English Teacher Musings

My cozy corner of (mostly) Star Wars pondering. Mainly CodyWan. Pro-Jedi, Pro-Clones, SW Prequel Trilogy supremacy. Teaching stuff. She/her, 30s.

[pliziu]

★Luminosité et lumières✨💙★

Et voilà, je suis de retour après presque un mois et avec un dessin de John Eyzen mais comme Gringoire 🎶✨ j'ai beaucoup de dessins à faire, j'en mettrai en ligne d'autres bientôt 🌹💙🌹

Nous sommes déjà en décembre, ne vous attendez pas à des dessins de Noël🗣️✨, je suis un Grinch dans la vraie vie hehe !🦇💚

[lieutenant-teach]

I don’t particularly enjoy Russian humourous fantasy books. But as an experiment I’ve finished ‘Masha and BEARS’ (Маша и МЕДВЕДИ) by Irina Elba and Tatiana Osinskaya. There was no plot to be found, no character developments at all, Mary Sue main character. But that wasn’t what made me angry – it was what the authors did with the romantic plotline. (spoliers ahead)

Masha is 17, all she thinks about is snuggling with hot men (not even boys – adult men). Her love interests grope her, kiss her – and they all are adult men. Why couldn’t the authors age the heroine up – at least to 18, esp considering that she studies at uni?

Lots of rape jokes, which – I get it – work as synonyms of passionate sex, and many more jokes about seduction of a minor. The book was written in 2016! I thought these jokes were left long in the past! Nowadays it’s at least deeply distasteful, at most – offensive.

There are moments when the heroine says to her kinda-boyfriend (she likes him, he likes her, but they are not True Loves) to stay friends, but he still kisses her and treats her as his girlfriend – touches her borderline inappropriately and flirts a lot. Later in the plot he kisses her while she’s drunk, they almost have sex, but in the morning she’s only offended they didn’t manage to, and she doesn’t have any qualms with him having kissed her while she was intoxicated.

All the other guys in the book (the heroine’s colleagues) joke with her inappropriately and ogle her while her being in lingerie – she doesn’t mind (let me remind you again, she’s 17, they’re adult men). In the end she suddenly falls in love with one of these guys, the one who hated her from the beginning, but now it’s True Love.

Frankly speaking, the nicest man in the book is a skeleton Count (who is also in love with the main heroine, of course) – he defends her honour and gives her flowers, and listens to her when she complains about her feelings being hurt (while the other guys, her colleagues, only judge her).

In all, I deeply disliked the authors’ attitudes towards the heroine and romance.

[lieutenant-teach]

My short, kinda a bit spoiler-y reviews of several POTO fan books I’ve read with recommendations for fellow phans.

The Phantom Saga by Jessica Mason

A good romantic and spicy rendering of the POTO book plus continuation of the story, romance and adventures – everything POTO fans and specifically Erik\Christine fans would wish for. I love Christine’s character – not a naïve quiet transparent as a tear girl, but with a complicated character and even hardness. I absolutely adored light BDSM moments with sub!Erik and dom!Christine – it’s the only time I could ever find such disposition of powers, everyone else goes old boring ‘sub!Christine and dom!Erik’. The books are very worth reading. They are 5 in the saga for now – 4 novels and 1 novella, expecting the 5th book this summer.

‘The Angel of the Opera’ by Sam Siciliano

First it seemed like a retelling of the original POTO book with some OC Sherlock’s cousin instead of Watson. The plot moves on without Sherlock at all, his presence doesn’t change events, which I find dissatisfying, but the ending (a happy Erik ending!) turns everything right in my eyes. I adored the fact that Sherlock unexpectedly, instead of being an adversary, believes in Erik’s goodness and gives him his friendship and help when no one does, which in the end saves Erik’s life and soul. Also I enjoyed Christine’s bitchiness and calculation in her choice of the husband – well, the girl has to survive in the man’s world...

‘The Canary Trainer’ by Nicholas Meyer

Some pages in, and it seemed like Sherlock brings plot changes to the POTO’s detective storyline, but he ends all the way wrong about Erik’s backstory. For real, the great Sherlock Holmes fails to find out the truth about the Phantom’s personality? Also it irked me how Erik is described as just a madman. Yes, I know he acts wrong in many ways, but the reasons why he became as he was (and which make him such a relatable character) are all missing. He doesn’t get any sympathy from the author. Meh.

‘The Phantom’ by Susan Kay

It’s considered as ‘almost canon’ in POTO circles, and I see the appeal, but… The storyline seemed ok, but Erik’s drug addiction and the fact he gives a child to Christine while Raoul takes the child as his own… It iffed me, really. Also I kinda dislike how Erik is described as a devilish child – not my headcanon. I get it, he’s a genius with restless mind, prone to mischief, but come on! There was no need to make him evil towards his mother. Mixed feelings – there are good ideas in the book, too.

‘The Vampire Advocate’ (‘Адвокат вампира’) by Elena Kostetskaya Erik works as the helper of Van Helsing and Johnathan Harker, who fight evil mystical creatures in London. Also featuring Count Dracula and Irene Adler who help them to deal with vampire!Dorian Gray. Erik is a real Frenchman here – very rebellious. Absolutely fun and adventurous book, can be enjoyed by those who know Russian.

[happyheidi]

𝖡𝗈𝖻 𝖱𝖺𝖽𝗅𝗂𝗇𝗌𝗄𝗂

[lieutenant-teach]

Vibes of fairytales, esp of Shrek for some reason.

[lieutenant-teach]

I deeply dislike when in POTO fanfiction the authors combine musical, book and movie fandoms, and then describe Erik’s mask and face way after the beginning of the plot. Why can’t we know which version we are dealing with from the first chapter? A skull-like guy or a half-handsome guy?

[poiv]

Harry and Hermione made their way to the back of the room, where there was a small, vacant table between the window and a handsome Christmas tree, which stood next to the fireplace. Ron came back five minutes later, carrying three foaming tankards of hot butterbeer. 

“Merry Christmas!” he said happily, raising his tankard.

Harry drank deeply. It was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted and seemed to heat every bit of him from the inside. 

[poiv]

–Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 10

This was one of the most vivid and touching moments for me while reading this book. It’s simple and heartwarming, just the way I love it.

[lepidopoda]

codywan biker au for whos.nox’s 10k DTIYS over on instagram

part 2

[i-mickdraw]

Jekyll and Hyde getting into a little fight

Hey look another post with these goobers!

I think I shall divulge in a bit of lore here…

Jekyll and Hyde (Hyde especially) can somewhat interact with each other when they’re in a certain state of deep sleep where they’re deep within a shared dream space together.

Plus side is it’s an easy way to talk with each other with leaving cryptic notes like “we need more milk” or “sorry for the stains don’t worry the blood isn’t ours :)”

Downside is it often leads to Jekyll not getting enough sleep cause Hyde’s antics in that state tends to make Jekyll wake up either in a cold sweat that means he’s not wanting to go back to sleep for the rest of the night.

Hyde especially has honed in his control over that dreamlike state in their mind as Jekyll is outside of the mind most of the time.

Anyways-

Basic rules is they can manifest however and whatever they want in this dream space with the only limit being their imagination, which Hyde often takes advantage of to taunt or torment Jekyll in some way

(Mayhaps I shall expand on why if there is interest in that 🤔)

So there you go!

A bit of lore that I hope makes a bit of sense.

Enjoy!

[veresks-blog]

moony🙏

[inquisitor-apologist]

God I’m such a nerd but I would LOVE to see standard classes and such at the Jedi Temple at some point. Like, we’ve seen their martial arts stuff (which I also love, and it’d be great for that to be expanded on outside combat), but I kinda just want to see the standard school stuff with Jedi and Force context sprinkled on.

How does endosymbiotic theory incorporate the midichlorians? What are Padawans and Initiates taught about in a standard anatomy class when there are dozens of different species in that class? How is the absolutely massive, entirely digitized Jedi Archive maintained, and what kind of technical support does it require? We know that the temple has some kind of theater department going on from Mace Windu’s backstory as a Rodian theater nerd—what kind of plays do they put on, and are any Jedi originals? How many languages are in regular use at the Temple? Ashowka establishes that the Jedi have some kind of ancient oral tradition that references other galaxies; how long have these stories been in circulation?

Just. So many interesting things to explore with the Jedi! Can we please get more with them than Order 66 From A Different Angle sometime soon?

[lieutenant-teach]

What are they going to do with HP merch? Are they going to remake everything from movies-looking to series-looking? Are we going to have two different variations of character toys – one labeled as ‘movie version’, another as ‘series version’? Scarfs with different colour variations for each House? Two versions of House symbolic animals? Because I don’t see them removing all movies merch from shops – movies still bring money even by proxy.

[lieutenant-teach]

In the hype after Harry Potter series teaser release, I mulled over this particular idea: the HP producers excuse the fact of HP series existence as the need to ‘rejuvenate’ the fandom for the younger generation. But the same time I remember the Star Wars producers who were so afraid to recast young Luke, Leia and Han for projects like ‘Han Solo’ movie or ‘The Mandalorian’ series, never mind make films about the OG trio adventures. In the case of ‘The Mandalorian’ they had a young actor for Luke – naturally a carbon copy of young Mark Hamill – but they put loads of unnecessary CGI on his face to emulate Mark Hamill in his prime. The result – everyone loathed creepy CGI Luke, although the idea was not to make SW oldies angry choosing another actor for Luke, who could easily get huge backlash for ‘taking place’ of Mark Hamill (as it happened with Alden Ehrenreich who played young Han Solo in the 2018 film).

SW are much older than HP. Still, no one remakes the Original Trilogy films (what they do with sequels\spinoffs is another sad story). No one says ‘OT is too old, more than a half of the century, it’s time to repeat the same plot, but with different actors, to cater for younger generation’. But somehow HP, which is only 25 years old at max (if counting from ‘the Philosopher’s Stone’), is the one that needs urgent remaking. (And yes, although we can kinda count ‘The Force Awakens’ as a semi-retelling of ‘A New Hope’, but at least it pretends to be a different movie).

[lieutenant-teach]

[yettocome12]

[mereelskirata]

Happy New Year all! Have a quick lil sketchy doodle of Codywan~

also.. return of the tag list!!! : @brokenphoenix99 @lonewolflupe @king-of-docks @earlgreyci @loverboy-havocboy @hastalavistabyebye @whiskygoldwings @the-starry-seas @bittybug-sunflower-blog

[petitworld]

by Phill

[vivianamphibian]

hope