Trauma and other things love can't fix

Yes, this is a seemingly negative title, but I promise, this discussion is going to be mostly positive. Although:

Warning! Mentions of forced prostitution

Spoilers for the novels.

The duology Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo is about to get its own part in a TV show, which I am very excited about because I greatly enjoyed the novels. For everybody who has no idea what I’m talking about, the novels take place in a fantasy world where Bardugo’s other series take place as well. Instead of focusing on the power struggle and war in Ravka, fantasy-Russia, however, these novels follow young street gang members in Ketterdam, fantasy-Amsterdam, as they commit a near-impossible heist in fantasy-Finland (Six of Crows) and deal with the resulting consequences (Crooked Kingdom).

The leader of the operation, Kaz Brekker, is a ruthless criminal, cruel and seemingly without mercy. He is respected and feared and appears to care about nothing except money. His right-hand woman, Inej Ghafa, is an acrobat and spy, who joined the gang to pay off her debts after they freed her from forced prostitution.

Despite his cold and callous exterior (the most positive thing anyone might hear from him is that they’re useful), Inej (along with the group’s sharpshooter Jesper) is in love with him. That Kaz cares more than he lets on - and more about her in specific - becomes obvious when Inej gets wounded early on.

The novels are fast-paced, action-heavy and dense in plot. Character development, nevertheless, is communicated very well through the changing point-of-view with every chapter. Thus, the reader is privy to every character’s thought processes and emotions which provides ample opportunity to get to know the characters, their relationships towards each other, and their growth and change.

By the end of Crooked Kingdom, it is clear that Inej’s love for Kaz isn’t and has never been unrequited*. Due to Kaz’ role, circumstances and character, however, he didn’t acknowledge these feelings even to himself. But it’s all good now, right? We did some growing and some changing and things happened that prompted us to confront our feelings for each other, so we can be together now, right?

Wrong. Because mutual feelings and mutual acknowledgement of those feelings does not erase years of trauma.

As the reader finds out, Kaz’ stoicism and style - he wears clothes that cover all parts of his body except his head - isn’t just carefully curated to evoke fear and respect, it is also necessary for him to cope with the world. When he was a child, he and his brother were tricked out of their money by con-artists and forced to live on the street. Consequently, they were vulnerable to an illness sweeping the city at that time. His brother died and he was presumed dead and thrown in with the rest of the corpses on islands. To survive he had to use his dead brother’s corpse as a float to get back to the city. This experience, naturally, left him with deep psychological scars and as a result he isn’t able to touch another human’s skin without it triggering a paralyzing flashback.

Inej lived a happy life with her parents’ traveling circus until she was kidnapped by slavers and forced into prostitution. In addition the owner of the establishment was cruel and regularly beat her for perceived misdeeds. And while Inej is more free with the gang than she was before, the gang leader technically still owns her, a fact that doesn’t change until the end of Crooked Kingdom.

They try to touch and kiss, but their respective traumas prevent them from even enjoying it. They recognize that while their bond is strong and their love for each other deep that they both need to heal and recover some more before anything resembling a romantic relationship is possible and healthy for either of them.

And that’s. That’s just so good and important. Because often in media love is presented as this cure-all which overcomes all obstacles. And sure that is a romantic staple and a beautiful thought but in real life the fact that you love each other sometimes isn’t enough for a romantic relationship to be healthy and good. As someone who lives with mental illness this is especially poignant. Sometimes a romantic relationship isn’t what you need, even if you might want it, and might even be counter-productive to your recovery process, which, nevertheless, does not diminish the love you feel.

Satori over and out




*Jesper, in the meantime, found a new love in merchant’s son and explosion expert Wylan Van Eck. They end up happy and living together in the mansion that they threw Wylan’s asshole father out of and help each other through their difficulties, which is also very good.

“This ends when I grant them my forgiveness, not the other way around.” - how a character’s backstory can improve a show

So. I’ve just finished Black Sails. I know, I know, the show’s been over for a while now, but only now did I watch the last season. When I started watching Black Sails back in 2015, I was mostly put off by the violence and the characters whose actions seemingly didn’t make any sense (I actually mentioned it in a post on my other blog once). But fans of the show generally agree that the first season is the weakest and you just have to get through it to get to a truly brilliant show. And what do you know? They are completely and utterly correct.

Spoilers, of course, for all of Black Sails!

The last two seasons in particular have such brilliant writing, acting, and cinematography. And I could probably go on and on about the fascinating parallels, themes, character constellations/developments and much more, but what I’m here to talk about today is how the backstory they gave Captain Flint (Toby Stephens) made his actions and words so much more meaningful and intense and emotional and the show as a whole so much better.

Captain Flint is known for being the pirate who buried the treasure chest of riches hidden on an island that sparks the whole of the novel Treasure Island. (Several other characters from the book appear as well, such as Long John Silver, Isaak Hands, and Billy Bones, as well as historical figures like Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny.) There isn’t much known about Captain Flint in the novel. He was a ruthless pirate, he accumulated a great deal of wealth, he did not trust anyone, one day he died.

Black Sails fills that gap with a rich backstory that makes Flint a complex and tragic character. Because before he was Captain Flint, ruthless pirate, he was James McGraw, an officer of the royal navy. He fell in love with Thomas Hamilton, the son of a prestigious English family, and was happy for a short while until his love was taken away from him. This experience led him to turn against England as a whole, a nation that not only robbed him of his love but also declared his love to be monstrous and vile.

“They took everything from us. And then they called me a monster. The moment I sign that pardon, the moment I ask for one, I proclaim to the world that they were right. This ends when I grant them my forgiveness, not the other way around.”

Instead of accepting this designation, Flint becomes a pirate intend on avenging what he believes to be his lover’s death and punishing England for calling him a monster for loving someone. His ruthlessness in his fight against the crown, consequently, is much more relatable and understandable. It is informed not by greed, but by pain.

When he talks about being painted as an evil villain, it is obvious that it does not only refer to his actions as a pirate but also to his sexual orientation. His words, therefore, hold more weight since his actions could certainly be seen as villainous, his loving a man, however, is definitely not. Not only does this make his character much more sympathetic - as he was driven into piracy by bigoted and hateful people - and complex - because we as an audience can understand where his violence comes from - but also gives the narrative as a whole a consistent theme.

“They paint the world full of shadows and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgements. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn’t true. We can prove that it isn’t true. In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom in the dark once someone has illuminated it. And who has been so close to doing it as we are right now?... All this will be for nothing. We will have been for nothing. Defined by their histories, distorted to fit into their narrative until all that is left of us are the monsters in the stories they tell their children.”

In the last two seasons the pirates ally themselves with a slave revolt. The struggle for Nassau has moved from being solely about the pirates’ self-interest to an almost revolutionary effort against the English oppressors. The treasure chest is no longer simply wealth, it is intimately connected with freedom. Literal freedom for the former slaves, freedom to live on one’s own terms and not on terms defined by a government that despises you for others.

What Flint refers to in his speech quoted above is so much more meaningful and emotional because it comes from a gay character. Him condemning the English’s judgements of the world would ring hollow if it only referred to his piracy and related activities, but because it also refers to his experiences as a gay man, the possibility that lies in the darkness, is the possibility of a new way to live life free from persecution.

I haven’t even talked about Anne Bonny and Max and how their relationship made me cry more than once and how women actually get to do things and have agency and be people. It’s a good show, is what I’m saying, and their decision to include lgbt themes is a decisive factor in that.

Satori over and out

Corporate greed and fan apathy

aka why I couldn't care less about things I used to love

Despite the general title, this is going to be a rather personal examination of my feelings towards big franchises I used to love. It is, however, still a more general condemnation of the detrimental effects capitalism has on the industry.

Look, I'm not going to pretend I'm not a sucker for these big franchises. I watched Game of Thrones as soon as it came out, buying two months of a streaming service I didn’t need just so I’d be able to see it immediately, I go to the midnight screenings of new Star Wars movies and I have watched a lot of MCU movies twice (or more) in the theater. I spend money on merchandise, go to exhibits and conventions. I loved everything to do with them. Note the tense.

Now, I don’t have to tell you that people are disappointed with GoT’s season 8 (it went so far that over one and a half million people signed a petition to remake it and most comments underneath a teaser for new GoT content were ‘I don’t even want this anymore’). And the opinions on The Last Jedi diverged drastically, so it’s probably no surprise that I’m on the fence with that (and didn’t even watch Solo yet). I might, however, do have to tell you that I heavily disliked both Infinity War and Endgame (Endgame even more than the other) and that their implications actually taint the whole of the MCU’s future for me. Personally I was never what one could call a Harry Potter fan, so I can’t really speak to that, but what I gather from friends who very much are Harry Potter fans and from youtubers I regularly watch, they feel similar about the newest Fantastic Beasts movie.

I know I’m not alone with my opinion and talking to people who feel the same way, I tried to examine where exactly my frustration comes from and what fosters this almost-resentment with franchises that used to be so dear to me.

The very simple and obvious reason would be that they are just not very good anymore. And while that is definitely true for the last GoT seasons as enough people have already elaborated on much more comprehensively than I ever could (see e.g. Lindsay Ellis' wonderful part one and part two examination), and I personally believe this to be the case for both Infinity War and Endgame, many people did credibly praise The Last Jedi (people also did praise Endgame but you know, that’s just not understandable for me). More importantly, however, a lack of quality hasn’t stopped me from enjoying the movies before. Some of the more mediocre Marvel movies are some of my favorites and I really do like the Star Wars prequel trilogy very much. Some of the bad writing that would be GoT’s downfall already plagued season six and season six is one of my favorites.

Flaws that didn’t bother me before, now made movies unwatchable. I didn’t even enjoy Spiderman: Far From Home very much and I was looking forward to it. It’s not very bad, it really isn’t and I was still unhappy with it. And I came out of Thor: the Dark World loving it, mind you. What is different now?

Well, for one thing, Disney owns Star Wars as well as Marvel and Disney does everything in its power to make as much money as possible while exploiting everyone they can. Disneyland entry is 149 $ now. That’s horrendous. They force movie theaters to pay more money for the privilege to show their movies. They put Endgame back in the theater with one (1) new scene just so they could break the previous record (held by the way by another of their properties). When I heard that news, I was so angry that I wished there was some way to get the money back I already payed to watch Endgame in theater. Not to mention the stuff that lead to Spiderman almost leaving the MCU. And I’m singling out Disney here, because they are such a vast and powerful company with ever decreasing competition and an ever increasing monopoly, but almost all of these companies producing movies and shows put their priorities in making as much money as possible.

Yes, I do realize that companies wanting to make money is an understandable standard that is utterly naturalized. What bothers me, however, is how obvious it has become that creativity and the passion for movie-making are only afterthoughts if that. They didn’t put Endgame back in theaters because the deleted scene changes the whole movie, they literally said it was to make more money. The ‘live-action’ Lion King has no new and interesting elements that would justify a remake, hell, the cgi doesn’t even look all that good. It did make good money, though, so there’s your justification.

People will watch these movies/shows despite vocally complaining about it, the companies know that. I am not exempt from this, not at all. Like I said, I saw Endgame twice, even though I already disliked Infinity War and knew I wouldn’t like whatever they come up with. These companies know how to hook their audiences. With nostalgia, as is the case with Disney’s live-action remakes and Harry Potter, with the promise of a satisfying end, as was the case with GoT and is currently the case with Star Wars, or with fanservice banking on fan devotion, what comic book movies and SW anthology movies rely on.

They do just enough to keep audiences voluntarily paying for more but not an iota beyond that.

When I can almost feel the studio’s desire to make as much money as possible dominating everything surrounding the production while I watch their end-product, this is where they lose me.

Sure, this feeling is less than concrete but it does have tangible symptoms that can be found in popular complaints about big franchises. Movies tend to follow a “winning formula” which makes them appear very similar in structure, character dynamics and optics. Studios play it safe which is the reason that most movies nowadays are prequels, sequels, remakes or adaptations as those are already proven to be successful. Shock moments and plot twists work to keep audiences engaged, so producers put as many of them as they can fit into a story if it makes sense or not and spoilers are treated as vicious crimes and movie-ruining in each and every case (hate to break it to you, but if a spoiler utterly ruins a story, it’s not a very good story). Studios produce so much content of a franchise that is proven to bring in money that audiences can feel overwhelmed or lose interest. Producers put in as much fanservice as possible where it makes sense and where it doesn't.

These are strategies that help the studios make the maximum amount of money, sure, as was yet again proven with Endgame, but all these strategies are also to the detriment of creativity in the industry in general and to the detriment of the quality of the specific products in particular, which in turn leads to people who were loyal fans previously descending into a sort of apathy or resignation concerning new releases.

What I’m trying to say is, capitalism is ruining the movie industry like it ruins everything. Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk.

Satori over and out

 

P.S. Literally me:

 

Who is responsible for the apocalypse?

In post-apocalyptic fiction there’s always a reason for how the wastelands came to be. These reasons aren’t always obvious for the characters and maybe even the audience won’t know for sure what actually happened. Sometimes it might even make the scenario more threatening when the audience doesn’t know what exactly caused the apocalypse. The creators of these stories, however, have to know who or what is responsible, otherwise their vision might be inconsistent.

In the following I will present 5 theories about who or what caused the apocalypse, complete with the associated characteristics (it is important to keep in mind that this ‘apocalypse’ I will be talking about, is always a human apocalypse, the definition of ‘post-apocalyptic’ here means ‘after the destruction of human civilization’):

Source: imdb

1. a virus

- examples: most of the zombie apocalypses, 28 Days Later, Planet of the Apes, Maze Runner, Oryx and Crake

- characteristics: The apocalypse didn’t come suddenly and instead was accompanied by a continuous demise of civilization that the characters suffered through. There were and still are efforts to find a cure. Remnants of the civilization breakdown are everywhere as well as the infected. The infected typically are a grave danger and represent some form of corrupted humanity.

Source: filmstarts.de

2. nature

- examples: Hell, 2012

- characteristics: This genre could also be called ‘nature strikes back’. Movies like this often - though not always - have ecological backgrounds. Fact is, a natural disaster destroyed the world as we know it, be it solar flares (like in Hell), or the turning of poles (like in 2012 - even though this is an apocalyptic movie and does not deal with the ‘post’). The world has now become hostile to humans but not to nature per se. In fact, the longer this ‘post’ continues, the more nature can be seen thriving. This is, often, to show - drastically - humanity’s influence on the planet.

Source: filmstarts.de

3. humans/war

- examples: The 100, Fallout, Mad Max

- characteristics: Humans are a very popular trigger of the apocalypse due to the genre’s preoccupation with criticizing current societal developments. Technically ‘a virus’ as well as ‘machines’ are often subclasses of ‘humans’ since humans often were the ones to design the virus and machines in question (technically even nature-apocalypses are sometimes facilitated by human negligence and/or direct influence like in Snowpiercer). What I mean here, however, is the destruction of the world through human war, often nuclear war. Nature is either dead, dying or hostile. There are bunkers and similar where people survived. Everybody not lucky enough to be in a bunker either evolved to live with the aftermath of the destruction or mutated.

Source: imdb

4. machines

- examples: Terminator, Matrix

- characteristics: In contrast to other post-apocalyptic wastelands that mostly lack electricity and anything that would need electricity due to the lack of power plants and the like, the wasteland of the machine-apocalypse is littered with active and working technology. Machines here are the enemy. There is a strict distinction between organic and artificial with organic being linked with good. Nature, here, is generally dead or dying as well. The possible thematic undercurrent is a criticism of humanity’s overreliance on technology.

Source: amazon

5. aliens

- examples: Falling Skies, The 5th Wave, A Quiet Place

- characteristics: Humans never had a chance. The extraterrestrials were more advanced and stronger and they won. Somehow, however, humans managed to survive like the cockroaches we are. For the future there are two options: either the humans succeed in their desperate attempt to turn this lost fight around or the earth is destroyed once and for all. This apocalypse, too, features more technology than others, brought by the alien invaders. Basically the only sub-genre of the post-apocalyptic movie where humans are completely free of blame.

I’m posting this now since it has been in my draft for so long that I don’t quite remember where I was going with this. So, now it is simply an enumeration of possible causes of apocalypses in media. If you have any additions, write me a message.

Satori over and out

Female Villain Archive 5: Dr. Olivia Octavius

(Source: https://marvel-movies.fandom.com/wiki/Olivia_Octavius)

Before I get into it, I have to say how incredible Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is in general. The story is great and uplifiting, the characters - especially Miles - are beautifully executed, the soundtrack is wonderful and the animation is outstanding. So it's not surprising that Into the Spider-Verse would have a fun female villain. 

Dr. Olivia Octavius (Kathryn Hahn) is the type of mad scientist that women rarely get to be. She's brilliant, she's ruthless, she's unapologetic and nevertheless maintains an affable facade. The fun thing about her is that we're introduced to her in a science video Miles watches in school, so she's obviously got some legitimate credibility in the science community she's in. When we first meet her in person, we already know that she works for Fisk but the degree to which she isn't only involved but spearheads his efforts becomes clear after a great reveal. Another fun thing about her is that she clearly does not care for Fisk's goals but only his money. She knows that people grabbed from another reality will always disintegrate painfully, but she doesn't tell him, accepting that Fisk's family will die before his eyes - again and again possibly - so that she can have her scientific advancements. What a deliciously dreadful person.

The Evil You Know

Warning! Mention of rape and child abuse

I recently listened to a horror podcast called The Magnus Archives (more on that in a different post) and its writing is brilliant, its narrative compelling and the way it builds horror and unease is amazing. But no matter how many upsetting eldritch creatures it introduces, how many creepy, disturbing and deeply unsettling stories it tells, nothing fucks me up like that one character's completely mundane backstory.

Part of the reason for my intense emotions, surely, is the fascinating way the podcast developed its characters, so that the backstory could take its full devastating effect, but another part of it is the phenomenon I want to talk about now: the evil we know is more terrifying.

We can easily see this phenomenon take shape in fandom spaces. While only very few people actually like Voldemort, for example, his evil is abstract in a grandiose genocidal way (though not without its clear real world counterpart). So while people generally don't like him, any dislike is (for the most part) impersonal in nature. Dolores Umbridge, on the other hand, is easily one of the most hated - if not THE most hated - characters in the Harry Potter franchise. And while misogyny might be, in this case, at least partially to blame, another reason is that the evil Umbridge represents is much more tangible for some people. A lot of people have had to deal with cruel and unfair teachers in their lives that made school a living hell. The emotions she invokes, therefore, are much closer to the audience' everyday lives.

A similar case can be found in Supernatural, where a large part of the fandom definitely likes some of the big bads the show has to offer. Lucifer, for example, who planned to kill all of humanity and hurt and murdered characters is actually pretty popular. What he does, is clearly fantastical in nature and, therefore, easy to ignore. The Winchesters' father, however, is markedly less popular, even though the show itself doesn't even position him as anything less than a tragic anti-hero. As a neglectful and at least emotionally abusive father, his misdeeds strike a chord with audience members, who might have their own difficult relationships with their fathers.

When Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton's actor in Game of Thrones) wondered why people were more upset about season 5's rape scenes than they were about the horrific torture earlier, he missed the point. Torture as shown in the show is clearly medieval and so far removed from anything any of the audience is likely to experience that, while it is upsetting to watch, it is not the same as rape since rape is a very real danger that people face in their everyday lives. 

Coming back to what I started out with: The Magnus Archives is full of wonderfully disturbing horror stories, featuring nightmare scenarios like wandering an empty world until your body gives out, being buried alive and unable to die, falling through an empty sky forever, being overtaken by a hive of worms and many more. And still, the worst I've felt while listening, is that one backstory that doesn't have any supernatural elements at all. Instead it's a father leaving the family when the mother gets sick and a mother who from then on starts hating the son forced to take care of her.

I've wondered why this is so much worse for me even though it lacks the classic horror elements. 

And now I think it's - at least partially - BECAUSE it lacks those elements. Its horror is real.

Satori over and out

Recommendation: 4 short stories of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017

Last year I bought the book The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 edited by Charles Yu. I have never read many short stories before and almost never for fun. That changed with my discovery of this book in one of our local stores. I enjoyed it immensely, not only because science fiction and fantasy are two of my favorite genres but also - and more importantly - because the stories collected where so varied and different from each other. It is still the case, that most novels that land on store shelves are written by white men. This is not to say that novels by white men aren't worthwhile or shouldn't be read or bought, far from it. It's just to say that reading stories from a variety of perspectives is good and fun since it not only broadens your horizon but also introduces you to ideas and themes and writing styles that you might not have read about before.

Anyway. Because this is my blog and I'd like to pretend that my opinion on things matters, I will recommend to you four of my favorite stories from the 2017 collection (I'm currently reading the 2016 collection and might do a recommendation for that as well). The recommendation is not based on any objective standard but rather on my own feelings and impressions. And anyway, I'd actually recommend reading the whole book because even though not every story resonated with me, they are all worthwhile.

1) My absolute favorite story of that collection is N.K. Jemisin's The City Born Great. It is high-key poetic and just made me feel very emotional. A homeless teenager living on the streets of New York meets a mysterious stranger who talks a lot of apparent nonsense about living cities and the role the teen still has to play. Its a both melancholic and passionate meditation on what makes a city, but at the same time it's a very human look into the everyday life of a teenager that has been cast out and away. All of this meshed with just a bit of cosmic horror to set the stage.

2) Catherynne M. Valente's The Future is Blue probably appeals to me because it's set in a bleak post-apocalyptic world whose protagonist goes about her day in a relentlessly optimistic way. In the future when the whole of earth is one big ocean a pocket of society lives on and in and with a swimming mountain of trash. The story is told piece by piece in flashback subchapters titled with insults people call the outcast protagonist who takes it all in stride because she knows that even the possiblity of hope is what keeps her society alive. Not only is the construction of the post-apocalyptic society wonderfully unique and imaginative (and utterly believable), the main character's thought and decision-making processes are a joy to read.

3) I like Everyone From Themis Sends Letters Home by Genevieve Valentine because it sets up a mystery that even after its conclusion keeps the story rolling. There are scientists on a research station going about their days, recording notes and mission reports and writing to friends, family members or superiors that they left at home. However, something's not quite right with either the station or the people and whatever it is, it's definitely going to be a problem in the future. Apart from enjoying the beautifully executed plot twist (if you can even call it that since it develops so organically), I greatly enjoy the story's themes of responsibility and consequences.

4) Brian Evenson's Smear is a quiet horror story that pulled me in and didn't let me go. There's a man on a ship and there's something wrong with it, he just has to figure out what it is and he'll be fine. I can't really say much more or I'll ruin the story for you which would be a shame, since its ominous narrative that feels like danger building is just very good. The ending, however, is what really sells it for me.

As you can see, these stories can be accessed on the internet, so you have a chance to enjoy them even without buying the book. If you are able to, though, buy the book, because it was very hard for me to pick just these few stories since they're all so very different and valuable.

Satori over and out