Just Finished Watching the 1st 2 Eps of House of Ashur...
Bitch.
I'm in!!
First, I didn't know Graham McTavish and Claudia Black were up in this?!
Nick E. Tarabay is chewing up scenes. We've fallen back into all the familiar; -the camp and the soap.
We so far only have the barest hint to Neferet's (aka Achilea's) backstory, but she does fight. ...Realistically, given her gender, and size.
...She's not Mary Sue.
And YES, to those who want to pretend they're not supporting this because Nagron isn't in it, is based in supporting queer rep and NOT because they are your favorite ship (which sure, I get but you can say that)...
She stands under the rainbow. 🏳️🌈
I missed the cussing, the blood and guts, the intrigue, and the cadence of vaguely Shakespearean play-tinged sword and sandal pulp.
If you watched Spartacus, then you already know what you're in for...but I'm just saying I'm surprised that they wrote Achillea doing what she did in one of these eps.
It's shocking violence, even for this.
We're not in the meat of the intrigue yet, but you can see who the chess pieces are.
So, #ThisIsARec so far.
First two eps are up!!
Support this show, if you're into what I've written.
Once again, it IS gory, has a lot of nudity, sex, and violence...
This is your warning, for those who DIDN'T watch Spartacus.
Making this a separate post, but I still deeply hate how Neferet’s takedown was handled.
( @cuttoncandyhair would love to hear what you think!)
Someone whose whole arc was "everyone failed me and so did Nyx, so I will become a better goddess than her, and all will worship me", to end up as "taking over downtown Tulsa from my swanky penthouse suite is a fine goal to have", just so an overpowered teen can defeat her without having to put in some hard graft, is quite honestly insulting to the intelligence of the characters the authors have given us, not to mention the reader.
I don't necessarily disagree that it would be Neferet’s own actions leading to her downfall, but if I may, I think it would ideally have a lot more to do with her own mounting ambitions and fatal flaws, than being nerfed by the plot out of convenience. I also think it would have been better served to demonstrate the flaws in the system that allowed her to get as far as she did -- flaws where high priestesses are so respected as to be seen as nigh infallible, where professors are expected to always agree and never be seen complaining about the high priestess.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if Neferet is an allegory for the priests who attacked children with reckless abandon, then at least show us the system that allowed her to do that! Otherwise, it would be tantamount to calling the professors we're supposed to respect and admire utterly useless for seeing nothing, saying nothing, and failing to act. And if that's the case anyway, I want to see those professors examined as flawed people! I want that flawed nature to be shown as a feature, not a bug we hand-waved away!
Back to Neferet. I know the books upped the ante by killing off the High Priestess of Vampyres, Shekinah, never mind that we the readers were given no reason to care about her other than "she's the vampyre pope and Neferet just lanced her like a damn zit", and nor are we given a reason to think she's more powerful than any other vampyre, other than her being older than most vampyres and good enough at the Voice to land her a spot with the Bene Gesserit. (That especially sucks because it wastes a fascinating character for the Big Bad's power moment). But I honestly think it would have been better to have Neferet stick to the original plan, in killing expendable professors in gradually extensive and cruel ways and blaming it on the People of Faith until she could spark a big enough uprising, eventually baiting actual People of Faith to kill a vampyre in front of witnesses. From there, she could use the media spotlight to incite that uprising into action. She would be a likely winsome face of the movement, and I don't doubt she could manipulate the Circle to be her poster kids to the same end.
(The question there is, would that narrative bring up problematic implications? Would that suggest that civil rights movements are based around hatred (in the sense that the media framed such as MLK and Malcolm X as threats to (white) peace before assassinating them), or bring up that there have indeed been bad actors and grifters manipulating the oppressed, who have used movements for human and civil rights for their own ends, or leaders for peace who have turned out to be violent (say, Aung San Suu Kyi, who led Myanmar in committing genocide against the Rohingya people)? I suppose that would lay with how that narrative was handled.)
What would undo Neferet then would be her fatal flaws, such as her ego and pride.
This isn't a new or non-canon compliant thing, I don't think. Neferet is the type of person who has such utter confidence in her ability to do anything she sets her mind to, with such inimitable conviction, that she is both unable to conceive of the slightest possibility that she might fail and unable to consider for even a moment that she could possibly be wrong in taking that path in the first place.
This is why she had the professors killed in crueler, more drawn out ways each time, by the way: as a reminder, she had Patricia Nolan beheaded and her head on a spike before nailing her to a cross, whereas Loren Blake was disemboweled first. Naturally, we can assume she meant to show that the People of Faith were more and more emboldened to attack vampyres without fear of getting caught (or the consequences if they were).
That is, were this story to stick to the original arc progression, based on her characterisation, there are two possible avenues that will lead to her getting caught:
1, As careful as she is capable of being, her egotism means that she would kill her colleagues in more and more cruel and drawn out ways -- yes, to emulate an emboldened People of Faith, but also without heed of the notion that she might get caught in the process -- until her or a lackey is caught in the act, or a victim lives long enough to tell someone who attacked them.
2, Again due to her egotism, she is so convinced of her own importance that when authorities do start investigating, it is not guilt that causes her to slip, but her paranoid certainty that such as the FBI are on her tail and looking into her every move -- because surely they would send their best after her! Now, it doesn't matter where that paranoia is coming from, it is still paranoia, and it can still make a murderer slip.
As to whether there are other factors involved that could cause that downfall, I do think she has an accomplice, and possibly one other than Loren Blake. This is based on the fact that both Loren and Patricia's murders seem to have involved wooden crucifixes (I say "seem"; the writers are a bit shaky on the canon details), and vampyre or no, there are three things I know:
- You need more than two hands to incapacitate a victim and stabilise a cross (Jesus had more than one Roman with him at Golgatha, after all).
- The Casts are fully the type to take a girl power stance in their fantasy matriarchy while also assuming that a woman alone isn't strong enough to murder anyone.
- You don't send a poet to do an assassin's job.
Next, given that the warriors didn't show up until after Patricia's murder, not least the fact that the more people you have involved in your conspiracy, the quicker it fails to remain one, there's enough reason to doubt that Neferet had Loren assist with murder 1, then brought someone in (say, a warrior) for murder 2. I personally reckon, unless there's a big piece I'm missing here, that Neferet had an accomplice, and the writers decided that this person's role no longer mattered right around the end of book 4. Which sucks.
I think the only thing that the books and I agree on is that Neferet would absolutely employ the power of a bigger divine bad in order to make herself a goddess, out of the belief that she could fully quell and manipulate whatever that bigger bad was. Why? For one, it plays into her fatal flaws (see above). The issue I have though is that Neferet would not be defeated once, then settle for a smaller domain to call her own. Again, this is not someone who thinks she can be defeated, and this is also someone who believed she could inspire all of vampyre society to take the world back; she would have taken any small defeat as a sign to aim bigger and higher. To not be goddess-like, but be *the* goddess. Nothing less would do.
By having her take herself down to smaller goals, we lost a chance to see Zoey and her friends work harder and become stronger and more skilled through their graft. Call me brainwashed from a childhood of watching Dragonball Z and Avatar: The Last Airbender, but what's the point in rooting for main characters who don't have to do much of anything for victory?
Goku is a great protagonist because he trained, he gained, and he gave *everything* in his battles, for his friends and the planet. His victories meant so much because he earned them with blood, sweat, tears, and no less than one dead Yamcha (one of his oldest friends, btw!). Frieza's defeat meant so much to us because he kept aiming higher, upping his power levels and metamorphosising to match. He didn't stop with any small defeat - he got stronger and worse. By the end of it, we wanted him *dead.* This was no longer business -- this was PERSONAL, and with the high cost, so was Goku's victory on planet Namek.
Aang was the same way: he gave nothing but his best, and he did it when Fire Lord Ozai had crowned himself the Phoenix King and had Sozin's comet boosting his own firebending, when he was at his strongest. When Aang defeated him, after all he'd lost, he didn't even need to kill him to do it -- he not only took away his bending and humiliated a fascist dictator in the process, but preserved his cultural heritage (the heritage of a genocided culture) and kept his hands clean. He won not only a physical victory, but a spiritual one, too, and you cannot help but love it.
With House of Night, there's none of that. There's no hard fought battle because it was barely fought. With no training of the heroes, no heightening in power, there's nothing to be invested in, no sense that we fought *with* Zoey and her circle, and so no reason to care. And with Neferet having to lose her own power and position before the final battle, with no thanks to Zoey's efforts, well, why did we put a 12-book series into a big(ish) bad that Buffy could have packed up in a two-episode season finale?
And that's really the moral of the story, isn't it? I love the potential of the world, but for what we have on the page, why.... should we care?
