#honestly for your third point

[bitz-and-fiana]

Hi I'm a lurker on here but I just wanted to say that I absolutely agree with your points. I haven't seen a lot of Fitz haters on Tumblr, but unfortunately he is quite overhated in other other parts of the fandom. As someone who is around Fitz's age and doesn't have the best temper, I think his actions make sense. I could not have personally handled those situations any better than he did, and I don't like haters who hold others to higher standards than they hold themselves to. You don't have to like him, but no one is perfect. There's no point in hating a character for having flaws, because characters without flaws are unrealistic and boring.

Fitz Vacker is overhated

I'm new on tumblr, but I can smell the possible haters a mile away. But uhhhh, other than that, I shall voice mt opinions! GET READY HATERS. HAHAHHAHAHA

No stellarlune spoilers. I haven't read that book yet. But spoilers for the other books I guess?

First point: Exile.

I wanted to tackle one of the earliest point people had. What happened in book 2. Watch everyone say "He had no right to be mad at Sophie!" While yes, Sophie ended up being the saving grace in the end, they still went through huge amounts of grief. Everyone handles grief differently. Fitz handled it with anger directed to the person his dad was with while he was in Exile. He thought she was to blame. Mind you, the Vackers held a PLANTING for Alden. They thought he would die. Imagine how devastating that would be for anyone? Needing to hold a funeral for YOUR OWN FATHER because he's in such a state where they don't think he'll survive. Fitz was experiencing the first stage of grief. He was grieving.

Point 2: The Anger Issues

While yes, Fitz may have a short temper, it isn't a good reason to hate on him. While yes, he handled some situations poorly, he's still 1) A child and 2) An elf. And lets be honest, he's only gotten mad a few times throughout the entire series.

Point 3: Sokeefe

Some of you people just hate on him for the sake of Keephie ☹️ DAWG IT'S A SHIP. AND IT'S ALREADY CANON APPARENTLY. GO AND REJOICE. LEAVE THE FITZ LOVERS TO CONSOLE FITZ ☹️😭

Point 4: The matchmaking thing

honestly? I do not know what to say here. I guess I just think the matchmaking in general is not for me. I guess people are mad at Fitz for wanting Sophie to reveal her bio mom so they can match? Idk bro. Why do yall hate him for this. I'm going out on a limb here, this is the result of Shannon wanting us to root for Keefe (FITZ DEFENDER 4 LIFE. YOU CAN NEVER CONVERT ME). I MEAN CMON. HE WAS OK WITH RUNNING AWAY AND JOINING EXILLUM AND ALMOST DYING TO PROTECT HIS FRIENDS. IN ONE BOOK. AND NOW HE'S SUDDENLY CHANGED?? (i saw this reason on Tumblr. Thank you to whoever made it. You made my post better)

Point 5: I honestly dk

Why do yall hate Fitz

Of course, in the end, these are just my opinions as someone who's been supporting Fitz this entire time. We're all entitled to what we want to believe, this is just mine :3

Any way. Rant over

[vaguely-concerned]

every so often, varric will write a black fox story. not anything fancy or for publication or anything, just for fun and because he knows hawke has a soft spot for them. ("an intrepid hero getting into and out of all kinds of trouble and the merry band of misfits following inseparably in his wake? can't imagine why".) some of them are experimental, some of them are straightforward retellings; they're generally pretty short and quick to do, so he allows himself to play around with form and genre and language more than he does in his professional work. stretching over the span of almost twenty years as they do, they contain some of his favourite pieces of his own writing, and some of the most '...was I huffing lyrium fumes or drunk or both for this one, hawke? what the actual hell is this' pieces. hawke keeps every single one of them. varric speculates that this is either because they're just that sentimental, or possibly that it's for future blackmailing purposes. he usually has one ready for their birthday. they have so much blackmail material on him anyway by this point, he figures, what's one more piece of ammunition going to do one way or the other.

varric finishes one of these black fox tales a couple of nights before he brings rook with him to minrathous — the last one. it's about the very last black fox story, the one where the black fox and his friends all disappear together into the depths of arlathan forest, where those in the know say you can find them to this very day, if you know where to look, or if you ever find yourself in trouble and in need of a helping hand. they'll turn up to aid a traveller in need, and disappear back between the shaded trees again once the day is saved, squabbling all the way, seeking treasures and unlikely quests yet unfound and unimagined.

they say on some days, you can hear them as laughter and friendly bickering on the wind from a couple of clearings over. it's not the end, it's just other adventures, some other place. that's the thing about stories. they're funny that way.

(once he wrote a book for his mother on her deathbed and read it to her through the comfortless and drawn-out hours of the troubled nights, and he burned the book the day she died and never spoke of it again.)

after he finishes the manuscript, he sits with it for a long time in the quiet and the candlelight before he wraps it up properly and sends it off back home to kirkwall. he attaches a note -- a story, to the best of all my stories, the one I'd tell forever if I could. take care of each other while I'm gone. first one to arrive saves seats at the bar, right? happy birthday, and send all my lack of love to the merchant's guild, as always. —Varric

he sends that to hawke. just in case. and then he gets up and he goes to find rook — it's time to get going.

[larsnicklas]

i simply don’t think most of you would like knowing how much hockey players are self medicating at all levels of the game and at all times actually

[the-way-astray]

i think my problem with the point five books thing is not the books themselves, so much as it is the marketing and way they're presented.

for those that aren't aware: point five books have a generally understood meaning/connotation that authors and fans both sort of know. it's basically code for "book that is not mandatory to understand the story, but it's there for fans that want extra content". usually this comes in the form of short story collections or whatever else the author may want to do. sometimes it's just a single short story. for example, a proper way for kotlc to utilize point five books would be to for instance, make a book 7.5, which has keefe and fitz's flashback short stories in it. extra bonus content from flashback (book seven), but you don't have to read it to understand the main story itself. you'll be okay without it. that is what a point five book actually means, as far as the wider literary world is concerned.

but books 8.5 and 9.5 in this series are not extra bonus content. you very much do have to read them to understand the main story. if you read it book eight, then nine, then ten, you will be lost or miss important stuff that's crucial to understanding the story.

just call it book nine. just call it book eleven. all this will do is label the books properly and not confuse people. and people will be confused. we aren't seeing the effects yet, because books are still coming out and everyone in the fandom keeps up with shannon's updates, so we all know what's up. but trust me, in a few years, after the series is over and new people get into it, they will be confused. they will skip straight over book 8.5 or 9.5 unknowingly, and it won't be good.

my theory is that someone on shannon's team wants to make this series seem shorter than it really is. because that is the only logical explanation here. you could describe this series as having "nine and a half books" now, instead of ten, and by the way the series is officially marked, that's not incorrect. but it is. this series has ten books. because there are ten mandatory books that you have to read that are out right now. stop calling books that aren't supposed to be called point five books as point five books!!!! this isn't quirky, it's just going to throw people off.

this is super, super confusing for people that aren't "in the know" with this series, so to speak, and there will be people that read this series incorrectly because of this. i have been a casual fantasy series reader for pretty much my entire existence on this planet, and let me just tell you, this is not how this works. at all. if i didn't know books 8.5 and 9.5 were mandatory, i would skip over them completely, going on my understood knowledge of how these epic fantasies are generally structured.

just market them correctly. praying to the heavens for shannon's team to stop. this is actively hurting your readers!!!!

*i assume it isn't shannon herself who is coming up with this strategy

[maldupay]

people are of course free to feel how they want about things regarding isat and what parts of the story/characters/gameplay etc they like and dislike.. Hell i sure have things i dislike along with all my love for the game. but i feel like a lot of the grievances i've seen about the artbook are just taking something that's clearly a joke too seriously, in an extra content book that's just meant to show some behind the scenes and creators thoughts. Like komaeda's in this book ok lets chill out

[i-am-church-the-cat]

Okay no one talk to me bc I haven’t watched the race yet but I just finished Nightbane by Alex Aster and am currently Losing It. I need the third book rn.

[stars-inthe-sky]

G & M for the fandom ask meme! 💜

G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

Ever so many! Early entrants before I knew fandom was a thing would probably have included Jo/Friedrich (Little Women), Han/Leia (Star Wars), and Alanna of Trebond/Liam Ironarm (Tortall books), although I came around on George pretty handily by the time I finished Lioness Rampant. Ron/Hermione was the first pairing I ever read fic for, though!

M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

Amy Santiago

[isdalinarhot]

the amount of times my stupid ass autistic body has mistaken hunger for You Need The Substance and then i go have lunch/dinner/etc and its like oh nvm im good ^_^ is comical tbh

[cronchcake]

I'm not gonna elaborate because I don't want to, but I wish we could have genuine and well-argued criticism of critrole. I want my n1 fave to be criticised for its flaws. alas, most critique I see is either pretty badly argued or it's done in bad faith.

[carriagelamp]

Had the sort of month where I could feel my books crying out for me while I was at work. They wanted to draw me home into their loving embrace…

My main take away from this month is that if you're going to be anything, by god be sincere

Bury Your Gays // Straight

My hold on Chuck Tingle’s latest horror novel came in just in time for spoopy season, which felt very appropriate, so I read both it and Straight, his horror novella that I hadn’t known about until I was looking up the release day for Bury Your Gays.

Both were quite enjoyable reads, and struck similar chords. He does a really good job of taking a potentially campy concept that’s been done before, and giving a very unique spin — not just in the inclusion of queer themes which can often come across as surface level and token if poorly done, but from the societal commentary that’s woven through both works. The queerness isn't window-dressing, but inherent to the story, horror, and criticism that’s present in both. Another thing they both have in common is that they are also, fundamentally, about hope and community and overcoming horror, which feels very relevant to the topic matter.

Straight is the shorter of the two, and on the surface is a zombie story. Due to vague cosmic horror, a strange thrall comes over straight people once a year that causes them to become rabidly violent towards all queer people. Two years out from the first instance, this story looks at how a group of queer friends deal with the trauma, how society has responded to it (and the fact that this came out 2021 feels very obvious as it looks at a fictional global pandemic), and how the friends themselves brace themselves for this years event. Isolating themselves out in the desert, they batten down and hope to wait for it to pass by relaxing and playing board games… obviously this doesn’t happen as intended.

Bury Your Gays was very different again, and between the two feels like the more ambitious in terms of imagination and story telling. The main character of this story is a partially closeted screenwriter for a major film studio who has had some success, both cult- and critical-success. However he starts to realise that there may be something sinister pulling the strings when he comes face to face with a fan dressed up as one of the horror monsters he had created for the screen. It must be a fan, right?

Both of these are excellent stories, and I appreciate how they shamelessly demand the reader suspend disbelief. They don’t bother over-explaining things, and allow horror to be unapologetically horror, slightly fantastical and campy and definitely scary. I have to admit, neither quite lives up to Camp Damascus, but I enjoyed both quite a bit nonetheless.

Defekt

The sequel (technically midquel?) to Finna, though it honestly stands alone fairly well. Finna, which involved hopping wormholes through fictional Ikeas, was alright, but I definitely think if you want something like that you’d be better for reading Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix. Defekt, on the other hand, I thought was an excellent novella and I’m glad I decided to give it a try! If you’re on the fence about this series, I’d skip right over Finna and just go straight to Defekt.

This novel is about Derek, who is LitenVärld’s most loyal employee. Everything about his life is centred around his work… even after his shifts he goes no farther than the storage crate in the LitenVärld parking lot where he lives. In this way, and many others though, he starts to notice that there are some… inconsistencies between how he views the world and how his coworkers view the world. He has never quite connected to them before, but do they have entirely different manuals? And why is his superior getting so angry about him taking a sick day when his colleagues seem to see no problem with it? Things come a head though when he’s scheduled for a special sort of inventory shift and he finds himself face to face with not just one but a whole team of people who seem to be his direct clones…

Doctor Who: The Day She Saved The Doctor

Like many Doctor Who novels this one is… fine. If you’re in the mood for more Doctor Who and want something easy it’s pleasant, but nothing world rocking. It’s composed of four short stories that bill themselves as feminist tales that focus on Sarah Jane, Rose, Clara, and Bill and how they “save” the Doctor. Honestly my main complaint is that they don’t actually do a great job sticking to this theme. The stories range from rather hamfisted to completely insincere — none of them have a truly impressive “save” but part of that might just be that they’re such short stories that they really have no space to come up with a complex rescue mission. None of them were actually bad, but also none of them stuck with me enough to describe them now…

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries

I was disappointed by this one. I feel like I’ve seen rave reviews for this novel, and it’s been on my reading list for ages, but now that I’ve finally sat down to read it I found it… profoundly underwhelming. It seems to be going for a sort of “cozy academia” vibe and I’m sure that works for some people but mostly I just found it… very boring. Maybe I was hoping for something more like a grown up Spiderwick. Emily Wilde was an okay character, but without much depth, and the male character they introduced was uninteresting to me. I ended up giving up on it part way through when I finally gave up on the plot picking up in any significant way. If it does get better, it wasn’t worth the slog to get there imho sorry to all the people out there that love it.

Hakumei & Mikochi v1

I honestly just adore stories about Very Tiny People in a Very Big World. This completely scratched this itch I have for Borrower-esque stories! It’s an episodic manga about the lives of Hakumei and Mikochi, who live together in a tree house, and little events in their life such as shopping in town, camping, and befriending a necromancer! Normal day to day things! I wouldn’t mind reading a second, it was very chill and charming.

Jaws

I honestly don’t know what I expected here. I had never seen Jaws before, but me and my friends have spent so much time swimming this summer to keep cool that we decided it was the time to finally watch it. I see why the movie is such a classic, it was an excellent film! Very well made thriller! And a great end-to-the-summer movie. Then I made the mistake of deciding to read the original novel. I got about eight pages in before they said faggot for the first time. At that point I decided maybe I should read a review or two. Honestly I might have pushed past the homophobia if the novel itself sounded good, but apparently the types of horror used in the novel vs the film are very different. The novel has none of the subtly that the movie uses and is primarily sexual and gross-out horror that was fairly typical of the 70s pulp horror scene. So. I did not continue reading Jaws. I feel like I need a nega-pride flag for this one.

Poison For Breakfast

Really neat novella by Lemony Snicket, and honestly I have a hard time classifying this one. It’s technically fiction, but in a lot of ways feels like it’s not, it’s autobiographical about someone who doesn’t actually exist. It starts with the author receiving a note telling him that he ate poison for breakfast. More than anything, it’s an entire book of philosophy told through the lens and language of Lemony Snicket. If you have any fond memories of The Series of Unfortunate Events then honestly you should read this. Even if you don’t, it’s worth reading. The language is so evocative and it genuinely made me stop and think and squirm with a general discomfort that good philosophising around life and death can bring about. 

Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, The Wide Window

I stumbled across Poison for Breakfast specifically because I decided to reread the Series of Unfortunate Events. I’ve been fairly anxious lately (more than usual, which is saying something when it’s me) and I needed something that would hold my interest but otherwise be an easy audiobook to listen to at night or during my morning commute. Since I’ve never actually read the whole series as a kid (they weren’t all out yet when I started and I never got around to finishing it) I decided now was the time. I’m especially excited to read it as an adult because I’m picking up a lot of nuance I simply didn’t notice as a kid, especially related to the Snicket / Beatrice subplot. Lemony Snicket really does now how to write a compelling mystery.

If you’ve never read The Series of Unfortuante Events, it’s got to be one of the best youth novel series out there (I say, unbiased). The narration is unlike anything else I’ve read in any genre, as is the strange world that the story is set in. The series starts with the three Baudelaire children learning that their parents died in a horrible fire that consumed their home, and that they will have to go stay with a distant relative who they have mysteriously never heard of before: Count Olaf. It quickly becomes apparently that the cruel Count Olaf is only after the Baudelaire fortune that Violet will eventually inherent, and though they expose him by the end of the first book it’s only the beginning of the tragic events that will dog at their heels from here on out…

The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room and The Wide Window are the ones in the series I’ve reread the most, and were very comforting to return to! (also I feel compelled to mention that Tim Curry does the audiobook for The Reptile Room and he uses his fucking Nigel Thornberry voice for Uncle Monty and you haven't lived until you've heard Nigel Thornberry get horrifically murdered in a completely unrelated novel... wild experience.)

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent

Easily the best book I read this month. This book was originally meant to be a series of interviews between Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea about her time as a Shakespearean actor. The interviews took place over four years and were meant for archival purposes before O’Hea realised how much these might be enjoyed by a wider audience — and boy was he correct about that.

The interviews are profoundly insightful about the various roles Dench played, her opinions on the characters and plays themselves very compelling, while also being interspersed with wit, banter, and reflections on everything from her fellow actors, to costuming choices, to green room antics. Dench has a remarkable memory and it means the interviews are able to go into great detail about the specific productions of each play that Dench participated in. I listened to the audiobook and if you have even a passing interest in Shakespeare I really can’t recommend it enough.

The Scum Villain Self-Saving System v2

 I continue down the SVSSS rabbit hole and honestly I have to applaud this series for proving to be more than mindless fluff, which is kind what I had been expecting of it (sorry, I was very biassed against this series). Don’t get me wrong, it is a genuinely hilarious series and an absolute parody of the genre, but it’s more than that which I think is important. Despite being a parody, it’s very sincere in its characters and relationships and story; while the main character may bitch and moan about certain “story tropes” and the “shitty author” who wrote the webnovel he’s found himself in, he’s as much swept up in this world as anyone else is, and the story forces you to acknowledge even the tropier aspects and look at how they would fit into a world where such things dictated every day life.

In this volume Luo Binghe (the “protagonist” who is supposedly destined to kill Shen Qingqiu) returns from his “presumed death” in the Abyss, much earlier than in the original story. Shen Qingqiu is frantic when he finds out, desperate to ensure his back up plan is in place and that he might yet avoid the inevitable death his character is meant to suffer at Luo Binghe’s hands. Of course, nothing is that easy, and Shen Qingqiu has irrevocably changed the plot (and possibly the entire genre) of this story, though he himself may not realise it yet…

Yuri Is My Job v1

So, my earlier comment about sincerity? How both SVSSS and Chuck Tingle’s stories intentionally use a lot of specific tropes and parody their genres? Despite this, both examples clearly love the genres they’re lampshading and ultimately commit to the story they’re telling. They never break away from the story to wink at the audience and say “see how dumb this is?” (cough Marvel) — they are completely embroiled in the worlds they create, they are entirely sincere in the story they’re telling.

And then you have this. Yuri Is My Job is a yuri manga about a protagonist who hides her true self behind a cutesy, beauteous mask. She’s determined to be the prettiest, sweetest, most desirable person in any room — she always wants to be the first pick! And things continue well for her, until she finds herself getting roped in to covering a shift at an usual themed café: one that’s based around a fictional private academy where the “students” work at the cafe and play out little dramas for the customers.

This could have been fun, especially as the protagonists realises that everyone is wearing a mask, and how their performed personalities can differ wildly from their true personalities, but there’s just no sincerity here. It makes me think of Ouran High School Host Club but without any love behind it. OHSHC can get away with a lot, and I’ll suspend a lot of disbelief while reading it, because it’s having so much fun with what it does. This manga seems to suck away any joy by constantly poking fun at its own premise.

So I dunno… YMMV, maybe this is something someone else would enjoy a lot, but it honestly just kind of annoyed me, especially when I sat down to figure out what exactly I didn’t like about it.

If you’re going to be anything, be sincere at the very least. Show me that you love what you’re about.

[rioblitzle]

theres a decently popular twitch streamer i used to watch a lot (more for the games he played and the times he was live than the actual guy himself to be honest) that i havent really watched in a year or two that's been playing through deltarune from the start and ive clicked on the streams three times out of curiosity and every time been repelled by the vibes so hard that ive had to leave within 2 minutes tops

[caterpillarinacave]

Just finished Clone Wars: Wild Space; it's full of CharactersTM in agony, would absolutely recommend.

[frostedturquoise]

In other news heres a flip the coin game: Is it a new fandom interest or did i think too hard about a funny pairing dynamic so it is kicking around in my brain for longer than expected (on top of spending over three weeks between being amused by the inclusion of historical mythology a kid i used to babysit was obsessed with combined with mentally lamenting over 'of COURSE they made him a blonde white guy, its anime why did i expect better') or wind up thinking about something else related to it a tiny bit too hard.

[zannies-joestar-hut]

merl mei qi gets better with every appearance

[lemonynuggets]

As an artist and nerd(/pos) , what would u make/write if u could build a game?

ok um this is a hard one

i've always thought it'd be really cool to make a game but i never stopped to think about WHAT i would make

maybe an rpg horror because i love rpg horror... or just any kind of horror game in general i heart horror lots

my first experiences with games were sally face and fran bow and similar stuff so that really shaped the kind of games i'm into, so yeah there would have to be some horror and puzzles in there, i'm just not sure of the genre or the story i'd go for

[clarasoswinsoswald]

I usually don't mind adding oc's into fics, in fact I read quite a few cause they can be interesting - and I write a few in my own time for my own entertainment, but I have yet to read one that does s8 and s9 of doctor who justice because there is a fundamental misunderstanding of 12 and clara in both of those seasons - and that, by adding a third person who can make the Doctor change his mind and not do some of the equally toxic things he did to Clara it just comes across as heavily one-sided toxic dynamic or they completely ignore both aspects and write the series unchanged with a third person there mildly disapproving