(or: I’m not sure Tom King knows just how bonkers what he wrote is and I don’t know what to do with that)
Batman/Catwoman concluded this past June, and I did not enjoy it, and it haunts me.
Just… when I read a story and what the author apparently thinks is happening does not align with the events on the page, I can’t help but feel some fascination. The final page, in B/C #12, is definitely the most dissonant:
What a romantic scene, the pin on a tale of love triumphant! If you ignore many of the events around it!!
I try not to be too much of a dick even about things I don’t like. Regardless of my opinion, Tom King wrote twelve dang issues interweaving three different time periods, so he put some measure of thought into it. So at the conclusion of my first read, when my reaction was “lol what,” I still thought maybe the spliced time periods were hiding something from me. That narrative tactic is typically used so that an event that happens in one period of time can directly comment on an event that occurs much earlier/later, and there was some of that in B/C, but its main effect was muddling the story. Plus I read it over the course of 17 months! Maybe I missed something, something that made it allllll come together.
So during my second read, like a sane person, I cut up all the panels and sorted them into the three different tracks. And then I read the story again chronologically, and this time my reaction was… *resoundlingly* “lol what.”
And I will explain why at length under the cut (with many many spoilers, as well as remarks on dismemberment and suicide).
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“Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”
— On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
girl typing a very specific question into google search bar, scrunching her face as she takes time to make sure she hasn't made any spelling errors, hitting enter, shaking her head as google only presents her with unhelpful websites that don't answer her query at all, moving her cursor back to the search bar and clicking on it so she can carefully write 'reddit' at the end, hitting enter again, sighing with relief as she finds a link to a reddit post asking the exact question she needed answered posted in a subreddit for a very niche topic, finally moving her cursor to click on the link, wondering why she didn't go straight to the subreddit earlier, only to be met with a deleted comment with a reply from the OP stating 'that was very helpful, thanks', sighing with frustration as she moves her cursor back to the search bar so she can copy the link and paste it into the wayback machine,
good things will happen 🧿
things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿
dark academia book list
The Secret History by Donna Tart
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman
A deadly Education by Naomi Novik
The Decay of Living by Oscar Wilde
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Dead Poets Society by Nancy H Kleinbaum
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
The Little Friend by Donan Tartt
Vicious by V. E. Schwab
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marissa Pessl
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Gentlemen and Players by Joan Harris
The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde
Maurice by E. M. Forster
A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde
Vita Nostra by Marina and Serhiy Dyachenko
Poems by Oscar Wilde
The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson
Ace of Spades by Fradiah Àbíke-Íyímídé
If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
The Lessons by Naomi Alderman
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Wilder Girls by Rory Powers
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
The Bellweather Revivals by Benjamin Wood
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Truants by Kate Weinberg
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
In the Woods by Tana French
The Atlas Six by Olivia Blake
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Love and Friendship by Jane Austen
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
Bunny by Mona Awad
These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee
How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao
The Ivies by Alexa Donne
For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing
The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky
Emma by Jane Austen
The Watsons by Jane Austen
The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino
The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter
The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring
Confessions by Kanae Minato
Truth Exercise by Susan Choi
We Wish You Luck by Caroline Zancan
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
The Basic Eight by Daniel Handle
Confessions by Kanae Minato
Lady Susan by Jane Austen
I love my mom.
I am risking nothing
I AM SORRY FOLLOWERS, I LOVE MY MOMMY
Will not risk.
sorry followers :(
good things will happen 🧿
things that are meant to be will fall into place 🧿
so i see a lot of people talking about how the asoiaf fandom treats it’s female characters today and i figured that i would give my two cents on it (also, it gives me a reason to procrastinate writing my history essay lmao).
first off, read this post by @maesterleia because they explained my exact thoughts better than i ever could.
female characters are treated are with a double standard compared to male character – which, unfortunately, is very typical in all fandoms but it seems to be taken to the extreme in asoiaf, a book series that does everything possible to make it’s characters as nuanced and shaded grey as possible. and while most of the male characters are analyzed with that in mind, every female character either must be a) a perfect woman that has never done or even think a wrong thing or b) an evil, scheming seductress who’s probably going to end up a worse war criminal than tywin lannister.
forget nuance, forget complexities of the human nature, forget being human – women are not allowed to be flawed here and if they are, they must be a villain. it’s like @maesterleia wrote in their post “Why is a female character having flaws seen as detrimental? Because this mindset is rooted in the idea that only villainous female characters are allowed to have flaws. Cersei, for example, can be dissected and analyzed critically because she’s on the villainous side of the narrative. She’s complex and sympathetic, but still largely classified as a villain (generally), and therefore, she is–according to this mindset–allowed to be flawed.”
it’s a ridiculous ideology and the cause of so many stupid and pointless fandom wars. the idea that a hero that happens to be female must be free of any flaws or arcs where they battle with their own morality when male characters like jon snow or robb stark is judged the same way makes no sense to me.
why isn’t jon judged for the way he called myrcella “insipid” for smiling at robb and being an eight year old girl or how he was classist and insensitive to his other night watch’s recruits in the beginning of agot the same way sansa was mean and insensitive to arya? why isn’t robb talked about descending into madness or dictatorship after he ordered the execution of rickard stark the same way daenerys is talked about after she ordered the execution of the slave masters? why is tywin admired for being ambitious but cersei or margaery or arianne is called a scheming slut for having ambitions too? why isn’t ned shamed for taking a young theon away from his home and culture and forcing him to live as a hostage the same way catelyn is shamed for not being a mother to her husband’s bastard? hell, why is jaime considered to be morally superior than cersei, who yes is a very bad and terrible person, when he tried to kill an eight year old boy and still shows no remorse, why he is the good lannister and worthy of redemption but cersei is not?
the unfair and ridiculous double standard is of no use when it comes to analyzing the female characters and the only thing it does is caused the fandom to pit women against each other. the “sansa vs daenerys” debate or the “arya vs sansa” or the “elia vs lyanna” debate, all discussion full of misogyny – deciding which character is better by saying who hasn’t done any wrong things (all of them have done some not-so-great things and all of have them done even more great things, give it a break guys) or who’s better by who’s more feminine or who’s less feminine (ridiculous AND sexist, especially considering it’s possible to be both feminine and masculine and not just one or the other). This also goes hand in hand with the idea that there is only allowed to be One female character that can be the hero in the series and all the others must be either be their enemy or something to prop them up – all while most of the fandom can find it in themselves to have multiple complex male characters in their heart.
the whole ideology that male characters can have flaws and make mistake and still be considered capable of redemption, or capable of learning, or still a good person while such ideas can’t be afforded to female characters is fucking toxic and a great way to make a fandom unbearable to be in.