Chaos, Lightly Distilled

Hey everyone! My main blog's over @chaoticke, but it is literally so clogged all the time with whatever I feel like reblogging that I wanted a separate place for whenever I feel like posting anything myself. I probably won't post much over here, but this blog will archive all of my original posts. || AO3

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Hi!

Hello to anyone that might find this!  My main blog is over @chaoticke but I created this side space mostly to organize my own original thoughts/posts/etc.  Whenever I make my own content it’ll end up over here first, though I’ll still reblog it from my main account.  Go over there if you want to see everything that catches my attention, but stick around here if you just want whatever nonsense is filling my head.  No promises how often I’ll actually post over here, however.

-Ruby

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Reading the early experiences of Luceum!Vis and squinting the entire time because this whole farm situtation is way too pleasant. The other shoe has to drop. He doesn't get to have nice things so there's no way this lasts

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The problem with killing a character at the end of a book and then immediately breaking the world is that I spend the next year going "no, you don't understand, here's how Callidus can still win" even knowing how unlikely that is to happen

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Me every time Vis gives into his rage issues

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I feel like at some point Kaz just had to become like, entertainment source #1 for the Barrel, and quite possibly the rest of Ketterdam. Yeah, no one wants to cross him, and yeah he's dangerous and annoying and you never know what horrors he's about to commit, but also. I bet at some point people start gambling on which mercher he's going to rob next. On when certain art pieces will reappear on the market. They spread the lies he's told about himself and theorize on which ones are actually true. He loves throwing information at people like lit bombs, so the best gossip in the city is probably in the wake of whatever drama he's stirring up now. Most people aren't lucky enough to be in on his cons, but I suspect many of the Dregs probably find them hilarious, when you're the one watching people get fleeced, and I'm sure they spread those stories around once the con is over.

Yeah, there's actual news going on and politics and operas and whatever other relevant real-world events happening in Ketterdam, but do any of them have the drama of Kaz? The panache? No. Built-in entertainment, right there

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There’s something about Edwin’s relationship with pain that fascinates me.  It’s not just that he survived Esther’s torture table, which juiced other ghosts in seconds, but the way he’s so calm about it.  In the flashback to his death, when he was tied to the table, he was terrified, thrashing, you could see the panic on his face.  When Esther has him in her device, there’s none of that.  He’s worried, but he’s calm.  He knows it’s going to hurt, but that’s no longer frightening to him.  It’s haunting how he stays silent for the beginning of the torture, and then again later while Crystal and Niko make their stand (the arms of the table were down the whole time, so he must still have been in pain, yes?).  At one point he begs Esther, but not like he expects it to do anything.

He’s a pincushion for the universe.  He’s so used to pain that he simply accepts it.  Even when presented with danger, his first response is to freeze.  Either the danger (the pain) will find him, or it won’t, but there’s nothing he can do to stop it except maybe run and hope he can delay it.  He knows pain so intimately that it can’t vanish him, but he doesn’t seem to notice it half the time because his tolerance is so high.  In the second episode, Charles urges him to stop trying to leave Port Townsend because he’ll rip his arm off.  Is that an actual concern?  Is that something that Charles thinks might happen that Edwin wouldn’t notice?

It’s a popular fan-tendency to characterize Charles as wanting to protect Edwin from pain, but how much pain does Edwin simply ignore because it’s not even a factor he considers anymore?  He seems avoidant of pain, yes, but never particularly concerned by it.  He’s endured the worst he can think of.  What’s a little hurt, next to hell?  At least he knows how to take it.  At least this way Charles, or anyone else, doesn't have to.

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The thing is: Simon being revealed to be gay is really cliché. We’ve all seen it before, the bully who goes after the gay kid because he has a crush and doens’t know how to handle or confront that. Been there, done that. So it got me thinking: why do I find it so impactful when Dead Boy Detectives pulled it?

Because it doesn’t matter.

Simon doesn’t feel like he was revealed to be gay as a way to expose “hidden depth,” which is why this move often feels cheap to me. It’s not used to justify his actions, and he is not excused for them. The narrative makes no apologies for his behavior. He murdered Edwin and the narrative underscores that

Instead, Simon being gay matters simply because it matters to Edwin, and that’s why this scene works. The revelation does not change how the audience is meant to feel about Simon; you maybe understand him better, but that is all. However, it changes everything for Edwin, because he’s recontextualizing all of these memories from when he was alive. The scene works because it allows Edwin to see himself in Simon, and to forgive himself for being gay and for being lonely. It’s not about Simon. It was never about Simon. It’s about what this knowledge about Simon means to Edwin.

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I know at the end of episode 8 we all assume that the sprites have been made big but consider. What if Niko and the polar bear charm are tiny now instead

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I don't post art much, but the Dead Boy Detectives characters have done something to my brain. Ergo, have a Charles

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I’m interested in how both Charles and Edwin treat the whole idea of being “detectives.”  Obviously, they are detectives.  They have formed a detective agency, they run cases, it’s their whole thing; it’s how they spend their afterlives.  But it’s more than just that.

They both take the detective work very seriously.  Edwin comes off, generally, as more serious than Charles about it, with his little asides about being a “proper” detective and the methodical ways he likes to do things, but Charles is clearly into it, too.  And sometimes it feels so clearly like they’re playing at the idea of being detectives that it’s almost like a game or a roleplay for them.  They want to be (and are) detectives, but they are two teenage boys who have styled themselves after the idea of being detectives.  Then there are moments where this “performance” of detective work begins to break down.

For Edwin, this happens earlier in the season.  In the first episode, he admits that the detective work matters because he needs it, emotionally, to matter.  His and Charles’s cases didn’t get solved, no one cared.  He needs someone to care.  That’s his investment in being a detective; its more than just a game for him.  When the Cat King casts his truth spell, this is only built upon.  He says he does the detective work, too, because he wants to stay out of hell.  For a while, though, I was trying to find Charles’s investment.  Yeah, his case was also written off when he died, but didn’t seem as upset about that as Edwin.  On the first watchthrough, I wondered if Charles’s investment in the detective work was simply because Edwin was invested.

Then there’s episode 4, when Charles beats the Night Nurse, and part of the speech he yells at her is about being a detective.  I think that’s when it started to click for me that there was something deeper going on with him, too, about the detective work specifically.  Charles is upset he died, he never came to terms with it.  I wonder if part of the reason he’s so invested in being a detective is because it gives him a sense of purpose and impact that he misses from being alive.  He could never stop the things he wanted to stop, never protect the people he wanted to protect, but at least he has this, with Edwin.  At least they are detectives, and Charles can feel needed, feel like his life didn’t end so early for no reason at all.  

I think a lot about the concept of ghosts having unfinished business and how that might apply to both Charles and Edwin, and I think that the detective agency, despite how it sometimes comes off as playacting, is deeply tied to both of their psyches.  Edwin needs the detective agency to feel like there was a point to everything that happened to him.  That maybe no one cared he disappeared, and maybe he ended up in hell, but it wasn’t for nothing.  They can try to keep it from happening to anyone again.  And Charles?  Well, he needs the detective agency because there was no point to what happened to him.  He shouldn’t have died, and he’s not ready to move on to an afterlife.  He needs to feel like he’s needed, like there’s something he can do.  If it hadn’t been a detective agency these two formed, it would have been something else because they had too many deep-rooted issues that have been sublimated into the agency itself.

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Does anyone else think about how Edwin’s soul traded hands between demons before he even arrived at the Doll House?  In episode 7, it’s said that Sa’al "traded his soul to a demon, who traded it to another demon, who traded it to something worse."  We know what the spider demon did with him, but we don’t know how long it was until he came into the spider demon’s possession, or how many of his decades in hell he was in its possession.  How many of those 73 years were spent in the Doll House?  How many were spent with Sa’al?  How many were spent with the other two demons?  What did Sa’al or those other demons do to him?  Episode 7 tricks us as the audience into thinking we know the shape of his experience in hell, but we really only know the end of it.  73 years is a long time, and we’re not given a timeline for when Sa’al traded him away or how many of those years were spent with the spider demon. There are still a lot of horrible things that could have happened that we don’t know about

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If I could add one song to Epic, it would be a song from Telemachus's diplomatic mission. It's been a while since I read the Odyssey, so forgive my details for being a little fuzzy, but I know one of his stops is to visit Helen and Menelaus, where Menelaus recounts the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra. I also remember that Helen drugs Menelaus at some point in this conversation. I might be missing context, but that's the gist of my understanding.

The song I would add, then, would take place during the Vengeance saga, probably set between "Dangerous" and "Charybdis." Forgive me for only having a middling knowledge of music words, but the song would feature three voices: Telemachus, Helen and Odysseus. It would open with Telemachus speaking (singing) to Helen, and the focus would be on Helen warning him to be wary of his father's homecoming. She's telling him that the father he wishes for might not be the father that returns.

On this side of the song, she recounts the story of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. Perhaps she frames it that Clytemnestra had to kill Agamemnon because he killed Iphigenia, just to rub salt in the wound of family. We, the audience, know that Odysseus would not hurt his son. How well does Telemachus know this? The next verse is sung by Odysseus in the musical equivalent of spliscreen as he journeys home. It's comparatively brighter. He's dreaming again of his homecoming, and the life he pictures with Penelope and Telemachus. Then the chorus is split between both Helen and Odysseus, both speculating on what Odysseus's homecoming might be like. The next verse is Helen's again, and this time she's singing about Menelaus, about how he's been different, since the war. About how she drugs him, but framed as necessary to keep him calm. To keep herself safe.

Maybe we hear from Odysseus again after this, maybe not, but either way he and Helen share the chorus again. Then there's a bridge, and this is where Telemachus comes in. As he's portrayed in Epic, I think he'd probably rebuff Helen, and they argue a little but she ultimately accepts his hopes. It might be interesting to complicate her story here with some of the lesser-known myths about her. There's another chorus. Odysseus's tone is a little darker as he approaches Charybdis. After the chorus, Telemachus sings himself out and Helen genuinely wishes him luck. She hopes her warning isn't needed, but she wanted him to go back to his father with his eyes wide open. Odysseus ends his part with something mildly threatening, to lead into some of his darker moments and shadow Helen's words. Telemachus leaves with a stronger commitment to his goals.

I'm not one to write music, but I would assign Helen a lower voice, in part to give her more contrast with Telemachus and more contrast with how youth and innocence is generally portrayed by higher tones. If I had to pick an instrument for her, I would suggest a cello.

This doesn't really fit in the musical as it stands now, but it was a concept I had in my head after the Wisdom saga that I thought would have been an interesting way to amplify the themes of homecoming that the musical was approaching.

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It’s all fun and games to speculate on what Edwin writes in his notebook all the time, but if he’s been writing notes in there both during his time in hell and in the decades since, then there has to be so much arcane knowledge recorded within in those pages.  He may not be inventing new spells (as far as we know---he 100% could be and we just weren’t shown that), but he’s been recording magical encounters, mapping hell, presumably making notes about anything that could help their future cases… That’s a wealth of knowledge right there, and I bet it’s super valuable.  Not that Edwin would ever willingly get rid of it, but how much do you think all that would be worth, in the magical community?  How dangerous would it be if somone else got ahold of it?

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It’s deeply entertaining to watch Edwin be a fish out of water but I do find it a little hard to believe some of the things he doesn’t know.  Like, maybe he doesn’t know the word handjob because he and Charles don’t talk about sex and it probably had a different name when he was alive and tuned into slang.  But he doesn’t know what molly is?  He’s been running a detective agency that primarily serves the restless dead in a major city for 30+ years, and I’m supposed to believe that not once did they encounter a case that involved drugs?  Ever?  Or did they encounter drug cases and Charles kept glossing past it like “that’s not important right now” so they could focus on the supernatural aspects?  Idk, I just have questions

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Cursed Necromancer Thoughts

In some systems of necromancy you have to like. minutely design whoever you're trying to resurrect, and that has to be weird sometimes.

Because like, if you're trying to resurrect a partner or something, you know what they look like in all ways. But if you're trying to resurrect a parent? A sibling? Man, must be uncomfortable if you have to sit there and contemplate how to design their intimate areas. You resurrect your dead brother and he's thankful and all but when you built him a new body you accidentally made his little self like two inches shorter because you didn't know otherwise and he's not mad about it because like. at least he's alive, you know? But he's also a little annoyed.

But there are also just so many things that it's just impossible to know about someone's body. You get resurrected and everything works in perfect order, which is great! Except your elbow doesn't click anymore and it's kind of throwing you off. You're not going to complain because this is objectively better, but it's. weird.

You get resurrected and one day you eat an apple but it's? Spicy? So you turn to your necromancer like "hey, patch notes, I think you messed up on the apples somehow" and your necromancer is confused so you complain that they're spicy now and your necromancer goes "but apples are always spicy?" and then you discover that a) your necromancer is allergic to apples, b) your necromancer never figured out they are allergic to apples, and c) because they never figured out this wasn't normal you are now also allergic to apples.

You're resurrected and everything is great until you're looking at the sunset and it looks. wrong. but not in a way you can describe. It's just, the colors are off and you can't explain it and this problem eats at you until you realize "oh no, my red really isn't the same as your red" and resign yourself to the fact that colors are just always going to be Wrong now.

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Review: Divine Might by Natalie Haynes

I was really looking forward to reading Divine Might because I really enjoyed Pandora's Jar, and I think of it fondly because it sparked what, for me, ended up being a several-month deep-dive into classics. However, I don't think Divine Might lived up to my expectations.

What I enjoyed about Pandora's Jar was the close-reading it gave of all the women it discussed. Myths were picked apart down to the etymological level, and each story had multiple versions and interpretations. Interesting cultural connotations were added, and I genuinely really enjoyed how it complicated these female characters. This is not, generally, the experience I had with Divine Might.

On some level, this might be because I'm meeting the text from a different place, now. I have read a lot more classical literature and interpretive works, and most of the myths and stories referenced in Divine Might were stories I have seen picked apart in more depth elsewhere. However, I still think that why Divine Might didn't work as well for me, as a reader, is because Haynes set her view too broadly.

Apparently, the structure of the book that she had to write 10,000 words on each of the goddesses Haynes selected, as she explains in the introduction to the chapter on Hestia. For figures like Hestia and the Furies, about whom there are fewer myths, this is fair. Haynes has to dig deep into interpretations and complicate her readings in order to find enough material. For figures like Aphrodite and Artemis, however, I think 10,000 words is insufficient to have the nuanced discussion that I enjoy and that made Pandora's Jar stand out to me. For figures with a lot of myths and sources, it becomes difficult to reach the same level of detailed, thorough analysis when trying to give an overview of all material. This resulted in some of the chapters feeling superficial.

I did enjoy Divine Might, at least at times, but I think the project could have been better served if either some of the more prominent goddesses were permitted more space to breathe, or if the book chose to focus only on more minor figures. Instead, some of the goddesses came across as somewhat flattened to me, and as more one-dimensional than I would have preferred to see them detailed. The chapters I liked focused on Hera, Demeter and Hestia, though even then my thoughts are not without nuance (for example, rather than purely rebutting modern interpretations of Persephone, who perhaps should have had her own chapter, I think Haynes would be well-served to detail what the interpretations she disagrees with are and are doing in more detail). I found the chapters about Aphrodite and Artemis somewhat flat, and I'm unsure of my thoughts on the Athena chapter at the moment. The chapters about the Muses and the Furies I have generally neutral feelings about. There were aspects of the discussion that I enjoyed and aspects that I found bland.

In conclusion, while I would continue to recommend Pandora's Jar, I do not see myself going out of my way to recommend Divine Might to someone looking for a pop analysis of classical works. The book is not without its charms, but the issues in its construction make the discussion of the goddesses inconsistent in nuance and scope, making it difficult for the whole book to appeal to a singular audience.

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Athena's arc in Epic, as I understand it, is towards kindness. She begins the musical wanting to create the perfect warrior, who is ruthless, efficient and perfectly strategic ("He's still a threat until he's dead") but realizes over the course of the story that there is a value to empathy, and that kinder choices may lead to a kinder world ("I can't help but wonder what this world could be if we all held each other with a bit more empathy"). The perfect warrior does not need to be heartless, and she seems to want to guide people toward a more compassionate frame for decision-making.

Therefore, I think there's a missed opportunity in "I Can't Help But Wonder."

The Odyssey, after Odysseus reunites with Penelope and kills all the suitors, ends not with the reunion, as the musical does, but with Athena. In response to Odysseus slaughtering the suitors, their brothers and fathers and etc. begin marching on Odysseus's palace for justice/vengeance and he prepares himself to meet them in combat, intending to kill them like he killed the suitors themselves. What stays his hand is Athena intervening in the situation and essentially telling both parties that the fighting stops here.

I think it serves the themes of Epic better to have it end with the reunion, I completely understand why that choice was made for this adaptation. However, if Athena is really committed to trying to create a kinder world, it would have been interesting to incorporate some sort of nod to this closing scene.

What I'm envisioning is no more than a line or so, included at the end of "I Can't Help But Wonder." When Odysseus turns her down, she responds with "Very well," and then there's a brief exchange where Odysseus tells Telemachus he'll be with Penelope in a moment. Somewhere between this line from Athena and Odysseus meeting Penelope, I would have loved the inclusion of a line where Athena says something to the effect that she'll go calm the suitors' friends. I'm not sure exactly how I'd phrase it (maybe a reference to a lesson, or by calling Telemachus along with her?) but I think it would strengthen her arc because now she's not simply speculating about a better world, but actively taking steps towards creating it.

It's not a big change, but I think it'd be an interesting way to include a little more of the source material, and it'd push her character further than the current end of the musical does because she'd be taking direct action in response to her character growth while remaining relatively true to the original story. The lessons she's learned are currently demonstrated by her relationship with Telemachus and that last conversation with Odysseus, but I think it'd have been an easy way to push her just a little bit further and make her just a little more active in the ending.