Review of the Librarians 1x09 and the City of Light: What Influences

Why do we do what we do? What makes us choose to go to the schools we go to or take the jobs we work? What influences those decisions? Often it’s myriad things that play into those decisions, but some of the biggest influences are the people we love and care about.

When I was in high school, I thought I was going to go away to college. I wanted to go out of state and get away from everything I’d known, start over in a new place. Be the time I graduated and started college, those plans had changed. Things with my family had changed a lot and I wound up going to college no more than ten miles from my family. Some of that was my decision and some of it wasn’t, but my family played a huge role in where I wound up.

This week we finally get a glimpse into what made Jake choose to stay at home, why he opted to stick to Oklahoma instead of going on the adventures he could have had as a Librarian. We also get to see Cassie make decisions based on her relationship with one of the other team members. So much of what we do is influenced by those around us, and that’s true for our favorite LITs too.

So let’s dive in.

Jake (and Mable)

This is a big episode for Jake. We learn a lot more about him in this episode than we have in the past seven episodes. We knew he was from a small town in Oklahoma and that he could have studied at at least two prestigious universities, but chose not to. We know he has a big family and they are important to him, and most likely they are they reason he stayed in Oklahoma so long, despite he longing to get out and see the world. We also know that he doesn’t trust his family with the knowledge of his gift. Which is actually a lot.

What we’ve never really known is what made him turn down those chances to study at prestigious universities? Why did he choose to stay in that little town in Oklahoma with people who never fully understood him, no matter how much they might love him, instead of getting out and traveling to see all the beautiful things he so longed to see? Thanks to a woman named Mabel, we learn those answers in this episode.

Jake immediately hits it off with Mabel. There is something about her that sparks his interest and vice versa. I think they can sense that they have things in common, even in that first meeting. Mabel sees that he is not a typical small town guy, though he’s clearly familiar with small town life, he also knows French and is intriguing in a way that a small town guy normally isn’t. That’s what draws the two of them together immediately. Later, when they get the chance to talk about their lives, they learn they have a lot in common. Family obligations, desire to travel without the ability to. They have similar backgrounds and dreams in a way that Jake hasn’t found with anyone else. And I think that’s why they connect so easily.

Mabel too had to stay in her small town, tied to the place due to “family obligations” while still dreaming of going to Paris and Budapest and Rome. Jake can relate all too well. They both dream of being able to tell stories that don’t revolve around all the same people and places they’ve always known. This shared common desire draws them together even more.

The difference between Mabel and Jake is that she didn’t have a choice in staying in Collins Falls. Due to the situation in town she literally could not leave. Jake felt like he couldn’t leave, but the truth is, he could have. Instead, he chose to stay and take over the family business because of his father’s drinking. As Mabel says, that’s a very good reason to stay. The thing about family though, is there is always going to be some obligation to them. And if you’re already scared of leaving, then those obligations make great excuses. Jake tells Mabel that he realizes now that he used his family as an excuse to not leave. He lived scared of his gift, his intelligence and used his family as a reason to hide from it. Becoming a Librarian is the only thing that changed that.

In the middle of the episode, Jake finds out Mabel didn’t tell him the whole truth about what was going on in the town. Now I’ve seen a couple of things about this in comparison to the situation with Cassie, particularly in the fact that Jake he still forgives Mabel very quickly but took a very long time forgiving Cassie. I think there are a couple of key differences in the two situations.

First, Cassie never came clean to the team. They only discovered her deception after it resulted in Flynn getting hurt and nearly dying. What’s more, until the Brotherhood put Cassie into a cell and basically revealed they’d used her, she didn’t go back on her deal to help them. Now, I love Cassie, so please don’t think I’m saying all this to hate on her. She’s probably my favorite character in the entire show. But she is flawed, like all good characters, and her flaws nearly got Flynn killed. To someone like Jake, who takes honor and trust very seriously, that’s a hard thing to forgive.

“But wait,” you say, “Mabel lied too! He should be just as mad at her.” Maybe yes and maybe now. Mabel’s situation was different. Mabel didn’t have a choice getting stuck in the town and having to try to find a way to help all the people there. Because, who would believe her if she told them that 87 people were stuck in a place between living and dying? So she didn’t tell the handsome stranger who wandered into town asking about town history the truth until she was forced to. I think in Jake’s mind, he saw her holding back information not as a selfish thing but as a form of protection for the townsfolk. And that’s why he found it easier to forgive her than to forgive Cassie, because he saw Cassie’s deception as selfish. I’m not saying I agree with him, but that could be what happened.

I think there’s a big moment between Cassie and Jake near the end, when the team decides to help. The pair exchange a look when Cassie agrees to help and Jake is clearly relieved that she is willing to do what she can for Mabel and the town. Because really, it’s Cassie’s vote that mattered most. If she had said it wasn’t possible, the team wouldn’t have been able to do anything, seeing as she was the only one capable of doing those kinds of calculations. Everything about the look he gives her says thank you. It’s a look that tells you exactly how far they’ve come in their friendship.

Cassie

This episode was problematic for me as far as Cassie was concerned. I was really struggling with her characterization in this episode. She’s so much sassier and sharper than she has been in the past episodes, that I wasn’t sure what was going on. I’m still not completely sure I figured it out, but below is my best guess at the analysis.

When Cassie and Jake first meet Mabel, Cassie gets visibly annoyed with Jake and Mabel. Of course, the question is why? What is it that’s bothering her? The first obvious guess is that she is jealous of Mabel. Jake and Mabel clearly have a connection, and one could make an argument that that bothers Cassie, especially given that she might have a bit of a crush on Jake. I mean who wouldn’t? Beyond the fact that he is an attractive male, there’s also the fact that Cassie and Jake too have a connection that is different from the rest of the team. They connected quickly in the first episode and he’s been the one who consistently gets her and helps her deal with her visions. I think just about anyone would be hard pressed not to develop some kind of attraction under those circumstances. So there certainly could be a bit of jealousy going on when they first meet Mabel.

I submit, though, that it could be something more than that. I think beyond a bit of jealousy, that Cassie possibly senses that Mabel is not telling them everything and that’s why she doesn’t particularly like the woman at first. After Mabel tells them everything, Cassie is a lot less snippy. I have basically no evidence of this, but it’s an idea anyway.

Cassie makes two decision late in the episode that directly impact Jake and I find them both interesting. The first is when the team is deciding whether to help Mabel and the town or not. As I said above, Cassie’s voice seems to be the deciding factor in that vote. She ostensibly agrees because they need to rescue Eve, but given the look Jake gives her after she says yes, I’m starting to think she said yes for him.

The second decision sort of solidifies this opinion. When she discovers that the risk is simply too great and they can’t rescue all of the townspeople she has to tell the team. During this conversation, particularly the part when she has to say it’s too big a risk and they need to shut it down, she is looking at Jake. She knows that telling them to stop this is going to affect him the most. He is the most committed to the mission and she knows that this is a blow. BUt she has to tell the truth. When she’s done and they all go to do their jobs, the two of them exchange another look, this one filled with apology on Cassie’s part and sorrow on Jake’s. In that look he is asking if there is any other way and she is telling him there isn’t and she’s so sorry. It’s with that look that we know that she did all of this more for him than for anyone else.

Ezekiel and Eve

So far, it’s been pretty clear that Ezekiel is the most grey out of our very grey heroes. If you were to put our three LITs on a white to black spectrum of goodness, Jake would be on the whiter end, Cassie would be in the middle, and Ezekiel would be closer to the dark end. He’s the thief, less concerned about morals and right and wrong than anyone else on the team. Until this episode.

In this episode, we finally get a taste of Ezekiel’s code. Everyone has a code they live by, a limit to how far they are willing to go or what they think is acceptable behavior. FOr some of us, that limit is much smaller than for others, but everyone has one and in this episode we finally see what Ezekiel’s is. Stealing objects and possessions is one thing. Stealing bodies is something else entirely. In fact, it’s so reprehensible to him that he wants to abandon the entire town because of it.

I like what the writers did with this though. They make it clear that body riding is abhorrent to Ezekiel, then they put him in a position where if someone didn’t do that, he wouldn’t have survived. If Baird hadn’t taken him over, he wouldn’t have been able to stop the townspeople from getting to Jake and Mabel. So the thing he looked at as too far was the thing that helped him save the day in the end. That’s always an interesting writing choice.

Other Random Goodness
~”I’ll tell you what, we’ll just fill in the crack you’re about to make about us and intelligent life and skip right to the job.” “Are you sure? It’s quite cutting.” “I promise to be properly offended. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have even understood it at first, but I’ll be offended later.” “Where’s the fun in that?”
~”You’re planning on selling out the human race, aren’t you?” “I will absolutely sell out the human race to our new alien overlords.”
~”We’re doing some research on town histories.” “Oh, well that make sense.” “For once.”
~The hand signals bit between Eve and Ezekiel.
~”Only you people could lose the Guardian.”
~”Colonel Baird is still on the planet.” “She’s alive? She’s safe?” “She’s . . . still on the planet.”
~”Magic is not an exact science. If it were, it would be science.”
~Cassie and Jake going back and forth about who should talk to Mable.
~The entire thing with Ezekiel trying to convince Mable that he calls optical illusions Colonel Bairds.
~Cassie is writing in her little notebook.
~”I see enough psychedelic visions on my own, so no thank you.”
~I’m pretty sure that the dam is the same one from “The Last Dam Job” in Leverage season 3.
~”So, how was your first kiss with a 130 year old woman?”
~”Well, assuming Miss Cillian and I have successfully implemented the theoretical scribblings of a mad genius using abandoned equipment that’s been in water for 100 years.” “Good pep talk.”

That’s it for this week. What did you think? Let me know down in the comments section.

Next week I’ll be reviewing the penultimate episode of Season 1, the Rule of Three. It’s a fun little episode and we get to meet Morgan le Fey, so come back for that.

In the mean time, on Wednesday I’ll be doing another writing prompt and on Friday the next question in 30 Things.

Until thin.

30 Things Question 18

18. What has been the most difficult thing you have had to forgive?

It’s actually something I’m still in the process of forgiving and it’s everything I went through with my parents when I was a teen and young adult. I don’t think I’ve fully forgiving them for what was said and done, but I’m working on it God is working on me. Someday I hope I can say that I have forgiven them completely.

Writing Prompt Wednesday - Legacy

Welcome to Writing Prompt Wednesday! I’ve been having so much fun with these first sentences, that I kept going with that. This one comes from here.

The prompt is: After she’d told me it was “high time” I knew my family legacy, my grandmother turned, pulled the box from the closet and handed it to me.

~~~

After she’d told me it was “high time” I knew my family legacy, my grandmother turned, pulled the box from the closet and handed it to me. I stared at the box for a moment, taking in the whorls in it’s grain and the well worn look of it.

“What in here?” I asked, looked back at her.

“Open it and find out.”

I bit my lip and hesitated. What if what was in the box changed everything I knew about myself? Who was I kidding, I knew it would.

Shaking my head, I slowly opened the lid of the box. In side sat a number of black and white pictures and a jeweled dagger. Frowning I pulled out the pictures and looked at them.

They were images of various people, all close in their late teens or early twenties, but who must be close my my grandmother’s age now. Both women and men stood together, some with arms slung around each other and smiling, others standing a little apart. Blinking, I realized I recognized two of the people in this photo. It was my grandmother and my grandfather, holding hands and beaming at the camera.

Looking at another one, I found yet another group shot, this one set some forty or fifty years later. This time, I quickly found my mother and father in the group, though they weren’t together. In fact, they stood on opposite sides of the picture. This struck me as strange, since they’d been nearly inseparable before they died a few years before.

Every single person in the pictures had one of the jeweled daggers.

Frowning, I looked up at my grandmother. “Who are these people? Why do they have the daggers?”

“Those pictures show the Order of the Dagger,” she replied, “Everyone in our family has been a member since its inception 200 years ago. I met your grandfather through them. Your mother and father also met thanks to the order.”

“But what does the Order do?” I asked, trying to get my head around what she was telling me.

“We are charged with protecting the world from dangerous magics and magical creatures.” She was completely serious.

I stared at her, not quite believing her, but then something clicked together in my head. Voice quivering, I asked, “Mom and Dad didn’t die in a car crash, did they?”

My grandmother looked at me for several long moments. “No Hattie. They didn’t.”

~~~

Well that was fun. I have a feeling this prompt could spawn something fun. Hopefully I get to develop it further some day.

Tell me what you think about it down in the comments.

Come back Friday for 30 Things.

Until then.

Review of The Librarians 1x05 and the Apple of Discord: The Darkness Within

Quick Note: Sorry this is late. Life got a little hectic but here's the review. Hopefully next week's will be on time. On to the review.

Have you ever thought about what the worst version of you would be? I have, on occasion, thought about this but I don’t really like to. It’s never fun to confront your darkest self. Unfortunately, we all have one, though some of us hide that dark self better than others. I’m a relatively quiet person, but if you get me really mad I can be quite mean. I’ll find exactly the right thing to do the most damage. It’s never pretty when it happens.

In this particular episode, we get a glimpse into the LIT team’s worst selves and as expected, it isn’t pretty. But beyond the trouble that these darker sides bring, we also get a chance to see how much our team has grown over the course of the season. Flynn comes back for this episode and he is pleasantly surprised by how much progress everyone has made.

This is probably my favorite episode in the entire season, so I’m excited to be doing this review finally. Let’s dive in.

Eve and Flynn

The episode starts out with the team working together to solve the problem of massive earthquakes happening throughout the world. It’s a great glimpse into how well they have gotten at working together (for the most part. Ezekiel still seems to have some work to do). But everything comes crashing to a halt when the backdoor starts reacting. Thankfully it’s Flynn, but he winds up causing some problems of his own just by being himself.

Flynn blows in and starts handing out assignments acting as if everything is still exactly how he left it several weeks before. Eve is less than thrilled about this. She’s been leading the team for weeks and they have become a well oiled machine. Flynn coming in upsets the balance they’ve achieved. Especially because he still thinks things are where they were when he left. He couldn’t be more wrong.

Eve tries to talk to him about this, but Flynn being Flynn and crises being crises, they don’t really get the chance until later in the episode. The real problem is that Flynn doesn’t stop long enough to talk to her about the team, and as such, he spends most of the episode being completely surprised by what they can do.

During the trek through the tunnels in Rome, Eve and Flynn finally have the conversation that Eve had been trying to have. It’s in this conversation that we finally get to see just how far Eve has come since the beginning of the season. When they first met, she and Flynn both agreed that working alone was much better.

Back in the first episode, they saw it the same way. They saw friends and family as clutter, getting in the way of them doing their jobs, a distraction that hinders them in their true calling. When Eve had to work with the NATO team during that first episode, do you remember how quickly she split off from them to tackle the problem on her own? That is not a woman who works well with others. Yet, during these last weeks, something has changed for her. She’s no longer the same person she was when she met Flynn.

Now she is a woman who’s found a team she can work with, and work with well. She and the LITs get along really well. She finally has a use for friends and teams. She’s changed so much, that she now, she admonishes Flynn for not calling her for help.She doesn’t want him to do things on his own anymore. Instead, she wants to be his partner, in everything.

Despite this, Eve still has some issues with Flynn's authority and Flynn still has some issue understanding that he might need other people. This is revealed when they each get a hold of the Apple.

Jake and Cassie

In my review of Santa last week, I talked about how much the dynamic between Jake and Cassie has changed. Apple is no different. If anything, they seem to have gotten closer in this episode. All through the episode Cassie and Jake are so much easier with each other. They’re relaxed around and seem to gravitate toward each other. They work so well together that they even have a shorthand now when Cassie starts losing the thread during her hallucinations. Now, all Jake has to do to get her back on track is get her attention and say “The other memory.” and Cassie is able to get back on track and find the beginning of the puzzle.

We also see this during Cassandra’s bout with the Apple. Eve, Flynn, and Jake all try to reach her, to get her to stop what she’s doing, but only Jake knows the “off switch” as it were. Flynn thinks he does with Pi (which was way to obvious for it to have worked anyway. Come one Flynn.) but Jake shows just how much he’s gotten to know our favorite Synesthete by tricking her into a “recursive loop” with Euler’s number. When Flynn questions Jake about this, the Cowboy just says that he noticed her writing in a small notebook a lot and that he pays attention.

The Apple and the Team

On his blog, John Rogers mentioned that each character had a specific classic sin that they dealt with when revealing their “worst self”. For Eve and Flynn, these sins were envy and pride, respectively. As usual, when the characters end up being other than themselves, it tends to reveal a lot about who they really are. This is no different.

Jake’s sin lust. Wikipedia defines lust as “an intense desire for anything, be it money, food, fame, power, or love.” Jake’s lust is for beautiful things, namely art. As with Flynn and Eve, we see signs of this in his normal life, just more toned down than when he has the Apple. When you admire beautiful things, there is an inherent desire to have beautiful things. Jake loves art. He sees the beauty and grandeur of the various pieces in ways that no one else on the team does (not even Flynn). He loves them so much that, despite choosing to remain with his family in Oklahoma, he leads a double life and publishes papers under a pseudonym, just so he can have some contact with this world of beauty. So it’s not hard to imagine that, given the Apple’s influence, he could see himself as the only one truly capable of appreciating these lovely things and want them all for himself.

Cassandra’s sin is wrath. wrath is “inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger.” Cassie has had a lot of crap happen to her in her life, stuff that would scare and anger just about anyone. A normal reaction to the type of pain she has endured is anger. She’s angry because she lost control of her life a long time ago. We saw hints of this in Heart during her confrontation with Katie. We’ll get more glimpses of it later on in Rule of Three. So it’s not hard that she’d be angry and want to take back control. When she goes on her rant, she talks about how she’s always thinking, always calculating, that it never stops. Cassandra never asked to have numbers constantly bombarding her and driving her senses haywire. At her worst, she gives into the tide of anger that comes with her gifts and decides she’s going to see just how far she can take it.

(Side note: how funny is it that everyone assumes Cassie at her worst wouldn’t be that bad. What is it about quiet, kind people that makes everyone think that they don’t get angry? Cassie is normally the happiest, bubbliest of the team, but that doesn’t mean she is perfect. Given the right circumstances, she can be just as dangerous as the most adept fighters. And I think Cassie knows that about herself. Most nice people are aware of just how ugly they could be if they let themselves. But Cassie doesn’t let herself be that way. The only reason she wound up there is because of the Apple.)

Eve’s sin is envy. According to wikipedia, envy “occurs when a person lacks another's superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it”. Basically, it’s when you want something someone else has. During the course of the season, we’ve actually seen signs of Eve’s envy, though they are a lot more toned down when she isn’t holding the Apple. She wants to have the same status at the Library that Flynn does. He is the leader, and she wants that. And she feels like the Library keeps telling her she doesn’t have that because it keeps resetting to Flynn’s preferences (re: her desk, which we’re reminded of at the beginning of this episode again). She sees that Flynn has the power of the Library and that the LITs automatically listen to him (something they did not do for her) and she wants that. So it’s not surprising that her worst self is someone who wants to claim all those things and more for herself.

Flynn’s sin is pride. According to good ol’ Wikipedia, pride is “an inflated sense of one's personal status or accomplishments.” Just like it’s easy to see Eve’s envy, it is not a stretch to believe that this is Flynn’s sin. Flynn Carson is one confidant man. He knows he’s smart and he knows he’s good at what he does. He has survived for 10 years on his own, so he must be good. I’ll be honest, before I watched the series, I’d never heard of the Librarian. So I’ve never seen Flynn before this. I’m guessing that all of those movies would probably give us even more evidence of just how awesome Flynn is. All that is to say, he knows he’s good and he has a right to be proud of what he can do. But his being good, taken to the extreme, leads us to a man who wants to take over the world.

Thankfully, we never have to see what would happen if either Eve or Flynn got what they wanted, since they don’t hang onto the Apple. The really interesting thing here is that the signs of these massive issues are there the whole time, it’s just this magical artifact that brings them so completely to the surface.

Ezekiel and Jenkins

Probably one of my favorite parts of this episode is the fact that we get to see Ezekiel and Jenkins working together. There’s something immensely fun about pairing the stuffiest character with the most relaxed character. It’s pure conflict gold. It also gives us a chance to see sides of these two characters that we haven’t seen yet.

Throughout the season so far, we’ve seen Ezekiel coasting through the problems and succeeding handily. He is lucky and he relies on that luck to get things done without getting himself killed. In this episode though, we finally see someone Ezekiel’s luck fail him. He is the worst possible person to handle the intercession and the conclave (I actually don’t have a hard time believing that when Du Lac found out it was Ezekiel serving as the Arbiter, he didn’t do a little internal happy dance. Seriously, the man couldn’t have planned it better himself.). Unfortunately, as charming and lucky as Ezekiel is, charm and luck only take you so far in some situations. That’s not to say he didn’t do a fairly good job with what he had, but if Jenkins hadn’t been there, Du Lac would have won.

But if Ezekiel hadn’t been there, Jenkins would have walked away. Jenkins issue is that he’s one of those immortal beings that has lived for centuries so he has seen so many horrible things that they just got to be too much for him. He tells Ezekiel that he made a choice a long time ago and he watched how horribly that turned out, so eventually he decided it was better to hide himself away and stop making choices. When Du Lac shows up, he believes running away is the only option. He doesn’t want to deal with making that choice again.

Jenkins refusal to make a choice (or really, to choose to help instead of just walking away) pisses Ezekiel off. This anger causes him to confront Jenkins and it’s during this confrontation that we find out Ezekiel isn’t quite the same person he was when he joined the Library.

Not long after I first rewatched the whole season, I wrote up a short meta about how the characters arcs worked in the intended order. In that meta (posted on Tumblr) I mentioned that Ezekiel is the least changed of all the characters, which I still think is mostly true. Though now, I think a better way to say it is his arc is the subtlest. It’s easy to miss since he’s so cocky and self-assured. But it’s there, if you look for it and this particular episode highlights just how much he’s changed.

Back at the beginning of the season, Ezekiel told Eve that when things got boring he ran. In Horns, he is chastised for running away and abandoning his team. For him, there has always been an underlying tension of whether he’ll stay or not, since he’s pretty clearly a guy looks out only for himself. As soon as things get hard or boring, he’s out of the picture.

Yet here, he is the one advocating for Jenkins to stay and fight. He’s had plenty of opportunity to cut and run. Things are clearly not going well for him as the Arbiter, yet he insists on trying. And it’s not just about showing everyone that he can do it at least not after Du Lac shows up. Once Du Lac is in the picture, it quickly becomes about saving the Library. Ezekiel is no longer the guy who can’t be counted on. Instead, he’s become a true part of the team and the Library.

Other Random Goodness:
~”According to the scroll of Yosemite Sam . . .”
~I love that Cassandra grabs a book, Eve grabs her gun, and Jake grabs a sword. It actually speaks to who they are as characters in a big way. Cassie relies on knowledge to win, Jake likes to get up close and personal to deal with threats, and Eve likes to deal with things from a slight distance. Amazing what you can get from a single 30 second bit.
~”Did you come to take them away? I keep their bags packed.”
~”Not dissimilar to the East Coast West Coast hip hop rivalry of the late 20th century.”
~”So he’s a dragon in a man costume?” “He’s a lawyer.”
~”May I get you anything to drink?” “The tears of our enemies rent from their bodies as their bones are crushed.” “I have jasmine tea.” “Oh jasmine, yes please.”
~”Well let’s see. Is there a polite way of saying ‘Absolutely not?’ Well who cares. Absolutely not.”
~”Last time we were together we broke into Buckingham Palace and now we’re breaking into the Vatican?”
~Cassie and Jake looking over the the city is such a great shot. I just love that view of them together.
~”Was that the Pope? Was that the Pope?” “Possibly!”
~”Now c’mon. This is just a bunch of consonants in a row. That’s not a word.”
~”See, the things that come out of my mouth don’t even bother me anymore.”
~”Is he eating my extra cheese and double pepperoni? He is evil.”
~”Did you say six?” *Jake nods* *Cassie promptly collapses.*
~”What is going on with this day?”
~”Are you ill?”
~”You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
~”Or maybe I’m wrong.”

What did you think? Do you think the sins matched up well with the characters? If not, why? Tell me about it down in the comments.

Next week, I’ll be reviewing City of Lights, a big Jake episode. That’ll be fun.

In the mean time, come back Wednesday for my next writing prompt and on Friday for 30 Things.

Until then.

30 Things Question 17

17. What is the thing you most wish you were great at?

There are plenty of things i wish I was great at, but I think the thing I wish I knew for certain I was great at and could make a living off of was writing. I want to be good at it so badly, but I’m just not sure I am. Sometimes I think I’m okay, but I struggle with the confidence to know that I write well enough that other people would actually like to read what I’m writing.

What about you? What do you wish you were great at? Tell me about it down in the comments.

On Monday we get the next review of the Librarians.

Until then.

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Footprints

Welcome to Writing Prompt Wednesday. I decided to do a first sentence prompt again (I like those). This time it came from this website.

Here’s the sentence:
The footprints in the snow suddenly ended.

~~~

The footprints in the snow suddenly ended. I’d been tracking them for fifteen minutes and now they’d disappeared. Swallowing, I glanced around. Snow was coming down fast in heavy wet flakes that stuck to everything, but even they couldn’t cover up footprints this fast. My prey had simply vanished.

Taking a deep breath, I looked up and around at the trees towering over me. The woods were silent, the snow muffling everything in a crisp white blanket. If the person I was tracking was an air mage, then I was royally screwed, since they had discovered that I was tracking them and decided to either fly away or jump and hide themselves so they could ambush me.

Just as I was thinking this, a pile of snow thumped onto the ground to my right a moment before a large heavy body collided with mine, sending us toppling into the snows in a flurry of white.

Years of training took over and I repositioned myself as I fell so could send my attacker sailing off of my thanks to our momentum. Once he - the guttural grunt I’d heard as he tackled me told me was male - was clear, I flipped over and jumped to me feet, baring my hunting knife as I turned.

Whirling to face my attacker, I found myself staring into two of the palest blue eyes I’d ever seen. They were set in a slightly tanned face under wavy black hair belonging to a not unhandsome young man not much older than myself.

“Why are you tracking me?” he demanded.

“Why are you trespassing on my family’s land?” I replied.

“You’re family?” His eyes went wide. “You’re a Dameen?”

I just raised an eyebrow and waited. My family’s name had that sort of affect on people. I was used to it. I just had to wait for him to get to the point where he would answer my question.

~~~

Another fun one. I’ve noticed that these seem to be generating a lot of story ideas. That’s always a good thing. Maybe by the time I finish Alana and First Sight I’ll have a bunch of new ideas to work on.

What did you think of the prompt? Where do you think it was going? Tell me down in the comments.

Come back Friday for the next question in 30 Things.

Until then.

Review of The Librarians 1x04 and Santa’s Midnight Run: Christmas Magic

I’m not going to lie, it feels weird to write about Christmas in March. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, but I’m of the opinion that Christmas is for Christmas time. I guess I’m a bit cynical in that regard. Or maybe I just like the whole year and want time to enjoy each part of it at it’s appropriate time. But, this is a Christmas episode, so about Christmas I will talk.

Christmas means different things to different people. It’s actually one of my favorite holidays, just because there’s so much tradition wrapped up in it. When I was growing up, my parents made a pretty big deal about Christmas. This was especially cool because both my birthday and my dad’s birthday are in December, so we had to find a way to separate those from Christmas, but my parents always did a good job of that. We’d put up a tree and decorate the whole house. My mom has these porcelain village houses that she puts up and one of my favorite things to do was help her create the tiny villages each year.

On Christmas day we’d all wake up, get dressed and have breakfast together before sitting down to open presents as a family. We’d each take turns opening a gift and showing it off so everyone could see, so the whole thing could take hours, but it was so much fun gushing over all the gifts. As I got older, my favorite part quickly became the moment when people would open the gifts I’d gotten them. I love giving gifts to people and finding just the right thing to give people, so seeing their reactions is always one of my favorite things, even now.

Just like me, each of our LITs has their favorite part of the holiday, and we get to learn about those in this episode. We also learn why our favorite Guardian isn’t so fond of the season and get to see what happens when she’s forced to deal with it. So let’s dive in, shall we?

Eve

On his blog, John Rogers described this as a big Eve episode, which is pretty true. After watching it a couple of times, I realized that beyond learning about how Eve got her name and why she doesn’t like Christmas, this is the episode Eve starts to soften a little. It was interesting to watch that softening occur as the episode went on.

At the beginning of the episode, she’s really annoyed by all the Christmas stuff. She complains about the decorations and can’t believe that all the LITs like Christmas for one reason or another. She dislikes everything about Christmas and refuses to accept any of it. Even after they learn Santa is real, the Guardian continues to dislike it and him and refuses to call him Santa. It’s only as she spends more time with him that her opinion begins to soften until her annoyance is more playful than legitimate at the end of the episode.

During her road trip with Nick, we learn that Eve doesn’t like Christmas because despite it being touted as the holiday that brings everyone together, she doesn’t believe it’s true. To her, that’s just a story that people tell to comfort themselves when in reality people were fighting and doing terrible things on Christmas (and the rest of the year). She feels that Christmas means nothing but loneliness and strife. She claims that she been too many places on Christmas watching people do horrible things to believe in the spirit of Christmas anymore.

I think another part of Eve’s opinion of Christmas comes from her loneliness and lack of home. Remember back in the my first review when I talked about how each member of the team came from a place of loneliness? Well, Eve was no exception. She had an empty apartment and didn’t know what to do with herself when she was forced to take a month off from work. She even tells Flynn that she prefers working alone because other people just get in the way. Clearly something happened in her past that made her feel this way and it’s influencing her views on Christmas.

The true turning point in her opinion is when she’s forced to take on the gift from Nick and distribute it throughout the world. By taking the gift and spreading hope and goodwill throughout the world, Eve finally has a chance to see mankind at its best instead of its worst like she has every other Christmas. She sees the potential for good that Santa sees. And she finally realizes that she has found a place to belong in her work at the Library.

At the end of the episode Cassandra laments that Eve didn’t make a wish since it would have come true. But the truth is, Eve did make a wish and had been wishing for a long time, and it finally came true. She realizes at the end of the episode that she now has a place to belong.

Cassie and Jake

If Heart was the episode where Jake’s opinion of Cassie starts to turn around, then this is the episode where we really start to see it. Cassie and Jake are so different with each other in this episode it’s like they are new people. Some of this is probably the high that comes from being happy about Christmas, but I think some of it also results from everything that happened in Heart of Darkness.

The beginning of the episode sees Jake and Cassie connecting over their mutual love of Christmas. He’s clearly amused by her enthusiasm and they share a moment when she reveals that her parents didn’t let her believe in Santa past the age of three. He’s really shocked by this. It’s so much fun to watch his reactions to her reactions in this episode. Everything from when she finds out that Santa is real to when they first meet Santa to the end is just them having fun together and I loved every minute of it.

During all this fun though, we get a few significant moments in the relationship that I think are important to point out. (I’ll mention again that it’s things like this that make me happy that I got the chance to rewatch the episodes in the intended order. So many things about their friendship make more sense when watched in the intended order, like this episode.)

The first significant moment was during the questioning of the Cockney santa in London. While talking to the Cockney santa, Cassie keeps trying to catch on to what is being said and keeps failing spectacularly (she’s a mathmagician for a reason guys). She fails so much that the santa questions her intelligence. And in a surprising turn, Jake actually comes to her defense, saying she’s far smarter than the santa could imagine.

Why is this significant? Because, this is the first time since the pilot that Jake has actually complimented or defended Cassandra. In all the other episodes after Crown of King Arthur, he’s only said one nice thing to her (that he likes her) and that was coupled with reminding her that he can’t trust her.

What’s even better about this is that he didn’t have to reveal that that’s what he said. His exchange with Cockney santa was all in Cockney rhyming slang which Cassie didn’t understand at all. Based on her face, it was clear that she thought he’d said something mean. And Jake could have let her continue thinking that, but chose to tell her the real meaning instead. This clearly surprised and delighted her in the end as she wasn’t expecting him to say something nice like that.

The second significant instance comes when they are trying to figure out where Du Lac might have taken Santa. Cassie has to remember where they took her when she was with them and it leads her to start hallucinating. Despite her best efforts, she starts to spin out of control and is about to lose the thread when Jake steps in and focuses her back on what she needs to be doing. This is huge because this is the first time since Crown that he’s acted as her focus (at least in the intended viewing order).

I think this moment is what really sealed for me that their relationship had started to turn around a bit. Back in Crown, his helping her focus was the first time they really connected. After she betrays the team though, Jake refuses to help her. In Horns, when she’s starting to see the pattern of the Labyrinth, he actually interrupts her and sarcastically asks if she can get them out of there, rather than helping her refocus. And in Fables, when she sees the pattern of the troll’s fingerprint, he doesn’t speak up when her hallucination starts to go off the rails. He does eventually help by revealing the fingerprint, but he could have just as easily helped her focus her vision and figure out what she was seeing. In Heart, they don’t really interact much while she’s hallucinating, so he doesn’t have any opportunity to choose whether to help her or not.

Which brings us to the scene in Santa. Something has changed and he’s decided he can help her again. So when she starts to spin out of control, he speaks up and gets her back on track, which leads to the discovery of Du Lac’s house and where Santa is being held. So you see, it’s kind of a big deal. And it’s why I can’t stress enough that if you can, go back and watch the episodes in the intended order. It really makes a difference.

It’s also cool that Jake is the one who points out that Cassie got her Christmas wish (to believe that Santa was real). He could have pointed out Ezekiel’s wish but instead he pointed out Cassie’s. Overall it s great episode full of lots of little Cassie and Jake moments.

(P.S. And Jake got his bar brawl. So everyone got their wish and all was well in the world.)

Other Random Goodness:
~I didn’t talk about this in the main review, but Ezekiel’s plotline of wearing Santa’s hat and getting to be the good guy for once (his wish) was hilarious. I loved how much he didn’t understand what or why it was going on. Plus Cassie and Jake’s reactions to it were perfect.
~Everything Cassie did in this episode is my favorite thing. I seriously don’t know how the actors got through a single take without laughing their heads off. All the awards to Lindy Booth for her portrayal of Cassie’s exuberant love of Christmas. Sheer perfection.
~I love Ezekiel’s reaction to Cassie roping him into helping her decorate. His face is great.
~Ezekiel starts fingering the presents Jake is wrapping, so Jake picks up the scissors and twirls them menacingly.
~“Mrs. Claus is real?!” “Oh shiny balls yes.” Bonus: Jake’s face during this exchange.

~”Are there any languages you don’t speak?” “Well my Urdu’s a little rusty.”
~Just the whole conversation with the Cockney Santa. Cassie trying to figure out Cockney rhyming slang is hilarious. Also, Jake getting more and more amusedly frustrated with her is great.
~”Architecture is just art we live in. Why doesn’t anyone get that?”
~The whole scene in Du Lac’s art room with Lamia hitting on Jake and Jake tossing the statues around to distract everyone.
~The fact the Ezekiel and Cassie used the chimney to rescue Santa.
~”Santa knows my name!”
~”It’s a one of a kind Tibetan Kubera. I couldn’t live with myself.”
~”Number 943 of the things I thought I’d never say but am saying in this job: Okay Santa, where’d you park your slay?”
~Jake and Cassie silently geeking out about Santa with each other.
~”Somebody jacked Santa’s ride.”
~”Great. Road trip with a psychotic shapeshifting avatar of goodwill.”
~Jake trying to activate the globe and Cassie’s reactions to it.
~”Where do you reckon he got the apron?” *Jenkins makes noncommittal noises and guilty face.*
~”Did I do it again?” “Yuppers.”
~The Jake and Santa fist bump.
~”Now hand over Santa, blah blah, you won’t be harmed, blah blah, a patently transparent lie. Of course I’m going to kill you, blah blah . . . blah.”
~”Actually, it would make us all very happy if you told us all the secrets of magic and how to stop the Serpent Brotherhood’s plans.” “Bit too much?” “Just a touch.”
~”Google ‘how to lower landing gear.’”
~”You okay Eve?” “Call me that one more time and they’ll be picking pieces of you off an ice flow for a year.” “She’s okay.”

That’s it for this week’s review. What did you think? What was your favorite part of this episode? Tell me about it down in the comments. Next week, I’ll be reviewing Apple of Discord, probably my favorite episode of the season.

In the mean time, on Wednesday I’ll have another writing prompt and on Friday I continue 30 Things.

Until then.

30 Things Question 16

16. What are your 5 greatest accomplishments?
~Graduating college. I wasn’t sure I’d actually make it, especially given that my parents didn’t make it the easiest to pay for the whole thing. But I did it. And I even had a decent GPA.
~Finishing the first draft of my first novel. I’d procrastinated on it for years (I started it when I was fifteen) so finally finishing it was pretty awesome.
~Finishing the first draft of my second novel (First Sight). At the time I wasn’t even sure I could finish it or that I had any other novel length ideas, so getting that crappy first draft done was a big thing for me.
~Passing my certified resume writer certification test and becoming a CPRW

I can’t really think of a fifth one. Sorry. I just don’t think I’ve really accomplished that much in my life. *shrugs*

Anyway, what have you accomplished? Tell me about your greatest accomplishment in the comments. Then come back on Monday for my next Librarians Review.

Until then.

Writing Prompt Wednesday - Sudden Wealth

Welcome back to Writing Prompt Wednesday. This week, I decided to see about using a prompt from a random prompt generator I found online. You can find the generator here (http://writingexercises.co.uk/firstlinegenerator.php).

Prompt: She had found something that would mean she'd never be poor again - but there was a catch

~~~

She had found something that would mean she'd never be poor again - but there was a catch: if she used it, it could destroy the world.

It didn’t look like it could be the answer to all her hopes and dreams, or the greatest danger she’d ever encountered, but appearances could be deceiving. The box was small, unobtrusive. Plain wood and simple looking. BUt inside was the Gem of Alara. The single most powerful ,magical object in the known world. And she’d found it, in a box at an estate sale. Surely this was sign.

Glancing around, she checked to see if anyone had seen what she’d seen. None of the other browsers near her seemed to be aware of anything. Releasing a small sign of relief, she tucked the box into a stack of ancient-looking dish towels and headed toward the kitchen. She was a maid after all and no one would think twice at a maid going to the kitchen.

She’d just placed her hand on the handle of the door when a heavy hand landed on her shoulder. “I know what you found,” a deep male voice hissed near her ear, “I won’t say a word, but you have to help me get it out of here.”

She swallowed, and glanced up. Standing over her was man she didn’t recognize. Tlal with dark hair, he had the bearing of a lord but the clothing of a servant. “Who are you?” she hissed.

“Someone who wants to prevent that object falling into the wrong hands. And those wrong hands are here at this sale. I can get you out of here, but if you don’t come with me now, I won’t be able to protect you.”

She swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked up again and saw a frown cross the man’s face.

“Yes you do. I know you are aware of what’s in that box. I need you to let me have it so I can get it out of here.”

“Even if what you said was true,” she replied, “Why would I give you my best chance of making a living for myself.”

“Because if you don’t, that man over there will kill us, take the Gem and move on to destroy the rest of the world.”

~~~

Well that got really interesting. There might be a story there. I may have to keep this one for future projects.

I love when a writing prompt leads to the possibility of an actual story.

What’s the most interesting story you’ve gotten out of a writing prompt? Tell me about it in the comments below.

Friday we get more 30 Things.

Until then.

Review of The Librarians 1x08 and the Heart of Darkness: Facing Fears

Disease is a scary thing, especially disease that doctors don’t know how to cure. To be told that you’ll have to deal with something for the rest of your life, or in some cases, that thing will eventually kill you, is one of the most frightening experiences anyone can go through. Often this kind of thing makes your world fall apart. You don’t know how to deal with it and those around you often don’t know how to deal with it.

In this week’s episode, we get a peek into what Cassie is dealing with thanks to her tumor, both on a personal level and on an interpersonal level. It’s a tough episode for our whole team, but especially for our favorite synesthete as she’s forced to confront her own impending doom. It’s also, I believe, a turning point in her relationship with certain members of the team (*cough*Jake*cough*). So let’s dive in.

(One quick note before we get started: I’m changing the format of these reviews a little. Sorry. Still figuring this out. I just feel like this new format will be a better experience for you, my dear readers. Hopefully I’m right.)

Cassie

At the beginning of the episode, Eve is clearly worried about Cassie. Despite trusting the team more, Eve still feels Cassie can’t take care of herself. I don’t think Eve believes Cassie will betray them again. She just believes that Cassie is fragile and needs to be protected. That’s the thing that people do when they don’t know what to do for someone who has an illness. Eve is a fixer and she can’t fix Cassie, so she does the only other thing she knows how to do: she overprotects.

But the problem with overprotection is that it is rarely the thing the person who is sick really needs. Cassie certainly doesn’t need it. She’s much stronger than even she knows. But no one will give her the chance to prove it. Instead, they relegate her to the truck and babysitting the girl.

When Katie asks if all Cassie does is read maps, Cassie clearly doesn't like the fact that’s all she’s being allowed to do. She wants to find the bad guy, wants to help her team. But they keep treating her as if she needs to be protected. It’s incredibly frustrating to have your choices taken away from you, even in the name of protection. Sometimes especially then.

Cassie feels that Eve is basically telling her that she’s useless except for doing math. She’s breakable. But the thing is, Cassie thinks she’s breakable too. She’s not even sure she’s up to helping out the team, even if she says she is. When Katie asks if Cassie will break, Cassie admits that she doesn’t know. She’s not even sure of her own strength at this point. Which puts her very much in the same position she was in at the beginning of the series. Remember, she made the choice to betray her friends out of fear for her life. She hasn’t fully accepted that she will die someday, and until she does, she will always be in danger of betraying her friends again for the chance to live.

Oddly, it’s Katie who encourages Cassie. She tells her that Eve does trust her, since she gave Cassie the job of protecting Katie. Eve didn’t ask Ezekiel or Jake to do it. Cassie sees that as just trying to get her out of the way, but Katie points out that it could be seen as the Colonel trusting her with a more important job, one that she can’t count on the boys to carry out due to their personalities. Cassie takes this idea to heart and begins to accept that while Eve maybe a little overprotective, she does trust her.

Despite this, it's only when Cassie faces her fear and admits that she is stronger than everyone thinks, that she is able to defeat the dark heart. All of her options are taken away, all of her protection is gone. If her friends are going to live, if she is going to live, she has no choice but to face the horror that is her fear and deal with it head on.

So she does. I think when she tells Katie about her diagnosis it is the first time she’s really talked about it openly, admitting how she has to deal with knowing that she is going to die everyday. I don’t think he’s ever really dealt with those feelings before. Instead, she hid from them and the rest of the world and looked for a way to escape her death sentence. Which is how she found the Brotherhood.

At the end, after she’s defeated Katie, she says that it isn’t about wishes. It’s about need. Here is where I think she comes to another realization. She says she really needs, but faints before she finishes her thought. I think she was going to say that she really needs her friends. She has realized that without them, she is alone and she can’t stand being alone anymore. Remember what I wrote in my review of Crown:

“Now, I’m not a super intelligent person nor do I have a brain tumor or any kind of life threatening illness, but I do know that the combination of being extremely smart and having a life threatening condition is something like a perfect storm of having people not know what to do with you. I imagine that seeing and processing the world in a way that is different from what is considered normal is rather off putting to people who don’t experience the world in that way. That’s bad enough. But then, combining that with a life threatening illness, something that no one knows how to react to or deal with, that’s the perfect storm of loneliness right there. We don’t know much about Cassandra yet, but we do know that she is probably very lonely. She’s probably been treated as a freak for most of her life. So when two people show up and don’t freak out that she’s hallucinating, she jumps at the chance to join them. They are probably the first people in her life to simply accept her.”

It’s because of them that she stayed. All through this episode she said she wanted to help, but kept running away. When she finally stopped running away and decided to help her friends, that’s when she faced her fears. Because they were worth facing for her team. They rescued her. They saved her. And now she gets to save them in return.

Cassie is changed at the end of this episode. She’s more confident in herself and she’s clearly gained Eve’s confidence. And no one argues with her anymore. She’s proven herself. In the car, Ezekiel does most of the talking, telling her he can feel the smugness coming off of her (which is rich coming from the king of smug himself), but Cassie has every right to be proud of herself. She put the pieces together alone and she saved the day.

If you watch Jake carefully in the back seat, you can see that he is confused by this new Cassie. He doesn’t say anything while she and Ezekiel go back and forth, but something has changed about the way he looks at her. His look when she tells Ezekiel to leave the radio alone because she likes the song is full of confusion and assessment. He knows something has changed about her and he’s not sure what it is or how he feels about it.

This is where I think their relationship starts to turn around. She’s no longer the same person she was when she betrayed them. She’s no longer haunted by the fear of her tumor and her death. Instead, she’s acknowledged and accepted that they are part of her. Because of that, she’s become a different person. And I think that’s what Jake is realizing in that car ride. He’s realizing that she’s changed from the scared young girl she was at the beginning into a woman who won’t let her fear make her make the same mistake again. This is where he begins the process of trusting her again.

Eve, Jake, and Ezekiel

Eve spends most of this episode working pretty closely with Jake. They have developed a groove and they really work well together. Ezekiel doesn’t fit as well, but even he is willing to do as he’s told, even if he gripes about it the whole time.

Throughout the episode, Jake keeps failing when he resorts to using his brawn to try and solve problems. Any time he does that, he fails. It’s when he starts using his brain that he begins to see what’s going on and starts figuring out the puzzle. He really needs to remember that it’s okay that he’s smart and start using that more.

What’s funny is that when Jake is resorting to using muscle Eve tries to use her brain. They almost take on opposite roles when they are working together in this episode. It clearly frustrates both of them, since the problem can’t be solved with a gun or a crowbar.

Other Random Goodness
~”This is me ignoring you. Get used to it.”
~”Mathgirl’s doing one of her loopy loops.” “Don’t. Don’t call me mathgirl.”
~I love how they’ve continued the trend of Ezekiel coming up with a nickname for Cassandra (or her tumor) and she first objects then eventually accepts it.
~”Anybody here like that coincidence?”
~Jake + crowbar = funny
~”You’re very weird librarians.” “It’s a very weird library.”
~”Well 2½ with Jones.” “I’m standing right here. I can hear you.”
~I loved the way Ezekiel tested out the swinginess of the candlestick before deciding it was good enough.
~Also, Jake tripping over the chair right after shushing Ezekiel and how everyone reacts to it.
~”So I’m the Katie wrangler now?”
~”You know, Colonel you have an incredible talent for turning a bad situation into the worst case scenario.”
~”Huzzah!” John Larroquette's delivery was incredibly. The man is seriously funny.
~”I don’t need the whole real estate ad from hell.”
~*Eve points a gun at Jake for the second time in the episode* “Again?” “Are you kidding me?” “Really?”
~”You wish you had something to shoot, don’t you?”
~*Katie stabs the phonograph.* “Sorry. That was bothering me.” Again, it’s all about the delivery. Lea Zawada was amazing as Katie. Shes very good at the creepy.
~”Absolutely. I could have been dragged around on my face.”
~”You could be dating . . . whoever it is backwards country people think is hot.”
~”I can actually feel the smugness coming off your body.”

Well that's it for this episode What did you think? Do you think this is where Jake starts turning around toward Cassie? Feel free to leave me a comment and discuss.

Next week I'll be writing the review for Santa. In the mean time, I'll continue my series of writing prompts and 30 things on Wednesday and Friday.

Until then.

30 Things Question 15

15. If you were an animal, what would you be and why?

This is an oddly hard question for me to answer, mostly because there are three different animals I would gravitate towards and I can’t decide which one I would pick above the others. I guess I could just tell you all three.

First, there is a horse, mostly cause I just love horses. They’re so beautiful and graceful and I love pretty much everything about them.

Second, there’s a wolf. Again, super majestic and cool animal. I like dogs in general, but wolves are awesome because they are hunters but also pack animals and are pretty intelligent. They have a super tight family and I like that. And all of them help take care of the cubs and raise them, which is also cool.

Third, there is a cat of some kind or another. Cat’s aren’t my favorite animal, but they are still kind of awesome, especially the big hunting cats like leopards and tigers. They are graceful, powerful, agile, generally smart. That and Kat is something my family has called me for basically my entire life, so it just seems to fit. Oh, and cats basically rule the world (or the internet) so there’s that too.

What animal would you be if you could be one? Why? Tell me down in the comments.

See you next week for the next review of the Librarians.

Until then.

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Inappropriately Pink

Here is this week’s writing prompt. I used a First Sentence from the Writer’s Tool Box this week.

The sentence:
I was dressed in a completely inappropriate shade of pink.

~~~

I was dressed in a completely inappropriate shade of pink. It was truly the worst possible color I could be dressed in. It was the same shade as that bubblegum everyone chews when they are five and it gets stuck everywhere and you wind up having to get a terrible haircut because Suzy accidently put some in your hair.

Unfortunately, I had no control over this particular shade of pink, since it was the color my sister had decided she wanted her bridesmaids to wear. It would have been fine, if we were all five year old girls going to a princess party. But we weren’t. Instead, four 20-something women would have to stand up in front of 300 people in the ghastly shade of pink and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

I was still contemplating the trainwreck that was my dress when someone pounded on my door, saying “Are you decent?” two seconds before barging in.

“Marc!” I yelled, “I told you to wait for an answer!”

My best friend shrugged and started to say something but stopped when he caught sight of me in my full length mirror. “What are you wearing?” He asked, his brown eyes going wide.

“It’s for Sheri’s wedding,” I moaned, burying my face in my hands.

“What is she thinking?” The horror and amusement in his voice made me want to throw something at him.

“I don’t know. I’ve never understood why women insist on tormenting their bridesmaids with truly horrendous outfits. I swear, when I get married, my girls are getting drop dead gorgeous dresses.”

Marc snorted, so I picked up one of the soft stress balls sitting on my desk and chucked it at him. It just made him laugh as he easily ducked out of the way. “Shut up.” I told him, “And get out. I need to change. I wouldn’t want to get anything on this before the big day.”

This time he full on laughed, so I picked up three more stress balls and threw them at him in rapid succession. Only the third one hit. I’m not the best aim.

Finally Marc left, and I got started on climbing out of the terrible dress. Maybe I could convince Sheri to change her mind. Sure we’d already bought the dresses, but surely once she saw how terrible it looked on me, she’d listen to reason. Right?

~~~

This actually wound up drawing on a couple of characters I’ve had sitting around for a while but have never done anything serious with. It worked out a bit better than I thought and I wound up with a slightly more complete scene than usual. That’s cool at least.

Tell me what you thought down in the comments. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Okay. Friday is the next question in 30 Things.

Until then.

Review of The Librarians 1x06 And the Fables of Doom: Playing to Type

Don’t worry, you didn’t miss any episodes. I am writing about Fables today, instead of Santa, even though Fables is 1x06 and Santa is 1x04. Why? you wonder. I will happily explain. When these first aired, it was pretty obvious (especially after this one) that TNT aired the episodes out of the order that they had been intended to be seen in. Generally speaking, this isn’t that big of a deal, except where character arcs were concerned. By airing the episodes out of order, the character arc got a bit muddled.

So, I have decided that I’m going to write these reviews in the order that the episodes were originally intended to be seen in. This is not because I’m mad at TNT. I love TNT for bringing us this wonderful show and giving us a second season of it (YEA!!!!). Now, I feel the season makes more sense if watched in the intended order, so that’s what I’m going to do.

I actually debated this for a while, since if I were doing these reviews live, I’d have to do them in the order shown. But I’m not, so I’m going to stick with my decision and just go with the intended order. They’ll still have their air order numbers, but I’ll post the reviews in the order that they would be in the intended order. Hopefully that make sense. Now on to the review.

Fairy tales. Everyone knows them. They are filled with beautiful princesses, dashing princes, heroic deeds, and evil schemes. They were some of my favorite stories growing up and even now I still love them. There’s something about these characters, these archetypes that resonate with people, even today. Know that good will always win, that evil will always lose, and the prince will always get the girl is comforting in a way.

But often, we forget that the tales we know so well, the ones that a certain large entertainment company has made cartoon versions of to the glee of young girls everywhere, aren’t the original tales. Those tales, the ones gathered by the Grimm Brothers and written by Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen, are not the happy light tales many have come to know. As Jenkins points out, often times the heroes suffer just as much as the villains. Our four heroes find themselves in a town plagued by these tales, and thanks to this we get a glimpse into a different side of them. It’s interesting to see which archetype each of our heroes takes on and what it might say about their character in general. So let’s jump in.

The beginning of the episodes find out LITs and their Guardian stumbling into the sunshine near a bridge where a truck has gone plummeting over the side. The clippings boo sent them there so clearing the accident isn’t just an accident. After an awkward encounter with the local sheriff, they head over to the truck and Cassandra immediately notices a pattern on the window that no one else can see. She tries to tell them what it is, but fails. Jake comes to the rescue and sprays the area with fire extinguisher, revealing a large fingerprint and their first clue as to what might be going on in the town.

(Isn’t it interesting how it’s Jake who figures provides the key to the rest of the team understanding what Cassandra is seeing? Even if he doesn’t trust her, they still share a connection and he still understands her in a way that the rest of the team doesn’t.)

The group has a quick conversation with Jenkins and determines that they are looking at a troll attack. Eve splits the team up to determine what type of troll they might be facing while she sends Jake and Cassie to get surveillance from the sheriff. Cassie is hesitant about this, since Jake made it clear he doesn’t trust her. She tries to give him the opportunity to work with one of the other team members, but Eve insists. Jake says no problem, so off the pair go, while Eve drags Ezekiel off to look for the troll.

While Eve and Ezekiel search for the troll, we learn how Ezekiel likes to operate. He tells Eve that he only became a Librarian because it looked like fun. He hates boredom. As soon as he starts getting a little bored, he splits. I think his attitude changes a little bit over the course of the episode and the season, but right now, he’s just in this for the fun. When it stops being fun for him, he’ll be gone without a second thought.

Back in town, Cassie and Jake have another conversation about their working relationship. Cassie is glad that Jake agreed to work with her, but the Cowboy assures her that he has no problem working with her. He likes the synesthete. He just doesn’t trust her. Cassie asks if that means she is supposed to run around trying to regain his trust and Jake tells her no, he’s fine with the way things are. This seems to bother Cassie, understandably so. How can she ever truly be a part of the team if one of the members refuses to trust her?

Their conversation ends there as the sheriff walks up and hands them the surveillance photos they had asked for. While talking about it, they have an uncomfortable encounter with the town’s mayor which leads them to ask if any other strange things have been happening in town. The sheriff lists off a few things that make Cassie and Jake realize that something else is going on in this town.

When they meet back up with Eve and Ezekiel to discuss their findings, they are interrupted once again by another strange happening. This time, it’s giant white wolf in a nightcap terrorizing the people on main street. This encounter is what causes them to finally realize what might be going on: fairy are coming to life and attacking people.

The team heads back to the Annex to discuss the situation with Jenkins and they determine that one of a few magical objects could be causing the problem. To determine which one it is, they’ll need to get their hands on the giant wolf and do an autopsy. So they team heads back to Bremen to get the wolf and we get our first clues that they may be being affected by whatever is going on in the town (as well as a nice conversation between Eve and Cassie about Jake).

(Actually, that’s not strictly true. The first clue was when Jake threw the axe at the wolf, but it’s so quick, it’s easy to miss.)

While waiting for their drinks, Cassie asks Eve what she (Cassie) should do about Jake. Eve tells her not to worry about it too much. She says that guys like Jake are all the same. They may bluster and be hard to get along with at first, but they eventually come around. He’ll eventually see that Cassie is trustworthy, she just needs to be patient.

This conversation leads directly into the the hints that the team is being pulled into the strange events of the town. The biggest thing to notice is that Eve’s hair is down. So far, she’s never worn her hair down in the field, so this is a big departure from the norm. Meanwhile, all the women in the bar keep staring at Cassie. Neither woman is sure why, since Eve is the one that is having the great hair day, but they don't think too much of it since it’s time to distract the bartender.

Outside, we get even more indications that our team is being affected. The boys are hauling the wolf out (and arguing about the fact that they are sure to be seen) when a man pulls up in a pickup truck. The boys go still, hoping they won’t be seen. And lucky them, they aren’t. Even luckier, they find that the keys are in the truck and it’s ready to go. Jake notes that this is just too good to be true, but Ezekiel doesn’t question it.

Back at the Annex, Jenkins finally gets all the clues he needs to know what’s causing the problems, and it’s far worse than he originally thought. Meanwhile, our heroes sink further still into the curse without noticing. When they return to town, even their outfits are starting to be affected. But how they are being affected won’t become clear until a little later in the episode.

At the hospital, after questioning the girl they pulled out of a wolf, the team splits up once more to try and find the Librus Fabula, the cause of the problem in the town. Eve takes Jake to look at the local library while Jenkins and Cassie look for people getting sick due to the artifact. Ezekiel’s job is just to keep out of jail.

It’s while he’s keeping out of trouble that Ezekiel happens upon the thing (or rather the person) their team has been looking for. He meets Jamie, a young girl who is deathly sick and they immediately connect. When he realizes that the Librus Fabula isn’t in her room, he heads off to find the rest of the team so they can help the girl.

When the team gets back together to discuss what they’ve found, the strange fairy tale happenings take a turn when the sheriff tries to arrest Ezekiel then takes on the persona of a big bad wolf. Suddenly the LITs are running for their lives. It’s while they are running that they discover they too have been sucked into the fairy tales and have taken on archetypes of their own. Each of them take on an unexpected role, that role taking over their usual personality. I think that each of these archetypes reveals a little something about the characters that wind up with as them. Let’s take a look.

Jake as the Huntsman - This is an interesting choice for Jake as it’s both opposite and exactly like him as a character. In the stories, the huntsman is an earthy character, connected to the woods and animals. He’s not known for his intellect but rather his ability to survive in the wild. He’s a loner. It’s not the most widely known archetype, but it does feature in several stories (Snow White and Red Riding Hood spring to mind).

Jake is an intensely physical person, and the most down to earth of all the characters. He’s most closely associated with hard work and grit, which goes well with this archetype. But he’s also very intelligent (190 IQ, love of art, polyglot) yet he continues to be the second most physical character on the show. It’s an interesting dichotomy.

Cassie as Prince Charming - Prince Charming is an intensely honorable, heroic character. He comes to the rescue of the damsel and fights evil at every turn. HIs personality is magnetic and draws everyone to him. They are well spoken and good leaders. In essence, the exact opposite of Cassandra, and not just because she’s a girl.

Cassie is the least confident, quietest character. Add to that that in her first appearance, she betrayed the team, and you’d think that this is the most off characterization there is. But, really, I think this archetype is revealing something about Cassie’s character that is usually hidden. She’s actually very good at what she does (math) and besides that first betrayal, she’s really very loyal, even when others think the worst of her. And everyone on the team actually really does like her (even if one particular cowboy doesn’t quite trust her yet). So perhaps her archetype isn’t quite as far away from her real character as it first appears.

Eve as the Princess - The helpless maiden who must be rescued. Always beautiful, usually with a lovely singing voice, whom small animals flock to. The princess is the one that needs saving in all the stories. Rarely does she do anything for herself. Instead, she’s forced to wait for her prince to help her. Which sounds about as far as you can get away from Eve as possible.

Eve is one of the least helpless woman you’ll meet. She’s a Colonel in NATO’s counterterrorism unit, so she’s got to be pretty self-sufficient. She certainly doesn’t need a man to rescue her. This is probably the most opposite archetype for Eve’s usual character. She has the beautiful thing down, but other than that, there’s very little similarity to what Eve is usually. Which is why it’s so interesting and fun to see her take on this archetype. It’s so completely opposite of what she is normally that it immediately become more interesting. Still, I prefer Eve the way she is.

Ezekiel as the Rogue/Jack/Trickster - In tales dating back to ancient times, it’s the trickster hero that wins out, and comes out of the tale without a scratch. One of the oldest trickster heroes if Odysseus, but others have existed. In fact, the Trickster is one of the most prevalent archetypes in stories. There’s just something about a hero who makes his way on his wits that’s appealing to people.

Which makes this the perfect archetype for Ezekiel. In fact, he is the only one of the four who isn’t really changed by the Librus Fabula. He remains basically the same clever person he’s always been. He just gets a little more luck, since that’s what all of the best guile heroes in the stories have.

After they figure out which archetypes they are, Ezekiel heads off to save Jamie while the other three try to save the rest of the town. It’s up to Ezekiel to save the day, and the only way he can is to stop the evil town librarian guy to use his wits and his luck. Thankfully those are his best tools and he manages to get the Librus Fabula away from the villain and give it to Jamie so she can give the story a happy ending.

Jamie gives Jake, Cassie, and Eve new characters that allow them to fight off the crazy town folks and we get to see them a little more like themselves again. Eve becomes a ninja princess, Jake becomes a robot huntsman, and Cassie becomes Merlin disguised as a prince. With their new powers, they defeat the crazy townsfolk and the story comes to a close.

The episode ends with the team heading back to the Annex and discussing how weird the day was and Ezekiel reminding them that he’s awesome, much to everyone’s annoyance.

Other random goodness:
~Jake is still so happy about the use of the backdoor.
~This episode has several callbacks to the previous episodes. I’m a big fan of continuity, so seeing this type of thing always makes me happy.
~The way Lindy and Christian played the reaction to the mayor was incredibly funny. I laughed so hard at that scene.
~”Someone has weaponized fairy tales?”
~”It’s never the Genie’s Lamp.”
~It was fun watching the subtle changes into their archetype characters until suddenly it was just bam, they’re them.
~The scene where Red Riding Hood is fawning over Cassie much to Jake’s annoyance is so funny.
~The whole vending machine speech by Jenkins was hilariously creepy.
~I loved how Cassie kept oscillating between being flattered and then freaked out by all the girls in the town coming onto her.
~When Jake goes full-on huntsman with the owl on his arm is probably my favorite scene in the entire episode.
~”Fatal yet interesting.”
~”Why am I wearing heels?”

So that’s it for Fables. What did you think? What was your favorite archetype? Do you think the right archetypes went to the right people? Feel free to discuss it in the comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Next week I’ll be reviewing Heart of Darkness. It’s a big Cassie episode so I’m super excited about it. In the mean time, come back Wednesday for another writing prompt and on Friday I’ll do the next question in the 30 Things series.

Until then.