I’ve seen a lot of people comment on how Our Flag Means Death is refreshing because it’s not a story about ~queer people Being Queer™~ but it’s about queer people doing their thing while happening to be queer, just like straight people get in all the stories about straight people.
And yes, I totally get what it means - Stede’s story is not “coming out as gay”, it’s becoming a pirate captain, Jim’s story is not “coming out as nonbinary”, it’s about revenge, and so on. But it’s also… not quite all of it, in my opinion?
Our Flag Means Death IS about queerness. The plot is a narrative tool to convey messages that are about queerness. Okay, not only queerness – what the show is about in its core is that area of intersection of masculinity, queerness, trauma and identity. So yes, it is about queer people being queer.
What makes Our Flag Means Death refreshing and so, so good to watch is that it does this with love, with sweetness, with lightness despite not shying away from the dark parts of what it talks about. It’s a love letter to men, queer men specifically, written with so much care.
Everyone has pointed out how the men in the show look like regular men, not thirty-year-olds with six packs that play high schoolers on a CW show. And those regular men are shown as attractive, they are attractive, and interesting, and funny, and silly, and capable of love, and also capable of hurting others without meaning to because relationships are complicated and people are hard to figure out and our own selves are super hard to figure out.
In fact, the ideal of attractiveness of the show is very much queer (as in both queer and not imperialistic), and so is the value set of the show. The subtext is queer, and by this I don’t mean the queerness is all in the unsaid and not in the explicit, by this I mean that the unsaid of the show is about the queerness (and the other related topics, of course) in the way subtext is supposed to work, i.e. enriching and giving complexity and facets and depth to the text.
Itis a story about people doing things where the people are queer. But it’s not a story where the people doing the things “happen” to be queer. And that’s the great thing about it. It’s a gift from queer people to queer people (especially men and transmasculine people, but judging from the amount of queer women who are absolutely mindblown by the show, it goes for all of us) and that’s amazing.
Reading and rereading (and re-re-re-re-reading) my Pratchett and Bujold collections (and listening to the audiobooks when I couldn’t read) until I had them memorized, that is what got me through my worst depressions for the last decade. Perhaps it was more obsession than fandom, though. It was a comfort to ‘visit’ (and occasionally draw) these much-loved worlds and characters, but it was an ultimately sterile experience, emotional maintainance without progression.
I found real fandom community in 2019 - the Good Omens “Ineffables” fandom specifically - with all the fic and art and aus and metas and chats that entails. And I’m old, there was a learning curve, but I love it. I love the mass-participatory aspect of it, the diy attitude, the gentle self aware humour. It triggered a surge of creative energy that I am still riding; my confidence as an artist has never been higher. For me it is both an outlet and an inlet, a seemingly endless wellspring of inspiration and encouragement, a platform to shout from, a door I can open. I love that in fandom, I can be a consumer, a creator, a student, and a mentor all at once, with no gatekeepers.
It’s not hyperbole to say, my fandom got me through The Covid Times - but honestly, that might be the least of it. I’ve spent a long time just trying to “get through”, and I want more than that. I want to become a better, more generous, confident, and compassionate person, in my selfimage, my relationships, and my art - through fandom, I am finding ways to practice.
If you honest to god need every single person who is critical of your fave to not just do the common courtesy of not posting in their tag (understandable! Encouraged! Don’t post hate in main character tags!), but to then go on to not even spell out the character’s name, just because you are too lazy/ignorant to work out the basic search function of the site you’re on? If people’s completely untagged posts that would literally only pop upifyou are the one incorrectly using the site’s search feature (and/or are deliberately going out of your way to find blogs that tend to criticize your fave) make you upset? If people going out of their way to make an entire tag dedicated to blacklisting itisitself grounds for mockery?
Then I’m sorry. You’re self-entitled. There are multiple ways to get around seeing Edelgard hate/criticism and we who often post these things tend to make it even easier to avoid; you not being fucked to learn or do anything to curate your experiences is on you.
And also, it’s fuckin’ rich hearing about how oh so mean we are for daring to have a critical tag for Edelgard, and for affronting these people’s honor by spelling out her name sometimes, meanwhile you know a good chunk of these same peoplehavezero issues with the fandom’s treatment of Rhea. Hate in the main character tags? Check! Having actually racist, sexist, and ableist takes made about her be so widespread as to be pretty much seen as canon at this point (and which are also put in her main tags)? Check! Hell, sometimes they’ll be the ones doing it!
I’m just fuckin’ stunned that people will just say this shit as though it isn’t the most entitled shit on earth. No, save for very few circumstances (like outright hate from my sis lmao), I’m not gonna not spell out Edelgard’s name. The fact that people want me and everyone else critical of her to do so for theirbenefit when they would never be fucked to even do the same for Rhea is absurd. The fact that a good fewwhoare critical of Edelgard feel the need to in order to avoid discourse - or worse, that they have encountered discourse because, again, they just spelled out her name when criticizing her - is a sad testimony to the absolute state of this fandom
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I get it, Tumblr search can be wonky sometimes. Unfortunately we don’t run the site. Here’s the healthy response to seeing something that upsets you in your fave’s tag:
1) Is this tagged? If tagged with something specific (e.g. [character]-critical), blacklist tag. If it’s in the general tag (e.g. [character] tag), block user. If you feel up to it, maybe politely drop a comment asking them not to tag hate with the main character tag and instead use another tag/don’t tag instead. Some people just genuinely don’t understand site etiquette and will happily change if you point it out to them
2) Is this not tagged? Block user
Congratulations, now you never need to see that person’s takes in your fave’s tags ever again
And they say the millennial generation is lazy and entitled.
Here’s a secret: it’s not OUR JOB to adapt to the market. It’s not OUR JOB to buy napkins and golf clubs and drive to the mall on the other side of town to make sure it doesn’t go out of business.
Did previous generations kill the horse and wagons after the car was invited? Did those lazy citizens kill the town crier by buying into that newfangled newspaper business?
What people want and are ready to spend their money on will change over time. Today we have different goals and different standards - like I will invite my friends over for dinner and instead of napkins I’ll put a roll of paper towels on the table. And my friends won’t clutch their pearls and hiss “you uncultured swine” at me, because we value that paper towels are cheap and efficient! Napkins may be pretty but some of them end up being unused, and I’ll have to throw them away after the dinner and it’s a fucking waste.
Did your mall end up as an empty husk outside of town because those pesky millennials buy all their clothes online now? You lucky son of a gun. Now you get to use your ~*IMAGINATION*~and repurpose that ugly windowless box into something actually useful. Why not a nice office space? (x)
Or how about you make the old stores into cute micro apartments? I WOULD LOVE TO LIVE IN ONE OF THESE! (x)
Are the stores fine but the parking lot empty because those cheap hipsters would rather take a bus or bike to the mall instead of buying a car like regular people? Do like they did in Seattle and turn it into a fucking beautiful water treatment facility and park.(x)
This thing collects storm-water runoff to create and provide nutrients to small pools and green areas. It works like a natural creek that ALSO filters out pollutants that would damage the salmon population! AS A MILLENNIAL I CAN SAY THAT THIS IS SO FUCKING UP MY ALLEY YOU HAVE NO IDEA. I WOULD GO TO THAT MALL, BUY A COFFEE AND GO OUT TO LOOK AT THE BIRDS.
Actual fucking plovers. When was the last time a parking lot did something for the environment except gathering upp more roadkill for the scavengers?
I could also go into why no-one is watching shitty sitcoms or boring movies because we have access to so much media that we can filter out the generic stuff that doesn’t appeal to us, but that is an essay in itself. We are extremely capable on spending it on media that speaks to us though (hey this is unrelated but did you know that Wonder Woman has passed 570M$ worldwide?)
TLDR: Market powers are entitled and used to people spending an ever-increasing amount of money on their shitty products. When this trend turns they are too unimaginative and lazy to do something about it so instead they’ll whine about how their former customers are “killing” them.
They can either DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT or spend the rest of their days crying into their surplus napkins.
Yes.
Also, the idolized lifestyle of the 1950s-2000s was unsustainable. The bubble burst, and my generation inherited a ruined world whose elders refuse acknowledge that their prosperity came at our expense.
So, Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 is somehow even worse than the leaks could have lead me to believe. The rare things the film does right are dwarfed by everything else it attempts to do. It’s a disappointment.
I read the leaks back in March, saw the camrip footage, and I naively thought, hey, maybe the overall film will be better than the few minutes we’ve seen so far. It isn’t. It’s frankly quite bad, but not in a “so bad it’s good” way. Just plain old bad.
Some parts of this film look nice. The scenes at the Third Village, for the most part, have some nice background art, the water looks especially nice, there are nice sequences in there in which things move nicely or look nice.
I’ve got many issues with the Third Village, but the film’s best scenes take place there. I wish the film had stayed there, just a village at the edge of the apocalypse, the headless Evas wandering in the distance, it’s kind of poetic.
It was nice to see Toji and Hikari again.
Hideaki Anno doing some Moyoco Anno product placement. As he should be.
It’s obvious they were experimenting with lots of techniques during the making of this film (watch the NHK documentary if you want to see how much of a shitshow the production was) and it’s nice that they’re trying things I guess.
Farmer Not-Rei is cute. Mortified Shinji sucks at fishing.
Penpen’s descendants are many and prosperous.
Part of the flashback-alternate-thingy Asuka sequence looks interesting, it’s nothing we didn’t already know but I enjoyed that brief moment.
Utada Hikaru.
The money it made will be used for other animation projects, so that’s neat.
That’s it.
The Bad:
It’s something Akihiro Koyama pointed out in their review (translated by the great @ngedaily, which I came across thanks to qmisato , thank god for her), butvillages don’t work like that. The Third Village is a nice idea and all, but it’s very childish and doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. The film makes no mention of organisation outside of “WILLE gives us stuff so that we don’t die”.
We start with sort-of-creepy Not-Rei discovering the world around her (which, good) and then Poka Poka Rei is back, only she’s Born Yesterday this time, also she’s programmed to like Shinji for meta reasons I guess? Or maybe not? I am so done with that bullshit. What is that supposed to be? Pandering to shippers or something? Who cares about shipping in Evangelion? I never did.
There was no storyboard for that film. It shows, but not for the best.
The soundtrack is, for the most part, forgettable. Also, the audio mixing is bizarre.
The Ugly:
Some parts of this film look nice. Other parts look awful. A lot of parts. They look like they’re unfinished, like the art direction isn’t good enough to make a coherent-looking film, or cuts haven’t been checked and corrected properly. The character art looks off more often than it should. The animation is very inconsistent, which is concerning for a theatrical release.
It’s nice that they tried lots of techniques for that film. Shame the results are very mixed and they tend to be bad. I don’t mind GNR Anna Anaconda all that much, but the white headless bodies look like the most default asset ever. In general, the conspicuous CGI doesn’t look otherwordly, it looks like garbage. Not “intentionally artistically out of place” but “straight up terrible” and boy oh boy is it terrible. The MOCAP Eva fights are straight out of Ultraman, but it looks incredibly goofy and almost amateurish, it has neither the look or the feel of EVA.
There’s that one sequence in the Third Village when Asuka attempts to force-feed Shinji and they’re trying to do something with camera angles and so they’re 3D models, I think? It looks terrible, it kind of gave me a headache. I get what they were trying to make but it doesn’t work.
The characters are barely characters at all. Ritsuko, Misato? Who are they? The characters we spend the most time with aren’t made to be that interesting. At all. Nothing interesting is done with any of them. I wish pink-haired WILLE girl whose name I already forgot and Sakura had successfully shot Shinji.
Some really clunky expository dialogue that makes no sense coming out of the characters’ mouths within the diegesis of the film. It feels like this was written by children.
All the technobabble and pseudophilosophical bullshit is just so much. I zoned out and stopped caring about any of that. Then it was just regular Instrumentality again but even more, only this time with Gendo, and it added nothing of value to the character and felt extremely out of place considering what the previous films had been about. It was just stupidly written and stupidly put on screen. That’s supposed to be the big stake of the film and I couldn’t be bothered to care.
There’s some Naruto bullshit now because fuck you. What do you mean this was never introduced beforehand and it’s coming out of nowhere? Wheeeeee!
All that stupid tasteless gross fanservice that adds absolutely nothing to the story and clashes with the mood of absolutely all the scenes they’re in. Some really fucking stupid blocking choices just to shove anime butts and boobs at the viewer’s face. All that Asuka and Mari fanservice was so awful. Who is that even for? The answer is “nonces” btw.
Ken-Ken. All of… that. I don’t even want to process that. It’s just so much. I hated every second of it. Made me want to stop watching altogether.
I like meta. This is called disappearing up your own ass, though. It’s incredibly ham-fisted, with the worst namedrop possible. It could have worked, had things been done competently. They weren’t done competently, and so it doesn’t work.
It’s a story about hope… The hope that one day you’ll become an adult, that is, a salaryman, and meet Moyoco Anno a gorgeous gal with big boobs of your own, also you should be having children. How much money did Abe pay you for that, Hideaki? You hypocrite. You don’t even have children of your own and you want to lecture us about that?
It’s a bad film. Anno directed a bad, uninteresting film, Khara made a bad film, it’s just bad and there isn’t much more to it than that. If you haven’t watched it yet, skip it, it’s not worth your time. Watch Shin Godzilla instead, that’s much better.
Richie and Eddie both teach the same grade, Richie’s class is one half of the students, Eddie’s class is the other
Eddie thinks Richie doesn’t take things serious enough because he’s always goofing off with his kids, but they love him and he’s actually really good, Eddie realizes
Like he’ll see Richie playing kickball and shit with his class on the playground and his kids think his shitty voices are hilarious
And Eddie is like …. hmm
And Richie loves how passionate Eddie is about everything … he usually goes out of his way to schedule ‘accidental’ run-ins with Eddie in the teacher’s lounge and cafeteria just so he has an excuse to talk to him
And they usually wind up sitting by each other during staff meetings and shit because they’re both snarky af and can whisper shit to each other
Richie always wears dorky-patterned button-up shirts with the sleeves rolled up and you better bet that Eddie’s checking out those forearms like
Myra is another teacher at the school and the rest of the staff acts like Eddie and Myra are the Jim and Pam of the school but Eddie is like ((leave me ALONE))
Richie finds out from other teachers that Eddie and Myra are supposedly a thing so he gets all ):
But then Eddie complains about all of it to him later and he’s all (: again
One time Eddie is making photocopies in the teeny copy station in the teacher’s lounge and Richie needs to reach something on the shelf above it so he just leans right against Eddie like ‘sorry lol’ and Eddie can’t b r e a t h e
One time Richie invites Eddie over one night to “work on lesson plans” but then when Eddie comes over it’s just Richie sitting at the dinner table with like candles and wine and shit like [:
Their classes have friendly rivalries and will often go against each other in dodgeball and kickball and stuff
During one of the games Eddie is casually like, “if my kids win, you owe me dinner” and Richie is like “well if mine win, you owe me” and that’s how they go on their first date
I know we’re all in love with Steven Grant and understandably so but Marc “I sought out the daughter of the man I died trying to save and then couldn’t tell her the truth bc I fell in love with her but then I had to leave her to save her from this moon god who’s got me in a lifetime contract and I hated myself so much for leaving her that I was willing to go dormant and let my nicer alter live the rest of our life oh and I went out of my way to protect my system from my superhero life and even bought steven a new fish when I accidentally killed his so that he could keep working his cute job at the museum and be none the wiser” Spector is truly one of the most tragic characters I have ever laid my eyes on and I want to hug him so badly even though I know he’d probably spit on me for trying
I get the McDanno hysteria - I really do - the looks, the carguments, the touches, the language - but they really are the biggest goofs around.
Also - who doesn’t love a Tol & Smol when the Tol is a border collie and the Smol is angry?
2. Every car used in a crime has been reported stolen that morning.
Seriously - how much car theft is there on O’ahu? EVERY crime car has been either stolen or rented using fake IDs. Also - above picture just highlights Point One. GOOFS!
3. If you want to fake your death - go to O’ahu.
A never ending list of dead but not dead characters - honestly, can no-one stay dead?
SPOILER ALERT - just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last 10 years.
4. This woman is a BADASS and deserved her own show.
Kono Kalakaua does it all - deadly sniper, mean right hooks, fight-ending roundhouse kicks, rugby tackles like a freight train, serious hand to hand combat skills - all while looking like an international model with a killer body, an thousand watt smile and the softest heart (after McGarrett’s) on the team. And I thank the ‘verse for her allergy to sleeves - in O’ahu it’s ‘suns out, guns out’ all the time.
5. These women deserved so much more than they got - more airtime, better storylines and a wardrobe full of kickass appropriate shoes.
I get that the show is all about the boys - but these female characters had the potential to be more than just pretty scenery.
6. This kid was awesome and I definitely wanted to see her and Grace hang out for the next 10 years.
7. Speaking of kids - all of the love for this.
Steve McGarrett - 6′1′’ Navy SEAL & complete marshmallow when it comes to children…all the feels.
you’ve got a whole life ahead of you. i cannot count on my fingers how many times you are going to look up at the sunset and smile, feeling oh, so warm. there are days when you are going to feel so unconditionally loved in the presence of people you deserve and who deserve you. you are going to be recklessly loved and hopeful. you’ve got days of peace ahead of you, there will be good things. but please realize there will be tears. there will be confusion and fear. you may even be experiencing some of that darkness now. this darkness, which inevitably will appear, is not a sign that your life is bad. this darkness is just an obstacle. it’s something that tries to turn your eyes away from the bright days to be had. keep your eyes towards the sky, keep your heart towards the love. keep going, better days are ahead.
btw being excessively nonconfrontational is NOT a positive trait. it does not mean u are “too nice” or just too kind to hurt people, it means u have a problem communicating and you need to work on it.
There are people in the notes saying that the alternative reason is that they’re doing it because of trauma and i gotta say that
1) same. I did have this same problem and reason for doing it.
2) this is not actually an alternate reason. You guys also have a problem communicating and while you can trace exactly WHY you have trouble communicating that doesn’t mean it’s okay to treat everyone like they’re potentially your former abuser and that you DO still need to work on this.
‘This behavior comes from trauma’ and ‘This behavior is harmful to you, to others and to your relationships with others’ are two truths that can co-exist, and that do co-exist quite frequently.
The Curse of Lucifer: Plausible Ideas with Poor Execution
Season 6 spoilers below.
Before I start, I want to make it clear that I am in no way saying that “Plausible Ideas with Poor Execution” applies to every single plot point in Lucifer. It doesn’t. If it did, I wouldn’t watch it. But this is an issue that, in my mind, has plagued some of the show’s storylines, including those in S6.
A prime example of this is Chloe’s betrayal in S4. It’s totally feasible to me that she would react the way she did. But a lot of fans found it unbelievable after everything she and Lucifer had been through together, and as a result, the character received a lot of hate for it, and I mean a lot. The reason? Because the writers failed to set it up properly.
Kinley’s manipulation of Chloe was inadequate, to say the least. Suggesting that Lucifer doesn’t lie is the biggest lie of all is excellent, but the rest of it? A book which Chloe herself points out is circumstantial evidence, and…? There were options that would have been far more convincing to the audience - involving Trixie and playing on Chloe’s instincts as a mother, for example. S4 was a tight season with only 10 episodes, but the issue was never extra time. It was what we were shown in the scenes that we got.
Which is exactly the problem we have with S6. So let’s move on to three things about that finale, shall we?
1. Lucifer and Chloe had a choice.
Lucifer chooses his daughter’s wishes over his own desire to stay on Earth with Chloe and raise her. A beautiful and poetic parental sacrifice… or it would have been, if not for the way it was handled.
How to make it seem like your character had a choice? Don’t have them make it under duress. Here’s Lucifer’s side of that conversation with Rory: “Rory, no! I’ll miss your childhood. I’ll miss your life! Please… No. Please don’t do this. Don’t. I can’t! Don’t MAKE ME do this. I can’t.”
Do they need to show how desperately Lucifer doesn’t want to leave them? Yes. But having him beg her not to makehim is entirely the wrong way to go about it if you want the audience to come away with the impression he had any choice in the matter. By including those two words, they left the fandom completely divided on this issue. (And I mean that literally - there was a poll on Twitter which came out 50/50.)
And then there’s the fact they give Chloe no agency whatsoever. She merely stands there while Rory and Lucifer (if you go with the view that he had a choice) decide her future for her. The rest of her human life is considered nothing more than a blip, without any thought to how time is perceived by mortals. One desperate look at Chloe from Lucifer, and one nod in return from her, would have included her in the conversation. Instead, she is left out of the equation entirely, as though it’s assumed that because she’s a mother, her choice is automatic.
There is definitely an argument to be made that they could have changed their minds afterwards. But Rory knew what she was doing when she had Lucifer give his word. We’ve only seen Lucifer break his word once, and that was when he thought he was putting Chloe in danger. This time, by breaking it, he thinks he would be putting the Rory he knows in danger of disappearing. Which leads me on to…
2. Rory doesn’t want to change
I think we can all understand this. How many of us would want to be erased? Sure, I can give you reasons aplenty as to why I think Rory should have sacrificed herself, but that’s not the point of this post. The point is, the reason Lucifer and Chloe do as she asks is because she wants to stay as she is. But the writers make that difficult for some parts of the fandom to understand, because outside of being an angsty teenager, her character is barely established at all.
Here’s what we know about Rory:
1. She’s older than she looks. Despite being written as an angry 15 year old, she’s actually older than 20. It’s not until the end of the show that it’s revealed she’s between 40-50 years old.
2. She likes her cool wings, because they remind her of her mom.
3. She loves and idolises her mom.
4. She is angry at and hates Lucifer enough that she self-actualised time travel to come back and kill him. His disappearance “ruined her life.”
So why should the audience care about her enough to prioritise her wishes over Chloe and Lucifer’s happiness? She’s a brand new character, and we know almost nothing about her. She’s 50 years old. What kind of life does she have? Does she have a career, a partner, passions, hobbies, other than liking to drive her dad’s car really fast?
Instead of making it clear why Rory doesn’t want to change, the writers are more successful in making it seem like she has a childhood she would want to change, especially after seeing how happy her mom is with Lucifer.
This isn’t helped by the focus not being on Rory changing, and far more on her desire for Lucifer to help souls in Hell (more on this later). She gets one throwaway line on the subject: “That you won’t change me!” I won’t lie, the scene is so hectic that I actually missed it the first time around. It wasn’t until later, by reading interviews, that I realised this was supposed to be the main motivation for the decision.
Finally, it’s made clear in the season that Rory doesn’t know how time travel works. In one moment, she can’t reveal the future in case anything changes. In the next, she’s not only telling people what happens, but also saying the future is set and nothing can be changed.
So when Rory says about her changing, she actually has no idea if that will be the case. Lucifer is already set in a universe where if reality is changed, the core of people remains the same. As was stated in the AU episode, they make the same choices, have the same passions. The audience knows this, and it makes the idea harder to swallow.
3. Lucifer wouldn’t have realised his calling without Rory travelling back in time
If Rory never travels back, then she never brings Dan to Earth, giving Lucifer a chance to unintentionally help him to Heaven. He also never helps Rory, meaning he never reaches the conclusion that he wants to help free souls of their guilt.
Except… by the end of episode 3, the writers already have Lucifer halfway there. Hell, the beginning is established at the end of season 5, with Lucifer talking about how unjust the situation is. He helps Mr. SOB get to Heaven by taking him to the source of his guilt. He is actively trying to find a way to help Dan when we kick off season 6. By episode 3, he is investigating the loop of Jimmy Barnes to try and find a way to help him. Has he succeeded yet? No. But he is working his way towards it, and it does his character an injustice to say that he wouldn’t have gotten there without Rory.
All it would have taken was one conversation with Maze for him to realise why putting Dan in his own kind of purgatory wasn’t working. Or further therapy and discussion on the subject with Linda. There are many, many ways for him to get there, with just a little help.
In order to sell the idea that the loop has to happen, and that Rory has to be there for him to understand his calling, she needed to be far more instrumental in the process.
In conclusion:
Do I like the end of S6? No, I think anyone who follows my Twitter account already knows that. But perhaps I could have accepted it more if what they were trying to achieve was presented more effectively.
A clear choice made by a parent to save the future child they have fallen in love with, who in return is sacrificing a childhood where she could have been raised by both her parents, so that her father can help other people.
But that’s not what we got, and it’s one of the reasons the fandom will forever be at odds over it.
The “If you were over 6 feet tall and living in Wellington in 2001 you didn’t have a choice my dude” is killing me, like I’m just picturing the LOTR casting directors running around Wellington with a measuring tape, black-bagging tall guys and shoving them into vans.
“You’re a Lord of the Rings extra now.”
“No! Please! I have a family! I’m supposed to work the closing shift at the Pita Pit tonight!”
“You serve at the pleasure of the Steward of Gondor now.”
I’m rereading Les mis again, and one thing I didn’t notice on my first reads is just how Militarized every single town is? Even in scenes where characters are just going about their ordinary day there are always soldiers in the street, and everyone’s always mentioning prison, and the police are always there, and there are always traces of the recent wars all around—
No matter what the characters are doing, the threat of state violence is always There. The threat of the military and police and government is always hanging over them.
Like in Fantine’s chapters with Tholomyes! As the four couples are going on their dates, there are constant references to how “Everything is Fine Now Because the Monarchy has Finally Put Down those Nasty Rebels and is Back in Power Again.”As the couples flirt and play, there are gendarmes in the street and people singing rowdy songs about the return of the king. There’s an entire intro chapter about the year’s historical context, and the rest of the chapters contains sprinkles of anecdotes about the new regime.
Hugo draws what I feel is a pretty explicit parallel between Tholomyes and the new King. We’re told that is fine in Paris because King Louis is on the throne: and we’re told that everything is idyllic in Fantine’s friend group because Tholomyes is its (quote) “dictator” who leads in a way that obligates everyone to obey.
Of course in the end Everything is Not Fine and these dictators can’t actually be trusted to rule over their people, and are going to especially hurt marginalized people like Fantine.
But it’s not just this one subplot obviously, it’s Every Single One. The threat of military violence is the background noise of the entire book.
Montreuil-sur-Mer where Valjean becomes mayor is literally a garrrison town for the military; Paris is always swarming with police and gendarmes; Marius’s story centers on his changing feelings about his Bonapartist soldier father; the Thenardiers live at the Waterloo Inn and constantly go on about Monsieur Thenardier’s military history; like the threat of the military/police is always there in the background of every scene, long before it comes to a head at the barricade.
One of the subplots that illustrates this best is Everything that Happens In Digne after Valjean is released from prison.
Valjean shows his yellow passport to the mayor and is immediately followed by a gendarme before he heads to an inn. His passport causes every inn to refuse service to him. After he asks a kind-looking peasant man at home with his family if he can stay at his house for the night, the man pulls out a gun and threatens to murder him. He attempts to get temporary housing at a prison, which refuses him.
We’re later given an explanation for what the townspeople think and say about their police force, and why they’re so determined to beat Valjean away. We’re told that the townspeople say:
“The police was very badly organized, moreover, because there was no love lost between the Prefect and the Mayor, who sought to injure each other by making things happen.It behooved wise people to play the part of their own police, and to guard themselves well, and care must be taken to duly close, bar and barricade their houses, and to fasten the doors well.”
Which is a terrifying philosophy that we see throughout the book? The reason everyone is so cruel to Valjean is because in a world where everything is militarized, ordinary people have decided to become unofficial cops. It’s like they believe the problem with their society is that there aren’t enough police/soldiers on the street—even though we see police and soldiers on Every Page.
There’s something terrifyingly familiar about the mentality that looks at cities swarming with police and says “the way to fix this is to Add More Police. Or for regular citizens to Do Police Work themselves!”
And I feel like that tension, that constant pervasive threat of government violence that never goes away because ordinary people are actively supporting these institutions too, is such a tragically relevant part of the book.
1. I can see how people’s names and the cities and the countries are spelled.
2. I don’t miss any words, so everything they say makes sense.
3. I get to know what background noises and conversations are.
4. The descriptions of the noises people make are freaking awesome. Ex: splutter, grunt, chuckles.
5. I can see who says what.
6. I don’t have to have the volume super loud so I can hear the dialogue, and I don’t blow my eardrums out because the ambient noises and music is SO FREAKING LOUD.
so I was cooking a deeply disappointing dinner and singing d*sney songs, as one does, and I realised:
where the fuck is the JoeNicky Beauty and the Beast au???
Obviously, Joe is Belle and Nicky is the Beast. But IMAGINE Keane as Gaston, storming the castle to kill Nicky and take Joe away from him. Merrick is Le Fou, Kozak is the mental asylum creep.
OH Booker is Maurice. Dead on. Joe swaps places with him so Booker can return to his sons, only he can’t convince anyone of what happened to Joe, he’s too well-known as a deserter and a drunk.
Andy and Quynh are Lumiere and Cogsworth. Don’t question me.
I can’t help but imagine Beast!Nicky as being more bird-like than Adam (don’t look at me like that, he’s beaky and I love him), longer in the face and sharper in the claws. Still with those big eyes though, obviously, how else will Joe know him when he transforms back? Aside from (LITERALLY everything up to and including his butt. Just with less claws and fur and feathers obvs)
Really, what I want is Joe in a flowing white shirt being gently cradled in Nicky’s claws while Nicky looks at him like he hung the moon, and then later I want Nicky “dying” in his arms having saved him from Keane as Joe weeps on his chest and tells him he loves him, is that too much to ask?
Extremely important update:
Nile is Chip.
Concept: Lykon is the enchanter who puts Nicky under the curse in the first place
any other “binary” trans people out there constantly annoyed that cis people automatically just assume ur gonna ascribe to their idea of gender because you call urself by language they think they recognize like yes I am a man but Not in the way ur thinking that’s for goddamn sure
like I am a man and you are a man but you see ur gender as one option of two or sometimes three and I see my gender as an untethered point in a vast constellation of infinite variables we are not the fucking same
laura jane grace said it best when she said “people think being trans is about jumping from one box to the other when really it’s about saying fuck a box”
Okay, SNW has done what I once deemed impossible. It’s gotten my invested in a T’Pring/Spock relationship, though not how you might expect.
It’s clear the two of them care deeply for one another; it’s clear that they’re trying to make it work, yet they’re simply just two different people with two very different lives. There’s love there, but its literally two ships passing each other in the night over and over again.
I also absolutely adore the glimpses we get into T’Pring’s character. She works with convicts and deviants; for a Vulcan she’s almost shockingly open to the emotions of not only herself, but of others. Yet she isn’t perfect. Spock’s humanity is something she constantly points out; it’s almost like she’s bitter about it. “If you didn’t have this part of you, we could love each other completely.”
And then Spock! In trying so hard to hide his human side he’s bringing out right in the middle of their relationship!
It’s just overall an exceptionally brilliant way of showing how two characters can be completely made for one another, yet at the same time absolutely not. There’s love there, but it isn’t easy. It isn’t Spock and Kirk meshing with one another as simple as breathing. T’Pring and Spock are fighting so hard for one another, but it just isn’t meant to be. Yet culture and family insists it must be. Until they resist, at least.
