrant (granted my father came to the United States, not the United Kindom), recognizable as a narrative I could connect to. We’re just two seasons removed from The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion, and we’ve gone from “refugees who are not comfortable with fully assimilating into a dominent culture are terrorists” to a stunning ode to how colonization ruins lives and shatters families, as well as how inter-generational knowlege and cultural transmission are sacred things that connect us (us in this case being the descendants of immigrants) to a past we can never fully know or understand.

Series 12′s The Timeless Children takes these ideas and disrupts our assumptions of the Doctor’s identity, forever changing some of the core framings of the narrative.

It reframes the Doctor’s travels through time and space, so that rather than keep them as the journeys of a priviliged member of the most priviliged race who would rather spend their time dealing with other people’s problems than face any of their own (eternally shrugging their shoulders and claiming Gallifrey’s fuckery is not their responsibility, so much so that they disown the one incarnation who Got Involved) we are told that the Doctor was an immigrant to Gallifrey, one who faced hardship and abuse upon arriving there stemming from that which made them different. Their first adopted mother literally changes them, altering their DNA just as much as they alter their own species’ so that in the end there no longer is any genetic difference between the Doctor and any other Time Lord. After all, we know that the Doctor’s biodata is very much that of a Time Lord’s. This, for me viewing as the child of an immigrant and as a member of a minority religion, is recognizable as the violence of assimilation (and despite what The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion might tell you, assimilation is VIOLENCE and is not actually anything close to an acceptable trade off for a safe place to live). Then as time progresses, the Doctor’s memory of their true origin is wiped, leaving them fully unaware of who they really are or where they came from.

This immediatly called to mind for me both Ryan’s total lack of knowlege of any kind of Black history in Rosa, and Yaz’s viseral pain when presented with the fact that her grandmother’s life before coming to England was totally unlike anything she could have ever imagined in Demons of the Punjab. Those marked as “the other” (and lol at how that term already exists in Doctor Who lore and applies to the Doctor in ways that call to mind this arc) in the West are constantly asked to disenfranchize themselves from their identity. Silmultaniously Western actors regularly claim aspects of other cultures as their own, and then demand others recognize those things as hallmarks of their own society totally seperate from their original context (a very prominent example of this would be the way British people understand and interact with tea).

Since the Time Lords are more than anything else a massive joke about the British nobility, it makes sense that within their extreamly xenophobic society an immigrant who had a major impact on the course of their devopment is subjected to a process of alienization, literally becoming alien to their original state, and upon fulfilling their use for their new home their presence is erased and that which was taken from them is claimed as inheriet to the dominent society.

One is then adopted by a family that by all accounts did love them, did not mistreat them and whose affection was returned by the Doctor. This second adoption takes place after the assimilation process has been completed, long after the Doctor’s usefullness as an other has been exploited in full and the Time Lords no longer see any reason to treat them in a manner unlike any other member of their people. We know that the Doctor still had trouble fully fitting into the society around them, but this discomfort gets attributed to everything and anything other than the truth of their violent assimilation. It all can play out exactly as every text written before The Timeless Children describes (but not all of them at once, of course, because quite a few of them are entirely incompatable with one another) but with the addition of the most recent season we can read the trauma of assimilation into the Doctor’s behavior. I also want to be clear that in this new context the Doctor is just as much a Time Lord as I am an American. My father may not have been born here, nor was my mother’s father or her mother’s parents, but at the end of the day that is inconsiquential. The Doctor is still a Time Lord, however what that means has shifted.

There are of course all kinds of other implications these new elements lend to the text. Personally I find myself constantly returning to the knowlege that the Doctor was twice adopted (something I admit gives me a personal thrill since my father was also adopted multiple times, but I digress) and how it makes the Doctor’s habit of forming found family units and adopting children all the more meaningful for me. Their interations with their companions, from their (most likely probably) biological family member Susan all the way to the Fam can be understood through a new lens, and since the ways old texts gain new contexts and meanings making them feel like new stories all over again is for me personally one of the greatest joys of big box franchise fiction, I’m increadibly pleased by this new addition to the lore.

The Doctor’s perspective post The Timeless Children is suddenly accesable to audience members who were initally left out of that story of a priviliged kid who didn’t like/want responsiblity so they stole a junked up old vehicle and ran away. So many of the show’s behind the scenes materials like to say that there is something innately British about Doctor Who, and now immigrant perspectives are being welcomed into that umbrella of Britishness.

Further (returning to my original point about the show’s uncomfortable relationship to The White Man’s Burden) it takes the previous framing of the Doctor and their journeys and turns them on their head, transforming the Doctor’s travels into those of someone looking for a sense of belonging they have never been able to claim, while also attempting to make sense of the violence that had been enacted against them they were denied any knowlege of by the same forces that committed that violence - something you can see play out over and over and over again in Earth History, and British History in particular, thus explaining the Doctor’s fixation. Even if the Doctor is unaware of it, there is a Reason they do not feel as if solving Gallifrey’s problems is in any way their responsibility. They already gave Gallifrey so much more than has ever been demanded of any other Time Lord.

I don’t really have a conclusion to write here because my thoughts on this story (like all of Doctor Who) are still evolving and of course are very much just my own personal reflections on this silly franchise that happens to be my horrible ADHD fueled special interest of the moment. Plus Series 13 may shock me by going in a radically different direction, who knows. So I am just going to say that I very much appreciate the ways the Thirteenth Doctor era so far has been challenging the British established view of history and is very much making good on its promise of creating a more inclusive show for its viewers, not just in its casting choices but in the messaging of the narrative itself.

#Doctor Who #long post #I am just rambling sorry #I normally just put this kind of thing in a google doc and call it a day #but I am really trying to interact with fandom more sooooo

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sersi · 2 years

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Merry merry! It's your Steggy Secret Santa come a-callin'! I'm working on something special for you this season and I'd love your input. Tell me what you love about Steggy, what you'd like to see them do, the vibe that would bring you the most holiday cheer and I will do my best to deliver something you'll enjoy!

Hi!

In terms of what I love about Steggy, there's really a lot of different things. On a character level, I love how Steve and Peggy are both deeply principled and both have a tremendous amount of respect for each other, even in the face of decades apart and a radically changed world. I love how Peggy (in multiple universes now 🥺) recognized the value and charm of Steve long before he got the serum and how Steve has always treasured his time with Peggy, no matter how limited it was at various points. I also really, really love how they both mix tremendous tactical and intelligence-based skills with a willingness to just run in and figure things out on the fly 😅. On a more explicitly ship focused level, I also adore the assorted Steggy motifs and callbacks (the compass, you’re late, dancing, the right partner, etc.) as well as literally all their eras/multiversal incarnations.

As for what I’d like to see them do, I’m basically open to anything and any era. Explicit holiday focus or holiday as set dressing or holiday vibes without any sort of snowy and Decembery setting. I will say that I’d love to see them interact with some of their supporting cast, be it the Commandos/Howard, Steve’s modern-day buddies, or some other assortment of characters. I’m also really enjoy some variety of joint Steggy problem solving.

In terms of vibe, I’d probably like a chill or not chill but it ends up chill sort of vibe. I’m having a really crazy December, so I haven’t had a ton of ability to really focus on or enjoy the season, so Steggy eventually getting to just relax and enjoy things would be a nice bit of personal wish fulfillment.

#steggysecretsanta #elysia's inbox #sorry this took a bit!!!#i started last night and then got interrupted #and by the time i could get back to it today i was in the middle of an eternals related spiral #so i needed to get that over/close photoshop to really get back into the correct Mood™

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shakespearefreak · 2 years

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Favourite Childhood Christmas Movie: Rankin/Bass' The Little Drummer Boy (1968) This movie really resonated with me as a kid. Aaron's journey, from youthful joy, to bitterness and hatred, to finally acceptance and love, seems very real, especially given the special's half-hour runtime. Also, the final scene before the manger is breathtakingly beautiful, and has forever influenced how I picture the Nativity.

Favourite Modern Christmas Movie: Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020) This only came out last year and it's already one of my favourites. The gorgeous, lavish costumes! The incredible songs! The worldbuilding! The acting! Keegan-Michael Key's Gustafson steals the show as far as I'm concerned, but there's a lot of talent here, including the brilliant young actress Madalen Mills as Journey.

Favourite "Christmas Carol" Adaptation: Scrooge (1951) Alastair Sim is Scrooge in a way no other actor has ever managed for me. I also love most of the other casting (especially Michael Hordern's fantastic Marley), and in general, I think it's the most faithful adaptation out there, and what extra scenes it adds are utterly in keeping with the tone of the original novel.

Favourite "Nice" Christmas Movie: It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Okay, so It's a Wonderful Life isn't exactly a Christmas movie in my opinion; a very small percentage of the runtime has anything at all to do with the holiday season, and in general, I tend to think of it as a "slice of life" story until near the very end (when George is standing on the bridge, about to jump). That said, a lot of people strongly associate it with the holiday, so I think it counts.

Favourite "Naughty" Christmas Movie: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) Any movie that can make me laugh hard enough to pee a little and touch my heart with tenderness is a good film in my book.

Favourite Child Protagonist: Cindy Lou Who (How The Grinch Stole Christmas 2000) I really related to Cindy Lou as a kid: her struggle to reclaim her former joy in Christmas, her otherness in a world where no one really seems to understand her, her determination, and her belief in someone everyone else has given up on.

Favourite Teenage Protagonist: Jack Frost (Rise of the Guardians 2012) Once again, RotG may not precisely be a "true" Christmas movie, but it definitely is has strong ties to the holiday. Also, I know Jack isn't technically a "teenager," given he's a few hundred years old, but he retained his teenage appearance and personality after becoming a spirit.

Favourite Adult Protagonist: George Bailey (It's a Wonderful Life 1946) I love Jimmy Stewart's characters in general. His George Bailey is both inspirational and relatable, which is a tricky thing to do. George has flaws - bouts of temper, despair, frustration - but is ultimately a wonderful person who is intelligent, charismatic, generous, and deeply compassionate. Also, I relate very strongly with the idea of giving so much of yourself to others, you feel like there is nothing left; thankfully, like George, I have a host of amazing friends who are there for me when I start feeling too drained to go on.

Favourite Santa Claus: Tim Allen (The Santa Clause trilogy) Though I love many different incarnations of the jolly old elf - Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Kris from Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1970), and Claus from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum especially come to mind - I have always felt that Tim Allen's portrayal of Santa was pretty much perfect.

Favourite Villain: Mr. Jonathan Teatime (Hogfather) Mr. Teatime (pronounced "Te-ah-tim-eh," as he always points out), falls into that small category of my favourite characters who I am genuinely afraid of, even while I adore them to no end. He's absolutely fascinating to me. He seems like a very young child in a lot of ways, one who doesn't yet really understand that other creatures have feelings, and just wants to take everything apart to see how it works.

Favourite Christmas Present: A second chance at life (A Christmas Carol) A lot of people doing this meme have been listing what they like best to receive on Christmas morning, but according to the original creator "Christmas Present, is what you think was the best present given to someone in any form of media, be it movie, TV show, extra. And yes, metaphorical presents like getting to spend time with family and such also count here." As such, I can think of no better gift than what Jacob Marley gave Ebenezer Scrooge - another chance.

Favourite Christmas TV Special: "The Most Adequate Christmas Ever" (American Dad!) I actually adore the American Dad! Christmas specials in general (especially the first three); I find them both hilarious and genuinely deeply touching. I also love the risks they take with the ideas of God, Heaven, and the afterlife.

Favourite Ship: Ebenezer Scrooge x Jacob Marley (A Christmas Carol) These two marvelous old sinners who both ruined and ultimately saved each other have been my ultimate OTP for almost my entire adult life (and as always, I have to thank @wolfenm and their wonderful story "A Conspiracy of Spirits: The Love Story of Jacob Marley and Ebenezer Scrooge" for opening me up to the idea).

Favourite Classic Christmas Song: "The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)" by Nat King Cole I love how simple this song is. It has so much depth and warmth, without ever feeling showy.

Favourite Modern Christmas Song: "Christmas Wrapping" Glee cover (originally by The Waitresses) Yes, I know Glee covers are basically blasphemy in the music world, and I really enjoy the original Waitresses song too, but there's something fantastic to me about Heather Morris' voice in this version.

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carewyncromwell · 3 years

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The next Cinderella AU part is here...and I am so thrilled about this part, because not only do we get a new character (who I’m quite sure you can identify from the sketch above -- only my second time drawing him ever, and I’m actually pretty happy with it!), but we’ll also get a nice serving of drama! Goodie!!

Robin Hood as a legendary figure first originated through the oral tradition, so its history is a little hard to plot out, but his first reference in writing is a ballad from the 15th century. Although our modern image of Robin Hood is that of a chaotic good heroic figure, his original incarnation was decidedly less saintly -- he was a bandit, and although he did refrain from stealing from women, he was rather violent, reckless, and hot-tempered, as well as flagrantly against both clerics and all nobility. Robin Hood’s backstory of being a disgraced nobleman who turned outlaw after losing his title and land and who remains loyal to the “good king” Richard while opposing the unlawful regent Prince John was added later, presumably to make him a bit more “approachable” to an Elizabethan audience who was more accustomed to hearing tales about nobility (just look at a lot of Shakespeare’s plays from that period -- many of them center around royalty or the upper class). Plays about or referencing Robin Hood then increased in popularity on the British Isles throughout the 16th and early 17th century, until the rise of Puritanism in the 1640′s put a halt to theatrical productions. (Bloody kill-joys.) For more information on the history of Robin Hood’s development, I strongly recommend this analysis done by Overly Sarcastic Productions (...actually, just watch everything on their channel, it’s all great XD).

Previous part is here -- whole tag is here -- Katriona “KC” Cassiopeia belongs to @kc-needs-coffee -- and I hope you enjoy!

x~x~x~x

Carewyn had a lot of trouble returning to her daily routine at the palace the following morning. Getting so close to the border with Orion and hearing about how much scarier it was likely to get on the battlefield made her all the more worried for Jacob’s well-being. Even if the spell Charles Cromwell had paid for nine years ago made it so that Jacob would stay alive as long as he willed it, Carewyn dreaded the thought of what harm, physical and emotional, that Jacob might face. If she only had some idea which battalion he was a part of and where on the front he’d be, then she could always just try to send a letter his way...maybe even ask Orion to drop it off to the camp for her, since his father was an officer. But Carewyn had combed every military roster she could get her hands on, but hadn’t been able to find a single record of Jacob anywhere.

‘He must be under another name,’ Carewyn told herself.

It wouldn’t be too unreasonable that Charles wouldn’t want Jacob to advance in the ranks on the back of their family name. And really, Carewyn knew full well how displeased her grandfather would be if he found out she was trying to reach out to her brother without his approval -- he could’ve even forced Jacob to take on another name, just to try to make it that bit harder for Carewyn to contact him without his approval...

Carewyn’s friends noticed a rather abrupt shift in her mood. She was singing as always, but her choices were a bit less upbeat and her voice sounded oddly distracted and nostalgic. At one point, Andre mentioned offhandedly that he’d been designing themed outfits for his friends to wear to his mother’s New Year Eve’s Masque Ball, but Carewyn had trouble putting much attention on it.

“I’ve already finished some ‘owl wings’ on a cape for KC and a fur-trimmed wolf mask and gown for Erika...I was thinking perhaps a stag for Bill, a dragon for Charlie, and a lioness for Ginny? I considered a horse at first, but I think a pale gold would make her just glow, don’t you think? Yours I’m most excited for, though...I’m hoping to actually make your newest pair of shoes with fabric on the inside for comfort and diamond on the outside for sturdiness, if I can manage it!”

“Mm...that sounds great,” said Carewyn absently.

Her gaze was drawn out the nearest window, as far out as she could.

“...Andre,” she said slowly, “I realize this is very last minute, but...may I have this afternoon off, to go see my family?”

Andre blinked. “Is something the matter?”

“Oh no, no,” Carewyn lied with as pretty and reassuring of a smile as she could. “It’s just...well, it’s nearly Tristan’s birthday. My uncle keeps him very close to home, compared to my other cousins...I merely thought I might stop by and bake him a little something, as a surprise.”

Andre frowned slightly. “You...get along better with your uncle and his son than with Iris, then?”

“No, but Tristan is only a boy. It’s hard to hold any bad behavior against him. And well, maybe if he and the others don’t know I made it, he’ll enjoy it better.”

Carewyn could see Andre still looked confused and a little dismayed, so she quickly added, “I’ll be back by tomorrow morning, in time for my rounds. I won’t allow it to interrupt my duties.”

Andre offered a hesitant smile. “Well, all right...if it really means that much to you.”

Carewyn’s eyes softened. “Thank you, Andre -- I really appreciate it.”

Fortunately for Carewyn, Andre wasn’t the best at picking up on other people’s pretenses. Unfortunately for Carewyn, two of his most regular confidantes were his cousin KC and fencing instructor Erika, and they did pick up on Carewyn’s odd behavior.

“She said she wanted to surprise her cousin with something for his birthday?” asked KC, frowning deeply.

“Well, yeah,” said Andre. “I admit, it seemed a little weird to do something so nice without even wanting credit, but Carewyn is an awfully selfless sort. From the way she made it sound, she just wanted to do something nice for him.”

“And you believed her?” said Erika rather coldly.

She whacked Andre’s practice sword out of his hand with her own, making the Crown Prince hiss in pain.

“I’ve told you before, Prince Henri -- you all may think Carewyn Cromwell’s nothing like her family, but that’s absolute bunk. She might be more pleasant than them, but she’s not stupid and she’s not honest. Or did you not notice that that weird guy she hangs out with keeps calling her ‘his lady,’ as if she weren’t the penniless orphan of a deadbeat merchant?”

Erika picked up Andre’s sword and tossed it back to him with ease.

“Then of course that guy himself is shady as all get out.”

Andre frowned. “You mean Orion? Come on, Erika, he isn’t that bad -- I thought he seemed quite amiable, myself. Don’t you agree, KC?”

“He is,” said KC fairly. “But Erika isn’t completely off-base. There is a lot about Orion that we don’t know -- that even Carewyn herself doesn’t know. She admitted as much to me, after I first met him. That being said,” she raised her own sword and got into position to attack Andre, “I don’t think Orion’s a threat. You would think anyone with the ability to sneak over the palace walls not once but twice would’ve tried to make some move to attack you by now, but he’s only ever come looking for Carewyn. And although I don’t completely understand the reason behind why she’s acting like a lady around him,” she shot Erika a faintly reproachful look as she and Andre traded blows, “I’m pretty sure it has more to do with her own insecurities than because she’s a terrible person -- ow! Damn it!”

Andre had successfully disarmed KC.

“Insecurities?” he said, his eyebrows furrowing in concern. “What is there for her to be insecure about? I mean, yes, she has no dowry, and taking Orion’s wardrobe into account, I’d suppose he has to come from a family with modest wealth -- but Orion seemed to enjoy the Weasleys’ company quite well, and their family is poor. I think they’d make a lovely match, really,” he added with a rather smug grin. “They even matched at the Festival, without realizing it.”

KC massaged her wrist, frowning a bit sourly. “Yes...but Carewyn is solely under Lord Cromwell’s charge. He’s the one who sent her here. He’s the only guardian she really has. And I think it’s quite clear how much influence he has over his family -- even his daughters who married into other esteemed families still live at his estate with their husbands and children, rather than moving out onto their own estates. And in Carewyn’s case, she doesn’t even have a parent to help shield her from Lord Cromwell’s will. She doesn’t have a penny to her name. So that means, in effect, she’s chained to him, and in those circumstances...well...”

She hesitated.

"Well what?” Andre prompted her.

KC looked incredibly uncomfortable.

“I didn’t want to say anything before without knowing for sure...but I think someone’s been looking at our military ledgers, documenting troop placements. Everything’s neatly put away the way they should be, but there are more fingerprints on them than before. And usually I’m the only one who has much use to look those up, whenever I’m ready to suggest a new war strategy...”

Erika’s eyes narrowed very sharply and she got right up into KC’s space. “And you’re only just saying this now?! That information could be critical to Royaume’s enemies! What if that guy Orion sneaked in not just to see Cromwell, but to get his hands on those? Or what if it was Cromwell herself, working in collusion with him?”

“Impossible,” Andre said forcefully. “Carewyn would never be a spy for the enemy -- it’s not in her character.”

“And I don’t think Orion would know where those documents would be, even if he did sneak in,” said KC.

Erika, however, looked unconvinced as she made for the door. “You can coddle those two all you want, but I plan to tell the King and Queen -- they’ll want to interrogate Cromwell and this ‘Orion Freeman’...”

“Erika, belay that!” Andre said in a suddenly much sharper and more authoritative voice. “That’s an order.”

Once Erika had stopped walking and turned back around, the Crown Prince exhaled heavily and crossed his arms in a business-like manner.

“I’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said firmly. “If Carewyn is heading to the Cromwell estate, she’ll have to take the road through town, correct? I’ll simply take a horse and follow the road after her.”

Erika and KC looked startled.

“Uh, Andre,” said KC, “you haven’t forgotten that you’re not allowed to leave the palace, have you?”

Andre smirked. “No. I’m just sneaking out.”

Before Erika and KC could articulate an argument, he added in a much sassier voice, “Look, I’m doing it whether you come with me or not. I’d appreciate the company if you want to come along -- all I expect is that you’ll dress appropriately. I hear linens and cottons are fashionable for those who don’t wish to attract attention.”

And so Andre, KC, and Erika made preparations to follow Carewyn...completely unaware that a half-hour earlier, Bill and Charlie Weasley had -- after having a similar, but much more concerned conversation with Badeea Ali about Carewyn clearly lying to Andre’s face -- decided to take their horses and tail their friend themselves. And sure enough, the two eldest Weasleys soon enough found themselves following Carewyn on the road heading northeast, avoiding the Cromwell estate all together.

At the very same time, in Florence, Orion had finalized his plan. Today was the day he was going to request a formal audience with Prince Henri, as Prince Cosimo VII. As Carewyn had said, he’d need to act fast if he was going to stop his father from finding a way to complete his own ruthless strategy -- the battlefield itself would be a difficult place for Orion to make his case, with so many distractions, but he knew a more balanced, peaceful setting wouldn’t be. And so he wrote a long letter to the King, explaining everything that he had learned from Royaume and its people as well as Florence’s own, so as to make a case for peace. He then had the court magician Severus Snape deliver it to the Florentine camp in his stead, while he dressed in his finest and prepared to leave for Royaume.

When he made as if to take his own horse, however, Orion found Skye and McNully waiting for him, a black coach already prepared.

“If you’re planning on going to meet Prince Henri, you really should arrive in style,” said McNully with a wry smile. “A good first impression to the King and Queen would help your case by a good 45%.”

“And you have to know there’s no way in Hell we’re going to let you go out and expose your true identity to the enemy without back-up,” Skye added, her arms crossed over her chest. “

Orion’s black eyes softened. “...Thank you.”

As he climbed into the carriage, both McNully and Skye’s faces nonetheless betrayed some hesitation.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” McNully asked. “There’s a 74% chance they’ll respond badly to it -- I reckon there’s a 39.5% chance they’ll try to arrest you on the spot and hold you as a prisoner of war...”

“I carry no weapons with me, and I come with the explicit purpose of diplomacy,” said Orion levelly. “Therefore I’m not an enemy combatant. As long as I follow their direction while under their roof, then any harm they might do me would be violating the conventions of war...and the Royaumanians, for all of their flaws, do have honor.”

“One could make a case for you having been involved in espionage, though,” McNully pointed out, but Orion ignored him and settled down in the carriage, crossing his legs offhandedly.

“What about Lady Cromwell?” said Skye, her voice a bit lower and more concerned. “She’ll find out you’re a Florentine. And not just any Florentine, the Prince of Florence.”

Something sad flickered through Orion’s confident, unflappable expression.

“She was going to learn the truth sooner or later,” he murmured. “If our time together has come to an end...then at least I may have the memories to hold onto...and the knowledge that by ending this War peacefully, I may have spared her of more heartache.”

He closed his eyes and began to meditate, clearly having said his piece on the matter. Skye and McNully, however, couldn’t help but exchange a look that was both anxious and very sad.

As long as they’d known Orion, he’d always been a little reckless, but he was also passive and avoided direct confrontation. This plan to directly appeal to Royaume’s royal family, however, required a lot of guts -- far more than either of them had thought Orion possessed. And they knew such courage could only have been encouraged by one person...the very same person who Orion loved so much that he would choose to follow her example and protect what she loved, even if it meant destroying their relationship forever.

Orion meditated during most of the journey to the Royaumanian palace. It was merely fortunate that, as they approached, McNully broke him out of his trance by tapping him on the shoulder and pointing out the window. If he hadn’t, then Orion would not have seen a rather familiar trio of riders on horseback, riding through town past them -- a short, stocky lady with dark red hair and freckles; a very tall blonde with a square jaw and sharp eyes; and a very handsome dark-skinned man dressed in a purple tunic, emerald green pants, and gold-buckled black boots.

“Stop the carriage!” said Orion, his soft, level voice nonetheless very firm despite not rising in volume.

He barely waited for the carriage to completely stop before slamming the door open and jumping out.

“Andre! KC!”

Andre, KC, and Erika all stopped their horses in an abrupt halt and turned around as Orion dashed up to them.

“Orion?” said Andre, startled.

KC looked from the rather finely dressed Orion to the expensive-looking black coach behind him and back. Erika’s eyes narrowed critically upon Orion as he came to a stop in front of them, his hands clasping in front of him.

“I...had not expected to see you out and about,” said Orion, trying to put on his most pleasant, calm expression.

Andre glanced over his shoulder up the road, frowning deeply. “Yes, well...some business has come up.”

“Orion, have you seen Carewyn?” KC asked him, her face very serious.

Orion blinked.

“Not since last night,” he said. He could feel his heart starting to beat faster. “Why? Is something wrong?”

“Never you mind,” barked Erika, as she turned back to the road. “Come on, we don’t want to lose the trail -- ”

“Erika,” reproached Andre, before he turned back to Orion, his face visibly concerned. “...Carewyn asked for the afternoon off to go see her family, but it was very last minute, which isn’t like her. And according to what we’ve heard in town, there’s been no traffic down the road toward the Cromwell estate in the last four hours...”

“So Carewyn had to have been lying about where she was going,” finished KC, her face much more stoic but her voice no less tense. “We need to find her and figure out why.”

Orion’s eyebrows had furrowed over his widening black eyes. His heartbeat was slamming in his ears as the memory of Carewyn in the woods returned to him -- looking northward, toward the army camps, as if longing to run toward them --

“I know where she’s gone,” he said at once.

He rushed back to the coach, grabbing onto the window frame and standing on the boot of the carriage.

“To the northern border,” he urged Skye, who sat in the driver’s seat. “Quickly!”

“The border?” repeated Skye as a sharp whisper. “But Orion, your meeting with the Prince -- ”

“Can come later,” Orion told her very firmly under his breath. “Both he and I must get to the war front.”

He shot a significant look over his shoulder in Andre’s direction. McNully, putting two-and-two together, nodded and inched himself up to the window of the carriage.

“If you tie one or more of your horses to the carriage, we should decrease our travel time by a good 21% per horse,” he told Erika, KC, and Andre. “If Carewyn left an hour ago, then with one horse, we should be able to overtake her within an half-hour -- two, within twenty minutes, and three, within ten. Though with Orion on the boot, there’s a 12% chance he’ll fall off if we ride at full speed, so we might have to go at 95% instead -- ”

KC fixed the blond-haired man with an incredulous look as she leapt off her horse.

“Are you really calculating all that on the fly,” she asked, looking as if she wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or amused, “or are you just pulling those numbers out of fat air?”

McNully couldn’t help but grin. “Excellent! Now I can officially say that I’ve been asked that question over a hundred times before.”

Still looking faintly bewildered, KC moved to help Andre, who’d quickly started attaching his, Erika’s, and her horse’s to the front of the carriage with the two black ones already pulling it, ignoring Erika’s incredibly sour and distrustful expression. There was no time to lose.

From the boot of the carriage, Orion directed Skye down the same road he’d taken with Carewyn the previous night, Andre, Erika, and KC riding with McNully inside the coach. Once they’d reached the forest, Orion caught sight of a familiar-looking golden eagle with a bandaged wing -- at the sight of the Florentine prince, the eagle gave a loud shriek and flew down into the trees, and Orion urged Skye to pursue him into the woods. The road took them deep into the trees, until at last the eagle landed on a branch over the heads of two familiar-looking ginger-haired men, who were bound with thick rope to a tree.

Bill and Charlie were stunned at the sight of such an elegant coach, but were absolutely beside themselves with relief at the sight of Andre, KC, and Erika. Erika immediately yanked a knife out of her ankle boot and set about sawing off their bindings -- once she’d cut Charlie free, he immediately rushed forward and grabbed Andre’s shoulders.

“We’ve got to hurry!” he said anxiously. “They’ve got Carey!”

“‘They?’” said Andre, very startled. “They who?”

“This band of Florentine bandits,” said Bill, his voice very low and urgent. He kept maneuvering his bindings as Erika cut them to try to sever them faster. “They cornered us so they could try to rob us -- they were willing to let Carey go since she was a lady, but she bartered with the leader, saying that they could take her so long as they left us alone. Claimed that they could probably get more money from holding her hostage than us, given her family...”

Both Skye and McNully glanced at Orion. The Prince’s face had lost most of its color -- he’d turned his face away and closed his eyes, breathing in and out slowly as he tried to stabilize his emotions.

“The bandits in these woods are Florentines, so I doubt they will harm you,” Baroness McGonagall’s words returned to his mind, “but I cannot be sure how they would respond to a Royaumanian, especially one related to one of their wealthiest noblemen.”

“They took all three of our horses and tied us to the tree so that we wouldn’t follow them,” growled Charlie. “They left us a knife so that we’d be able to cut ourselves free, but it’s so dull I reckon it would’ve taken us hours to do it ourselves...”

Bill succeeded in snapping the weakened ropes in half and leapt back to his feet, massaging his wrists.

“They must have taken her to a camp of theirs,” said KC, her dark blue eyes narrowing. “Even bandits need some base of operation.”

McNully nodded, resting his arms on the edge of the coach’s window. “The lady is right. Given where we are, I’d say the odds are fairer that it’s southeast of here.”

“Closer to the Florentine side of the border, you mean,” presumed KC, and McNully nodded again.

“They were heading south through the woods,” said Bill. “But we won’t want to bring the coach. They stopped us because they wanted money -- if they have any reason to think any of you have it, they’ll no doubt want to imprison you too...”

“On the contrary,” said Orion in a very low voice, “this carriage may be just the thing we need, to ensure that they don’t imprison us.”

Everyone looked at Orion, their faces all a mixture of incredulity and revulsion, but he seemed disinterested in explaining himself.

“We must be quick, McNully,” said Orion, and although his voice and face were as level and unreadable as ever, they both betrayed a slight edge. “Time is not on our side.”

With Bill now sitting with the driver’s seat next to Skye and Charlie hanging off the boot with Orion, the black coach set off again. Overhead Orion caught sight of the wounded eagle again, which shrieked at them warningly -- the Prince thought it must mean they were close, but did not respond fast enough to the trap set out in front of them.

The coach rode right through a certain cluster of vines, and within seconds, they had magically sprung to life, lashing themselves around the limbs of the five horses pulling the coach. The steeds reared back, panicked -- Skye immediately yanked out a sword from her belt and began hacking away at them, and Erika and Andre both leapt from the carriage with their own swords to help, but it was no use. The vines only lashed onto them, binding all three of them fast and making it impossible for them to move. And when things seemed like they couldn’t be any worse, without warning, a group of green-dressed men and women had swung down from more vines attached to the nearby trees, surrounding them in a tight noose-like circle and pointing their arrow-decked bows at them.

They were trapped.

“Well, well,” said a voice from the trees above, “we don’t often see coaches that ritzy out here.”

The voice’s owner leapt down to the ground. Unlike his companions, his hooded tunic was yellow instead of green. When he lifted his head enough that they could see his face, it was the host of a mischievous smirk.

“Especially ones crafted in Florence,” the dark-haired and eyed bandit said breezily.

Andre, KC, Erika, and the Weasleys all stiffened.

“Florence?” breathed Bill.

They all as a unit whirled on Orion. His face was remarkably calm and solemn as he stepped off the coach and in front of the others and faced the bandits’ leader, his hands clasped in front of him.

“We do not come seeking trouble,” he said. “We merely come to retrieve a lady who surrendered herself to you. Frame like a robin’s. Hair the color of a red sunset. Eyes the color of the sky.”

The bandit’s leader raised his eyebrows curiously. “The maid called Cromwell?”

“That is her.”

“And what reason would you desire her in your custody?” challenged one of the green-dressed bandits with a cocked eyebrow, a dashing man with tanned skin and dark brown hair.

“Wants to ransom her off himself, no doubt,” sneered another woman with messy brown hair and cold magenta eyes. “He probably works for Lord Malfoy -- we all know he’s the sort to make money off illicit enterprises and keep it all to himself, rather than give it to anyone who actually needs it...”

Two of the other bandits -- a pair of women with long red and short pink hair, respectively -- exchanged a sour look.

“We have nothing to do with Lord Malfoy,” spat Skye, vainly tugging against the vines binding her. “We wouldn’t collaborate with that rat if you paid us -- !”

“Skye,” said Orion in a quelling voice.

The last bandit, a very strong-looking man with dark red hair and emerald green eyes, frowned deeply at the leader, who considered Orion carefully.

“I know your face,” he murmured.

Orion inclined his head, his black eyes boring into the other man’s face. “I’m sure you do.”

The leader’s thin-lidded eyes narrowed critically -- then they widened, realizing.

“Bring out Lady Cromwell at once,” he said abruptly.

The others all whirled on him.

“What?!” cried all three women and the dashing man.

“Jae, are you mad?!” said the woman with the magenta eyes.

“Do it,” said the leader called Jae firmly, without flinching.

The strong bandit -- the only one who hadn’t questioned the leader’s direction -- grabbed a vine, which immediately retracted back up above them.

Jae glanced at the magenta-eyed woman. “Merula, have the vines set them loose.”

Merula looked rather scandalized. “What? Oh come on, you know how much of a pain it is, to have to recast a spell after it’s broken -- ”

“Better that we do it now than wait around for the spell to expire on its own,” Jae said dryly.

Still looking very reluctant, Merula nonetheless did as she was told, holding up her hand, which glowed with light green.

“The terms are now invalid,” she muttered sourly at the plants.

The plants sparkled with a similar green flare before falling limply off of the horses, Andre, Erika, and Skye. KC and Bill moved to detangle the now harmless plants from their companions and around the horses’ legs, and Charlie moved to soothe the frightened steeds.

Within a minute, the strong bandit was back, holding onto the vine easily with one hand and holding Carewyn under his opposite arm. She had her ginger hair tied back in a loose bun and was dressed in the green peasant dress she’d worn to the Festival and her slightly oversized brown shoes -- no doubt because it was the most comfortable dress for travel she had. Orion was also beyond relieved to see that she was perfectly unharmed -- not a single cut or bruise.

“CAREWYN!” cried KC, Andre, Bill and Charlie in relief.

All three of the men immediately dashed right over to her and threw their arms around her in a group hug.

“It’s all right,” Carewyn reassured them with a small smile. “I’m all right.”

“They didn’t hurt you?” Bill interrogated her.

“You must have been terrified -- ” said Andre.

“Where are the horses?” asked Charlie.

“Tied up in a makeshift stable over there,” said the pink-haired bandit with a wry grin and a vague hand gesture.

“A bit tricky to lug them up into treehouses,” added the red-haired one cheekily. “And no, for the record, we did not hurt Carewyn Cromwell. She may be a stick in the mud, but she’s a decent sort.”

“And brave too!” said the muscled man, beaming. “She wasn’t scared at all, not even when Merula stuck a knife in her face!”

“I was only getting fed up with her smart remarks,” huffed the magenta-eyed bandit called Merula. “You’d think she was the Queen of Sheba, with how she acts...”

“She is a proper lady, to be sure,” said the dashing bandit, shooting Carewyn a rather Casanova-like smile.

Carewyn tried to stifle a snort of laughter behind her hand as Jae approached her.

“Seems you’ll have an escort after all, Carewyn,” he said, lowering his bow with a slightly more serious look. “I don’t think I can convince you to reconsider, but under the circumstances...well, just make sure you’re careful. I’d hate to hear of Royaume losing one of its only honorable citizens due to their own stupidity.”

Carewyn inclined her head to him, her blue eyes very solemn. “I’m far from Royaume’s most honorable citizen, Jae, nor from any other country, I daresay. But thank you.”

Jae nodded. He then looked up at Orion.

“By your leave then, your Highness,” he said with an abbreviated bow.

He then nodded to the other bandits, and one by one, they all disappeared back up into the trees.

None of the people on the ground, however, gave them much mind. All of them had turned back around to face Orion -- Carewyn felt like her heart had stopped still as she stared, taking in his neat ponytail and finely tailored black doublet and hose and boots.

“...‘Your Highness?’ ” repeated Charlie, shocked.

Andre’s eyes widened. “Then...then you’re...?”

Orion swallowed, but somehow managed to keep his composure as he nodded. His eyes were locked on Carewyn’s face, never shifting and as turbulent as a black ocean.

“King Cosimo’s new heir,” KC breathed, her face flooding with fresh understanding around her amazement. “Cosimo VII.”

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passionate-reply · 3 years

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Are you tired of Great Albums being about music people have actually heard of? Do you want me to just go ape shit, and review obscure minimal wave cassettes from the 80s? Admittedly, Oppenheimer Analysis’s New Mexico is one of the most famous weird minimal wave cassettes, and for good reason: it actually holds up quite well as an album! Come check out what all the fuss is about. Transcript below the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be talking about a very cultish cult classic, and an album that’s one of the definitive works in the very underground scene of so-called “minimal wave”: New Mexico, the only full album released by the duo “Oppenheimer Analysis.” The band’s namesake was actually lead vocalist Andy Oppenheimer, who became acquainted with instrumentalist Martin Lloyd at the 1979 World Science Fiction Convention, where the pair bonded over speculative fiction, Midcentury graphic design and propaganda, and the work of early British electronic pioneers like the Human League. 1982’s New Mexico was these two’s first recording as a group, but Lloyd did go into it with one credit--the year prior, he and David Rome of Drinking Electricity released a double A-side, featuring the jumpy, playful instrumentals “Surface Tension'' and “Connections.” They referred to their act as “Analysis,” making it feel very much a part of the Oppenheimer Analysis story.

Music: “Surface Tension”

Oppenheimer, meanwhile, was a true outsider artist, making a living as a nuclear science writer without any substantive musical background. While not all minimal wave is “outsider music,” and not all electronic outsider music is minimal wave, there’s certainly a correlation there. Oppenheimer’s reedy, somewhat strained voice lends New Mexico the punkish charm that only utterly untrained vocalists can offer: a vessel that cracks and buckles as it fails to contain the raw emotion within.

Music: “Martyr”

The addition of a singer is one major distinction between New Mexico and Lloyd’s earlier compositions, but they’re also very different in tone. As I said earlier, the “Analysis” instrumentals are sort of light-hearted and sprightly, a bit reminiscent of the jazzy synth experiments of artists like Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley. New Mexico is substantially darker and more gothic, as befitting an LP that’s at least partially a concept album about the nuclear age.

Music: “The Devil’s Dancers”

While nuclear anxiety is an indispensable theme of the album, it’s never a suffocating one that makes it feel horribly antiquated to modern ears. It’s a very aestheticized rumination on nuclear themes, that never jumps up and hollers, “bombs are bad!” Take, for example, the track “Radiance,” probably the best-known track on New Mexico...to the extent that any of them are that well-known. It’s one of the album’s most languorous, atmospheric moments, and paints a vividly desolate picture of ground zero after a detonation, with its fluttering, delicate, but ultimately frigid synth flourishes.

Music: “Radiance”

I think my favourite part of “Radiance” is actually its lyrical turn: an atomic blast isn’t like the radiance of a thousand suns, but rather, vice versa. The latter is the one that’s merely theoretical and dwells in the realm of poetic license, whereas the former is a historical fact that we all have to contend with. “Radiance” is quite solid, but in many ways it’s a pale imitation of the title track, a seven-minute sprawl that works exquisitely as a kind of musical landscape painting:

Music: “New Mexico”

Painfully evocative, with an eerie, almost yearning undercurrent, “New Mexico” is easily the track that feels the most grand and epic. I would really have loved for it to be given more of a place of honour in the tracklisting, possibly as the closing track, but it’s wedged somewhat awkwardly in the middle of the second side. I suppose we can’t expect quite as much from a gonzo underground mail-order cassette release, though. At any rate, while “Radiance” and “New Mexico” are absolutely about atom bombs, they remain very emotionally intimate--almost torturously so. A lot of the other tracks are less about the bomb itself, and more about the rise of “Big Science” in the Midcentury consciousness in the wake of the Second World War--chiefly, “Men In White Coats.”

Music: “Men In White Coats”

As in “The Devil’s Dancers,” Oppenheimer happily accepts the role of an evil or insidious narrator here, and sells us this megalomaniacal perspective with aplomb. A lot of early 80s synth, minimal wave and otherwise, is characterized by more deadpan vocalists, but I can’t stress enough how much Oppenheimer’s piercing lead vocals bring to this album. It’s perhaps the most critical on the tracks that delve into more traditionally emotional topics--chiefly, the standard romantic love numbers. Take, for instance, the harrowing, neurotic “Scorpions”:

Music: “Scorpions”

I’m certainly a fan of the title “New Mexico,” which just ties together all the right connotations. First and foremost, New Mexico is a place--a place you can visit. And this is one of those albums that really wants to ground you in a narrow and specific sense of place, a sonic landscape. New Mexico is mostly empty desert, large tracts of which have been government land even before it started being used more intensively for military research in the 20th Century...most famously, of course, on nuclear weapons. I like to think that the name also suggests novelty and recency of place. We are, after all, entering a “new” world, defined by the advances of science, and the upending of earlier ideas about the world.

The representation of the album art for New Mexico that I’ve been showing you is actually the imagery of the 2010 reissue of the album, which I’ve chosen because I think it’s a bit better known, and I simply prefer it, personally. The most striking thing about it is this colour--a ghostly green, that instantly evokes the common imagery of atomic phenomena. Radiation doesn’t really glow green, of course, but, like everything else about the album, it’s clear that this choice is meant to be a reflection upon the greater cultural imaginings and social impact of the Atomic Age, so I think it’s a perfect fit. At the center of the composition, we see a figure, head bowed and face shaded to provide some sense of anonymity, reaching a hand towards the side of his face in a gesture that’s almost reminiscent of using a cell phone at first glance. What exactly he’s up to is as unclear as his identity. Between the modernist styling of the architecture to his left, and his antiquated attire, the image is quite suggestive of a Midcentury setting. But the real narrative angle here comes from the right side--several figures are approaching that central character, possibly in hostile pursuit. Espionage gone wrong? A desperate attempt to silence a whistle-blower? Much like the music, there’s an ambiguous, mysterious, but also menacing ambiance to this cover.

For historicity’s sake, I’ll also discuss the original cover of the homemade cassettes of New Mexico. As we might expect from the nature of this release, it’s a fairly simple graphic, featuring a nude woman whose full-figured body type, popular on pin-up models, and short hairstyle convey that Midcentury aesthetic almost as well as her clothed counterpart on the reissue. Our eyes are naturally drawn to her exposed breasts, where they meet a pair of radiation warning signs censoring her nipples. A simple image, but a deeply perverse or twisted one. Is it a kind of union between the vulgar, crass profanity of pornography, and the depravity of atomic weapons? Is it a visual representation of the way Oppenheimer Analysis have beautified the nuclear landscape, conflating man’s inhumanity to man with something voluptuous or pleasurable? This cover is at least as complex a symbol for the album as the reissue one is. And while it’s easy to dismiss it as lowbrow, I think it’s worth noting how the salacious or saucy aspect of it would have helped it fit in with other underground cassettes of its era, many of which had lurid or provocative imagery.

Of course, this discussion of the differing incarnations of the album is a natural segue to addressing the release history of New Mexico. The story of Oppenheimer Analysis is deeply entwined with that of New York-based Minimal Wave Records, founded in 2005 by Veronica Vasicka, a radio DJ fascinated by underground electronic music. The label specializes in making obscure, self-published works like New Mexico widely available in digital form, so that more music enthusiasts can get a chance to hear them. Without her, I myself might never have heard this album, and certainly wouldn’t be in a position to make a review like this! Vasicka felt strongly about the artistry of Oppenheimer Analysis, and gave the honour of her label’s first-ever release, “MW001,” to a self-titled EP compiling several of the tracks from New Mexico. Later, in 2010, when she was able to rerelease New Mexico in its entirety, she gave it the honourary designation of “MW001D.”

Vasicka is the one responsible for coining the term “minimal wave” to describe the subgenre she was interested in, and, fifteen years later, I think it’s safe to say it’s had some staying power. While it may be a bit vague and subject to individual interpretation, that’s a problem all genre labels contend with, and I think fans of minimal wave ought to be proud that this term was at least coined by a passionate and dedicated fan, who made her favourite music more accessible to everyone, as a labour of love. It’s also not the only genre term to come about much, much later than the music it seeks to describe. At any rate, New Mexico will always have a place in the minimal wave hall of fame, and it’s a genre-defining work, if in hindsight. The stylistic hallmarks of New Mexico are, for better or for worse, now also those of a whole movement: harsh, tinny rhythm machines, strident synth lines, anxious, unmannered vocals, and technological themes.

But what actually happened to Andy Oppenheimer and Martin Lloyd? In light of the renewed interest in their work in the 00s, they actually got back together for a bit, releasing some archival material from the 1980s and laying down a handful of new tracks, very similar in style to those on New Mexico. Lloyd passed away suddenly in 2013, but Oppenheimer has remained interested in keeping their ideas alive. He’s been performing live as well as putting out new music, first as “Touching the Void,” alongside Mark Warner of Sudeten Creche, and more recently as “Oppenheimer Mk II,” with Mahk Rumbae of Konstruktivists.

Music: “You Won’t Disarm Me”

Something that I think really stands out about New Mexico, especially when compared to a lot of other small-time minimal wave releases, is that it’s a very consistent quality throughout. As you might expect with an underground genre, a lot of the music to choose from is varying degrees of amateurish and clunky, and it’s arguably better to listen to Minimal Wave compilations than the LPs that exist. New Mexico is an exception, though, and doesn’t have any particularly weak tracks. The favourite tracks cited by fans of the album tend to vary pretty widely. My top pick, though, is the album’s opener, “Don’t Be Seen With Me.” It’s a perfect marriage of dizzying, spiraling synth runs, and one of Oppenheimer’s most frenetic vocal performances, that creates a masterful portrayal of being swept up in infatuation with somebody you really shouldn’t be fooling with. That’s all I’ve got--thanks for listening!

Music: “Don’t Be Seen With Me”

#music #great albums #album review #album reviews #minimal wave #minimalwave #coldwave #minimal synth #oppenheimer analysis

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traincat · 4 years

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I’ve read Waid and Hickman’s FF runs and am currently reading Zdarsky’s 2 in One. I’m planning on eventually reading the Lee/Kirby run. Can I ask, what other runs would you recommend? Is Claremont’s good? Sorry for bothering.

I LOVE Waid and Hickman’s Fantastic Four runs, and Zdarsky’s Marvel Two-In-One was excellent to the point where one of my lingering disappointments is that Marvel brought the Fantastic Four back in a way that prematurely cut off Zdarksy’s 2n1. I know I said I wanted them back but wow did we all get monkey’s paw’d on that one. Zdarsky did really excellent stuff with both Ben and Johnny and the multiverse hopping was honestly fun and interesting. Lee/Kirby is also, in my opinion, just a really terrific run -- it lays the groundwork for not only the future of the Fantastic Four but a lot of big concepts for the Marvel Universe in general, and I think it holds up really well by modern day storytelling standards. Lee’s sense of humor works well with the retrofuturistic vibe and Kirby’s art is always wonderful. In particular I think it’s interesting to look back on The Galactus Trilogy (Fantastic Four #48-50) as the granddaddy of all event comics, for better or worse.

Claremont -- okay, I love Claremont’s run, let me start off by saying that. Claremont’s run follows on what is in my opinion one of the worst periods of Fantastic Four canon, and I mean bad to the point where the literal canon at that point was that to get things back on track the Fantastic Four had to be put in a bubble universe. Claremont’s run kicks in one or two issues after their return to the main Marvel universe and it’s so fun. I think Fantastic Four is one of those series that kind of flourishes in adversity and Claremont’s run starts off with the Fantastic Four trying to regain their footing in a world that had assumed them dead, their Baxter Building gone, living in a warehouse property. Claremont, in my opinion, also has one of the best if not the best handle on characterization for a lot of key Fantastic Four figures, including Johnny, Reed, and Sue. His Ben is also very good, but I think Ben in particular tends to be an easier sell for a lot of comic book writers -- the outcast, the gruff man, the comic relief. He’s easier to identify with than Reed, the Smartest Man on Earth, or Johnny, defined by his youth and beauty and queercoded since the ‘60s, or Sue, by sheer factor of being a woman. So I think a lot of writers identify with Ben first and foremost and put the most love and care into his depiction, whereas the others are a little easier for them to leave by the wayside. Which isn��t a bad thing -- I love that one of the most beloved comic book characters is also one of Marvel’s few canonically Jewish characters, but there is a wealth of truly excellent Ben canon in comparison to the other three. Especially with Johnny, there’s no one else who has written for Fantastic Four who has put nearly as much thought and detail into Johnny’s relationship with his powers, both the positive and the negative, as Claremont has, even reworking the origin story from Lee and Kirby’s joyous scene of Johnny flaming on for the first time into a deeply traumatizing incident -- being sixteen and traumatized and bursting into uncontrollable flames.

(Fantastic Four v3 #11) There’s also a lot of women in Claremont’s run! A valid criticism of Fantastic Four canon is that by its initial core team makeup it tends to be lacking in female characters compared to some other big Marvel staples, but Claremont brings in a ton, from Reed’s college friend and fellow genius Alyssa Moy (who has been done dirty by pretty much every other writer who’s ever touched her, including Waid and Hickman) to multiversal bounty hunter Bounty to the most platonic of Johnny’s gal pals Caledonia to Valeria Von Doom, a “time dancing” teenage incarnation of the baby Sue lost back in Byrne’s run, who sets up baby Val’s eventual return. Claremont is also king of Reed vs Doom setups -- if you haven’t read his Fantastic Four vs X-Men miniseries, I highly recommend it, and he brings a lot of the two sides of the same coin energy from that into his Fantastic Four run.

The downside of Claremont’s run is that the plot is always there and always running and I could not explain half of it if you paid me. Things certainly happen! Like all the time! For seemingly no apparent reason! Stuff gets set up and then it’s not resolved and now we are in Latveria! I don’t think this is necessarily all that detrimental -- the run is still massively fun and the characterization is always fresh and interesting. It’s just that sometimes you have no idea what’s going on and you have to roll with it. And then sometimes you do know what’s going on but in the way where you know Claremont was just writing it because it’s his kink. Which is like, whatever. As authorial ids go, you can pretty consistently do worse than Claremont’s, I’ll give him that. So I do recommend on it the whole, as long as you’re not going into expecting the kind of plots either Hickman or Waid brought the book. Claremont’s is kind of like “stuff happens and it’s either weird or fun so just don’t pay too much attention to it.”

Aside from Claremont, I feel like I generally like far more Fantastic Four runs than I dislike -- but also I don’t hate Millar’s run, which is honestly bad, so it’s possible I’m just very forgiving with the Fantastic Four. I really like Robinson’s run, which is the last run before the Great Fantastic Four Drought of 2015-2018. It’s short, self-contained, and devoted entirely to one story, so it’s pretty tightly written, with good characterization and some very shiny art by Leonard Kirk. Straczynski’s run is decent enough for the fact that it intersects with Civil War -- I think he does his best to get into the heads of the characters re: their actions in Civil War -- and it leads directly into Dwayne McDuffie’s run, another brief one where Black Panther and Storm take over for Reed and Sue. Very fun. Marvel Knights 4 is also a fairly recent run that’s got some strong moments in it, although I feel it’s a little inconsistent in its handling of the characters. It’s still fun, though. For an older, longer run, I like Simsonson’s -- the art is very dynamic, even if the storyline kind of gets too involved with itself.

(FF #337)

I recommend Byrne’s run with the caveat that there’s plenty to dislike about it and plenty of reasons to avoid it, not the least of it being Byrne himself as a creator and a person. It’s heavily sexist in how it deals with Sue, it retcons a huge age gap into Sue and Reed’s relationship, and Byrne’s early departure sets up my all time least favorite Fantastic Four story. (Though that one is Roger Stern and later Tom DeFalco’s fault.) It is historic as Fantastic Four runs go, though, and there’s a lot in later runs that’s built over it or references it or borrows from it. So it’s a rec with a lot of caveats and I also understand why people might give it a skip -- I think it’s more important for an understanding of the greater body of Fantastic Four canon and the impact it had than for the actual run itself. I do think Byrne has some very interesting subtext with Johnny, although it never come to fruition, and while his Sue falls victim to a lot of sexism, I really like what he does with the character of Frankie Raye, who like poor Alyssa Moy I don’t think has ever gotten really good treatment ever since.

I have mixed feelings on both Millar and Fraction’s runs, not in the least because I think they end very similarly -- and that Millar did it better, which doesn’t say great things. Millar’s run is kind of like a trashy popcorn flick version of Fantastic Four; it’s not actually good, but I can’t say I don’t like the terrible eldritch monster in Scotland Christmas arc (Fantastic Four #564-565) and I’m sort of into future Sue. Fraction, on the other hand, takes a space road trip and makes it boring, which is the greatest Fantastic Four sin of all. He’s one of the rare writers who I think actually writes a bad Ben Grimm -- not the least because his run goes out of its way to try and label it Ben’s own fault that he was transformed into a monster. I do really like his FF (just the initials) though.

The only Fantastic Four runs I can say I really truly dislike are Tom DeFalco’s and Dan Slott’s, which sort of unfortunate because DeFalco’s is both long influential (I have no idea why because it’s honestly terrible like in terms of storytelling) and because Slott’s is happening right now. DeFalco comes onto the book on Fantastic Four #356 and stays on until Fantastic Four #416, at which point Marvel hit a literal retcon button to get out of the mess he’d made. (This leads into Fantastic Four v2, which is largely skippable -- it’s basically a mid-90s retelling of a bunch of early Fantastic Four stories that leads back into the FF heading back to the main universe.) DeFalco’s responsible for the Skrull retcon in the JohnnyAlicia marriage and for dragging that out for over 50 issues, the entirety of which feel like he was writing without a plan or outline or literally anything, and I have never felt like a comic book was attempting to gaslight me through its own incompetence or refusal to commit to things it set up itself as badly as I do with DeFalco’s run. (I like other non-Fantastic Four Tom DeFalco runs. I just hate this one.) Dan Slott’s run is just 25 issues and counting of badly written emotionless unfunny pages blandly stapled together and I so badly want Marvel to kick him off the book for its own good.

#almosteverythingnerd #fantastic four #traincat talks comics #comic recs #long post/

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josie-effortposts · 3 years

Text

The Woman Who Fell to Earth

I stopped watching Doctor Who in 2013 after the 50th anniversary special. Up to then I was deeply obsessed by its reams of stories, hidden subspaces and detailed production histories. It wasn’t just entertainment, it was a case study in a massive shared universe, and a direct function of the times and places it had been written.

It’s never been very controversial to anyone I know to dislike Moffat’s run of the show, and as it drew to a close everything that followed seemed pretty well-telegraphed: Chris Chibnall would become the head of the show, it wouldn’t be very good, reactionaries would blame bad writing on a female Doctor while plenty of others would just lost interest, the ratings would drop and the whole show would become less culturally relevant. It was a Cassandra truth.

But that said, I still wanted to try it. I watched a bit of the Twelfth Doctor and had mixed feelings, and when I watched the first episode of the Thirteenth I found myself taking notes on it. So, without a lot of structure, here are my thoughts.

1. New Who treats first episodes as very important, the first moments that we see new Doctors and their statements to the world. Call it a modern tradition - where “Robot” and “Time and the Rani” play the change for comedy before jumping into the week’s adventures, “The Christmas Invasion” and “The Eleventh Hour” are primarily statements of continuity. By Twelve’s first outing the villains themselves become metaphors for change, and now Thirteen delivers a brief speech about deciding to become different while paying respect to the past.

2. Speaking of that speech, I feel like there must have been an earlier draft that connected the plot to these metaphors a lot better. The villain of the story keeps pieces of his past triumphs with him at all times, but these trophies are body parts taken from the dead, and they disgust the Doctor. At least Twelve’s flesh robots were stumbling towards eternity.

The villain as a whole is just what you’d expect from a low-grade Doctor Who monster, I guess. He’s supposed to be on a hunt, which sounds really cool, but this consists entirely of him walking places and murdering random bystanders by touch. He’s not keeping the masquerade up or succeeding in his goals by doing this, and the rest of the story implies that he’s at least shrewd about getting what he wants. The Doctor’s complaints against him center on him being a cheat who can’t do the hunt fair and square and on his desecrating corpses, but she never seems very angry at him over murdering people.

The idea of the Doctor stopping a proper hunt actually sounds interesting to me, especially as someone who sat through all of DWAD’s The Most Dangerous Game. There’s a lot of suspense in dealing with an intelligent, directed killer with a small number of targets, be it in Predator or Day of the Jackal, and a villain that stalks, hides or sets up ambushes could be easier on the budget. Or you could keep the villain the same but add a second member of his species to the setting and have them in competition, conflict on conflict. (That sounds like it’d make a good module for TIMELORD, actually...)

3. The Doctor feels simplified. I don’t mean the new personality of this incarnation, although I think the slight amnesia-until-climax is a bit forced. There’s just stuff that comes off wrong. For instance, things are outlawed in “every civilized galaxy” and the villains traveled from “five thousand galaxies away”. Despite ostensibly going anywhere and anywhen, the show’s always respected some species of distance, in that going far enough away or leaving the universe itself is a pretty big deal (especially since so much of it sticks to Earth). This line could’ve been any distance and nothing else would’ve changed, but it kills the idea of space - how can galaxies be civilized? It feels like the setting is shrinking - the word just sounds big and spacey, and this is the part where the Doctor says that something’s out of place, so big, spacey words go there.

This probably sounds nitpicky, but it feels lazy. Where Davies and Moffat both repeatedly made the Doctor or companions into the Most Important People in History, Chibnall seems to take it as read that the Doctor can just do stuff as the plot demands it. The climax involves her making a jump over a dangerous drop to the gasps of all assembled, but her first appearance is after an even longer fall where she breaks through the ceiling of a train car and isn’t even scratched. She "reformats” a phone into some kind of tracking gadget with six seconds of thumb typing and builds a new sonic screwdriver out of random scrap, which then solves basically every issue in the story. And, naturally, she can pinpoint things from a billion light-years away.

My favorite Moffat story is probably “The Eleventh Hour” because it presents the Doctor with a genuine challenge at his most vulnerable. If he had his regular tools handy then it would’ve been a much more straightforward Doctor Who story, but there’s no time to stop and build a new sonic screwdriver, because people are going to die by the time he’s finished. I wish more modern stories had that.

4. I can’t tell how I should feel about the side characters here. Not the companions, although it feels like Chibnall looked at RTD’s companions and thought “why not bring the entire family along?” There’s just this odd tension in characterization between comedy and drama for them, and without a very detailed soundtrack it’s hard to tell what emotions the script’s trying to go for.

One of the hunter’s victims has spent years trying to find his missing sister after another hunter abducting her. Instead of any resolution coming to that story he just gets murdered without ever knowing what happened to her and then the Doctor commandeers his workshop. (It’s even made clear that these human trophies are all still alive, just “in stasis”, so there’s no reason to think they couldn’t save her and presumably several others.) Meanwhile one of the main characters suffers a short fall and dies, taking up most of the final act with a funeral despite us hardly knowing her.

Other victims are worse. A man throws pieces of his salad at the monster for no discernible reason - he doesn’t even seem drunk, and then he dies as the hunter crushes that salad underfoot. A security officer gives a heartfelt goodbye to his family and tells them what a lucky granddad he is, then walks offscreen to be murdered. Neither of these scenes had to happen, and both together don’t even fill a minute of the runtime, so what was the motivation? The first is at least charmingly odd, but both of them feel like bizarre, extremely cheap set-pieces.

The soon-to-be-trophy himself listens to positive affirmations in a crane, then shouts them as he’s being chased. “I’m important! I matter!” The implication would seem to be that this is goofy behavior, and yet the things he shouts are in some ways the themes of the show. Is this self-critical deconstruction, unabashed humanism poorly delivered, a running gag?

5. The other half of a new Doctor, classic or modern, is this shedding of old things. Not always in terms of showrunners, but sometimes in attitudes or fans. The change from Six to Seven was motivated by a desire to change the tone of the show, for instance. Nowadays this is reflected a lot by the fandom - every Doctor has newcomers who jump back out because they don’t want their hero to be replaced, but the jump to Eleven confronted a lot of younger fans with this for the first time. Then Twelve culled some fans who couldn’t stand the Doctor being old and unkissable, and now Thirteen’s wiped out her own contingent of grognards who think the Doctor being a woman is a radical idea invented in the last three years.

That said, I’m not a fan yet. Some Doctors I don’t like as much for aspects of their characters, particularly Five, but Thirteen just doesn’t feel Doctorly. (To be clear, neither did Twelve.) I grew to enjoy Matt Smith’s performance where I thought I wouldn’t, and I’ve found a lot to like in every Doctor, but for some reason both of them still feel like actors playing the role to me, where Unbound Doctors and Mark Kalita have captured whatever the core is.

6. I feel like I’m getting old. So much of the beauty of Doctor Who just feels transparent now. After Moffat the maximalist decades of worldbuilding can never convincingly pretend to add up to a coherent universe and they can’t escape into the freedom of canon-indeterminacy any more than they already have. Even Big Finish, which I used to adore, feels strangled by a mandate to realize and box-set every possible combination of whatever actors they can summon from the show, no matter how many tedious hours they have to fill with cardboard characters and back-of-the-napkin monsters.

There’s no excitement in the adventure for me, because I know the route and the destination. And I don’t know if that’s Doctor Who being formulaic or disenchantment from seeing the patterns too much, or some personal lack of spark and imagination. I feel like there must be some drive I don’t have, one that would re-energize my own perspective in the face of concrete understanding, that would see it as a good thing that I understand another layer of what I enjoyed so much without sacrificing that enjoyment. But if it’s there, I just don’t see it.

But hey. While there’s life, there’s...

#doctor who #the woman who fell to earth #s11e1

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nativehueofresolution · 3 years

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loki and thor

The tough thing about Thor and Loki is there’s so many incarnations of them because they keep dying and reincarnating, and each version tends to have pretty distinct dynamics… so I kind of tried to do a greatest hits of different incarnations because I think understanding all the different flavors of their dynamic is what gets you the full Thor and Loki experience.

1) Loki (2004) #4 - Mythic Thor and Loki! Blood Brothers is still very rooted in the Marvel versions of the characters, but it’s an alternate universe that imagines Thor and Loki having gone through centuries of their love/hate cycle and finally reaching a breaking point--which short of captures the epic scope of their mythic characters, imo. Despite the “what ifs” of it all, I think the insight the series gives into their relationship is totally on point. Loki not being able to go through with killing Thor, hating him because he loves him, everything falling apart at the moment it looks like they could reconcile, the inevitability and tragic doom of it all falling apart...

2) Siege #4 - Classic Thor and Loki! Ish. I mean it’s the original versions, but on the modern side… but whatever, I’m not familiar enough with the really old stuff to pick out a special issue. The good old fashion Loki realizes his evil plan has gone horribly right, dies trying to redeem himself, and Thor is the only one deeply heartbroken… classic! Plus on that helps inform a lot of the following incarnations of their relationship.

3) Thor (2007) #617 - Thor and Kid!LokI! This is the issue where Thor gives Serrure his memories back. To me it says everything about their relationship that Thor brings Loki back after all the hurt Loki caused, when no one else thought it was a good idea, when Loki had done Thor so much personal harm… yet did it selfishly, really only thinking about how much he wanted Loki back, not thinking about what life would be like for Loki, basically pressuring Serrure to give up his life and identity to come back to Asgard, in spite of how hated he will be. It’s selflessly selfish, which is Thor and Loki to a T.

4) Loki: Agent of Asgard #10 - Thor and God of Stories Loki! Well, kind of. He’s in the middle of it. Anyways, it doesn’t get any more emotional than Thor finding out about Kid!Loki dying, fighting to the near death, and Loki tearfully begging Thor not to go. Trying to change but really just falling back into the same cycle. And you get the flipside of some of the previous issues, with Thor being the one who is not able to go through with killing Loki.

5) Thor (2020) #9 - King Thor and King Loki! Their current dynamic is really fun--to my mind, this current stage, with Thor as king of Asgard and Loki as king of Jotunheim, is the first time both of them have really been pretty much on equal standing. This issue may not have the most in terms of screentime, but I think it gives more insight into their current dynamic than something like Loki (2019). Thor being really vulnerable with Loki by confiding in him about Donald Blake, and yet he’s still being secretive about why he really needs help, even though Loki is obviously signalling to Thor he knows what’s going on. Thor asking for Loki’s help lying, even though he knows Loki is trying to change. Yet the fact that Loki can call Thor on it, and Thor can still be vulnerable… it’s good!

#ta! <3 #wizardysseus

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ganymedesclock · 5 years

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there's a post somewhere about how ganondorf's death is often presented almost as a holy death, deeply dignified and with appropriate silence. i think the term the person used was like a kind of anti-martyrdom, like. "a holy death, but not of something good". i'm not sure if i'm using the terminology entirely correctly, but that's something that's always hit me. like. i don't think that comes from just the general seriousness of the plot, but also that there's a quiet acknowledgement that fate

itself was against him - and the inherent tragedy of that. like. they're So Close to digging just a little further and questioning that concept of fate + supposedly inherent character weakness in the first place. this is present in oot - zelda acknowledges him as pitiful, someone who couldn't control the triforce. and in tp, zelda seems to do something like a quiet prayer. this aspect of zelda herself isn't present in wind waker (iirc), but is embodied by the king, who directly compares himself.

That’s a concept that a friend of mine talks about a lot ( @betterbemeta ) in almost those exact words but I asked her and she said she wasn’t sure of the specific post, just that she didn’t get it from someone else.

But, yeah, I feel like... there’s this interesting sort of counter-narrative within the Zelda series, I think? There’s the main narrative, which is the Legend and the Cycle and that it is Correct to perpetuate the Cycle and live out the roles people are given.

But there’s also a lot of counterpoints, of things making it clear that the Cycle is hurting people, that you will not be rewarded or kept safe for perpetuating it- and in Wind Waker this is very interesting, because, a lot of the evidence points to Ganon’s stance- “Your gods abandoned you!” being correct.

Hyrule was destroyed. Most of its people were killed. Two young people who were active servants of the god at the time were murdered and nothing protected them. Ganon comes across as someone who’d know- because he’s acting as the Divine Opponent, here.

And there’s this scene, late in Wind Waker, where he reads Tetra’s dreams with his power.

This scene sticks with me, because it’s Ganon doing something unnecessary. He’s got no reason to treat Tetra hospitably at this point. He’s got no reason to tuck her into a bed, which he does, or acknowledge that she’s a child, or wonder who she is besides Zelda.

And, yet, we have this. unexpectedly introspective soft scene, and while it’s followed by the puppet Ganon fight, the things he says there don’t seem just like villainous trash talk, but, nearly a plea for these kids to realize how messed up their situation is. They’re allegedly agents of the gods who are being chewed up by their Fates, used and cast aside, and while he has an agenda in not wanting this to happen (as their given Fate is to be parties in his execution) there’s a bleak humor Wind Waker Ganon has about the situation that, to me, has never actually been contradicted within the Zelda games. Words to the contrary ring hollow. In practice, we watch Hyrule desolated, we watch its executioners throw him on vulnerable populations (in Twilight Princess, the Sages know enough of the modern Twili to recognize Midna in her cursed form- so they had to have known the people they were leaving at the mercy of a wounded, panicked Ganon who was nonetheless fully capable of killing a person with his bare hands at that point).

In Breath of the Wild, which doesn’t even depict Ganon as a person who can argue his point (though the sequel may shed new light on that), he still nonetheless seems correct about the nature of the cycle; Zelda is unabashedly a survivor of child abuse who was forced to pray in sacred springs starting at age seven.

BotW is basically the series’ most detailed thesis yet that the Cycle broke Link and Zelda and tore pieces from them they’re not getting back. Both of them lost a century. Zelda’s passions and interests were sublimated to force her into a passive role. People they knew and were close to died. Link’s habitual silence is depicted as a product of the anxiety that the hero role pressed on him, and he was also a human shield just to guarantee that of the Champions, Zelda at least could make it, that left him critically injured.

The only real coherent defense raised by the Cycle- which is meta-wise, “justified” by Skyward Sword, which establishes it as an unholy curse- is “this is the only way to save Hyrule” which is never challenged or argued or defended. It’s merely accepted. And we keep watching young, vulnerable kids following the paths laid out by their predecessors and being torn apart by these events.

Link and Zelda don’t look like people who are protected by benevolent gods that shine over them. Repeatedly, the deities of the Zelda setting are depicted as not especially loving. In A Link To The Past, the Triforce itself says it doesn’t care about good or evil, merely that Link has proven his worth and should now make a wish. Other characters in the setting describe it as fickle or a troublemaker. In Skyward Sword, Zelda, regaining Hylia’s memories and thus the clearest potential insight into how Hylia was thinking and feeling, states that Hylia obtained a mortal incarnation basically as bait for Link, who would be driven by compassion to protect his friend, and thus get functionally conned into acting as Hylia’s champion.

I think this is why fanworks that put the chosen three on the same side make sense, because, in this way, Ganon is more a contemporary to the heroes than the King of Hyrule, who, no matter how often he dies, never really has that sense of being a martyred hero who’s lost fragments of himself. Daphnes was able to choose his own death, and the death of his kingdom, on his own terms using the Wind Waker and then the Triforce; Rhoam controls the narrative at the beginning of BotW.

Ganon?

Just from what we know about BotW’s sequel (which is not much at all) Ganon is having a bad time. In a way, his fate seems to combine elements of Link and Zelda’s- he was confined for a long time in a death match with another force (Zelda), and he was heavily and brutally injured and may have lost consciousness (Link) only to awaken in an unfamiliar future where he’s been all but forgotten (both of them).

And part of this is the need that the games seem to have, to have everything be Ganon’s fault, but to never acknowledge or explore the relationships Ganon actually, has with the various entities he ostensibly commands. I love Wind Waker, but, as friends of mine have pointed out- there’s only flimsy excuses at best for Ganon to put the various boss monsters in the environments they’re found in. They’re themed to their environments so that they seem fitting elements, rather than something foreign placed there that’s disrupted an extant order.

It leads to this sense of Ganon more as a pariah than as a true Source Of Evil. Because he’s blamed for everything, including things that don’t actually seem to further any of his stated objectives and in fact, might even work against something he is stated to want (e.g. the withering of the Deku Sprouts in Wind Waker, which are stated to be a potential way to drain the Great Sea and leave the Land Below accessible once again- the big thing Ganon wants- but they’re stated to fail because of Ganon’s magic; or him outright saying he wants the sun to shine on Hyrule when earlier in the game Daphnes accuses him of cursing the entire sea into a state of darkness because he wants everything to be dark)

Ganon’s not blameless and harmless- like. he absolutely did shit and is rarely sorry for it or sorry but not enough to stop- but, it definitely feels like his role as Hyrule’s Enemy is a degree outside of his control, much as the Hero or Princess roles are out of Link and Zelda’s. This is a game series about people being forced into roles that cause them to suffer, and then the end takeaway is I guess It Was Worth It because the Bad Man Died.

It’s this situation where the narrative tells us we are dealing with a demon man who hates everything and the only holiness or justice can come from his death, and then at the same time we’re shown a guy who is a power-hungry jerk with a large list of offscreen and frankly mystifying crimes that don’t seem to add up with anything he seems to want or value or even his sense of humor. And it ends up leaving the whole Cycle... feeling rather bleak.

#Legend of Zelda #Ganondorf #Link #Zelda #like it's this Weird Thing of I guess the cycle has to be ultimately vindicated #so we can keep making more games #but also look at all this lovely drama of how the cycle is awful and hurts everyone #but don't feel bad for Ganon who has seen this murder wheel go around multiple times in his life #faelapis #long post

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theoriginalsuki · 4 years

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Because if you like what I write, we probably have the same taste!

There’s a glut of well-written, well-crafted post-TROS Star Wars fanfiction out there, from fix-it to AU’s – not that I’m complaining! – but I’m-a just throw out some of the ones that have hit my sweet spot. Please reblog! It keeps the fic life cycle going.

Complete

The Ocean: A TFA Divergence by Journeying_Jane

I’m a die-hard TFA Kylo Ren fangirl (it’s my favourite of the trilogy, I know), and this divergence tugs the threads unravelled in the interrogation scene to a very satisfying conclusion, re: Rey and Kylo see their shared future a lot sooner, before the elevator scene in TLJ, and start to understand what they mean to one another. Soooooo good. (Rated G)

Air and Water by Flaignhan

The tender and thorough examination of Ben and Rey’s relationship, what it is, how it completes her, and their wholesome being-together that we ache for across three films. Better than cozying up with a hot cup of cocoa on a rainy day. (Rated G)

What She’s Worth by g_girl143

If Rey had been taken in by the Jedi Academy as a child and basically raised by Ben Solo. Hear me out. This love story is innocent and organic and is so well navigated that by the end you’re just like, yeah, of course, there was no other way that could have happened. The *potential* is what it gives us. I need to read it again, slowly and to savour, and happily await the sequel! (Rated T)

Dead Space by Solia

Kylo Ren sacrifices himself to save Rey when they are stranded in a malfunctioning ship. If you’re like me, and you like angsty grand gestures of love more than sexy times, this one is gourmet Reylo. I’m so into the not-looking-directly at their feelings and extending that sweet pain for as looooong as possible. Because, one brain cell! (Rated G)

Paradise by englishable

Post-TROS, the only epilogue I will accept (except for Cleave, also by englishable). Ben is brought to trial; Rey stands by him throughout; they figure out how to go on together. It’s so wholesome and satisfying. Let the healing begin! (Rated M)

Near Kinsman by englishable

In post-Civil War America, Rey answers a bachelor ad and the most classically romantic love story since the Brownings unfolds. (Rated T)

Delicious Ambiguity by Juulna

Some people like smut. I like dangerous male-types harnessing their aggression toward protecting women and their unborn children. That’s hot. Some good TFA Kylo Ren being inexplicably soft with Rey and her Force-conceived twins. Both of them have issues. Both of them really, really love those babies. It earns the happily ever after, which you know I appreciate so much in a fic. (Rated M)

until you return to me by lovefrompluto

Rey accesses the WBW and looks in on every incarnation of Ben, all the lives they live together. Such a cool meta on fanfics with a satisfying ending, giving Rey the agency she was denied in TROS. (Rated M)

Killing Me Softly by AlbaStarGazer

I’m not a big AU person but the premise of this is so good and works really well with the characters as we know them in canon. I also really appreciate a fic that isn’t afraid to look at the work of love.

Ben and Rey, childhood sweethearts, married, are put to the test for three years after Ben gets in a terrible accident and forgets Rey. She’s won’t give up on him, but she’s too hung up on the past. He’s in love with her but afraid that all she sees is a memory, and not the person he is now. Some really good character study and hurt/comfort with a happy ending.

WIP’s

The Argent Coda by BetweenTownleys

A deeply involved and well thought-out fix-it that makes me soft. It’s not happily ever after (yet) and I am 100 percent okay with that. The Force bond intimacy between Ben and Rey hurts soooooo good! (Not Rated)

Conversations by acowlorsomething (suchlostcreatures)

Takes place after TLJ and moves effortlessly into the kind of interaction we want to see between Maybe-Ben and Rey. Okay, what *I* want. Nothing too easy, nothing too sexy, more of the same of the tender conflict we got from The Last Jedi, playing out in a believable way. (Not Rated)

Bride of Fortune by SharKohen

Cute arranged marriage AU. Rey is supposed to be a lucky bride. So Leia Organa-Solo brings her into the household as her son’s wife. They’re only young, so will they have time to chose one another before the age of consummation? (Rated T)

Chains by Veggieheist

Rey is a slave on Jakku. Kylo Ren picks up on her Force sensitivity and “buys” her. Cue side comments from everyone that he just wants to sleep with her, to which he is bewildered and frustrated. Kylo doesn’t understand why someone so powerful would act so lowly, but when he pushes Rey hard, he finds out there’s more to her than he bargained for. Or did he see it all along? (Rated M)

hear my plea (and come save my life) by nouveaulove

Rey finds Ben alive but with amnesia. I’m so soft for pining and protective Rey having to woo back Ben. (Rated M)

Halfway, Between The Black and Grey. by PunkForTheMoment

Anakin helps Rey go back in time to the interrogation scene in TFA and she is anything but smooth. Inspired by that meme. Very promising!

My Fic

Epilogues by TheOriginalSuki

My initial self-help fic in the wake of The Rise of Skywalker. Kinda dream-like with a hazy plot that is basically me just making myself feel better. Maybe you too? Some mature content, I don’t think it’s smutty, though. (Rated M)

Rey goes into self-imposed exile on Tatooine. After refusing to let Ben go, they break the laws of physics to be the family to one another they never had. Healing can at last begin.

Battlefield by TheOriginalSuki

After The Rise of Sywalker I could see things getting worse before they got better. If Kylo Ren had buckled down on the darkness after soul-crushing rejection from Rey and the trauma of seeing Luke again, how in the world would he walk back from that? I’ve got it tagged “dominant Kylo Ren” but I’m not into abusive stuff, so don’t expect that! I do however love the angst. (Rated T)

Kylo Ren took the galaxy, and Kylo Ren takes Rey. There’s nothing left for him to accomplish, Vader’s vision is complete – only he’s still in pain. And no matter how he manoeuvres around the scavenger girl, it’s not easing up.

what stars are made of by TheOriginalSuki

Me trying to make a place to dump one-shots and dead-end ideas and probably failing. Every time I pull a thread of “how things could have gone” in this universe, a whole world unravels! Oops! The tone of this one is completely different, inspired by the adorkable Ben Solo we got a glimpse of in TROS, and how he and Rey’s relationship plays out afterward. (Not Rated)

Rey has a minor objection to being abducted. Good thing Ben didn’t ask her, then!

The Stray by TheOriginalSuki for itsinthestars

Written for the RFFA fic exchange. A modern AU! (Rated T)

Rey moves in across the hall from Ben; a former foster kid alone in the city, aspiring to be an actress. Ben is a ladder-climbing white collar businessman with a horrible boss and zero social life. Which is just the way he likes it. So why in the world has this insufferable creature made it her life’s work to adopt him? From sharing her dinner to doing his laundry, she seems determined to make a connection. In the end, it’s easier for Ben to just let her. But opening up means letting your heart be vulnerable.

Hiraeth by TheOriginalSuki

A passion project. I even have a plan! Bonus – there’s Tai! (Rated M)

Rey crosses over the World Between Worlds and finds herself in a time before Kylo Ren. it’s been twelve years since her Ben dies, and she’s achingly in love. But he has no idea who she is.

Beatrice by TheOriginalSuki for englishable

Illustrates the principle that good art generates good art. Rinse. Repeat. (Raged G)

A brief character study from Ben Solo’s point of view, encompassing the three films and then a positive resolution.

#Reylo fic rec #Reylo fic #Reylo fanfiction #Reylo #Ben Solo #Rey #Star Wars fanfiction

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