Fields of Iron (Magnificent Devices #11) by Shelley Adina

Gloria’s plans to stop the Californias invading the Texican territories and likely massacring thousands of people – including several innocents in between the two territories, looks to have been scuppered when she narrowly avoided being kidnapped by the California’s ambassador

She can see only one way to stop the war – to appeal to the Viceroy himself. But to even get to the man involves crossing a territory where no woman travels alone – and with her speaking not a word of Spanish. It seems only a marriage of convenience will allow her to make her plea for peace.

I have to say yet again how much I love Gloria Merriwhether-Astor for being one of the most selfless, kind yet non-matyred characters. It has to be stressed that Gloria has no personal stake in the events of this book

Gloria is an extremely wealthy woman. She if the heir to a massive munitions manufactory which is making an absolute fortune selling arms for a brewing war. Gloria has everything to gain from this war going ahead and everything to lose by stopping that war

But she’s a deeply moral person and she absolutely refuses to accept this war going ahead. Considering her father directly responsible for this war and the upcoming massacre of a vast number of people including several innocent tribes – like the Brujas we saw last book and the Navapai who are caught in the middle. Gloria is not only determined to stop this war and cost herself a whole lot of money but she is willing to endure a lot of hardship to make this happen. She has been kidnapped, faced a lot of set packs and physical discomfort and, finally, in this book actually opts to marry a man she doesn’t love or even know very well because it’s the only way she can navigate the incredibly misogynist society of the Californios.

Gloria is a protagonist acting entirely from altruistic motives. And entirely against her own self-interest. And entirely to her own detriment. Yet she isn’t a protagonist who is being dragged into this by fat or destiny or special Chosen One status. Nor does she spend any real time bemoaning her fate or what is happening. She spends some time debating whether she really wants to take a certain step – but it’s only really about which step she takes, not about whether she should keep going forward. No matter how much she sacrifices, she is completely lacking in angst because these are actions she actively chooses; she’s not acting badly done to. She is an active participant here and the choices she makes are her own active decisions

Part of this may stem from her slightly shaky low self worth. Again this is interestingly well done – we have a lot of protagonists in the genre who will sit in a corner and dramatically declare how hideously ugly/awful/terrible they are. Gloria isn’t like that, she merely fails to acknowledge how extraordinary she is: partly because of her extremely terrible father but also because she has been surrounded by the awesome protagonists of this series which she persists in comparing herself too

Lucifer, Season 2, Episode 9: Homewrecker

This episode may be one of the turning points of the season as it has some excellent realisation moments from Lucifer

Last episode Lucifer made it clear to his mother, Charlotte, and his brother, Amandiel that he doesn’t want to go back to heaven and he doesn’t want to go back to hell – he wants to stay on Earth. He wants to stay in Los Angeles, this is his home, this is what matters to him. And it matters to him a lot

This is all expositioned extra clearly by Linda his excellent therapist. Ok, normally when a show or book manages to find a way to Tell everything, especially character development, so expressly it’s usually convoluted or doesn’t make any sense at all or is generally made because the author seems to think their audience are so terrible lacking in intelligence that everything needs spelling out

But Linda is excellent, she helps grow Lucifer not by just expressly pointing out his growth and feelings but prodding him every step of the way. And I love her all the more now she has both learned the truth about Lucifer and managed to at least partially got past that. There’s one excellent scene that covers this with Linda meeting Charlotte. She’s both in awe that Charlotte is the ex-wife of god (and respectful of Charlotte’s excellent rebuttal that she isn’t defined by her marriage) while also ferociously refusing to share any information about Lucifer with her. Respectful, even in awe, but still very aware of her professional ethics. Linda is awesome

Actually I’d love to see a series all following Linda, the therapist to the supernatural.

Anyway, this realisation of how vital Los Angeles and the sense of home is to Lucifer – the first place he has ever felt at home – he also faces a threat to that. This week’s murder victim was Lucifer’s corrupt landlord and his son is now selling Lux, Lucifer’s home, out from under him. And he buyer is a gloriously awful wealth real estate mogul who is just wrecking everything to spite her enemies. I kind of love her, I always have a soft spot for people who are gloriously awful and revel in it – I call them Magnificent Bastards and I kind of love them for it.

While the murder investigation goes on, Lucifer tries to scrabble up some way to save his home – with parties blocking the place from eviction (because of course he does) often not focusing on the case because of it. And here we see the wonderful relationship between Chloe and Lucifer – even as he endlessly frustrates her and his inability to follow the rules clearly exasperates her to no ends – she still deeply cares about Lucifer and his plight. Not enough to do more than to provide some legal distraction during Lucifer’s fight because she’s still Chloe and the law matters to her – but still there to offer real support. She knows how much Lux means to Lucifer which in turn makes it important to her. I think moments like this show the connection (not necessarily romantic) between characters more than anything else – forget kissing, sex and dramatic proclamations of love: simply making someone’s priorities your priorities is the most powerful depiction I can think of.

Unfortunately Charlotte is also in on the game. I’m all kinds of torn about Chaerlotte. In and of herself, I kind of love her, because she is the utterly perfect Magnificent Bastard. Charlotte is the Honey badger, she wanders through life Not Giving a Shit. And I think for this character to be awesome we either need a major storyline to focus on her (which I don’t think we have the space for here because we’re focusing on Lucifer and Chloe) or give her no real goal and just have her wander around causing chaos and being generally hilarious – let’s have a season of establishing her as this utterly powerful, confused, lost, sociopathic character finding her feet and dropping the occasional body and snarling and Mazikeen (hey we could make far more room for Mazikeen then – a character who really really really needs more attention. Or more room for Amandiel which makes him more than moving through Charlotte’s orbit. Hey couldn’t we have a 3 part story of Lucifer, Amandiel and Charlotte all adapting to the human world separately. Oh the storyline we could have).

The Vampire Diaries, Season 8, Episode 7: The Next Time Hurt Someone It Could be You

Time for the obligatory holiday episode and, honestly, it’s just so pointlessly awful. Really really awfully pointless.

Caroline has decided she wants to have this big grand holiday party with a lot of food and booze. So much booze. All the booze. More booze. This is the Vampire Diaries people they can’t get up in the morning without a double of jack.

Damon, to the surprise of no-one, has got over his little stabbing episode and decides to join the party. Caroline and Stefan act like this is totally ok and Caroline, bizarrely, spends the entire episode pretty much trying to turn all these murderous people who hate each other into a merely AWKWARD dinner and why can’t everyone just try to get along and play nice and drop awkward questions like who ordered who and who has made terribad awful deals with the devil forever more, mmmm ‘kay

It’s weird. And it’s weird because we’ve seen Caroline do this before so many times when it fit her character. She was the organiser of parties, of social events, throughout their school life. This is what she lived to do – to host and organise and order and make all her friends unite and work together – but that was years ago. She isn’t that person now and this isn’t a school ball.

Anyways, in response to being murdered last episode Damon decides to murder Stefan with a Christmas ornament

Seriously, this vampire family has a giant wooden Christmas ornament with spiky bits that are reinforced enough to stab someone in the heart. Who has this?! Why?

This sends Stefan to the spirit world to have a little 1:2:1 time with Cade his new devil boss and pretty much covers the only relevant part of the episode while everyone else sits down to the Most Awkward dinner with Damon threatening to kill everyone, Pointless Matt and his even more pointless dad showing up for reasons and Caroline trying to get everyone to play nice

Van Helsing, Season 1, Episode 13: It Begins

Vanessa has been captured by the big bad vampires which means she now has to suffer the most awful of tortures

Dmitri’s speeches

Honestly, there’s a lot of wrong with this show – but in terms of enjoyment pretty close to the very top of the list has to be the over the top ridiculous, awful villains

If only this show would realise this and EMBRACE it. Dmitri is amazing comic relief.

EMBRACE YOUR COMIC VAMPIRE

I keep waiting for the punch line but I just get that creepy feeling – y’know the one you get when laughing along to one of your creepy uncle’s comic diatribes before realising “oh my god, he’s serious, he actually does thing gay jewish illuminati are going to impose Sharia law”

Anyway we “learn” that Vanessa is actually the descendent of Van Helsing which is possibly why he has super powers

Well, I put “learn” in quotation marks for a reason because it’s the title of the show. This isn’t a reveal. They also want to harvest her eggs. Or impregnate her. Or both. They want to create a new generation of day walking vampires so they don’t have to keep blocking out the sun and likely destroying all of the plant life leading to a mass extinction but no-one seems to talk about that. Also they want to feed Vanessa blood because…

Meanwhile the head vampires, Rebecca, Anastasia (who is here for… reasons?) and Dmitri all kind of hate each other. Rebecca is also working with Taka, the head of the resistance to attack the fort in exchange to give them a vampire free island on which to starve to death on. And she gets… well I don’t know but her reason seems to be she’s jealous that Dmitri is going to make daywalker babies with a human. Because a female villain still got to have a male motivation, right?  

Salem, Season 3, Episode 5: The Witch is Back

So John and Bob are fighting uber rascist zombie Native American savages because Salem has zero respect for the depiction of minorities

As they fight, Bob gets stabbed which necessitates John to part her clothes to see her wound and notice that she in fact a woman. He had absolutely no idea until this moment.

Bob shares her backstory – those savage raping Native American savages (ye gods, Salem really?!) killed, kidnapped or raped her family and she hoped that the great John Alden would save them. He didn’t. So she now decided she will seek revenge as a warrior which means pretending to be a man because women aren’t allowed to fight

Also she kisses John while she has this great sucking chest wound

I would say this could become a comment on sexism, female vulnerability at this time, the tyranny of being forced to rely in men, the problem of male only professions – but instead we have that kiss which means we’re likely to have a love triangle or Bob dying tragically in tragic fashion so John can be So Very Sad about this.

Back in town Anne is being tortured by evil Baby Devil – while Minion is indifferent. He doesn’t understand sadism. He doesn’t care enough about humans to want to hurt them and finds it all rather distasteful. Luckily for Anne, predictably Cotton shows up to save his precious baby. He hands himself over which means, technically, he totally gets to claim the reward for turning himself in. Rather than laughing and killing him, Baby Devil decides to grant him his wish. Which is to save the womb holding his child

Or, Anne basically. But He decides he’s going to call the baby Hope regardless of Anne’s wishes and all will be wonderful and perfect because woooomb. While Anne is going to be all redeemed and find love with him again and it will all be perfect because wooooomb. Basically everything about Anne, good or bad, is set aside because WOOOOOOOMB

Also baby Devil wants Cotton to become his biographer and record his life story before he destroys the world because of course he does. And even if he doesn’t get involved and decides to nominate Minion to recite events to Cotton. And it’s all pretty hopeless – Minion describes a long series of events and all Cotton hears is “zomg god! So wonderful!” Minion is critical of god and Cotton gasps “BLASPHEMY!” unsurprisingly the fallen angel doesn’t sweat blasphemy all that much. Minion tries to raise the idea that power corrupts – and therefore god is the mostest corrupt ever

Supernatural, Season 12, Episode 8: Lotus

Lucifer is still out and about causing chaos – and still pursued by Sam and Dean, the Hunters, Castiel, the earnest but rather inept Angel and Crowley the sarcastic. They also bring Rowena on board after Crowley minces her latest attempt at trying to marry a rich man since it turns out he’s conning her. Splattered in blood and gore she declares it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever done for her

See it’s moments like this that make me really like Rowena.

So what is Lucifer up to? He’s leaping from body to body, briefly causing a brouhaha by possessing an Archbishop and then a massacre when said bishop’s staff noticed the holy man unable to hold a crucifix and decided the best thing to do would be staging an exorcism

Lucifer doesn’t exorcise easily. Also, shallow moment, but is there a reason why the staff of this Archbishop are all so hot? Or is television casting so broken you can’t even have a casting call

But he leaves of his own accord to find a new host. The President of the United States

Remember last week when I asked exactly how much damage Lucifer would do in his new body? Well, we now have the president of the US, who is an unhinged, violent, impulsive nihilist with no real grasp of reality

Wait, sorry, I turned to the news by mistake, let me try again

We now have the president of the United States possessed by satan.

When the gang finds out (no surprise, Crowley has a minion on the president’s stash), they’re duly disturbed and worry exactly how they can even get near the president to combat Lucifer. Especially since Lucifer has dispatched the Secret Service against the Winchesters

Something which would be problematic if the British Men of Letter’s didn’t show up, in the form of Arthur Ketch, the fixer of the Men of Letters with a huge stash of shiny lethal toys and an extremely improbably accent. He came because Sam called – and you can’t hardly blame him. I mean Satanic President is the wor... second worst thing that could happen to the presidency.

He still wants to recruit the Winchesters on side and make up for the whole torturing and murdering thing (oopsie) he’s totally willing to lend them his toys. Which is useful because he has a handy-dandy exorcism orb. It’s shiny.

Will Game Of Thrones Bring More Girl Power?

For many seasons, one of the primary criticisms of Game Of Thrones was its handling of women. We wrote previously about the rape of Sansa Stark, which was one of the most controversial things the show has done to date during its six-season run. However, there were other issues as well. Daenerys Targaryen was objectified and sold into marriage by her own brother, and was only taken seriously as a leader when she had dragons at her back. Cersei Lannister derives power from her beauty and name but for several seasons lived in the shadow of her authoritarian father. And on countless occasions, the shrewdest and most successful women in the show have used their physical charms to get ahead (or get by). In short, there wasn't ever a whole lot of female empowerment in Westeros.



This changed drastically in season six. We saw Sansa help to bring down her husband and rapist. We saw Daenerys dismiss her lovers and admirers to lead her army on her own. We saw Yara Greyjoy assume control of an Iron Fleet in her weakened brother's stead. And we saw Cersei orchestrate one of the deadliest schemes in the show's history all on her own with no help from her powerful and wily brothers or her long-deceased father. That's all to say nothing of the likes of Arya Stark and Brienne generally kicking ass. It was the season of girl power on Game Of Thrones, and the shift toward female empowerment got quite a bit of attention.



Now the question is whether this trend will continue when season seven rolls around in 2017. That's an open question at this point, but for now let's look at a few things that could be done to lend even more power to the women of Westeros.



Sansa Could Cast Littlefinger Aside



There's a lot of debate over Sansa's relationship with Littlefinger at this point. Moviefone, which will often post fun articles and interviews looking ahead to upcoming projects, posted some comments from the actors that indicated there may still be some kind of trust between them. It's implied that Sansa might be considering Littlefinger's vision of taking the Iron Throne with her by his side. The idea is that she wants credit for taking the North. But this would feel like a step backwards. Sansa has fallen prey to the whims of men in her life throughout the show, from Joffrey to Littlefinger to Ramsey, and it would be refreshing to see her stand up for her independence. There's also an outside shot that she could choose to marry Jon and take her place as the Lady of Winterfell, given that he's not her brother—but this feels unlikely.


Yara Could Win A Battle



Yara Greyjoy carries herself with a certain swagger that's unique among Westerosi women. It's implied that she knows what she's doing and that the naval troops of the Iron Islands have reason to trust her. But we haven't really seen her do much. It would seem to be a relatively easy move for the showrunners to give her a battle to win en route to Westeros with Daenerys.



Cersei Could Use Her Wealth



We could almost forget, at this point, how much money the Lannister family has. And that's because we attribute it mostly to Cersei's father. Backing this up, Lottoland published an infographic depicting fiction's richest characters. Ordinarily a destination for Euro Millions lottery players, the site seems to have put this up as a means of playfully teasing those players with fantasy wealth. But the point of interest here is that Tywin Lannister made it onto the list. And yet, Cersei is usually portrayed these days as being at the end of her rope, or struggling under the Crown's debt. For her to reclaim the wealth of her house and wield it like the Lady of Casterly Rock would be an interesting power play.



Arya Could Finish Her List



Finally, we could also see Arya Stark finish her list. The youngest Stark daughter has already become a rare symbol of female power in the show, and if she continues her journey to becoming a cold-blooded, man-hunting assassin, she could represent the ultimate girl power triumph.

Moon Chosen (Tales of a New World #1) by P.C. Cast

  

I don’t know how I got roped into this, but it appears I’m reading more P.C. Cast. I blame Cynna, Olivia, Maverynthia and Paige for my pain and suffering. I will be joining them on the Papercuts Podcast to discuss this atrocity we have all endured.

Because this book is just so very… typical. It was utterly awful in several ways.

I think to understand a lot of the PROBLEMATIC awful elements of this book as opposed to the awful WRITING elements of this book and the awful CHARACTER elements of this book it is necessary to look at how this book treats race

A very very very very simplistic reading of this book would suggest there are no POC in this book – but I think that’s largely because an editor (yes, I actually believe this book may have gone near an editor despite all evidence to this contrary) looked at this and said “you’re going to make them POC? Nooooo, stop this Save the Pearls awful!”. This means the book is very very very very careful not to outright label skin colour of anyone. There’s one reference to Earth Walker skin colour:

“The dirty, earthy colour of all Scratchers”

Which pretty much makes their dark skin confirmed in the most utterly racist way possible.

Even if it were ambiguous and it is rarely mentioned, that doesn’t mean the racialisation of the Earth Walkers and the Tree Tribe aren’t clear. The physical descriptions have several markers – the Earth Walkers have black, coarse hair, broad noses; the Tree Tribe has blond hair, small noses. And these are just some examples – Mari spends most of the book hiding her mixed race identity using dark hair dye and darkening her skin and disguising her features with mud – which screams darkening her skin. Sure she could be disguising herself by being the person who is literally and clearly blathered in mud all the time

But… really? I mean can someone even live like this? She thinks the tribe ostracises her – but if she is this filthy all the time is it any surprise everyone backs away from her. Ultimately, another character openly comments that her skin is a different colour. It’s hard to avoid the idea that the Earth Walkers are not a POC analogue even if not POC themselves

And we know that with some extra really problematic tropes that have been dropped on them. The Earth Walkers are cursed – at night if they are not “washed” in moonlight the women become passive, despairing, depressed and suicidal while the man become animalistic, violent, savage rapists. So much so that even washed they cannot live with their wives and daughters because big angry rapey men – with POC coding this isn’t just problematic, this is disgustingly racist. Seeing this the Tree Tribe kills the animalistic men and enslaves the women – assuming they’re helpless, pathetic, incapable of helping themselves and the good noble tree tribe HAS to enslave them for THEIR OWN GOOD

Seriously, this white saviour narrative is so strong Cecil Rhodes would ask you to steady on a little. Not only are these magical slave/slaughter traits disgusting in and of themselves, but they’re also used as redemption for the Tree Tribe’s slavery. One thing this book does manage is to make it clear that enslaving the Earth Walkers is wrong – but this narrative of woo-woo JUSTIFIES them, it absolves them. They’re not evil, they just didn’t understand that this entire race of people they were murdering didn’t want to be murdered and enslaved. They’re killing them FOR THEIR OWN GOOD.

The woo-woo which causes the POC to rape and be enslaved is an appalling, insurmountable part of this book which pollutes my tablet with its presence. But it’s not the only issue – the way the Earth Walkers (coded POC) and the Tree Tribe (coded white) are described is utterly awful. The Earth Walkers are ugly – coarse, rough featured, plain; while the Tree Tribe are “refined”. This is the objective description of the two people – the beautiful blonds and the ugly, coarse POC who are rapists and enslaved.