Allyssa Ellis

For this week's topic, witches, I read the five volumes of Redlands. I found this series to have a contradictory storyline, leaving me not sure about my verdict of it as a whole. The story is about powerful women, but they are constantly faced with misogyny and terrible men. They take vengeance, but they kill many people by doing so. Because of this conflict, I think that the story in itself is about underlying morals and how we are able to challenge and even discard them for a good story. The main characters in this series are what I would consider archetypal powerful woman figures. The three main characters, all witches that hold special powers of some sort, seem to exist for the genuine betterment of their community. They are typically taking vengeance on men that have committed crimes or have treated people poorly. This gives a feeling of justice from these characters. The bad guys get what they deserve, and that really boils down to moral principles. The reader feels as thoug...

For this week, under the topic of The New Weird, I read the novel Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. One particular theme that I noticed throughout the novel is the constant presence of curiosity and how that goes hand-in-hand with reality. The novel retells not only the experience of being in Area X, but also how the main character got there. It seems that every expedition that has traveled to Area X have done so out of curiosity for finding themselves, or the truth of their specific field (i.e. biology, psychology), and ended up learning and experiencing much more than they could have intended. In the beginning, it's portrayed like this area is similar to a wildlife preservation, with seemingly pristine natural flora and fauna that have been undisturbed unlike that of the outside world. As the story progresses, their curiosity leads them to explore the "Tunnel" or "Tower" inside of the ground, as well as the rest of Area X. The more that they explore and examine...

In this weeks reading, Interview with a Vampire,  something that stood out to me was the way the author depicted what was considered good versus evil. Since the majority of the book is told from Louis's perspective, through dialogue in his interview, we get to learn about his beliefs as a vampire versus the other vampires around him. For example, Louis is depicted as a generally good character at the beginning. This is shown through his squeamish and hesitant nature about killing humans and his empathy towards their lives. He also points out that he doesn't realize he is able to take animal's blood rather than a humans. This appears as a sense of morality. This morality is directly contradicted with the personality of Lestat. He is depicted as a tough vampire who doesn't feel empathy and will hunt anyone he pleases. Later in the book he turns a little girl into a vampire which leads to his "death." He later comes back to life on more than one occasion to get h...