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https://www.tor.com/2019/10/10/celebrating-the-best-of-supernatural/

https://www.tor.com/?p=506976

Oh Supernatural, even though you can be painful, frustrating, and depressing sometimes, I will never stop loving you. With the start of the fifteenth (!) and final season this week, what better time to revisit the 307 (!!) episodes of the little show that could. Sam and Dean have died more times than they can count but this time it might be for good. But before the going gets tough and the tough get going, let’s take a moment to celebrate some of the best episodes that this bonkers, beautiful show has produced over the last decade and a half.

Best Monsters of the Week

Screenshot: The CW

The Benders — season 1, episode 15

A bit of an odd choice to start off a list for show about supernatural beasties with an episode where humans are the killers. But what makes this episode so good is that it reminds us that it’s not just monsters wreaking havoc on the world. Sometimes humans can be just as cruel as demons and vampires.

Best line: Dean: “I’ll say it again: demons I get; people are crazy.”

Nightshifter — season 2, episode 12

A great example of the show firing on all cylinders. The monster of the week case is familiar yet quickly spirals out of control; in fact we only see the monster near the end, the rest is Sam and Dean trying to do what’s best for everyone and failing spectacularly. Also, remember when Dean was wanted by the FBI? Ah, memories.

Best line: Sam: “We’re not working for the mandroid!”

Good God, Y’all — season 5 episode 2

When the pastor of a small Colorado town asks if the chaos going on outside is the end times, my first thought was “oh you sweet summer child.” Season 5 was the first of several end times, but none of the others had Titus Welliver as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Ghosts, monsters, and demons are bad enough, but War is an altogether new class of evil.

Best line: Castiel: [bemused look] “No, [God’s] not on any flatbread.”

Hammer of the Gods — season 5, episode 19

There’s fighting a god here and there, and then there’s being kidnapped by a bunch of them so they can sell you out in exchange for surviving Lucifer’s wrath. Poor Sam and Dean are trapped in a small town hotel, The Elysian Fields, as a gaggle of gods decide their fate. Gabriel/Loki is involved (in an episode this weird, of course he is), Lucifer doesn’t do bargains (of course he doesn’t), and it all goes even worse than you expect.

Best line: Gabriel: “Sam. Dean. It’s always ‘wrong place, worst time’ with you muttonheads, huh?”

Best Character Studies

Screenshot: The CW

What Is and What Should Never Be — season 2, episode 20

“Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero?” Dean asks these questions while standing over his father’s grave. He has just woken up in a djinn-created world where he and Sam and John never became hunters. This is Dean’s chance to start over, to be a normal guy who mows the lawn and dates nurses. We see how much the hunter life has taken its toll.

Best lines: Dean: “Bitch.”
Sam: “What are you calling me a bitch for?”
Dean: “You’re supposed to say jerk.”
Sam: “What?”
Dean: “Never mind.”

When the Levee Breaks — season 4, episode 21

Sam is a demon blood addict, and it’s time for him to detox. While locked in Bobby’s panic room as he goes through withdrawal, he hallucinates everyone from his mother to his younger self to Alastair (the demon who tortured Dean in Hell), and even his big brother. As hard as it is to watch, it’s worse when he goes back to Ruby and nearly murders Dean.

Best line: Dean: “If you walk out that door, don’t you ever come back! ”

Dark Side of the Moon — season 5, episode 16

After being shot by two pissed off hunters, Sam and Dean end up in their respective Heavens. For Dean it’s setting off fireworks with young Sammy, and for Sam it’s his first real Thanksgiving instead of his father passing out on the couch with a bucket of fried chicken. Elsewhere angels are arguing, but in Heaven Dean gets to have one last sandwich made by his mom.

Best line: Zachariah: “Wow. Running from angels. On foot. In heaven. With out-of-the-box thinking like that, I’m surprised you guys haven’t stopped the apocalypse already.”

Lebanon — season 14, episode 13

Speaking of family reunions, Dean accidentally summons John Winchester from 2003 to 2019. Mary had been resurrected by Amara at the end of season 11, but this was the first time in series history all four were on screen together. Of course there are temporal paradox shenanigans, but for a brief, shining moment, they all get to be happy. The boys and Mary had a fraught relationships with John, and this meeting gave them the closure they so desperately needed.

Best line: John Winchester: “Then it’s all true. God, the Devil, you boys smack in the middle. Now you live in a secret bunker with an angel and Lucifer’s kid.”

Best Episodes From Non-Winchester Perspectives

Screenshot: The CW

Ghostfacers — season 3, episode 13

Ed Zeddmore and Harry Spangler are back and this time they’re in charge. The Ghostfacers set up shop in a haunted house to look for ghosts and wind up with more than they bargained for. Sam and Dean crash their party just in time for a dangerous ghost to start picking them off. Also: baby Ted Mullens!

Best line: Ed: “Rats are like the rats of the world.”

Weekend at Bobby’s — season 6, episode 4

Jensen Ackles’ directorial debut features Bobby in all his grumpy glory. Bobby helps the Winchesters solve a case, but mostly he battles an okami and digs up Crowley’s buried past. Bobby has always been like a gruff uncle who pops in and out as needed. But here the Winchesters are secondary characters in Bobby Singer’s story.

Best line: Bobby: “Do I look like Dr. Phil to you?”

The Man Who Would Be King — season 6, episode 20

Castiel takes center stage in this episode, which is bookended by a scene of our favorite angel praying to God in a park. Cas is having a crisis of conscious. He’s screwed up in some pretty major ways this season and is this close to losing the Winchesters for good. All he wants is to do his Father’s bidding, but Daddy isn’t answering his calls. In a show about terrible fathers, God is the worst.

Best line: Dean: “You know who spies on people, Cas? Spies!”

Baby — season 11, episode 4

Alright, so technically this isn’t really shot from the perspective of Baby, Dean’s name for the Impala, but it is shot from inside the car. Baby has been there since the beginning and will likely be there at the very end. She is the glue that holds the Winchesters together.

Best line: Chuck: “On April 21, 1967, the hundredth millionth GM vehicle rolled off the line at the plant in Janesville. Three days later, another car rolled off that same line. This 1967 Chevrolet Impala would turn out to be the most important object in pretty much the whole universe.”

Biggest Laughs

Screenshot: The CW

Bad Day at Black Rock — season 3, episode 3

A couple of loser thieves steal a lucky rabbit’s foot from John Winchester’s old storage shed, except it’s more a curse than a boon. Whoever possesses it has a rash of good luck, but when they lose it — and they always lose it — they eventually die. Rube Goldberg-ian mayhem ensues, peaking at a particularly glorious scene where Sam tries to scrape gum off his shoe and ends up losing it down a sewer drain.

Best line: Dean: “I’m Batman!”

Changing Channels — season 5, episode 8

This and “The French Mistake” are the episodes I have rewatched the most over the years, and for good reason. I still can’t make it through the herpes commercial without giggling and Dr. Sexy, MD is sheer perfection (not to mention that it makes a strong case for Dean being bisexual…). And that credits sequence for the 90s sitcom! *chef’s kiss*

Best line: Dean: “Calm down? I’m wearing sunglasses at night! You know who does that? No-talent douchebags! I hate this game! I hate that we’re in a procedural cop show, and you want to know why? Because I hate procedural cop shows! There’s like three hundred of them on television, they’re all the freakin’ same. It’s like, ‘oh, plane crashed here’ — oh shut up!”

Fan Fiction — season 10, episode 5

This is one of the all-time great episodes. Forty-two minutes of call-backs, in-jokes, and obscure references, occasionally set to music. Every time Sam and Dean encounter fans of the Carver Edlund books is a delight. There’s a monster of the week thing going on in the background, but who cares when we have Dean wrangling with the concept of “Destiel.” And apparently Dean has seen Rent enough times that he can quote it off the cuff???

Best line: Marie: “Oh, it’s just subtext! But, then again, you know, you can’t spell subtext without s-e-x.”

Saddest Deaths

Screenshot: The CW

Death’s Door — season 7, episode 10

During a fight with Dick Roman and the Leviathans, Bobby is mortally wounded. “Death’s Door” is a lovely tribute to an honorable character. Luckily, his absence was only temporary, as in he was later replaced by Apocalypse World Bobby Singer.

Best line: Bobby: “Well, as fate would have it, I adopted two boys and they grew up great. They grew up heroes. So you can go to hell!”

Holy Terror — season 9, episode 9

Alas poor Kevin, we knew him well. Becoming a prophet put him in the crosshairs of the war between angels, demons, and the Winchesters. His story was never going to end with puppies and rainbows, but getting his insides burned up by Gadreel possessing Sam’s body probably wasn’t on his bingo card.

Best line: Kevin: “I always trust you. And I always end up screwed.”

All Along the Watchtower — season 12, episode 23

This episode has three deaths for the price of one. Kelly Kline dies giving birth to Adam, the Nephilim sired by Lucifer, while Crowley stabs himself to death with an angel blade in an attempt to trap Lucifer in Apocalypse World. Too bad Lucifer jumps back through the rift just in time to kill Castiel with the angel blade before Mary drags him back into Apocalypse World as the rift seals for good.

Best line: Crowley: “Is this what you do when I’m not here? Type?”

Worst Deaths

Screenshot: The CW

Abandon All Hope — season 5, episode 10

Ellen and Jo Harvelle, a mother-daughter hunter team, were key supporting characters in the early days. Both are killed trying to protect Sam and Dean. The writers seem to think their deaths are heroic, but in reality they feel unnecessary and pointless, particularly when we realize they were fridged, as their demises are used to further motivate Sam and Dean. Thanks, I hate it.

Best line: Jo: “No. Sweetheart, if this is our last night on earth, then I’m going to spend it with a little thing I call self-respect.”

Dark Dynasty — season 10, episode 21

Charlie was one of the best guest characters in the show’s history. Killing her off was bad enough, but to do it in such an awful way was downright terrible. She dies doing something uncharacteristically stupid, and her death is further cheapened because she’s fridged. You’d think the writers would’ve learned their lesson after ten seasons, but no.

Best lines: Charlie: “Sam and Dean are like my brothers. I love them.”
Rowena: “I know. And that steadfast loyalty will be your undoing, my girl.”

Biggest Game Changers

Screenshot: The CW

The Monster at the End of This Book — season 4 episode 18

As far as game changers go, this episode offers 4 pretty major ones. We meet Chuck Shurley for the first time, the writer who has visions of Sam and Dean and turns them into the cult classic book series Supernatural. Turns out he’s also a prophet (or is he…?). Back when it aired, this seemed like another piece of the Michael/Lucifer vessel puzzle, but a decade on it turns out to be one of the most revealing episodes in the show’s history.

Best line: Chuck: “I write things and then they come to life. Yeah, no, I’m definitely a god. A cruel, cruel, capricious god…I toyed with your lives, your emotions for entertainment.”

Point of No Return — season 5 episode 18

This really is the point of no return for the Winchesters. They’ve spent 5 seasons trying to avoid their fates, but now it’s crunch time. No more running, no more planning. Adam turns his body over to Michael and there’s nothing Sam or Dean can do about it. A tense, dramatic episode where everyone makes rash decisions rooted in fear and anger.

Best line: Dean: “So screw destiny, right in the face. I say we take the fight to them, and do it our way.”

First Born — season 9, episode 11

The first time we meet Cain (the awesome Timothy Omundson), the introduction of the First Blade (which Dean needs to kill Abbadon), and a ton of backstory about Lucifer’s role in Abel’s murder and the Knights of Hell. Dean also gets saddled with the Mark of Cain. Dean often trades his soul for the benefit of others, but even he begins to regret this deal.

Best line: Castiel: [takes a bite of a sandwich] “It tastes like molecules.”

Don’t Call Me Shurley — season 11, episode 20

Down on earth, Sam and Dean deal with a case of killer fog while in a dive bar Chuck and Metatron work on rewrites of Chuck’s latest book. Of course Chuck isn’t really just some loser writer. This episode confirmed a long-standing fan theory that he was, in fact, God. We learn more about the archangels and their relationship with their Father, and by the end Dean holds a glowing Samulet in his hand as Chuck finally reveals himself.

Best line: Sam: “Dude, quit ironing my shirts with beer!”

Moriah – season 14, episode 20

Nothing could be a bigger game changer than the season finale right before the final season. Jack confronts Sam, Dean, and Cas and it goes poorly. Dean once again takes on the worst task to spare others and decides to kill Jack. Except that’s exactly what Chuck wants. And when has Team Free Will ever done what Heaven wants? But refusal comes at a high cost as Chuck sets off the Apocalypse and releases every monster the boys have ever killed.

Best line: Dean: “Hi. I’m Dean Winchester, and I’m looking for the Devil’s son.”

Best Reality Benders

Screenshot: The CW

Mystery Spot – season 3, episode 11

AKA the many deaths of Dean Winchester. Stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque time loop thanks to the wiley Trickster, Sam has to watch Dean get killed in increasingly bizarre ways until he learns an unsettling lesson

Best line: Sam: “Yesterday was Tuesday, right? But today is Tuesday too!”

The End — season 5, episode 4

Zachariah sends Dean 5 years into the future where the Croatoan virus has become a pandemic and Lucifer possesses Sam. The result? Not great, Bob. Bonus points for a stoned Cas who goes to orgies and is stoned all the time.

Best line: Dean: “Well if it isn’t the Ghost of Christmas Screw You.”

The French Mistake — season 6, episode 15

Out of all 300+ episodes, this has to be the funniest. Sam and Dean crash into a world without magic thanks to Balthazar and wind up as Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, stars of the low-rated TV show Supernatural. Basically 42 minutes of non-stop jokes. Just thinking about Dean realizing Sam married Fake Ruby has me snickering.

Best lines, all courtesy of Dean: “I feel sick. I’m gonna be sick. I feel like this whole place is bad touching me.”

“Dear Castiel, who art maybe running his ass away from heaven, we pray that you have your ears on. So breaker, breaker.”

“Look at these male modelin’ sons of bitches.”

Scoobynatural — season 13, episode 16

Yep, it’s exactly what it sounds like. The Winchesters get sucked into a television and end up in an episode of Scooby-Doo. The plot gets a little too intense for the kid-friendly cartoon characters, what with the ghost being a dead kid and the discovery that the supernatural is real, but the boys make sure to set things right.

Best line: Dean: “Sam, growing up on the road, no matter where Dad dragged us, no matter what we did, there was always a TV. And you know what was always on that TV? Scooby and the Gang. These guys, they’re our friggin’ role models, man. Except Fred. He’s a wad.”

Best Beginnings

Screenshot: The CW

Pilot — season 1, episode 1

Meeting Sam and Dean for the first time is one thing; rewatching it 15 years on is another. Thankfully it still holds up, even if the show is a very different beast now. The pilot is fun yet frightening, economical yet expansive. Barring the fridging of two women characters and all that toxic masculinity that stained the early seasons, it’s a nearly perfect episode.

Best line: Dean: “House rules, Sammy. Driver picks the music; shotgun shuts his cake hole.”

In My Time of Dying — season 2, episode 1

For all his faults, John Winchester really was doing his best. He loved his boys and wanted to protect other families from what they went through. Unfortunately he didn’t know how to do both at the same time, not until he makes a deal with a demon to save Dean’s life. Starting off the second season by killing off the most important figure in the boys’ lives is a bold choice.

Best line: Dean: “You always have a choice. You can either roll over and die or you can keep fighting, no matter what.”

Lazarus Rising — season 4, episode 1

This ep gives us a Dean who is resurrected after spending decades being one of Hell’s worst torturers and the arrival of Castiel. While the episode doesn’t spend much time setting up the arc for the season, it does establish the new-yet-not-improved versions of Dean and Sam and introduces Cas. It packs a whole lot in just 42 minutes.

Best line: Castiel: “I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition.”

Best Endings

Screenshot: The CW

Devil’s Trap — season 1, episode 22

If there’s one thing Supernatural does best it’s season finales. The first season ends on a killer hook. The boys have just rescued their father from the clutches of a demon. Just as they’re making their escape in the Impala, a demon trucker smashes into them. Are they dead? Merely unconscious? Fans watching live in 2006 had to wait nearly 5 months for the answer. And! This is Bobby Singer’s first appearance!

Best line: Dean: “Killing that guy, killing Meg. I didn’t hesitate, I didn’t even flinch. For you or Dad, the things I’m willing to do or kill, it’s just…it scares me sometimes.”

No Rest for the Wicked — season 3, episode 16

Dean and Sam go up against Lilith in what they hope will be the final battle. She escapes, but not before sending Dean to Hell as per the bargain he made a while back. The very last shot is Dean, bloody and sweaty, suspended by meat hooks on chains and screaming for his brother. Whew!

Best line: Dean: “All I’m saying…Sammy, all I’m saying is that you’re my weak spot…You are. And I’m yours.”

Swan Song — season 5, episode 22

For an episode that was originally supposed to be a series finale, this does a lot of heavy lifting. The Michael/Lucifer arc ends with Sam!Lucifer and Adam!Michael tumbling into the Cage. Cas heads off to find God while Dean settles for trying to build a monster-free life with Lisa. And Chuck vanishes. It’s a hell of an ending, even if the pause is only temporary.

Best line: Chuck: “No doubt, endings are hard. But then again, nothing ever really ends, does it?”

Alex Brown is a high school librarian by day, local historian by night, author and writer by passion, and an ace/aro Black woman all the time. Keep up with her on Twitter and Insta, or follow along with her reading adventures on her blog.

https://www.tor.com/2019/10/10/blumhouse-and-iheartmedia-are-teaming-up-for-original-horror-podcasts/

https://www.tor.com/?p=507931

Podcasts have proven to be a great breeding ground for horror, with works like Lore, The Black Tapes, Tanis, Limetown, and of course, the OG, Welcome to Nightvale, all amassing tons of fans. Now Blumhouse Productions, the studio behind such horror franchises as Insidious, The Purge, and Paranormal Activity, is getting in on the action. Variety has reported that the production company has teamed up with iHeartMedia to make a series of original fiction podcasts.

According to Variety, the scripted audio-plays will all be in the horror genre, “including thrillers, murder mysteries, and sci-fi,” and are intended to be adapted into TV and film. If they do end up snagging some adaptations, then both companies will produce.

The first podcast under the partnership will be The Mantawauk Caves, described as a supernatural horror about a trio of boys who go spelunking in the Appalachian Mountains, only for the trip to go disastrously wrong, leaving just one survivor. Written, directed, and produced by The Signal director Dan Bush, it’s expected to come out some time in “early 2020.”

https://www.tor.com/2019/10/10/todd-phillips-joker-take-on-mental-health-doesnt-match-realism-of-ben-edlund-tick/

https://www.tor.com/?p=507624

When Todd Phillips’ Joker premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September, it received a rapturous reception, winning the Golden Lion for Best Film. Now that it’s out in the U.S., the reviews have been a bit more mixed. The story of Some Bad Days in the life of Arthur Fleck, who might be mentally ill, and maybe becomes the Joker, is compelling, but not always coherent. I found myself rooting for Arthur at times, but I also found myself thinking of a very different superhero-adjacent story—one that also featured a mentally ill protagonist.

I’m speaking, of course, of The Tick.

Join me below for a spoilery discussion of Joker, The Tick, and the importance of therapy.

Todd Phillips’ Joker presents a very particular fantasy of misery porn turning into a revenge narrative. Arthur Fleck is down on his luck. He has a crappy job. He’s jumped twice in what seems to be about a two-day period, and gets fired from his job in between the attacks. While he appears to get away with murder, his already shaky life falls apart: he learns his mother has been lying to him and spends a few days thinking he’s the son of Thomas Wayne, only to be told that this is not true; he learns that he was abused as a child but has repressed the memories; he loses his access to state-sponsored therapy and medication; his mother has a stroke; he’s publicly humiliated by his hero, a talk show host named Murray Franklin.

Now this kind of abuse isn’t that far afield from other citizens of the superheroic world. Bruce Wayne loses his parents in a random act of violence that defines his adult life, and over the course of his stories he’s lost partners, surrogate children, and, often, any hope of a stable or happy life.

But one specific detail plays out in the background of this narrative: the film makes it clear that Fleck has been diagnosed with a medical condition, that he uses several medications to control it, and that he’s going to therapy each week. Early on in the film he hands a woman a card explaining that he has a neurological condition that causes him to laugh uncontrollably whenever he feels stress. We see this uncontrollable laughter impact his life, as it gets him in trouble at work, undercuts his attempt at stand-up comedy, and leads directly to attack #2 when a bunch of finance bros decide to punish him for being a freak. However, the film only feints toward explaining his conditions, with a script that is purposely light on specifics. The neurological condition is never named, and while it’s apparent that Fleck lives with depression, we never learn if this is manic-depression (as it would been called in 1981), schizophrenia, or a panic disorder of some type. Similarly, it’s unclear whether his extreme skinniness is due to an eating disorder or a marker of poverty—the film draws his mental and physical health in broad strokes.

We go with Fleck to two therapy sessions. In the first, his therapist sits patiently through one of his laughing episodes, then asks if it helps that he comes in to talk. She asks if he’s been keeping up his journal, looks through it, and comments on a few of the jokes he’s written—ignoring the pictures of naked women he’s pasted into it. He asks her to up his meds, and she replies that he’s already on seven medications. He says that he just wants to stop feeling bad, but we don’t see her response to this.

From what we can see she’s doing her job well? She gives him space, checks in with him, and overlooks things that might seem off-putting. She doesn’t judge. The next time we see a session, she tells him she has bad news, but rather than allowing her to continue, he rants that she doesn’t actually listen to him, that she, like everyone else in Gotham, ignores him. Given that she opened their previous session by asking him if he found therapy helpful, this seems off base, but she doesn’t take offense, just lets him talk again. Then she breaks the news that their funding has been cut, and they won’t be meeting anymore. He asks, “Where am I supposed to get my medication?”—clearly prioritizing that over the sessions. She replies by telling him that the city doesn’t give a shit about people like him, or her. She very definitively throws her lot in with Arthur. She’s on his side, whether he can see that or not.

Later we see close ups of the bottles of meds, to see that he only has a few pills left. It’s after the meds run out that he learns the truth of his parentage, and starts acting more, like, well, like The Joker. He kills aggressively rather than defensively, and seems to take genuine joy in killing. He has a longstanding hallucination that seems to grow much stronger as the film goes on, before finally breaking in the final scenes.

Screenshot: DC Films

Because of the revelation that his mother (probably) lied to him about his parentage, we have no idea how much to trust her. Since Fleck claims that she’s the one who first told him he had mental health issues, we have to doubt those, too. We never know exactly why he did a stint in Arkham. Was he violent? Did she have him committed for an illness he didn’t even have? Are his meds actually destabilizing his brain chemistry, rather than helping it? When Fleck finally accuses his mother of inventing his illness, she’s in no condition to dispute, and we no longer know what to believe. He then claims that he feels better since he went off his meds.

This is where the film breaks into a few different threads of possibility:

On the one hand, what we have is her word against the word of several very powerful men, and a medical report that was possible funded by those very powerful men. It’s entirely possible that she’s telling the truth about Arthur being Thomas’ son, and that everything from then on is Thomas crushing her so he doesn’t tarnish his rep.

On the other hand: She’s delusional, convinces herself she’s in a relationship with Thomas, adopts Arthur to try to force him to marry her, and then gaslights Arthur for his entire life, and his medications cause him to hallucinate and exhibit other symptoms of mental illness.

On the other other hand: She’s delusional, but Arthur does actually have neurological conditions, which are exacerbated by the abuse that her boyfriend inflicts on them. The meds and therapy are helping, and when they’re cut off his hallucinations worsen, his impulse control pretty much evaporates, and he tips over into full-blown mania and starts what will end up being a career as, and I cannot stress this enough, THE JOKER. Whatever waffling there is about his health in the first half of the film, we watch him gleefully kills multiple people in the second half.

I’m going with the third one, because as is revealed toward the end of the film, Arthur has spent several weeks experiencing the exact same delusion that his mom had. Where she became convinced that she and Thomas Wayne were in love, he becomes so obsessed with his neighbor that he hallucinates an entire relationship with her. He only realizes it hasn’t been real after he shows up in her apartment and she clearly has no idea what he’s talking about, and he seems to think back through their history together and realize her presence was a figment of his imagination.

Rather than dealing with what this revelation would do to him, the film cuts to him back in his own apartment. He might have killed her—for my money he probably killed her—but the audience isn’t shown her body, or her daughter’s, because presumably (god, hopefully) this would destroy the audience’s identification with him. It would force us to consider him in a harsher light, which would make it difficult to keep our sympathies through the final section of the film, when the script frames him as an avenging antihero. Given the spotlight on Murray Franklin’s show, Fleck ditches his stand-up routine to give an improbably eloquent speech lambasting society’s mistreatment of the mentally ill. He accuses Thomas Wayne and the rich directly, saying that they would step right over men like him, even if they were dying in the street, because they don’t care—echoing the earlier words of his therapist. Fleck ends with a call to arms: “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you fuckin’ deserve!” This speech leads to an all-out riot in Gotham, as the poor rise up against the rich, and take Fleck as their leader.

Screenshot: DC Films

But after he’s murdered Murray Franklin and is stuck back in Arkham, we see him with a new therapist, who is also a Black woman. She is sympathetic. She certainly would have read his file, yet she’s sympathetic to him. She’s also meeting him in a room alone, with no guards of any kind. The film cuts to Arthur in the hallway alone, trailing bloody footprints, every sign pointing to him having murdered his new therapist.

In Joker we have a portrait of a mentally ill man who loses his support network, falls through society’s cracks, and becomes a gleeful murderer as opposed to a victim. The film frames his emotional distress as being the fault of one woman who fails to nurture him: His mother. This distress is then exacerbated by the lack of care exhibited by two different female therapists—two Black women who have chosen to go into social service professions—and the female neighbor (also a Black woman) with whom he hallucinates a relationship. We never know anything about the neighbor aside from her status as a single mom, who seems to have a warm and loving relationship with her daughter. This neighbor “fails” Fleck by not actually being the person he hallucinated. Confronted with Fleck in her apartment, she tries to get him to leave by mentioning her daughter—protecting her child from a bad man in a way that Fleck’s own mother could not.

We’re asked to empathize with him as he is kicked and beaten and abandoned by the government and lied to by his mother. The film very, very clearly frames his mania and at least two murders as triumphant revenge fantasies. These scenes are incredibly compelling, and I thought the strongest parts of the movie were when he truly became the Joker we’re all accustomed to, clad in a striking, off-kilter suit and committing acts of grotesquerie. From the moment he kills his mother, up until the point where he starts speechifying on Murray Franklin’s show, I was riveted, and I think there was a lot of fascinating stuff in this film.

BUT.

There was another superhero story that told a tale of an openly, mentally ill hero, one with a real diagnosis on real meds. We were also asked to identify with him as he struggled. He was also named Arthur.

He was Arthur Everest, the hero of the latest version of The Tick.

The 2016 reboot of The Tick took the whimsical and goofy comics world Ben Edlund first created thirty years ago, and crashed into the much-grittier superhero world of today. The Terror, formerly a joke of a character, is reimagined as a true supervillain who really enjoys torturing and killing people. There’s an anti-hero Punisher parody who turns out to be a sexual abuse survivor. The Tick himself is an amnesiac who has an existential breakdown mid-way through Season One. All the updated characters were commited to emotional realism, but no one was brought more to Earth, and made more real, than Arthur.

Arthur has PTSD; when he was a little boy he watched helplessly as The Terror murdered his favorite superhero team, the Flag Five. But the Terror only murdered them after the FF crashed their plane right on top of Arthur’s father. And of course the cherry on top of this trauma was that after Arthur’s father and heroes were all dead or dying, The Terror walked right up to Arthur and stole his ice cream sundae.

Screenshot: Amazon

This is, in the parlance of comics, One Bad Day.

But when we meet Adult Arthur, he’s a normal, non-superpowered person, and one of the few people who believes The Terror is still alive. In the time-honored tradition of fictional amateur detectives, he surveils a warehouse and gets in over his head—but then meets The Tick, and learns that he’s been right all along. He and The Tick form a partnership and work together to bring The Terror down.

But in the background of this slightly skewed heroic arc, we learn that Arthur also has some rather severe mental illnesses, and is still, understandably, dealing with the PTSD of his Bad Day. He’s gone through therapy, and he’s on two medications: Amisulpride (an anti-psychotic used to manage schizophrenia) and Celecoxib (a multi-use drug that can be prescribed as an anti-inflammatory for people with arthritis, but can also be used to treat depression and bipolar disorder).

But as he realizes he’s been right all these years, his success goes to his head. He becomes increasingly frustrated with his support group, and dramatically throws his medications in a trashcan at one point.

And on the one hand, we’re supposed to empathize with him. His conspiracy theory turns out to be right! the Terror is still alive! His overprotective sister should back off! His mom is too pushy! He probably doesn’t even need those meds!

Well…no.

No, his sister is checking in because she sees all the warning signs that he’s spiraling. His mom is calling about dinner because she wants both of her kids to come home on a regular basis, because she loves them and she wants to hear about their lives. And when Arthur has a scare, thinking the Tick has been a hallucination (because, as his sister points out, he’s dealt with hallucinations in the past) he has to confront the fact that he needs his support network.

Happily, The Tick isn’t a hallucination. But this startles Arthur into understanding that, no matter how strong he’s become, he shouldn’t try to go it alone. He isn’t going to be “cured” because he was right about The Terror. There is no “cure” for trauma. He may not need to keep taking medications (it’s implied in the second season that he’s stopped using them) but he does still need to check in with his support network, to make sure he has a firm grasp on reality, especially in a world overrun with superheroes and villains and somewhat sentient robots and terrifying government agencies. As his sister reminds him, there’s a drill he’s supposed to repeat: “Normal is what normal does: takes meds, returns calls, dresses appropriately for the weather.” In the world of The Tick, normal also includes donning a super suit and doing battle with evil—but you still have to return those calls.

Over both seasons, the show makes a point of introducing us to Arthur’s support system. When he goes to his stepfather’s birthday party, his stepdad reassures him, and invites him to open up about his mental “choppy surf.” His mother, meanwhile, has taken the extra step of inviting two of his therapists to the party. These therapists aren’t just blips in Arthur’s life—they are part of an extended network of people who have used their expertise to help him, and because of that Arthur’s mom has welcomed them into the family’s private sphere. These people are all working together toward the common goal of keeping Arthur healthy and stable, which in turn is what allows him to team up with The Tick and become a hero.

Screenshot: Amazon

Now, compare that with Joker. The film gives us a really beautiful, to my mind, line about living with mental illness: “The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don’t.” But from behind the scenes there are comments like this one from Todd Phillips in the LA Times:

“Me and Scott and Joaquin, we never talked about what he has — I never wanted to say, ‘He’s a narcissist and this and that,’” Phillips said. “I didn’t want Joaquin as an actor to start researching that kind of thing. We just said, ‘He’s off.’ I don’t even know that he’s mentally ill. He’s just left-footed with the world.”

Those italics are mine, by the way. Screen Rant posits that Arthur Fleck’s incongruous laughter is caused by Pseudobulbar Affect, a condition that tends to set in after a person suffers a head injury. Once Arthur begins researching his mother, he learns that he was battered about the head by one of her boyfriends, so this could check out, but the film exaggerates the condition far beyond how it actually plays out for people. It also cherry-picks the condition by focusing on Arthur’s laughter, when he’d probably cry uncontrollably as well—but obviously it’s way cooler for the Joker to laugh when he doesn’t mean to, it’s just so much freakier than a man who can’t stop sobbing, right? The other option is that Arthur’s exhibiting the Emotional Disregulation that can result from bipolar, borderline personality disorder, PTSD—any of which could also fit Arthur’s behavior.

We also don’t get a good look at Arthur’s medications. We’re just told he’s on seven of them, which his therapist says in a tone of disbelief. As well she should. Joker is set in 1981, in “Gotham” in an alt-USA. New York is never mentioned, but Joker evokes 1970s New York so strongly it’s easy to assume that Gotham is operating pretty much like that city did in that decade. Now in 1981 (especially considering that he’s a dirt-poor patient who relies on Gotham’s public mental health system) Arthur would almost certainly be on “first generation” antipsychotics—medications which were developed in the 1950s. “Second-generation” medication didn’t start to roll out until the ’80s, so I think it’s safe to assume that Arthur, who has already been hospitalized, is not allowed to have a gun, and is very much In The System, would have a set regiment of those older meds.

Now a cocktail of seven different drugs from that first generation? Obviously they wouldn’t all be antipsychotics, but they’re still going to be quite strong, and have heavy side effects. Yet Arthur is able to get up each day and go to work, care for his mom, and work on his stand-up act with seemingly no hiccups. And again, if the film was trying to hint toward Arthur being somewhat superhuman, it would have been quite easy for someone to comment on how unusual his dosage was. The film does edge toward him being slightly supernatural, as he’s beaten up and hit by cars multiple times only to shake off his injuries, and later seems to have an eerie ability to evade the police even after committing multiple murders—but the movie doesn’t commit to that in the way that the Nolan/Ledger Joker commits to being, well, a chaos demon. Joker doesn’t want to commit to him having an identifiable diagnosis, or seven researchable prescriptions, so the illnesses can remain as Screen Rant says, “convenient plot devices.” It can continue to use his mental health as a nebulous stand-in for social ills.

And I understand why a filmmaker would want to keep this nebulous, to avoid getting bogged down in diagnoses and prescription cocktails—but when you want to use a mentally ill character as a symbol, without actually defining how he’s mentally ill, when you want to blame all of his problems on his equally mentally ill mother, when you cast one Black female therapist as a villain, and another as a punchline/victim, and then cast another Black woman as the object of stalking/probably murder—I don’t think you should then also get to have him stand up and have an extended soapbox scene lamenting the abuse of mentally ill people. I don’t think you should give your marginalized hero a rousing speech while you’re also vilifying the very people who are trying to act as a support network—people who are also marginalized. If you want us to cheer when he fights back against finance bros and rich, bullying talk show hosts, you don’t also get to make us laugh at the murder of a most likely poorly paid Black social worker. And given how much conversation this particular movie has kicked up, I thought it was only fair that I jump in and point out a superhero show that took its mentally ill character seriously, and allowed him to become a hero instead of a villain.

Leah Schnelbach would maybe participate in a social uprising if Arthur Everest was the leader. Arthur Fleck, less so. Come dance down the steps with them on Twitter!

https://www.tor.com/2019/10/10/erin-a-craigs-house-of-salt-and-sorrows-will-be-a-tv-series/

https://www.tor.com/?p=507919

Erin A. Craig’s YA gothic fantasy, House of Salt and Sorrows, is coming to TV! Deadline has reported that 1212 Entertainment, the studio behind Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, will be taking on the small-screen adaptation of the novel.

Described by Deadline as a “gothic twist on the classic Grimm fairytale The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” the adaptation will be developed and produced by Joshua Long and Roberto Grande.

Here’s the book’s official synopsis, according to the publisher:

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor with her sisters and their father and stepmother. Once there were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls’ lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last—the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge—and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods. Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that her sister’s deaths were no accidents. The girls have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn’t sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who—or what—are they really dancing with? When Annaleigh’s involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it’s a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family—before it claims her next.

According to Deadline, the team behind the show is currently looking for a writer. There’s no word yet on a cast, production, or a planned release date.

In the meantime, you can check out House of Salt and Sorrows‘ official book trailer:

“blue bokeh texture for your use”by pinkorchid_too (Sandra) is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/scotusblog/pFXs/~3/T99boDr5JVQ/

https://www.scotusblog.com/?p=289609

Capitol of Puerto Rico

The Constitution’s appointments clause provides that the president nominates, but the Senate must confirm, principal “Officers of the United States,” although Congress can also give the president the power to appoint “inferior Officers.” Next week the Supreme Court will hear oral argument on the scope of both this clause and the ancient remedy known as the “de facto officer” doctrine, which blesses an official’s actions even when his appointment is later discovered to have been invalid. The questions before the court may be a law nerd’s dream, but the justices’ resolution of these issues could have powerful real-world implications.

In 2015, Puerto Rico faced a financial crisis. The island was operating under a crushing debt – over $70 billion – that it was unable to repay. Because the island’s debt was not only massive but also held by a large number of individual investors on the U.S. mainland, in 2016 Congress passed the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) to restructure the commonwealth’s debt.

PROMESA created a Financial Oversight and Management Board to make fiscal, legal and governance reforms to bring financial stability back to Puerto Rico, including by restructuring the island’s debt. The board is made up of seven voting members, six of whom are supposed to be chosen from a list compiled by members of Congress; if they are chosen that way, Senate confirmation is not required. The law also gives the president discretion to select the seventh voting member of the board.

In May 2017, the board began proceedings in a federal court in Puerto Rico to restructure the island’s debt. But Aurelius Investment, a hedge fund that had invested in distressed Puerto Rico bonds, and a labor union that represents employees of Puerto Rico’s electric utility challenged the appointment of the board members. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit agreed, ruling that the board members are “Officers of the United States” who must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

But the court of appeals rejected a request by Aurelius and the union to invalidate all the actions that the board had already taken. Instead, relying on the de facto officer doctrine, the court of appeals concluded that those actions should stand. Reversing them, the court of appeals explained, would have “negative consequences for the many, if not thousands, of innocent third parties who have relied on the Board’s actions until now” and would “likely introduce further delay into a historic debt restructuring process that was already turned upside down” by “the ravage of hurricanes.”

The lower court’s ruling spawned five separate petitions for review: three – from the board, the federal government and a committee of unsecured creditors – asking the justices to review the 1st Circuit’s ruling that the appointment of the board members violated the Constitution and two more – from Aurelius and the union – asking the court to weigh in on whether the de facto officer doctrine prevents invalidation of the board’s prior actions. The justices granted all five petitions at the end of June and fast-tracked the cases for oral argument in October.

The threshold question before the justices is whether the appointment of the board’s members must comply with the appointments clause. The board, the federal government and others argue that the appointments clause only applies to “officers of the United States,” which means officers of the federal government. It does not extend to the local government of a territory like Puerto Rico, as confirmed by the fact that other words in the appointment clause (such as Congress and the president) also refer to the national government.

Further evidence that Congress does not need to comply with the appointments clause, they say, can be found in the territory clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress “full and complete legislative authority over the people of the Territories and all the departments of the territorial governments.” And historically, they add, Congress has not always complied with the appointments clause when selecting officers for U.S. territories.

Here, they argue, there is no doubt that the members of the board are officers of Puerto Rico, rather than officers of the United States: Congress clearly intended the board to be a local entity that acts for Puerto Rico, rather than part of the federal government. And they warn of serious consequences if the 1st Circuit’s ruling is upheld. The board, for example, cautions that the ruling “throws into doubt the legality of” its actions and “threatens the progress that Puerto Rico has made to this point,” while the federal government tells the justices that the ruling “threatens to upend the government of all five major U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.”

Aurelius and the union counter that the appointments clause does indeed apply to members of the board because they are “officers of the United States.” Board members are “appointed, overseen, and removable by the federal government alone,” they contend, and the board members “exercise significant federal authority” that goes beyond the authority exercised by territorial officials – for example, the sole power to enforce PROMESA in federal court and “investigative powers that sweep far beyond Puerto Rico.”

Aurelius and the union reject any suggestion that the territory clause carves out some sort of exception to the appointments clause. And allowing the 1st Circuit’s ruling to stand, they assure the justices, would not pose a threat to other territorial officers because it has long been understood that “purely local, territorial officers who enact and enforce primarily local law” are not “officers of the United States” and “may be elected or appointed in any manner of ways.”

The board and the government (among others) argue in the alternative that, although the board members’ appointments were legitimate, it is in any event well established that the de facto officer doctrine applies when it is later determined that appointments violate the Constitution. They stress that the harm from invalidating the board’s past actions as it attempted to restructure billions of dollars in debt would be significant – as one group of bondholders put it, it could “wreak havoc with the entire economy of Puerto Rico.” Indeed, they note, one proceeding filed by the board has already led to the confirmation of a plan to adjust billions of dollars’ worth of Puerto Rico’s debt by issuing new bonds, which are already on the market.

By contrast, they suggest, the benefit to Aurelius and the union would be minimal, because the proceedings that the board has initiated are no different from any other bankruptcy case in which Aurelius has participated – the board does not, for example, prosecute or adjudicate the case. And the violation, if it existed, was relatively small, because Congress did help to select the members of the board even if they were not confirmed by the Senate.

Aurelius and the union push back, arguing that the de facto officer doctrine should not apply and the board’s actions should be invalid. The Supreme Court has made clear that the de facto officer doctrine should not apply to violations of the Constitution, they contend, and it would be particularly inappropriate to apply the doctrine here, when the violation of the appropriations clause was “so open and notorious.” Adding insult to injury, they continue, the board has continued to work even after the 1st Circuit ruled that its members’ appointments violated the appointments clause.

Aurelius suggests that a ruling that the de facto officer doctrine applies to this case could lead to a variety of undesirable effects. First, it observes, private parties won’t have an incentive (and may not even have a legal right to sue) if a remedy is not available for past violations of the appointments clause. Second, it contends, such a result “would also encourage Congress to usurp executive authority, confident that it will suffer no repercussions.”

Aurelius also urged the justices not to be swayed by dire warnings that chaos will ensue if the de facto officer doctrine does not apply. These claims, it argues, “boil down to an extraordinary assertion that the constitutional violation here is simply too blatant and too big to remedy” – an argument that “turns the Constitution upside down.”

Next week’s argument, which the justices expanded to 80 minutes, will feature four different lawyers debating these questions. Although we won’t know for some time how the court is likely to rule, we can be sure that lawyers, law professors and the bond markets, as well as residents of Puerto Rico, will all be waiting anxiously for the result.

This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.

The post Argument preview: Justices to hear argument in appointments clause dispute arising from Puerto Rico debt crisis appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-nature-deception/201910/some-lie-lot

https://www.tor.com/2019/10/10/denis-lawson-will-reportedly-return-to-star-wars-in-the-rise-of-skywalker/

https://www.tor.com/?p=507644

Another familiar face is reportedly returning to the Star Wars franchise in forthcoming film The Rise of Skywalker: Denis Lawson, who played the role of X-Wing pilot Wedge Antilles in A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

Word of the casting comes from Rebel Force Radio, which says that it’s received confirmation that the actor has agreed to reprise the role of his character from the original trilogy.

LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT THING. We just received a solid “YES” from a representative for the actor, Denis Lawson will be in #StarWars #TheRiseOfSkywalker reprising his role as Wedge Antilles. pic.twitter.com/ESoB0JhA1L

— Rebel Force Radio (@RFRRebelForce) October 5, 2019

Abrams had approached Lawson to reprise the role for The Force Awakens, but the actor had turned down the role, according to Birth.Movies.Death: “They asked me but it would just have bored me,” he explained at the time.

Obviously, there’s a bit of a grain of salt to be taken from any casting news for the upcoming film, but there have been some other apparent clues: the Spanish publisher for Rebecca Roanhorse’s upcoming novel Resistance Reborn apparently tweeted (via ScreenRant—the publisher’s tweet has since been deleted) an updated image for the book’s cover, featuring someone who looks very much like Antilles. The synopsis for that book reveals that the heroes from The Last Jedi are desperately working to rebuild their movement, “seeking out more leaders—including those who, in days gone by, helped a nascent rebellion topple an empire.”

The character has appeared in a handful of post-Return of the Jedi stories: he was mentioned in a pair of short stories in Star Wars Insider, “Blade Squadron” and “Blade Squadron: Zero Hour”, and appeared in Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath trilogy. In the now non-canon Expanded Universe (rechristened Legends), the character appeared in or headlined a number of novels, most notably Michael A. Stackpole’s Rogue Squadron series.

If Lawson is returning, it stands to reason he could be one of the people recruited to help rebuild the Resistance movement. Indeed, we speculated that he’d be an ideal character for Marvel’s Kevin Feige to feature in a Star Wars film just the other day. Maybe we’ll get some sort of cool callback back to Rogue Squadron.

https://www.tor.com/2019/10/10/more-sorcery-less-swordplay-jirel-of-joiry-by-c-l-moore/

https://www.tor.com/?p=507611

In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.

In the early pulp magazine days, there were relatively few women writing science fiction and fantasy, and there were even fewer female leads appearing in the stories that made it to print. Thus the Jirel of Joiry stories of C. L. Moore, first published in Weird Tales magazine in the 1930s, stand out from the crowd. Written in the days before the sword and sorcery sub-genre had fully coalesced, they feature a female warrior from the Middle Ages, penned by a woman who was one of the best authors of her era. I recently found a collection containing Jirel’s adventures, and having not read the stories for decades, decided to revisit them.

When I finished the collection and put it down, my first reaction was a sense of disappointment. Not disappointment with what I read, which was very compelling and well written, but with what wasn’t there. I was fascinated by the idea of a noblewoman leading her people, something I knew had historical precedent, but we get no information on how Jirel came to rule her people or how she earned the respect they show her. And while the author tells us that Jirel is a mighty warrior, she gets little opportunity to show off those skills. These are not truly sword and sorcery tales (again, that genre was still developing when these stories were written). Instead, Jirel’s adventures are more akin to tales of Lovecraftian horror. In these tales, the human viewpoint characters are largely passive observers, often overshadowed by the immensity of the evil they encounter. The viewpoint character in this volume is a medieval warrior woman—but that identity is not as central to the tales as I would have liked.

My copy features a dust jacket painting by the incomparable Stephen Hickman (seen above). One thing I noticed, however, is that the stylized armor he painted falls into the category of what is called “boob plate” armor, a common artistic convention used in portraying female warriors which is not only of questionable value in combat, but triggered one of the longest discussions in the history of Tor.com.

The copy I reviewed was a book club hardcover version of a paperback edition, and the copyright page even contained the standard paperback warning that discourages resale of copies after the covers have been stripped and returned to the publisher for credit: “If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property.” The book is not a novel; instead, it collects the stories from Weird Tales in which Jirel appeared. The book contains all the published Jirel of Joiry stories except one, a Northwest Smith story “Quest of the Starstone” where Jirel also appeared (a story which also marked Moore’s first collaboration with her husband, Henry Kuttner).

Recently, Tor.com featured an article on the “Five Forgotten Swordsmen and Swordswomen of Fantasy,” and Jirel of Joiry was chosen as one of the five.

About the Author

Catherine Lucille Moore (1911-1987), like many women of her era, wrote under a gender-neutral pen name: C. L. Moore. She wrote fiction in several genres, including science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Her husband throughout most of her career was fellow author Henry Kuttner, who she met after he wrote her a fan letter, and with whom she collaborated on a number of works. Both separately and together, and often under a variety of pseudonyms (including Lewis Padgett), the couple were frequent contributors to John Campbell’s Astounding magazine, and were considered to be among the first rank of Golden Age science fiction writers. Moore’s two greatest characters, who both appeared in Weird Tales, were Northwest Smith, the interplanetary adventurer, and Jirel of Joiry, the medieval warrior ruler.

I have reviewed C. L. Moore’s work before, specifically the adventures of Northwest Smith; that review also gives a short recap of the history of Weird Tales magazine.

Moore was voted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1998. The Science Fiction Writers of America wanted to designate her as a SFWA Grand Master, but her husband at the time, because she had Alzheimer’s disease and he was worried she could not handle the ceremony, declined the honor on her behalf.

As with many authors who were active in the early 20^th Century, a few works by Moore can be found on Project Gutenberg.

Warrior Women

While women warriors were far outnumbered by their male counterparts in the early days of sword and sorcery, Jirel, while one of the first, was not alone. Even in my own (admittedly male-oriented) early reading, a few memorable female characters stood out. Robert E. Howard’s Conan partnered at times with Belit the pirate queen and Valeria of the Red Brotherhood (I reviewed a tale featuring Valeria here), and those female warriors nearly made Conan a supporting character in the tales where they appeared. Amongst the overwhelmingly male protagonists of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, the shield maiden Eowyn of Rohan plays a key role in a pivotal battle. Dejah Thoris, the Martian princess who captured the heart of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter, was certainly no shrinking violet. Andre Norton’s Witch World books were full of female characters who were active, equal participants in the stories. Themyscira and the Amazon nation that produced Wonder Woman was impossible to miss in DC Comics when the character debuted in the early 1940s. And in one of Leigh Brackett’s most compelling tales of Eric John Stark (which I reviewed here), the stage is stolen by the character known as the “Black Amazon of Mars.” The always useful online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE) notes that other women writers who have penned sword and sorcery tales include C. J. Cherryh, Jane Gaskell, Barbara Hambly, Katherine Kurtz, Tanith Lee, R. A. MacAvoy, Sheri S. Tepper, Joan Vinge and Patricia Wrede and that women play a large role in many of their stories.

I wish I could offer more examples of women warriors in sword and sorcery or fantasy tales, but unfortunately, I didn’t read much in the genre after the 1970s, which is when women characters began to appear more frequently in active roles, depicted as equals to their male counterparts. So when the discussion begins, I would greatly appreciate everyone sharing recommendations and information on their favorite women warriors.

Jirel of Joiry

In the first story of the collection, “The Black God’s Kiss,” Joiry has just been conquered by the forces of the boorish Guillaume, and the bodies of its defenders are still strewn about the castle. Guillaume has their captured commander dragged before him, only to have her revealed as the Lady Jirel, a tall and powerful woman with short red hair. His first reaction is to force an embrace and kiss on her, which due to the censorship of the era, is as brutal a sexual assault as could be portrayed. Jirel is locked in the dungeon, but soon makes short work of a sentry, dons chain mail and greaves, puts a dagger in her belt and picks up her two-handed sword (this is a good illustration of her physical strength, as not all men can fight effectively with a sword of that size).

She heads to the chapel, and finds her priest Father Gervase there. She asks him to bless her, as she intends to go down a secret staircase the two of them had previously discovered. He warns against going, because the stairs lead to a hellish alternate world which will put her very soul in peril. But driven by hatred and anger, and desperate for a weapon she can use for revenge, Jirel forges ahead. She travels through curving passageways that warp both time and space, and finds herself unable to go further until she takes off the crucifix she wears. She sees that she is no longer underground, but in a different and nightmarish world. She travels through a landscape that reveals one horror after another until she meets an avatar that looks like her; this avatar promises her a gift if she will go to the temple in the heart of this strange land. Despite knowing that a gift from a demon is no gift, Jirel continues on, and when she finds the black statue of an ugly god in the temple, she knows she must kiss it. When she does, she immediately realizes that she now holds a curse that will destroy her if she does not pass it on.

[Spoiler alert: I am about to discuss some aspects of the end of this story, which also relate to the next story, so if you want to avoid these spoilers entirely, please skip forward to the discussion of “Jirel Meets Magic” below.] Jirel rushes through the long journey that will bring her to Joiry, finds Guillaume, and kisses him. As he dies a brutal death, she is filled with love for him, and realizes that this is the price of her weapon; she will know forever that she killed the man she loved. As a curse, this is demonically clever, but it is also deeply unsettling. I have sometimes encountered stories that depict women falling in love with men who abuse them, and I always find that trope distasteful. Moreover, a character betraying someone with a kiss reminds me too much of the Biblical figure of Judas, a connection that doesn’t square well with Jirel’s largely heroic nature.

The second story, “Black God’s Shadow,” is a direct sequel to the first, and not a complete story on its own. Jirel continues to be troubled by her (creepy) love for Guillaume, and haunted by his restless spirit. She cannot bring him back, but she does want to bring him peace—to give him a clean death. So, she again uses the passageway beneath her deepest dungeons to travel to the land of the black god and once there, she battles him to gain the release of Guillaume’s soul. To my disappointment, this struggle takes place in her mind, and the conflict is centered on emotions and determination. Not being a Lovecraft fan, I would have preferred adventure to horror, and wanted Jirel to be given a quest that tested her sword arm and warrior skills. But that was not meant to be, and this tale is even more dependent than the first on the distasteful premise of a woman loving and defending her abuser, so this was my least favorite of those contained in the volume.

The next story is “Jirel Meets Magic”: Jirel and her forces have defeated the evil wizard Giraud of Guischard (at this point, I am wondering if every man Jirel meets has a name that starts with a G). Giraud himself is nowhere to be found. Finally, in a high tower, they discover a mysterious shuttered window, and when the window is opened, Jirel finds that it leads to another magical world. She encounters a sorceress, Jarisme, who is torturing a dying dryad. The sorceress disappears, and the dryad gives Jirel a charm that will help her locate Jarisme, and ultimately defeat her. Jirel travels through the magical land, and finds Jarisme with Giraud by her side. There are some references to Jarisme trying to avoid a dark destiny, and she teleports Jirel away, telling her to go home. But Jirel is determined, and sets out on a long and arduous journey through the magical forest. There are no swordfights or battles along the way, but at least our heroine is doing something physical instead of metaphysical. Jirel finds and explores Jarisme’s magical hall, which is full of doorways to other worlds. Jarisme arrives with Giraud, and Jirel must face both in order to win the day. This was my favorite of the stories, as Jirel gets to display more agency in the course of the narrative.

In “The Dark Land,” Jirel is dying of wounds suffered in an unshown battle (we are again robbed of swordplay). Just as Father Gervase arrives to administer last rites, her body disappears. She awakens in a mysterious land beside a huge and evil-looking statue of a man on a throne with flames flickering high over her head. Then she meets the man the statue is modeled on: Pav, king of this mysterious land (finally, a man whose name doesn’t start with G…). He has been watching Jirel from his mysterious world, and wants to take her as his bride. But Jirel’s spirit is strong, and he realizes that the only way he can possess her is by destroying the spirit that he admires. Jirel wanders away and finds herself in the presence of a white witch who is Pav’s rival. She offers Jirel a clue to how Pav can be destroyed. What follows is another of those metaphysical struggles that I tend to find tedious, a struggle that will test the limits of Jirel’s strength.

The final tale, “Hellsgarde,” brings Jirel to the titular castle in the company of the unpleasant Guy of Garlot (back to the G’s again). He has captured some of her troops, and will ransom them if she recovers a treasure box that is hidden in the ominous edifice. She finds the castle inhabited by a nightmarish family that wants to use her to summon an evil spirit. Of all the creatures and evil wizards she has encountered, this family is the creepiest. We get another fierce but largely metaphysical struggle in which Jirel encounters an evil spirit that forces kisses on her (as in the first tale, an image of sexual assault), but she is able to overcome it. The ending is not what I would have expected, but wraps everything up with some clever twists.

Final Thoughts

The adventures of Jirel of Joiry were groundbreaking, introducing readers to a woman who is strong, brave, and perfectly capable of rescuing herself from even the direst of threats. Both Moore and Jirel were far ahead of their time—it would be decades before protagonists like Jirel became more commonplace. The stories are engaging and well written, and the central character, who is headstrong and passionate, is more than compelling.

Jirel is often mentioned as the first woman hero of sword and sorcery, but unfortunately for readers like me who prefer combat and battle scenes, the swords are largely in the background, and it is sorcery that is at the heart of the tales. Fans of eldritch horror and sinister gods, however, will find much to enjoy here.

And now I turn the floor over to you: For those of you who have read Jirel’s adventures, what are your thoughts and reactions? Also, what other notable female warriors have you encountered in your fantasy reading, and what aspects of their adventures did you enjoy?

Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for over five decades, especially fiction that deals with science, military matters, exploration and adventure.

https://www.tor.com/2019/10/10/two-elf-brothers-try-to-summon-their-dead-dad-in-the-first-trailer-for-pixars-onward/

https://www.tor.com/?p=507894

Pixar has a reputation for putting out fun, adventurous, and beautifully animated feature-length films that will also leave you an emotional and possibly existential wreck, and its latest entry, Onward, looks to be no exception. The first trailer is only two and a half minutes long, but already it packs quite the powerful punch.

The clip begins with a velvety-voiced narrator explaining that, once upon a time, the world was full of “wonder and magic,” as centaurs and wizards frolick around a grassy mountain glen. But no longer! In the present-day, magic has disappeared, and the storybook denizens of New Mushroomtown take planes and do Wii workouts and buckle under the strain of late-stage capitalism, just like us. Enter two elf-brothers, Ian (Tom Holland) and Barley (Chris Pratt), whose father passed away when they were too young to remember. On the day of Ian’s birthday, their mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) gives them their dad’s wooden staff. Turns out, he may have been a wizard, and they also find a spell that can summon him for 24 hours. When this goes, uh, only half as well as expected, the brothers have to embark on a quest around town to see if magic still exists so that they can bring their dad back.

Onward lands in theaters March 6, 2020.

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http://www.teachingushistory.co/2019/10/teach-my-book-jelani-m-favors-shelter-in-a-time-of-storm-how-black-colleges-fostered-generations-of-leadership-and-activism.html

http://www.teachingushistory.co/?p=4702

Teaching United States History is excited to present Teach My Book, a series of posts where distinguished authors reflect on their work and how instructors might integrate their insights into the classroom. Our thoughts today come from Jelani M. Favors, Associate Professor of History at Clayton State University. Dr. Favors is discussing his new book Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism (UNC 2019). 

1. Can you give us a brief overview of your book’s argument, narrative, and historiographical contribution?

My book is entitled Shelter in a Time of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership and Activism. It is the first comprehensive and intimate portrait of how our nation’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) served as seedbeds for insurgency and dissent that ultimately produced the modern Civil Rights Movement. From one generation to the next, HBCUs served as enclaves for Black youth as Jim Crow and white supremacy became firmly entrenched throughout American society.  Their nurturing environment aided in the politicization of students and ultimately resulted in an unprecedented wave of activism that shook the foundations of America and forever altered the political destiny of the United States.

Shelter in a Time of Storm illuminates the history of student activism at seven historically Black colleges.  These institutions represent a diverse cross-section of Black colleges: northern and southern, private and public, conservative and liberal. This research will demonstrate that HBCUs were complex institutions that were charged with a mission to educate, elevate, and transform African American youth into citizens empowered to engage in dissent. By sifting through black college newspapers, memoirs, diaries, and papers of past administrators and faculty, and through oral interviews of key players, Shelter in a Time of Storm has produced the most intimate portrait yet of the inner workings of Black college life that made these institutions invaluable sources of militancy during the struggle for Black liberation.

2. How does your book shape the broadest narratives in American history? How should survey courses in American history reflect the arguments and evidence of your study?

Dissent is perhaps the most important defining characteristic of the American narrative. Indeed our nation’s history has largely been a story of slow and gradual inclusion. Since our inception, marginalized people in this country have fought to declare, like the poet Langston Hughes once wrote, that “We Too Sing America.” While a number of historians have made us acutely aware of the role that labor unions, religious institutions, civil rights organizations, and special interests groups have played in generating the activists energies that transformed America, few histories have been produced that highlight how colleges and universities generated radical idealism and functioned as incubators of militancy and dissent. Shelter in a Time of Storm follows with the trend of long movement histories that have emerged over the last two decades to illustrate how Black colleges carved out crucial space to not only educate youth, but also to deliberately fit them with a mission to serve as change agents in their respective communities and professional fields. Shelter in a Time of Storm traces that development from the founding of the very first Black college in 1837 and highlights that mission through the rise of the hip-hop era of the 1980s and 90s.

Shelter in a Time of Storm eschews the “top down narrative” and documents the experiences of numerous students, faculty, and administrators who carved out interstitial space within Black colleges and administered a “second curriculum” that was powerful, instructive, and liberating. It therefore argues that key players and change agents operated from both the bottom and the middle in order to catalyze the movement. Students will understand how student activism emerged as a threat to forces that sought to undermine democracy and freedom in America. Yet the book also highlights the complexities of social movements and how they are often undermined by both external and internal forces. Shelter in a Time of Storm examines social, political, and economic barriers that confronted African Americans from the antebellum era through the 20^th century and documents how marginalized Americans strove to have their voices heard in a society that in both practice and in theory deemed them as both inferior and in many ways invisible.

3. What courses commonly taught at the college level besides the survey would most benefit from considering your work?

This book would pair well with courses on Modern African American History, History of Education, History of Black Education, History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement, History of the Early Civil Rights Movement, History of the New South, History of Reconstruction, and History of the Nadir. By themselves, the chapters on Bennett College, Alabama State University, and Jackson State University would work very well in courses on Women Studies and Black Feminism.

4. If instructors were to excerpt a chapter or two from your book, which chapters do you think would be most useful, and why?

I think the chapter entitled Our Aims are High and Our Determinations Deep: Alabama State University and the Dissolution of Fear, 1930-1960 provides a fascinating narrative that bridges the New Negro Era of the early 20^th century and places the reader at the epicenter of the modern Civil Rights Movement during post World War II America. It makes the argument that the catalyst of this movement was heavily dependent on the radicalization of Black students who were deliberately politicized within the racialized space of Black colleges. It places women at the center of this development and further erodes the top-down, patriarchal narrative that previously placed Black male ministers and labor leaders at the center. Furthermore, it illustrates how HBCUs served as a seedbed for idealism and radicalism that overtly challenged Jim Crow policies in the Deep South.

Additionally, the epilogue entitled It’s a Different World: The Rise of the Hip-Hop Generation and the Corruption of the Black College Communitas adequately elucidates the challenges that HBCUs have experienced since integration that have jeopardized their ability to serve as incubators for militancy and radicalism as they once did for much of the 20^th century. The book concludes by examining the loss of talented Black faculty from HBCUs that rapidly occurred during the last quarter of the century, the desegregation of college sports and its impact in exacerbating the wealth gap between predominantly white institutions and HBCUs, and the rise of STEM and the role it has played in eroding financial support for the humanities and the spirit of radical idealism as it once existed on Black college campuses.

5. Have you integrated any of the lessons learned from this research project into your own teaching? If so, how, and to what effect?

I have frequently presented students taking my upper level African American History survey or my History of Student Activism class with a final assignment entitled “Project Activism” that requires them to conclude the course with a group project that generates a socially conscious activity/protest. Students in my classes where I have used this assignment have developed projects that address a variety of topics such as gentrification, environmental racism, bullying, etc. On a more personal note, the work that I conducted in researching and writing this manuscript continues to challenge me to think critically about my relationship with my students and how I can (and in my opinion, should) encourage and directly influence my students to serve as positive change agents in their communities and strive to make our country more inclusive, fair, and just.

6. Did your book utilize any publicly available primary sources? If so, what are they, what did they do for your study, and how might instructors use them in their classes?

Few scholars have mined the precious primary resources found within Black college newspapers. Shelter in a Time of Storm made Black college newspapers the bedrock of the study. HBCU newspapers offer the fullest testimony to the political climate of campus, an exposé of the endless caravan of activists, scholars, and labor leaders that addressed and instructed students as campus visitors, and the growing militancy that students displayed in sharply written editorials and news stories. With the exception of the first chapter where the Institute for Colored Youth (Cheyney State University) had no student run newspapers during the period that I examined, every chapter of the manuscript leans heavily upon newspapers as a barometer of consciousness and activism on campus. While many of these newspapers have not been digitized, there are an increasing number of Black college newspapers that have and should indeed by consulted by both teachers and scholars looking to learn more about this critical space and the role it played in strengthening American democracy. The arguments made within Shelter in a Time of Storm were also supplemented with memoirs, diaries, oral histories, and organizational papers and minutes. The result is a deeply intimate portrait of HBCU life.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/marginalrevolution/feed/~3/PM7cJTA5nlE/my-education-podcast-with-can-olcer.html

http://marginalrevolution.com/?p=76871

The post My education podcast with Can Olcer appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

https://www.tor.com/2019/10/10/watch-the-trailer-for-the-turning-a-henry-james-adaptation-starring-finn-wolfhard-and-mackenzie-davis/

https://www.tor.com/?p=507881

Last year, the queen of gothic Americana, Shirley Jackson, got two Hollywood adaptations: one quite faithful, one not so much. Now, it looks like it’s Henry James‘ turn. His 1898 horror novella The Turn of the Screw is the source of not one, but two upcoming adaptations. The first is season two of Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, now called The Haunting of Bly Manor. The other is the Floria Sigismondi  movie The Turning, which dropped its trailer on Wednesday.

Unlike the movie adaptation of Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Turning keeps the main premise and characters but transposes everything to the present day. In this version of The Turn of the Screw, Mackenzie Davis plays a brand-new nanny named Kate, whose first-ever assignment is to look after two orphans, Flora (Brooklynn Prince) and Miles (Finn Wolfhard), on their sprawling, scary-chic Maine estate. While Flora takes to her new caregiver (“maybe”), Miles seems hell-bent on making her life as difficult as possible, grinding pet koi under his boots, saying spooky shit like “keeping your lights on won’t keep you safe,” and playing his drums at her in a highly aggressive and super obnoxious manner.

But is Miles the real POS here, or is it whatever’s giving her visions of a white-clad woman drowning in the water and sending disembodied hands (!) to crawl all over her back?

The Turning premieres in theaters January 24, 2020.