Not bad weird, and not necessarily good weird, just... weird.
This is my eighth time out with Mercy and her band of furry, highly strung idiots.
The eighth time I've been led on a merry chase by the monster villain of the week who's decided Mercy looks like a particularly tasty snack.
The eighth time I've settled into that nice little happy place Patricia Briggs provides me (even when she's scaring the shit out of me: Kelpie. FUCKING KELPIE!) whenever I open a new chapter in Mercy's story.
Eight triumphant times.
But this is the first time I've been left a little underwhelmed, and I attribute this as a symptom of Night Broken very much being the book in the middle.
You know the one, the book that starts to truly put things in place.
Usually the second in a trilogy, where you have to trudge through exposition to reach the final battle.
The one where things happen but not as grandly as they have before; where information is tantamount to action, where the pieces of the previous stories start to make a little more sense, and you're reaching those final scenes wondering how this could be the end because nothing feels resolved, surely there's more book to come.
...
It's the set up book.
Which is always, undoubtedly, a frustrating story to read.
It's not unenjoyable or necessarily a bad entry in whatever series you're currently investing in, but it does make for a somewhat lacklustre escape from reality.
Not that Night Broken was dull in any sense of the word, far from it, but it didn't contain its usual spark.
I didn't even start dog-earing pages until a third of the way through, which is unheard of when Mercy's involved.
This story really started off as a way for our leading lady and her growly husband/mate to finally address the ex-wife elephant in the room.
The ex-wife (Christy) that the Pack treat like a beloved, fragile princess who can do no wrong, even though she unceremoniously dumped Adam (I could accept that if she left him the fuck alone), abandoned her kid (dick move, no excuse), treats the Pack like they're monsters (what a shithead; they're overgrown puppies at best), and blames everyone else but herself for her mistakes (which are plenty. Abundant. Legion!)
All the while treating Mercy, their Alpha's bloody wife!, like she's shit on their shoe they can't scrape off, as their beloved Christy makes "innocent", undermining comments towards her every chance she gets.
The talk around the table turned to "worse job" stories.
I excused myself when the conversation drifted to some funny event that happened back when Christy was Adam's wife, well before the pack had moved to the Tri-Cities. Even Adam got into it, had everyone in stitches about trying to find a bathroom for his very pregnant wife at 2:00 A.M. in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. It wouldn't have bothered me if he hadn't given Christy a tender look as she threw her head back and laughed. She had a beautiful laugh. I got up from the table, taking my plate and glass.
"Didn't you like dinner?" asked Christy as I passed her, drawing everyone's eyes to my almost-full dinner plate.
"I had a late lunch." I continued on to the kitchen. "And then there were all those dead people afterward. Hard to keep the smell out of my head."
That shut her up. I think that all the talk about the dead bodies really had bothered her. I was letting her make me petty.
I kept my movements slow and even as I scraped my plate off into the garbage. I loaded my dishes into the dishwasher and walked with deliberate steps up the stairs; by then Darryl was carrying the narrative. I didn't run, didn't even move with speed, but every step was in as direct a line with my bedroom as I could manage. I shut the door behind me and caught a deep breath.
If her stalker didn't kill Christy soon, she might just drive me to it.
She's a gaslighting infant in a woman's body and I abhor her.
And the Pack aren't much better.
I really struggled with this dynamic, and not because of the tension - honestly, since Mercy married Adam, the tension's become a reliable companion - but because it's bad enough being the person who's gaslighted and manipulated, but to be an observer? To know what's happening and not be able to reach inside the book, bap some lupine noses with rolled up newspaper (because I'm from the 50s, apparently?), and demand they all get a goddamn clue made me, in a word, incandescent.
I was furious for just under three hundred pages.
That's a long time to hurl mental abuse at idiot wolves with no more sense than a pheasant contemplating rush hour.
They just. Kept. On. Falling. For Christy's bullshit.
She makes a mistake.
She puts the blame on someone else.
She cries.
The Pack makes it all better.
Ad fucking infinitum.
That is a tried and true method of manipulation.
You fuck up, you fear rejection, you pass blame, you garner sympathy with fragility.
Show me a toddler that isn't an expert in this particular field of puppy-eyed fuckstickery and I'll give up bread forever.
(This is a filthy lie, I will never give up bread, not even for a gluten intolerance diagnosis ← my greatest fear, I'll never let them test me!)
But the thing about most toddlers is, they grow out of this shit when they reach adulthood (I said most).
They learn that taking ownership for their mistakes isn't automatically going to lead to rejection and pain.
They learn not to be assholes who thrive on being petted and babied when they've done something wrong and can't handle the consequences.
They grow the fuck up.
...
Christy apparently never reached this stage, and even though she's come to the Pack for protection against a murder-happy, firebug stalker who's obsessed with her (*infinite eyeroll*), which isn't her fault but is consequently putting the Pack in danger, she still somehow lays the blame at Adam's door. Mercy's door. The Pack's door.
And they let her!
They see what she's doing, how it hurts Adam, Mercy, Jesse! - her own kid!, and they still let her!
You can tell I'm pissed off beyond reason because the exclamation marks are out in force; they're all entirely necessary to relate the depth of my rage, though.
Especially this one:
!
That's a fuck you, wolfies and the spiteful, fuzzy paws you rode in on exclamation point.
Because I can say this with absolutely clarity, certainty, clear-headedness:
I DON'T CARE THAT THEY'RE WOLVES AND IT'S IN THEIR NATURE TO PROTECT THEIR OWN, ESPECIALLY THE WEAKER.
THERE'S PROTECTING AND THEN THERE'S ENABLING BAD BEHAVIOUR.
DON'T ENCOURAGE GASLIGHTERS, DOUSE THEM IN HOLY FUCKING WATER UNTIL THEY SHUT THE FUCK UP.
...
I may be a little over-invested in Mercy and Adam's general wellbeing but I feel this way in fiction and in life.
Playing the victim and abusing people with secondhand guilt is far too easy for some, and if Patricia Briggs wanted me to feel Mercy's frustration and horror at the way Christy treats people then bravo, job well done.
I'm fucking furious.
I've watched Mercy crawl and scrape her way through the Pack dynamics for eight fucking books - even before she was with Adam, trying her best to win their favour without losing her dignity, saving their asses on multiple occasions with little thanks or respect for her abilities and sacrifice (she's nearly died twice for them, now. TWICE), and they continue to treat her like shit because she isn't a wolf.
...
Speciesist bullshit.
And it's mostly coming from the women.
I can't quite figure out why Briggs has done this, pitted the women of the Pack against her heroine, but it makes for a truly uncomfortable read.
Every snide look, every arm around Christy's shoulder in sympathy, every cutting remark hurled directly at Mercy's face is a misogyny dagger right in the sternum.
They would rather a simpering brat who manipulates them than a capable, caring, selfless coyote who loves their alpha beyond reason and puts her life on the line regularly to protect anyone who needs it.
What the fuckery is that about?
Jealousy? Snobbery? Bigotry? All of the above?
The latter, most probably and as a consequence, it's the first time I've looked at this series, really looked at it, and thought: I don't like that. That's not okay. I don't like that.
I really don't like that, for so many reasons, but high on my list is that whenever I become attached to a character, especially one who's a bit of an outcast, my fervent hope for them will always be that they'll find a home, a family, where they're safe, loved, accepted.
And Mercy isn't getting that.
She isn't respected by 90% of her "family", she isn't even liked by them (which is bullshit; Mercy's fucking delightful), and she certainly isn't safe.
Safety is the most basic requirement of being alive, at the very least in your own home, and the Pack takes that away from her.
She's not verbally safe, she's not mentally safe, and she's only physically safe because Adam would flay them alive if they ever caused her bodily harm.
That's not okay. That's not what a Pack should be about. And I can't even be mad at Adam for the fucked up dynamic Mercy married into.
At first I was, at first I was beyond livid that he never said anything, he never outright defended her, he never fought fucking back, especially with Christy.
I was so mad at him, not because I want him to fight Mercy's battles, she can do that on her own, but because he really showed the minimum amount of support for half the bloody book, and I couldn't figure out how Adam, lovely, mallowy, growly Adam who'd burn the world down for my girl, wasn't doing shit to support her.
Initially, I was chalking his behaviour up to the dynamics of the Pack being so labyrinthine that to do something, order them to sort their shit out, spank them into obedience, would actually be more harmful than leaving Mercy to it.
It would undermine her, make her seem weak, and they would use it against her.
I get that, I can accept that, I don't like it but hell, family's a complicated fucker.
But when Christy arrived?
When she immediately acted like the "lady of the house", cooking endless meals, commenting on how things used to be, sidelining Mercy like she was the guest and not vice versa, touchingAdam in small, seemingly innocuous ways.
I didn't see it at first, what she was doing, not the full scope of the damage she'd caused and why Adam became so submissive with her when it's not in his nature to be, not until Mercy let me: Adam's a victim of spousal abuse.
Verbal, mental, emotional abuse.
His ex-wife spent years convincing him that he wasn't good enough, that he wasn't providing the life she wanted, that he scared her, that he was a monster, he was putting her in danger just by existing and he made her behave the way she did.
Years and years of heaping on the blame and guilt, and now he's fucking paralysed the moment she enters his space because Adam's default setting is to protect, to ensure safety, and the woman he used to love convinced him he'd failed at every turn, and he's fucking drowning in unwarranted shame.
The moment that clicked in my brain, I forgave Adam all his silences in the face of his ex-wife's abuse.
I know I essentially howled earlier that letting gaslighters away with their bullshit is not okay, especially when you're aware of it, and I stand by that one thousand percent, but the Pack can go fuck itself because they haven't endured this woman the way Adam has. They haven't been routinely beaten down by her. They know fucking better.
But Adam? She slowly and methodically destroyed a part of him, and he doesn't know how to protect himself from it.
I'm so unbelievably glad he has Mercy now to help heal that void.
I'm so glad they fight (sometimes in sparring form; fun!) and talk and make up, that they treat each other with equality and respect, instead of guilt and mind games.
I snarled at my attacker―who snarled back with interest.
The snarl didn't make Adam's too-handsome features less handsome, but it would probably have scared anyone else. Me? I think I have some kind of subliminal death wish because Adam's anger makes me go weak in the knees, and not in a terrified sort of way.
"What are you trying to do? Kill mosquitoes?" Adam was too made to be aware of my reaction to his anger. "I'm a werewolf. I'm trying to kill you―and you smack me open-handed on my butt?"
Even with me on the ground, he stayed in sanchin dachi, a neutral-ready position that allowed him easy rotation for either strike or block. It also made him look pigeon-toed. Not a good look, even for Adam, but his thin t-shirt, wet with sweat, did its best to improve the picture.
"It's a cute butt," I said.
He rolled his eyes, released the stance, and took a step neared to me.
"As for my hand on you cute butt," I continued, letting my shoulders relax against the mat, "I was cleverly trying to distract you."
He frowned at me. "Distract me from what? Your awesome, sneaky attack that left you lying on the floor?"
I twisted, catching him in front of the ankle with one foot as I put my whole weight behind the shin I slammed into the back of his knee. He started to lose his balance, and I rolled up with an elbow strike that hit the big muscle that ran up the back of his upper leg with charley-horse-causing force. As he went all the way down to hands and knees, I swung the wrench I'd snagged on my original fall and touched him on the back of the head with it.
"Exactly," I said, pleased that I'd been able to lie well enough with my body language to take him unawares.
He needs that. He needs to know that every piece of poison Christy planted in his psyche was unfounded and just plain cruel.
His arm came around me. "I don't love her. I never loved her the way I love you. She needed someone to to take care of her, and I liked taking care of people. That's all we had."
He thought he meant it, but I knew better. I'd seen them together when times had been good. I'd seen the damage that her leaving had done to a man who took care of the people who belonged to him and didn't let go of them easily. But I wasn't going to argue with him.
"I'm not worried about her coming between us," I told him truthfully. "I'm worried about her hurting you and Jesse. Hurting the pack. But that's better than letting her face whatever it is on her own.
He bent down and put his cheek against the top of my head. "You lied," he said. "You aren't mean at all."
"Shh. It's a secret."
It's so rare to see spousal abuse from the other side in fiction, especially Fantasy. So often it's a dominant, male Alpha using his size, strength, gender to control someone weaker, bossing them around, basically chaining them to the bed until they do what they're told.
It's not often you see the effects a toxic woman can have on a man, not because it doesn't happen, happens all the damn time, but there's more of a fixation on abuse you can see externally, rather than abuse you can feel internally.
It felt important to see this, to see that power imbalances don't necessarily correlate to size or strength, and it helps explain a lot of why Adam is the way he is, why he can seem closed off at times, perhaps a little too "cool guy" stoic.
He let someone see him and they not only rejected him, they recoiled in disgust and left a stain in the process.
...
Have I mentioned how much I despise Christy?
How much I would happily sacrifice her to her stalker boyfriend because my sympathy levels for the woman are non-existent?
I'm glad she dumped Adam and fucked off to greener, creepy stalker pastures, because he found Mercy, who not only fits him infinitely better, but would never hurt him this way.
Adam snorted as he pulled on a faded green t-shirt that said I HEART COYOTES. Yet another sign that folding my clean clothes wasn't too big a price to pay to make him happy. He didn't have any I HEART CHRISTY shirts―or I would've burned them already.
Who would only treat him with the same devotion and respect he gives in return.
"I never forget," I murmured to him when I could.
"Forget?"
"Forget who you are are to me," I said, petting him with my fingertips because I could, because he was mine. "I'll be fretting about Christy, worrying about the pack, hoping Christy trips and spills her cardaywatsafanday stew―"
"Carbonnade à la flamande," said Adam.
"―all over the floor, then I look at you."
"Mmmm?"
"Yep," I said, putting my nose against him and breathing him in." Mmmm."
Fuck Christy and her dinner napkins.
Give me grease stains and brownies.
"She's not a horrible person," I protested.
He smiled, briefly. "No. She makes people feel good for defending her, for doing things for her. Makes them feel like heroes―she made me feel that way once, too. Nothing wrong with that." He kissed me. "But I like my women less helpless."
I went limp against him, and said, dramatically, "I'm helpless against your kisses."
He laughed like a villain in a cartoon. "Aha. So that's how it's done. Well, there's no help for you, then."
"No," I said in a faint voice, putting an arm over my forehead as I arched back over his arm in the classic pose of the helpless ingénue. "I guess you'll just have your wicked with me again."
"Cool," said my husband, a wicked growl in his voice. "Don't worry. You'll enjoy every minute of it."
A little mess and sweetness is always my preference.
"I love you," I told him rawly. "And if you don't come back, I will spit on your grave."
He smiled, but not enough to bring on his dimple. "I know you do, and I know you will. Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman, if I have not said it, you should know that you brought joy into my life when I thought there was no joy left in the world."
Speaking of mess and grease, could people stopattacking Mercy in her garage/assault site? It's stressing me the fuck out.
Attack her in her sleep, mid-coitus, at the grocery store, I really don't care (I care, I care very much), just not the place where her bodily autonomy was torn from her, not where she's still paralysed at times from the memories when an unknown patron walks in at night and she's alone.
Anywhere but the goddamn garage!
Even if the attack this time around was both fun as hell and mildly ridiculous.
Imagine this, a blisteringly handsome stranger with a giant dog breaks into Mercy's garage late at night, crowbars her door open and proceeds to turn into a lava monster and throw his molten finger at her face.
Flores's face changed as he laughed, flowing and darkening, but beneath the darkness, visible in cracks in his skin, was a sullen red light. My changes are almost instantaneous the werewolves take a lot longer than that with the exception of Charles. But none of us glowed.
Flores . . . Guayota moved his hand, still laughing, and something flew at me. I dodged, but it slid over my shirt, which caught fire, and landed on top of the Passat.
A quick brush of my hands put my shirt out, leaving me with blisters on the skin along my collarbone and a hole in my bra strap. I slid back one step to see what he'd thrown at me without having to look away from him.
It was about the size of a finger, blackened and oozing on one end. I chanced a quick glance and realized that not only was it the size of a finger, it had a fingernail.
He threw... his finger... at... her face.
Shot it right at her like a flaming phalange bullet!
Some truly weird shit, but I don't think anything's caused such a WTF moment as this right here.
...
BECAUSE HE THREW HIS FIERY FINGER AT HER MID-FIGHT!
...
I may have laughed my ass off for a good ten minuteswith a befuddled look on my face when it happened.
I'm still not entirely sure I read it right, because it's just so... silly.
Levity doesn't often appear in battle and I totally think it should make more appearances because silliness is always welcome.
Well, until the frivolity of the event ceased and the expected moment of ohhhh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, this is not good, this is really not good set in.
Patricia Briggs is *chef's kiss* at villains; whether they're monsters driven by bloodlust alone (may I reiterate: FUCKING KELPIE!), or fiercely intelligent eldritch horrors with despicable endgames (Wulfe is a scary, little bastard and I'm looking forward to the day Mercy stakes his creepy ass), they're always pitch perfect terrifying.
Based on the Guanche myth of a malevolent deity residing inside Mount Teide, a gateway to the underworld, who became obsessed with the sun, Magec, and stole her away to his volcano, casting the world into darkness.
(Although, not my H+P; they're precious, pink and blue, munchkin cinnamon rolls who firmly believe in love and respect, and being fucking adorable all the live long day)
But unlike the Greek myth, Guayota was eventually defeated by Achamán, the supreme god of Guanche, who rescued Magec after the people of Tenerife prayed to him for help, and thereafter imprisoned Guayota inside Mount Teide forever.
It's all very good defeating evil, cut and dry, case closed.
Unless you're Patricia Briggs (I bloody love when authors rework old myths)who decided this particular volcano god isn't as nicely ensconced in his molten prison as everyone believed and is on the hunt for his missing sun.
Enter: Christy.
I mean, no accounting for taste, but I guess when you're a deranged, millennia old deity who likes to kidnap women, a gaslighting, adult-toddler-bride is probably just your type, real attractive, ticking all the right boxes.
...
Until she freaks out, runs off to hubby number one, and makes good ol' Guayota lose his ever-loving mind, that is.
Let the killing spree commence!
Or as I like to refer to it:
A godly hissy fit.
This book is essentially what happens when a grown-ass man/god has a temper tantrum over a bad breakup.
If I roll my eyes any further back into my head, they're gonna stay there and I'm not gonna see how this all plays out in the next book.
And I need to see because nothing was really concluded here, even though many new and interesting things were introduced:
🌋 The above-mentioned man-child volcano god, who they "defeated"
🌋 Some family for Mercy; a half-brother by the name of Gary Laughingdog - can we keep him? I love him.
🌋 The return of Coyote, drip-feeding Mercy information about her heritage
🌋 Power reveals - Tad, sneaky badass, you've been keeping secrets
🌋 Who the fuck knows where Christy's gonna be in the next book, I mostly care that she's not in Mercy's home
🌋 A little vampiric revelation - Stefan, also sneaky secret keeper
🌋 A new pet?
🌋 Zack - let me hug you, I'll do it real soft
🌋 And more inexplicable nonsense with a particular fae walking stick that won't leave Mercy alone
Eight strands of story left trailing freely and infuriatingly for the eighth story in the Mercy series.
...
Goddamn set up books.
I never know what to do after I've finished them. The logical answer is read the next one, and I'm tempted, sorely, sorely tempted, but spacing my most beloved series out like a psychopath is part of my nature, now.
I can't read it consecutively.
To me, that's the real psychopath behaviour.
But it really is tempting, because Night Broken was not only brimming with the promise of where the series is going, but the villain Briggs introduced was, after the unexpected thumb war battle, a compelling, seemingly unbeatable addition to the story.
And the fact that in the end he wasn't really "defeated" but more abruptly relegated back to his Vulcan man cave through sheer luck, it makes me wonder if we're done with this particular Guanche god.
If maybe Briggs has started something she intends to finish at a later date.
Personally, I really hope so, I'm rooting for it, in fact, because this villain felt like someone who could potentially be the end for my merry band of shifters.
Bodies, blood, and pieces were scattered here and there and mixed, so it took me a moment to parse exactly what I saw. I finally decided to go with heads, because heads are difficult to eat, and the charnel-house mess was definitely missing parts and maybe whole bodies. Five . . . no, six people, all women, two dogs―a German shepherd and something small and mixed-breed―a horse, and something other big animal whose head was either missing or might have been under something.
I have a strong stomach―I hunt rabbits, mice, and small birds while wearing my coyote skin, and I eat them raw. Before this, I would have said that lots of things make me squeamish, but fresh bodies not so much. This was so far beyond anything I'd ever seen that I flinched, looked away, then turned back to stare because part of my was sure that it couldn't have been as bad as I first thought. It was worse.
It's a strange thing to hope for, your favourite characters to be put in mortal peril they might not survive, because I don't want them to die in a blaze of glory, I truly don't, but I think it's a universally agreed upon necessity in fiction that there's no point in a final battle if there's no real chance of the characters you're rooting for dying.
There has to be, otherwise the battles that came before were for nothing.
So, I say, raise the stakes as high as they'll go.
Force your MCs to strive for the impossible, and make it fucking glorious.
And I think Guayota might just be the man for the job.
Especially now that Mercy has something that truly belongs to him.
Or maybe I'm wrong and Guayota's going to take an extended nap for the rest of the series and some greater evil is coming to take a bite outta Mercy because she's just that damn tasty.
It's still not perfect, and their Josh isn't my Josh, and I'll still scream (politely) at everyone to read the book for the superior experience, but the movie's really grown on me.
Become a comfort watch.
Even if they did kinda mess up the "work you so hard" moment - criminal.
And the she pukes on him, he tends to her fever needs section was a little underdone.
I still really like it.
And Lucy Hale's perfection, though. 10/10 casting. Shortcake in her big boss form.
I remember getting really up in arms about the catfishing aspect of this when I watched it the first time, and now I can't even understand why.
Cyrano de Bergerac is the original catfisher, he woos the woman he loves with his words via another man's body because he believes he's too malformed to be loved.
It's not malicious, it's not done to hurt Roxanne; it comes from a place of deep, festering insecurity.
But it is wrong. Deceptive and unjust.
Pretty fucked up when you think about it, but most fictional love stories are a bit fucked up.
And if you were going to modernise it, implant it into our present day, technological, hive-mind society, it would be with catfishing!
I don't why this didn't penetrate on my initial watch, why it made me so mad, because it's literally how the story goes.
And a damn sweet version of it, as well.
Shannon Purser and Noah Centineo have great chemistry and they both embody the spirit of the original story.
And they manage to address something that's always bothered me - even in my preferred version, Roxanne, the Steve Martin, 80's masterpiece - of whether Roxanne would ever have given Cyrano a chance had the deception not occurred.
In previous versions, my answer would have been maybe, after time, if she got her head out of her ass and saw him as more than a friend.
But it's a very tentative maybe because Roxanne's usually portrayed as pretty oblivious character.
Not shallow, necessarily, not unaware of Cyrano's appeal, just... elsewhere in the mind.
And it's always frustrated me because it makes me question whether Roxanne actually deserves him.
Yes, he's deceptive, no matter the reason, but he's ultimately a damaged person who's afraid of rejection and does something stupid for a chance at love.
But he always sees her, physically and internally, she only acknowledges the internal.
So, without the farce, would she have seen him at all?
I'm not sure, I'm really not, but I am with Sierra Burgess.
Their friendship may start over the phone, their relationship developing and deepening there, but they do meet at certain ports points throughout, and they do have that instant connection of oh, there you are, I've been looking for you.
I believe Jamie (Roxanne) would have pursued her had he not been in the beginnings of a relationship with, well, her but not.
His version of Roxanne isn't oblivious, he doesn't gloss over Sierra's (Cyrano) appearance. He looks at her and wants to look again, and again, again, and I believe it.
Maybe that's the chemistry between the two actors, or the Labrador energy Noah Centineo tends of give out, I don't really care, either way.
It was just pretty fucking lovely to see a fucked up love story being put to rights in some small way.
Even if my idiot brain did take a minute to get there.
I've watched this movie so many times and I'll watch it many, many more, but as I continue to devour it like a repetitive, serotonin-seeking psychopath, it becomes increasingly clear that:
a) Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone have insane chemistry - it's ridiculous, they should just always make movies together.
and
b) Gosling's my favourite thing in the whole damn movie, and there's a lot to choose from.
He's just a soft cinnamon roll with a big ol' cinnamon heart, unsuspectingly stumbling upon his gingerbread other half; and watching it happen with each scene is, y'know, hot.
Mallowy-on-the-inside men are hot - remember that men-folk, alpha bullshit is exactly that: bullshit.
And I miss him being funny.
He's got charmingly offbeat timing and I would eat it with a spoon if it was at all possible.
Why do all actors eventually fall down the serious thespian route?
At least throw us a funny bone every now and then!
Less of a rewatch and more of a finally seen all the way through.
And I still think it's a bit morally questionable; should he able to redo events that skew their relationship in his favour?
Uh, err, um...
Probably not, but... it's fiction, it's not like this could actually happen so fuck it.
I declare this movie sweet as fuck.
You can say a lot about Richard Curtis, but the guy knows how to make a typically British rom-com.
My favourite part of this one, however, wasn't the romantic love between Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams' characters, but the paternal and parental love between Gleeson and and Bill Nighy.
Two actors who act so fucking effortlessly tenderly in their scenes together, it warmed even my vicious little heart.
I don't know why I say these things, I'm goddamn growly softie with faucets for eyes.
"I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell, I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world."
...
Do NOTtalkto me.
But do talk about how adorably grumpy Cassey Kuo is:
Found about ten minutes after The Little Trashmaid through a collab comic, and that creepy monster laugh I was trying to keep in slipped out without my consent.
The plight of a careless zombie is apparently my funny bone weakness.
My mum is a certified sci-fi snob (sorry, mum), rarely gives anything a pass for originality (a scathing review was given for Ex Machina), very hard to please (I was damn well shocked she liked the Duneadaptation so much. Shocked!), because, well, she's read/seen it all, and whilst watching this I could vividly see her in my head, rolling her eyes (I've never actually seen her do this outright but I've felt it, y'know, as a vibe).
And this time I was right there with her.
The premise for this is unquestionably interesting but it feels so overdone at this point that what exactly was the point of doing it other than to have Chris Hemsworth wear old man glasses and make it look dashing?
Which I appreciated, don't underestimate my appreciation for this man, but I needed a little more than his pretty face and excitable puppy demeanour.
I needed this movie to either be bloodier or funnier.
workin on some persephone art. 👀🌸 the full sketches are up for patrons, but here’s a preview! do you prefer kore, persephone, or the dread queen? #loreolympuspic.twitter.com/5DTkhkKkBb
Lore Olympus X Legally Blonde AU 🧑⚖️ [As I was watching my monthly dose of Legally blonde this scene was just too perfect for Demeter and Persephone, I had to do it haha!]#loreolympus#loreolympusfanartpic.twitter.com/3116fSBVwH
I ask wonderful things howdare theybe so wonderful? a lot, and I always mean it, but hollllllllly crap.
This is a big one.
Beastly.
Epic.
Behemoth.
It's gonna need full lung capacity.
*deeeeeep breath*
...
HOW DARE THEY?!
...
Who allowed this?!
It's so fucking beautiful, and the songs are amazing (I finally know we don't talk about Bruno; thank fuck, otherwise I was gonna have to muzzle my sister), and it's not another fucking Disney movie where romance is all important, but instead about family and the complexity of it.
The rules within fairy tales are something that have always drawn me in.
Don't leave the tower.
Never stray from the path inside the forest.
Eat the goblin fruit and you'll be lost forever.
There are always rules to follow, put there to safeguard the protagonist from harm.
And there are always deadly consequences for disobeying them:
The wolf devours Little Red Riding Hood.
Aurora touches the spindle and plunges the kingdom into darkness.
Snow White eats the poison apple.
And so on.
Not once has flouting the law of the fairy tale resulted in a happy event, especially if you subscribe to the original tales - that's some dark shit.
But it's the breaking of them that's always fascinated me the most.
Temptation is brazenly thrust in the path of each protagonist and expected to be ignored as they live routine, mundane lives.
Whether they're royalty, paupers, reside in the woods, the sea, possess magic, or are helplessly human, each character starts their story by breaking the rules they're caged by.
Set free from a tower, or allowed to feel the sand on their freshly made toes for the first time, it's always an act of being unbound.
And without exception, it comes as a result of going against the enforced mandate they've previously followed.
Whether the consequences of flouting the rules are good or bad depends on the story, but in my experience, it's rarely positive.
Torture and oftentimes, death tends to follow.
But perhaps the agony is worth it to simply have a choice.
The story begins with a little girl and her nightmarish guardian; they collect flowers and herbs, chop wood for the fire, have tea parties and scavenge for food from the neighbouring village.
They are at first, mismatched glance, daughter and father, loved and loving, both innocent in spite and due to their appearance.
Light and dark.
Human and beast.
But the little girl must never venture far from the house without her loving monster, if she sees a stranger she must always run back as quick as her feet will take her, and most importantly, they must never touch.
Because what isn't apparent at first is that Shiva's guardian, simply known as Teacher, isn't a creature born, but a human cursed.
One of many who befell a deadly malediction that turned them into beasts with a single touch, banished to the outskirts of civilisation and hunted by the unsullied for their malady.
Which makes the tranquil coupling of Shiva and Teacher all the more unusual.
How did he become her guardian? Why is Shiva living side-by-side with a curse that could alter her forever? Why is Teacher keeping her in the dark?
The situation our pseudo father/daughter duo find themselves in is a classic style of fairy tale, but one where we rarely see the "monster" caring for the innocent.
Least of all with this much tenderness.
The way Teacher is drawn doesn't lend much room for emotion; he lacks the necessary facial features to express himself, and his movements are elegantly still, but by some form of rendered magic we can feel the devotion he has for Shiva.
It pours from the pages, spilling over every bath drawn, every silly request acquiesced, every longing glance that sobs with the need to simply hold his foundling's hand, tend to her wounds, wipe her face when she's covered in jam after one of their tea parties.
Teacher may not emote with his face or his body but it can be felt all the same.
Felt, and felt, and felt until it warms fingertips, cheeks, and chest.
It's simpler with Shiva, who's a creature of glorious, unfettered joy; she bounds from one task to the next, exploring every nook and cranny left untouched, thrice, she lives in that graceless way only children seem capable of and adults desperately wish to feel again.
But if she's innocent, it's because Teacher wishes her to remain that way, because he knows too much and the pain of it never quiets.
It's why he made the rules, it's why he does everything in his power to keep her safe, keep her happy.
But as the way of fairy tales, the rules must always be broken in order for the story to begin.
Strangely, the beginning of this story happens with a full stop, an unexpected touch, and an unraveling of unvoiced questions.
I think I broke the thesaurus in my desperate hunt for enough colourful synonyms to relate my fury.
And now I can't do it.
All that cantankerous energy, wasted.
Because...
I'm fucking bewildered I'm saying this but... I loved it.
I really fucking loved it.
Persuasionis my favourite Austen novel, I hold it very dear to my heart, and I take on a very crotchety old neighbour yelling at the neighbourhood kids to get off their lawn persona when I love something.
Thus I don't like people fucking with it, and this adaptation is essentially Persuasion-lite with an Emma sensibility by way of Fleabag, so, fucked with it was, but...
I smiled the entire time, laughed unexpectedly and with confusing frequency, rejoiced in the contemporary spin when at first glance I recoiled like a turtle had bitten that sensitive bit of side flesh I can't stand people touching.
It took me entirely off guard in a fucking delightful way.
It's not Persuasion, absolutely not, it bears its essence but ultimately it's a lost love via misunderstanding, second chance rom-com- no digs, love an ll-m-2c-rc
And I will never forgive it for severing a couple of the most beautiful clustering of words Austen has possibly ever written and reducing it to "we're exes" - yuck, ew, illegal activity, straight to jail.
But I'm still fucking smiling, basking in the silly glow of it.
And I feel not one iota of guilt
(Totally infuriated the sibling; Em needed a ranting companion, Sarah just wanted to watch me lose my collective shit like I normally do over crap like this)
Which is why I've already watched it again.
And again.
And maybe, just maybe, again?
Sorry Austen, if you wanna zombie your way outta the ground and take vengeance, then by all means, I'll be here, watching this bastardised, gleeful monstrosity of your work with a stupid grin on my face.
Sorry?
Ps. I'm kinda loving that everyone's furious and I'm just rolling around in the trash like:
What exactly is wrong with being a receptionist in your 30s? Or not having a partner? Or not living alone?
Why does being adult equate to relationship, overpaid job, and only living with your partner or alone?
Is that all we get? Is that really the only way we're allowed to live?
I call societal, hetero bullshit.
That's rom-coms for you, though, isn't it? And as far as they go, this was pretty damn sweet, but most likely that was helped along by Charlie Day, Jenny Slate and Manny Jacinto- all adorable, all must be protected.
One thing, though, If you've got Charlie Day, right there, present and awkwardly correct, and you don't have him as Seymour in the school production of Little Shop of Horrors?!
WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!
HE IS SEYMOUR!
...
Quacks. All of you, quacks.
Any time Jenny Slate wants to reprise her role as Audrey, though.
All I really want from cartoon series movies are feature length episodes.
Ninety minutes of elongated goodness.
And if it's Bob and the fam, I want songs.
Many songs.
All the songs!
...
And they delivered.
The eldest sibling tells me the songs in Adventure Time are beyond incredible, and I believe her, but I don't know if anything could ever beat the dulcet The Divine Comedy-esque tones of Bob Belcher crooning over burgers and familial exasperation.
Is Linda and Gail's Thanksgiving banger permanently affixed inside my brain.
Yuh huh. It won't leave.
I never want it to leave.
Or Mr Fischoeder encouraging cry of run, burger people! at the denouement of the movie.
The middle sibling keeps unexpectedly squawking this and I'm just waiting for the moment she bays it at Charles when he's desperate to leave the house after a feeding.
(He doesn't understand cat-flaps, little king needs his doors opened for him)
It'll happen, simply because the amount we quote this show is bordering on problematic.
But who else would understand why I gasped at the opening scene by the harbour?
Because holy shit!
The quality of the water was insane.
I wanted to lick that water.
And the Belchers have shadows, now! They've never had shadows before! I didn't know they could cast shadows!
...
The old mind's a little strung out from the goodness, so I'm going to be quiet now before I disgrace myself and sing about why snakes makes no fucking sense, instead.
He's so wise.
.............................................
The hierarchy of adjectives:
Been about five years since I first read this, on the English language's *completely universal but totally invisible* adjective hierarchy, and I can honestly say I've thought about it most days since. pic.twitter.com/5DhNDHgTbS
— The author, Séamas O'Reilly (@shockproofbeats) July 8, 2022
Freshis a blatant, gorgeous, delicious allegory for the patriarchal bullshit women are put through and the way our unity is, in the end, the only fucking thing that serves us.
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![Totsukuni no Shoujo [animation] discovered by 𝗶𝗼𝗿𝘆](https://data.whicdn.com/images/335154441/original.gif)
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