Blurb: You lose three mates, ten babies, both parents, all your siblings and then every friend for scores of millennia and still entertain the concept of being ‘sweet’ on a dead woman still consumed by her own pain.
Doing It never had much meaning to Robin, even when he was alive. Now that he’s dead, it’s really just something to while away all the years. At some point he’s asked most of the ghosts if they want to do it. Some said no, some said yes. His only rule is, they have to genuinely want to do it, too. And, they mustn’t be too sad. One of the ghosts was too sad, for so long, so he waited. And waited.
Description: Over the years stuck as a Ghost, Robin propositions the other ghosts when he first meets them, except Mary who is too sad. You wouldn’t think this description would be of a heartbreaking story of loss, and the pain of years stuck in one place unable to even touch anything but your fellow ghosts. But that just goes to show, never judge a story by its initial premise.
Special Mention: Oh God, Robin’s speech to Julian at the end. ‘I was in tears’, does not put justice to the state I was in after I read this.
Warnings: Mentions of violent death, the loss of children, and other adult matter. Also Julian, he’s a warning all by himself.
What Ho wee readers, and welcome to the newest blog serious of the Wee Writing Lassie. As you might have been able to guess from the title, this one will be about all the fanfiction I’ve read … and I’ve read a lot of it over the years. I had planned to make an introduction, making the case for a fanfiction as a form of engagement with the original media that’s more active and creative – and far more natural to those of us of a more writerly persuasion – than the passive consumption that main stream society expects of us, but to be honest I’m so excited to get this thing going that I’m just not going to bother. Either you heard the word fanfic and ran screaming towards the hills, clutching your pearls all the way – or you were intrigued and sat down to listen to me gush over my favourite stories. If the former, goodbye you won’t be missed – if the latter welcome , to beginning of your obsession 😁
Let’s begin, shall we?
Ned Stark Adopts His Way Through Westeros
Author: witchbreaker
Blurb: “This isn’t my fault.”;And other lies Edward Stark tells himself.
Description: Basically what it says on the Tin. After finishing the campaign of the Iron Islands, Robert Baratheon decides to go on a great tour round his new kingdom – dragging his foster brother, Ned Stark along in his wake. Somehow this begins a series of events in which Ned Stark ends up fostering the abused/ neglected/or forgotten children of the nobility. And since this is Westeros – that would be most of them. It’s a surprisingly heartwarming- considering the source material- tale, where Ned Stark fixes most of the problems to come, simply by being his, best character, self.
Warnings: While this is certainly not a story that is driven by violence – with most of the drama / humour coming from Ned going “whoops I’ve accidentally adopted another child again” in almost every scene – this is still a fic set in Westeros. So if violence of any kind makes you uncomfortable, I’d advise you to skip past the scenes where he whips his sword out. There’s also depictions of child neglect and at the very least verbal abuse on screen. But don’t worry Ned Stark is here to make it all better.
Special mention: Particular mention goes to the child he adopts in Dorne – I can’t say who because I don’t want to spoil anything, but believe me when I say once you know the whole backstory from the books/show it’s freaking hilarious. King Robert couldn’t stop laughing when he found out and you know what, neither could I.
What Ho wee readers, and welcome to the newest post of the Wee Writing Lassie. You know what’s a wonderful feeling, watching a film – or in this case a series of films – that you had previously written off as stupid, or dumb, or ‘not as good as the originals’, and discovering that not only were you really wrong with that assessment, but that these seemingly dumb movies have actually reached a depth a nuance that before only existed in the original source material. No, too specific an example to be relevant to anyone but myself? Oh well, at least I’m writing the post.
To clarify, recently I have had the pleasure of rewatching all of the films in the Jurassic Franchise. And I found something absolutely remarkable, the newer films – the Chris Pratt films as they’re called within my family – are better. And no, I’m not just talking compared with with the second and third Jurassic Park films, which everyone can sort of agree where lack lustred additions to the franchise – I’m talking about the original film as well. Yes, yes, I know, the horror, the horror, but I’m not saying that it was a bad film; I’m not actually even saying it was bad compared to the newer films. What I really mean is that when you look back to the original book ‘Jurassic Park’ by Michael Crichton, and the deeper messages it was trying to convey – the danger of corporate sponsorship of science, and the horrors that can be unleashed by genetic engineering done for the pure pursuit of profit – between the two film trilogies , it’s the newer one that actually convey those messages.
Okay, let’s take a step back here, all the way back to 1990 in fact – to when Michael Crichton published his grim prediction of what science working for profit and profit alone, could be capable of. And he called this, harrowing story of genetic engineering gone wrong – Jurassic Park. You know the basic story already: very rich man decides he wants to make an amusement part like no other, an amusement park filled with Dinosaurs. But things start to go slightly wrong because the Dinosaurs are proving a little too dangerous for his people to handle, his investors get very anxious and so they demand that he have experts look over the park before it’s allowed to open for the public. Experts come in, are shocked and awed by the dinosaurs – all seems to be going well for our rich man, then a storm hits, the lights go out and shit, as the expression goes, hits the fan.
That sounds about right, doesn’t it? That’s the basic plot for both the original book and the first film anyway. I never said it got everything wrong, it’s just some of the details were lost in adaptation. But the devil, as the saying goes, is found in the details. One of the first thing that is changed, or cut out in the transition from page to screen is the level of control, that Hammond and his employees have lost over the dinosaurs even before the storm hits. In the film one employee has been killed by a raptor who didn’t even get out of its box-cage, and some of the dinosaurs have started to breed despite the fact they should all be female. That’s about it, and then a greedy and ungrateful employee shuts off the power to the island, and everything goes down hill from there. In the books … the dinosaurs haven’t just been breeding without Hammond’s team’s knowledge, they’ve been escaping the island. Granted, only the smaller dinosaurs so far – but seeing as our main characters spot several juvenile raptors escaping on a boat leaving the island before the storm hit, I’m guess it won’t be too long before the others follow.
Another thing the film changes from the book is Hammond himself – in the film he’s a cuddly old man, who truly wants to make something wonderful and real for all the children of the world, not just the rich ones. And when it becomes apparent how dangerous the park he’s created actually is, he agrees that it’s something that should be shut down.
In the book he’s out to make money, pure and simple – he only listens to the trained experts he’s hired to run and build his park when they’re telling him what he wants to here, never admits the park was a bad idea from concept and does everything possible – in mental gymnastics – to avoid taking responsibility for it. And oh yes, was completely planning on making another one of them if he ever escaped the park – which thankfully in the book he doesn’t. Nope, he falls down a hill after getting spooked by a fake dinosaur noise and breaks his ankle. Then he gets eaten by tiny dinosaurs.
Hmm, an old millionaire capitalist who instead of learning and being humbled from his mistakes, and trying to fix them later in in his life, instead doubles down on them and dies in a humiliating way? Well, doesn’t that sound familiar. Don’t get me wrong, Attomburgh’s performance – he was a star, but the Hammond of the Book wasn’t meant to be a star, he was meant to be a Hate Sink. There was nothing redeemable about him, nothing cute or grandfatherly – he was a monster, as big a monster as the dinosaurs he helped create. An unnatural creature was this late stage capitalist typhoon, a beast not worthy of pity or mercy … but something that must be killed, that must die if life, or at least human existence, has a hope of continuing.
I’m not trying to call for the heads of all late stage Capitalist millionaires, or the CEOS of our biggest money making monoliths – before anyone mistakes that last bit of poetry for a call to arms. Rather, what I’m saying is that after reading it – that appears to be what the book is trying to convey, if maybe not in those exact words. It’s an anti capitalist, anti Science for profit book and while the film has hints of that, the true depth of that message, and how obvious it really is – is lost under the spectacle of the Dinosaurs. Because that’s what the first film is it’s a spectre thing – ooh look at the pretty dinosaurs, look at how sharp their teeth are, look run away they’re trying to eat you. Let’s not think too deeply on the endeavours and the process that brought these horrors to life, don’t look at the man behind the curtain – he’s only cuddly old Attenborough anyway. No, need to worry about the future, or think what other horrors science – and biological science in particular- will bring if conducted only for profit.
And all the Jurassic Park films work this way, I might add. Oh the second one tries to have a deeper message of animal conservation, but it still ends with a t-rex roaming the streets of New York City, like a modern day scaly King Kong. And the third one even has the gall to show a picture of pterodactyls flying towards the main land, like it s a whimsical magical thing we should stand in awe of – rather then what it actually is, the beginning of another horror film.
This is a problem that the Jurassic World Trilogy manages to side step entirely. Mainly because it’s first film – Jurassic World – begins from the starting premise: ‘What if Jurassic Park Opened, and people got bored of Dinosaurs?’ This works on both a story and a meta level, because, no, there’s nothing exciting about seeing dinosaurs on the screen anymore. We were well into the age of CGI, and pretty good CGI, by the time Jurassic World came along – so it was no longer enough to just put a dinosaur on the screen to captivate an audience. You had to try harder, make it bigger, make it more exciting – which is exactly what the scientists at Jurassic World were told to do when they made the Abominable Rex. “I believe the word you used was, ‘cooler’, in your note.” – Says Henry Wu to the owner of the park, when he’s confronted with the results of his mad science. And this new dinosaur is a creature of mad science, no, no, it’s a creature of for profit science. Wu and his team were told to make an attraction that was bigger, cooler, that had a name that was easy to pronounce: and so they smashed together different DNA, and what they made was an actual monster. A creature that kills, not because as a large predator it needs to eat, but because it finds it fun. Which means it’s killing a heck of lot quicker, and more, than any other predator on the island would.
And the Second Film – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – continues this theme by introducing another genetically made Dinosaur monster, but this one was specifically designed to be sent into war zones as a weapon. And the villains are selling it, along with the rest of the dinosaurs they could get out of the now defunct’Jurassic World’ before it was destroyed by a volcano – it makes sense in context – to the highest bidder. No longer any bullshit about ‘bringing joy to children’ by these money men, their motivation is laid out naked for the audience to see. Money, dear boy, money. And the devastation this of this for profit science is no longer contained to a single amusement park – oh no, for you see the Dinosaurs get out. Mainly because our heroes let them out – but still!
Which brings us to the last, and by far the best of the trilogy: Jurassic World Dominion.
Dinosaurs live amongst us! This is the reality, the world, that our for profit science has wrought, now we have to live in it. It could have stopped at that: Dinosaurs running rampant all over the world, and humans have to do what they have to, to survive against the horrors their own science has wrought upon them. That would have been a pretty good film, by itself, a pretty good ending to the trilogy but Dominion, goes two steps beyond. You see, society hasn’t ended with the introduction of man-made dinosaurs – it’s adjusted. People illegally farm them for pets and meat, they train them for the military, they throw them in cages and make them fight in underground tournaments. Giant herbivore dinosaur wonder into lumber yards and have to be shooed out by experts, they roam the wilds in great herds and have to be caroused away from danger by Cris Pratt. And most frighteningly at all, none of this has been the wake up call for the corporate world to stop its bullshit with biological science.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce Dr. Lewisham Doderson, a man who Wikipedia claims is the main antagonist from both Jurassic world novels as well as the first film. Erm, I can’t speak for the second novel but as for the first – while he does set some of the shenanigans into play, it’s really the dinosaurs themselves who are the main antagonists. However, he’s certainly the main antagonist of Jurassic World Dominion, and it is he who far more resembles the book Hammond, than anything Richard Attenborough ever touched.
He’s out to make money, just like he was in the original film – though he’s played by a different actor this time round – but he’s not going to do it by making dinosaurs, please we’ve already got a planet full of those. No, this time he’s ordering Wu to make him locusts, locusts that attack any crop that hasn’t been grown from his own biologically engineered seeds. And he hides all this research, along with a now throughly broken Wu, under a sanctuary for the dinosaurs.
The lesson here?
Trust no one – especially giant corporations who’s main purpose is reaching their bottom line.
If you’ve enjoyed this surprisingly anti capitalist rant – I’m not personally against money, or even capitalism as a concept, but like the biological science of the Jurassic franchise it’s a terrible destructive force in the wrongs hands – why not follow the Wee Blog if you haven’t done so yet. Also check me out on X, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Spotify, Tumblr, TikTok, YouTube, Goodreads, Facebook and Kofi. Also if you wish to discover which Jurassic World Beast is the best subscribe to the Wee Mailing List before the end of the Month. Until then Wee Readers, stay safe, be happy and have a very bonny day.
What Ho Wee Readers, as some of you may have already known by now I’m a wee bit autistic. Why is this relevant to the topic up above our heads? Well, I have the tendency to develop intense hyper fixations. Usually they follow a cycle pattern, with Greek Mythology being one of my most well trodden hyper fixations – I’m even currently writing a novel that’s a retelling of a Greek Myth, that’s how much it fixates me – but sometimes, occasionally my fixations will be kind of random. And my most recent one has been the franchise dedicated to the talking Greta Dane, known as Scooby Doo.
But I hear you say, that’s all well and good, Wee Lassie, but that doesn’t exactly explain the title of the post. And to that I say, no it doesn’t really. So instead I will ask you to think carefully and tell me, what do you think is the main message of this franchise? Let’s think, a mystery solving franchise where more often than not every ghost, or goblin is revealed to be some creep in a mask? Well, that’s obvious isn’t it? The theme of Scooby Doo is the theme of the sceptic. It’s telling you, or rather the intended audience of children, not to take every story you hear at face value. Ghosts don’t exist, so think carefully and dig deeper, and you’ll probably find a rational explanation to most perceived supernatural occurrences. As Velma has taken to saying lately : “There’s a Rational Explanation to Everything.”
Great answer, well thought out and argued, one problem though … Ghosts are real in the Scooby Doo world. Ghosts, Vampires, Werewolves, fairies, goblins, monsters of all shapes and sizes actually do exist in the Scooby Doo Franchise. Starting from about the eighties I think, with the introduction of the Tv show “The thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo” – the supernatural was in fact very, very real in the world of the talking Great Dane.
So what does this mean? Is this a sign of the franchise’s slow degradation? That it strayed so far from its original purpose just to keep the interest of an ever easier distracted audience? Maybe, it certainly wouldn’t have been the first franchise, or the last, to degrade in quality over a long period of time. But that argument relays heavily on the idea that the Scooby Doo franchise has declined in quality at all. Some might say it has, but since there have been so many interpretations of the classic cartoon talking Great Dane, that is certainly not a conclusive declaration. Thus if the appearance of real supernatural entities is not a writing blunder, or at least cannot be proven as such, what does that mean for our greater meaning? Think carefully when confronted with supposed supernatural occurrences because there’s a rational explanation for everything … except when there’s not? Well not to put it too bluntly and give the game away but … yes. That’s exactly what it’s saying.
Stop for a moment, and walk with me to this ledge, I’ve not gone insane. I’ve actually thought out this argument a great deal. Okay, I’d like to start by asking you a question. Yes, another one, I know they’re getting rather tedious but come on, just one more then I’ll be done I promise. Taking a step back to our Sceptic take on the franchise, what character would you say most encapsulates this view of the world? If you said any character but Velma Dinkley, than you are wrong and will be going home with no prizes today, Tom. I mean you wouldn’t be even if you did since I don’t know where you live, but that’s the joke. Yes, Velma Dinkley, resident brain behind Mystery Inc. and half the time the one actually solving the mysteries the Gang comes up against. Okay, that’s a bit mean to the others but still … she’s the one seen doing the research, and she’s certainly the character who, shared with Fred, is often the one describing how they worked out the mystery. And most importantly of all, she’s almost always the one actually saying ‘there’s no such thing as ghosts’. She’s the actual skeptic in the group, again while some interruptions make her share this trait with Fred and or Daphne, you’d be hard pressed to find a version of Velma who at the very least didn’t start out a skeptic. And it’s notable that in the more heavily unquestionably paranormal interpretations of the franchise – the eighties films, like the Ghoul School and the Reluctant Werewolf; along with Tv shows like ‘The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo” – Velma isn’t present. And when she is either the supernatural is either non existent – think of “Scooby Doo, Where are you?” , “Whats New Scooby Doo?”, “Be Cool, Scooby Doo” -; is something she never sees or remembers – think the modern direct to video movies -, or it’s a revelation that has to be worked up to – think the nineties films like “Scooby Doo and Zombie Island” or the “The Witch’s Ghost” or later Tv shows like “Mystery Incorporated”. Never once in a Velma present Scooby Doo show is it just taken for granted that the supernatural exists. Thus one could make the very real argument, at least as far as the narratives of this decades long franchise is concerned, that Velma Dinkley is the living embodiment of the Sceptic is this world.
And yet it’s notable, that Velma Dinkley is not the most prevalent character in the franchise , she’s not even the second most important character in the franchise . So who is? Well, dear reader that should be obvious by now. The most prevalent characters are Scooby Doo and Shaggy Rogers. Over the various spin offs and re imaginations it is almost always these two characters that remain a consistent presence in the franchise.We can swap out Fred, Daphne and Velma for Scrappy Doo all we like so long as the titular Great Dane and his beat-nick owner remain at the helm. The only show I can think of that deviated from this was Velma – in which it is the titular brainiac who’s the main character, Scooby Doo is no where in sight, and Shaggy – or “Norville” as he’s now called – has been rewritten to be so deeply and pathetically in love with Velma that he will quite literally shape himself into whatever she wants him to be. A simp, with a captain ‘s’. Don’t get me wrong he’s an interesting character, but he’s also … you know … not Shaggy. Not at least the Shaggy that is prevalent in the rest of the franchise. And that who is that, I hear you ask? If Velma is the embodiment of the sceptic, than Shaggy Rogers is her opposite … he is the Believer.
In every single one of the mysteries the gang conducts he – along with Scooby – is the one that always believes the ghost is real. Yes he’s a self proclaimed coward, but that cowardice, that all encompassing fear isn’t fueled by nothing. Scooby and Shaggy take it as a given that the supernatural exists because to them it very much does. They alone – at least in the more modern films – are allowed to remember their supernatural experiences, because they alone have minds open enough not to go mad from the revelation. This was not the case in the nineties films, where the creative team instead chose to shake up the usual formula by allowing the supernatural to be real for the entire gang. Or for the show “Mystery Incorporated” which would follow in the steps of the nineties films by encompassing supernatural elements into its lore, that the whole gang was allowed to both discover and retain the memory of. But this is certainly not a usual trait for most of the shows and films in the franchise.
So what should we take away from this? Is the hidden theme of the Scooby Doo franchise in fact, that we should instead believe everything? That to sew even the barest amount of doubt into the possibility of a single supernatural occurrence will shut ourselves off from the true wonder hiding within our universe? If you can’t tell from my slightly incredulous phrasing, I believe the answer to be … no. It’s not saying that at all. For while it is true that Shaggy and Scooby Doo, are consistently the only ones allowed to retain knowledge of the deeper truths of their world, it’s worth noting that they are nervous wrecks. In fact in recent films, this is gotten so bad that it has started to actually affect the state of Shaggy’s health. And it should be noted that in the majority of cases they aren’t correct in their unwavering belief in the supernatural. The ghosts, or ghouls, do often turn out to be nothing more than a creep in a mask.
I believe what we should take from these two cases, these extreme opposing philosophies, instead is the danger of assumption. Yeah, Velma is usually right when she states that “there’s a rational explanation for everything” – but because she’s usually right, she assumes she’s always right. And so when something steps beyond her limited definition of ‘rational’, she either misses it completely or has to go through a great deal of pain – sometimes both psychologically and physically – to comprehend what she’s actually seeing. Something that is more than a little bit of handicap to a seeker of truth, which is what Velma claims to be. On the other hand while Shaggy and Scooby are not blind to the hidden truth of the world, their initial assumption that all the ghosts they meet are real – while also having a tole on both their psychological and physical well being – is not really conducive to mystery solving either.
Sometimes the ghost is nothing more than a man in a mask, but other times he is real – and it is when we assume he is always only ever one of those things, that is when we will fail to solve the mystery.
If you’ve enjoyed this strange little rant of mine, why not follow the wee blog if you haven’t already. Also check me out on X, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Spotify, Tumblr, TikTok, YouTube, Goodreads, Facebook and Kofi where I am also active. And sign up to the Wee Mailing List by the end of the month to discover my top five hyper fixations. Until then Wee Readers, stay safe, and have a very bonnie day.
Wow, it’s been quite a while hasn’t it? You’ve got a bunch of teenagers in the house now, that must be fun. No, no, you’re right I don’t seem to age at all do I? Anyway back to you, so teaching at the Castle School now. Exciting. What would you say your greatest joy as a teacher has been thus far? Any student in particular that stands out?
Amalphia: I’m actually just a counsellor at the school when I’m not busy elsewhere – if I can help one person avoid dark dungeons and mad scientists, that will bring me great joy. I’m also acting in an advisory capacity during the televised competition that’s taking place at the castle at the moment. All the students are fantastic, of course, and I don’t have favourites. Though, I know Ariel and Alexander are up to something. I just hope it’s nothing too terrible… But you know what’s going to happen now.
The Nutcracker mice of the English National Ballet
I think the video speaks for itself. English National Ballet’s production of the Nutcracker returns to the Mayflowr Theare, Southampton this winter season 2023-2024.
The 8 1/2 Overly Pretentious Questions for Ailish Sinclair : The Eighth Question
What Ho, Wee Subscribers and welcome to the final Pretentious Question for Ailish Sinclair. Remember to check out the other questions on the wee Blog if you haven’t already.
So, Ailish, now that the first instalment of your Dancer Series is out where all good books are sold, can you give us a little hint on what’s next for Amalphia Treadwell?
Yes. I didn’t leave the poor girl in peace for long. Here is the blurb of Cabriole, the next book in the series, out November 24th:
How hard can a career on the stage be, anyway?
After a traumatic year at the castle, Amalphia Treadwell travels back to London to start her professional life, putting dark and difficult things firmly behind her. Or so she believes.
As she tries different approaches to work, in search of her true vocation, Amalphia encounters new pain and a deeper dark than that of the dungeon.
She wrestles with the complicated nature of her own heart and suspects that ‘happily ever after’ is something she can never hope to achieve.
As dark and witty as its predecessor, the second instalment of Amalphia’s journey is a sensual story of love, dance and self-discovery.
What Ho, Wee Readers and welcome to another post of The Wee Writing Lassie. Well, as you might have guess from the title of this post I’ve been bitten by the Sex and the City bug … sort of.
In all honesty I’ve never quite gotten Sex and the City, at least in anyway that made me have an emotion other than irritation at it. I can understand it’s appeal on an academic sense, four female main characters trying to push the boundaries of what’s acceptable to talk about on Tv, particularly regarding female sexuality. But in practice whenever I tuned in all I saw was four people being assholes to everyone they met, including each other. Like, yeah on a meta sense it might seem great to the audience that Miranda Hobbes stood up while having lunch with her friends and berated them for being four grown ass, intelligent women with nothing to talk about but their boyfriends – but in the narrative, the world of the show, it’s a really shitty thing to do. Like … so are they not allowed to talk about their relationships, a part of lives, in front of Miranda less she have another hissy fit?
While I’m sure there’s a greater context to that scene, once again couldn’t bring myself to stay long enough to find out, I’m still kind of sick of people holding it up as a great feminist move on behalf of the character. Because the truth is it’s only that in the meta sense, in real life if you did that you haven’t made some great feminist statement, you’ve just been an asshole.
So yeah, Sex and the City … not for me. So, what you might be asking yourself, changed? Well, nothing really. I still don’t like Sex and the City. But then the sequel happened and at first I didn’t bother to watch it. Why would I? I already hate these people, I don’t need to see them twenty years on and with back pain, I can’t imagine it’s improved them significantly. And for the next few years that was it, but then screwing around on YouTube … as you do … I stumbled across a few reviews of ‘And Just Like That’. Apparently people didn’t just hate it, they loathed every last second of it. From the new characters, the woke version of New York – even actually woke people hated that, probably because it was so forced it felt like it was making fun of them – to the main four demons themselves. Wait sorry, three main demons, because one of them refused to come back which really should tell you everything about the kind of behind the scenes drama that plagued the sets of both shows.
I enjoy a a good hate watch as much as anyone, and if Sex and the City fans … arguably the target demographic of any sequel to that show said it was objectively bad, well what reason did I have to doubt them. But I was curious, could anything really be as bad all that? So I downloaded the first episode on my iPad, and sat down to watch it with my lunch. And … I didn’t hate it. In fact I would even say that the first episode of ‘And Just like That’, was really, really good. And even now when I’ve watched the rest of Season One and discovered how truly not good the rest of it is, I will stand on my pedestal and proclaim episode one, and maybe episode two and three, are actually good. In fact back then, I enjoyed it so much that I was even planning on a blog post on why I, someone who was not a fan of Sex and the City, could be objective on the actual quality of its sequel.
That was the early stages of this blog, so you can see how things change over time. For one thing, I can admit now that I am not as objective as I naively thought I was. True, I don’t have fond feelings for any of the characters of Sex and the City. But I do have feelings, I do carry over an impression of them – perhaps poorly formed but there undoubtedly- from the previous instalment of the franchise. Thus when I see a character being so throughly … what would be the right word here … assassinated… I can’t just note it down as something that happened. Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not devastated or angry as apparently so many other people were … I find it kind of funny.
Well, we’ve reached the part of the post where I really should introduce the main point of it, or just admit I don’t have one. Thankfully, I’ve got one and her name is Miranda Hobbs (I can’t be bothered to remember her married name) and she’s a bitch. I’ve properly just offended a whole bunch of people there, but I will stand on my sad little soap box and scream it to the heavens if I have to, Miranda Hobbs is and always has been a bitch. She looks down on everyone she meets, whether it be friends, boyfriends, or casual acquaintances – she regularly participates in the slut shaming of those she pretends to care about (despite hating to feel slut shamed herself) and she once proudly proclaimed that bisexuality wasn’t a thing. Oh, isn’t it ironic. And yes, I’m talking about Sex and the City Miranda here … just in case my hatred of her confused anyone.
Because here’s the weird thing, many people hold up that version of Miranda as a feminist icon. I assume because she wore business suits and didn’t take shit from anyone. Which to be fair, all true – she did do that. But I would hesitate to call any character who treats the other women in her life the way this one did, as a feminist. She’s got superficial traits of a feminist, she’ ambitious and has drive to succeeded in the male dominated world of law. She’s easily the kind of character an audience needing a feminist outlet would gravitate towards, but let’s not make the mistake of thinking that’s actually feminism. Feminism is about bringing all women up, Miranda Hobbs just cares about bringing Miranda Hobbs up. The fact that she is a woman while she does so, is the only thing that makes that look feminist.
The Miranda from ‘And Just Like That’ is an entirely different animal all together . Oh she’s very much still a bitch, and I really wouldn’t call her a feminist icon, but then again no one else would either. While you could conceivably call old Miranda inspirational in certain aspects of her life : she was ambitious, she knew how to stand up for herself, and at least in theory, she had strong principles and stuck to them. The New Miranda has none of this, she looks at these qualities, the very few qualities that mad Miranda someone who you could pretend was a likeable and admirable character and she spits on them.
That ambition? Gone! She throws away a very difficult to get internship so she can follow her new squeeze to LA for the summer. In an act that makes her look less like the RomCom heroine she thinks she is, and more like someone having a cross between a midlife crisis and a psychotic episode. That ability to stand up for herself has either been twisted and warped to the point she shuts down any conversation that even remotely hints at judging her for her horrible, horrible actions. Or, in the case of her relationship with Che, has vanished entirely. Turning her from a person that could stick up for themselves into someone who is both so stubbornly resistant to criticism that she stops anything interesting from being said; and so weak willed that she drops everything to be with a person who can’t even be bothered to tell her they’re moving to a whole other state in private. And then we have the biggest issue of contention with Miranda’s old fanbase, her moral decay.
For Miranda Hobbs was someone who was venomously opposed to the act of infidelity. This is a woman who would scream at her friends in the street if she caught them cheating on their partner, who threw her husband out of the house after she discovered his one night stand, and took a whole film to forgive him. To the Miranda of yesteryear while the sin of cheating on your significant other could be forgiven, given the right amount of grovelling and regret on behalf of the cheater, it was still very much a sin. It was a crime, it was something only trash people with garbage souls did. And to that the new Miranda says, unless it’s me of course.
She gleefully jumps into an affair with Carrie’s new boss Che Diaz, a Non-Binary unfunny comedian. And this isn’t just a one night stand thing either, it’s basically a full on relationship by the time Miranda finally gets up the nerve to tell her husband – at the end of the season – that’s she having an affair. And she certainly didn’t do that because she felt guilty about it.
Of course none of these observations are new, they are in fact quite common criticisms of the New Miranda. So you might be asking yourself why have I bothered to even write them down at all, then? Ha, ha, you have fallen into my trap I see. You’re right of course, there’s nothing new about noticing that the Miranda of ‘And just like that’ has degraded from her ‘Sex and the City’ counterpart. However most criticism and critics – that I have read to be fair – seem to blame the abysmal writing of the series. That obviously this was just some kind of horrific mistake on behalf of the writers. And yes, indeed, the writing of the majority of this series, is terrible. But I don’t think the writers intention for this character can be so easily read as all that. That is to say, I am throughly of the opinion that everything Miranda has done, every cringe inducing escapade, has been a deliberate attempt on the writer’s behalf to make the audience hate her.
Really, don’t believe me? You think they intended you to like a character who has sex with her best friend’s boss, in the kitchen of said best friend’s apartment, while that best friend is lying in another room of that apartment recovering from hip surgery? Really? You think they actually made Carrie, the main character of both shows and currently grief stricken widow (spoiler), pee in a plastic drink bottle because she was in too much pain to get to her bathroom without help, and the person that was meant to be helping her was too busy breaking her marriage vows were food was prepared, because they wanted you to feel sorry for that person?
And this isn’t just me pointing to the terrible things a character does and crying – the writers meant for them to do that, we were meant to hate them. No, Miranda’s actions are bad in universe and I have proof!
I ask the reader to turn their eyes once again to the character of Che Diaz.
They are not a nice person certainly, but then again as they have been written by the same geniuses that write Carrie and Miranda, that should not be a surprise. Most, if not all of the characters on this show are throughly unlikable people, with garbage souls – so expecting the non-binary person to be an exception from this is, odd. Yes, that’s the kindest word I can use, odd. But whether or not their character is deserving of all the vitriol they get is not the point here – the point is really not Che at all, but rather how the writers use them.
For you see Che is not just Miranda’s new love interest, oh no, they are her guide into the frightening new world of the LGBTQ+ community. What it is, how it works, the ins and the outs of it – I never said they did it well, but Miranda’s intense infatuation with Che is an excuse for her character to explore that side of herself, and the narrative does tend to hold them up as a leading figure in the New York LBTQ+ community, so bear with me. In a sense, the writers want us to see them as an authority figure, a yard pole for behaviour that should be allowed to be acceptable. So thus when it finally comes out that Miranda is not, as Che had believed, in an open marriage but rather simply cheating on her husband with Che – the writers want us pay attention to their reaction.
Because it’s not one of acceptance, it’s not one of humour, or pity for Miranda’s situation – it’s one of horror, and disgust. They are absolutely horrified that Miranda has essentially turned them it what they had never wanted to be – a home wrecker. It’s a mildly self centred horror, they are a self proclaimed narcissist after all, but it is a horror none the less. And when Miranda replies with the rather pathetic, “you knew this was all new to me,” with a great big grin across her face, the writer’s want you to hear Che’s next words, so I’ll repeat verbatim.
“New to being Queer is one thing, lying and married is another.”
What Miranda is doing, the cheating, the lying to both partners in the equation, this is wrong. The writers know this is wrong, and they want you to know it too. Not to teach you any kind of moral lesson – I think that would be quite beyond them – but because they want you to hate Miranda, they want you to be disgusted by her, to look at that woman on the screen and think, ‘God, she’s the worst’. And judging by the level of virtual towards the character in almost every review, or passing comment I’ve read on the internet, they have certainly succeeded.
But the thing you must be asking yourself right about now is, why? Why shank your character so hard in the belly like this? Well, before I start I want to reiterate that this is all just a theory of mine, and not hard solidified fact. Granted it’s a theory that has some legs, considering everything Miranda does – but that’s all it is, a theory. So like, when I say they did this to spite Cynthia Nixon, the actress of Miranda Hobbes, it’s a speculation. Having said that, the possible reason why they would want to do this is verified fact straight from the actress herself. She had the love interest that was supposed to awaken Miranda’s latent bisexuality, changed.
It had originally been planned to be Mia, her Professor when she went back to law school and both characters would act as a closet key to each other.
But apparently Nixion really did not like this idea – the reason why seems to change depending on where I read the interview but either it was because she felt that sleeping with her Professor was a line that Miranda wouldn’t cross, or because she found the idea unsexy. Referring to it as two straight women flopping at each other – assuming I haven’t misremembered the quote, I’m not going back to check. She then pushed for the Che character, who was not conceived as such, to be the love interest instead.
Now I could be completely wrong, maybe they had no hard feelings about this at all. Maybe they welcomed the constructive criticism, and jumped at the chance to rework their original idea to accommodate someone who would clearly know the character well, having played her for so many years. However giving the fact that Mia, and at least the remains of the law school plot are still there in the show, despite not really having a narrative purpose with the affair plot surgically removed from them, I find that unlikely. Clearly they liked the character of Mia enough to keep her in the show, and to keep the storyline of her troubles with infertility, and trying to decide if she really wants a child at all giving all she has to go through to get one. Not judging that, Mia is one of only two likeable characters in the whole show – the second being Steve, (Grady! That was the married name, okay, that was going to bother me all day, back to the rant) who we see so little of in season one, he’s more of a cameo than a character. But while her storyline is certainly one of the few I stayed awake for, I would be lying if I said it felt needed in a sequel to Sex and the City. Like this is a really interesting story, with a lot of depth and nuance to it, but what’s it got anything to do with the three remaining witches of the Upper East Side and their search for more Man Flesh? True she’s Miranda’s new friend but all that does is make Mia look like she has terrible taste in friends – particularly since their introduction was Miranda being really, really racist towards her.
Having said that, at least she has managed to escape the curse of being romantically entangled with Miranda – a silver lining if ever there was one.
Steve and Miranda were a fan favourite couple before ‘And just like that…’, so any character made the catalyst for their marriage going up in flames, was going to have an uphill task of being accepted or barely tolerated by the target audience. Perhaps Mia being an actually decent person on a show full of assholes could have managed it, but it was the death nail to the likability of Che Diaz, unfunny comedian and self proclaimed narcissist asshole.
I’m not saying that’s the only reason people didn’t like them, there were many reasons not to, but it certainly didn’t help. Which you know must have been very annoying for the Writers who spent time crafting this character and then were forced to change their entire role in the story. Che had been more imagined as a friend of Carrie’s, and a side character primarily in her storyline not Miranda’s. Which you can kind of see the bones of in the first few episodes, particularly when Che takes Carrie aside to talk about the problems she’s having talking about sex on their podcast. It would have been an interesting dynamic to watch unfold, that friendship, but instead most of Che’s scenes revolve entirely around their relationship with Miranda and now they and Carrie are the friends that never hang. Instead we got … well.
God, it’s like Miranda makes everything less interesting just by her involvement.
Ah, there’s that old feeling of hate in my chest again – it seems like the writer’s have done their jobs well. Maybe a little too well, if I’m to be honest. But what do you think? Have I just gone nuts, or is there some grounds to my mad cap theory?
If you’ve enjoyed this long ass rant on the deliberate character assassination of a fictional person why not follow the wee blog if you haven’t already. Also check me out on X, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Spotify, Tumblr, TikTok, YouTube, Goodreads, Facebook and Kofi where I am also active. And if you want to find out whether of not my view on Miranda has changed upon finally making myself sit down and watch the second season of ‘And just like that…”, sign up to the Wee Mailing list by June 10th. I know it’s a long way away, but I need the time. Until next time Wee readers, keep safe, write well, and a have a very bonnie day.
And now ladies and gentlemen, I present a visual trip round the city of Aberdeen.
And now I present…Aberdeen Art Gallery.
That’s all Folks!!!
If you’ve enjoyed this visual trip through the parts of the city of Aberdeen that I actually visited, why not check out the blog and give me a wee follow, if you haven’t already. Also check me out on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, Pinterest, Tumblr, GoodreadsTikTok and Facebook. Also Kofi. Until next time wee subscribers, take care, and have a very bonny day.
Well, here we are at last – the seventh knight rises, just as the others thought the battle was over. My final choice may not be entirely surprising to those that have followed this blog series from the start, but it is the one I’m sticking with.
Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy
Telling the story of the enchanter Merlin, from his early childhood as the bastard (and seemingly fatherless) son of a Welsh Princess, to his final years as a man grown old before his time – Mary Stewart’s Merlin series may just be the phenomenal writer’s magnum opus.
Filled with the kind of beautiful pros anyone familiar with Stewart’s work has come to expect, this series gives us a look into a far more grounded Arthurian world than is normally portrayed. And most amazing of all, it manages to do so without making its subject boring, cynical , or depressing.
For anyone looking into why people are still drawn to tales of Merlin, Arthur and his knights of the round table – I would recommend this series above anything else.
The Wee Writing Lassie 