theweeklydiscourse

[theweeklydiscourse]

Excellent points. It’s like Alina’s a hollow vessel being used to prove something about Mal.

It endlessly irritates me that their experiences with “loss” are equated when Mal actually gains so much from Alina’s loss of power. She’s his passive dependent and companion now because she no longer has a community to return to. Alina like a selkie whose seal skin has been lost forever.

Sure, he’s lost his tracking abilities (which were not even that consequential to his identity in the first place) but Mal has gained dominion over Alina’s attention and time. She’s just his weird little wife now, and he no longer has to fret over losing her to the Grisha or Aleksander.

Thought I'd make it into a separate post.

So, Malina fans use this passage to "prove" that the ending shows a healthy, whlesome, sweet relationship:

"The boy and the girl had both known loss, and their grief did not leave them. Sometimes he would find her standing by a window, fingers playing in the beams of sunlight that streamed through the glass, or sitting on the front steps of the orphanage, staring at the stump of the oak next to the drive. Then he would go to her, draw her close, and lead her to the shores of Trivka’s pond, where the insects buzzed and the grass grew high and sweet, where old wounds might be forgotten. She saw sadness in the boy too. Though the woods still welcomed him, he was separate from them. Then the hour would pass, and the teachers would catch them giggling in a dim hallway or kissing by the stairs. Besides, most days were too full for mourning. There were classes to teach, meals to prepare, letters to write. When evening fell, the boy would bring the girl a glass of tea, a slice of lemon cake, an apple blossom floating in a blue cup. He would kiss her neck and whisper new names in her ear: beauty, beloved, cherished, my heart."

But what do we see here? He would find her. He would go to her. He would draw her closer. He would lead her. He would bring her tea. He would kiss her and whisper to her.

The only thing she does throughout the entire passage is stare at things and see sadness in him. Ever a passive observer. She doesn't talk, doesn't initiate contact, doesn't reciprocate his gestures. Bar the last sentence about neck kisses, he sounds like a nurse taking care of their elderly patient who lost touch with reality years ago and spends their days staring out of the window. She is borderline catatonic. Because it's not their ending. It's his happy ending, and she's just a quiet, unassuming prop he manages in his cottagecore dream. Someone poke her with a stick; maybe she's dead.

[theweeklydiscourse]

i don't know why we should care if the actors "don't see it" that's because you're trained in acting, whereas i am trained in the ancient and noble art of shipping. get ready to have fake sex with someone who reminds you of your sister, actor boy

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i love over-analyzing media as much as the next person but sometimes you just have to be like well the reason it happens like that is because someone wrote it that way. because they needed something to happen for plot reasons.

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'The most irritating phenomenon to come out of shipping discourse is people applying arbitrary limits to very broad dynamics under the guise of objective analysis.' really bold of you to say this while also sniping about how found family interpretations you don't personally like or agree with are reductive lol

That’s actually not what I was saying. In my post about found families, I was commenting on the fandom tendency to specific familial dynamics (e.g. parent/child or siblings) to character dynamics that do not fit into those molds at all. I was more-so commenting on the attitude of hypocrisy towards shippers where people will claim that romantic interpretations simplify the dynamic while doing the exact same thing by simplifying other relationships (e.g. mentor/mentee, peers, employer/employee) to describe them using the terms of specific familial relationships.

I think that it is a bit reductive for people to take a dynamic like found family, something that is broad and complex by nature, and simplify it to fit the comparably more rigid structure of a nuclear family. Relationships are often hard to define in real-life, so people are inclined to use the terms that feel the most familiar to them even if they don’t fit. It’s probably something people do without thinking, so I don’t want to attack them for gravitating towards familiarity, but I felt like commenting on it nonetheless.

There’s also the added factor of people using their personal found family interpretations as a cudgel to attack shippers with differing views of the characters. That kind of behaviour is both limiting and extremely annoying. That entire phenomenon of imposing your headcanons on others is based on applying arbitrary limits to things under the guise of objective analysis (e.g. the trend of invoking “coding” as indisputable evidence).

[theweeklydiscourse]

tumblr users’ obsession with self-reporting (especially as a weird form of penance) needs to be studied

[theweeklydiscourse]

The most irritating phenomenon to come out of shipping discourse is people applying arbitrary limits to very broad dynamics under the guise of objective analysis. They talk about what “works” and what doesn’t “work” as if their preferences are universal and not influenced by their own unique experiences and beliefs. They confuse what they personally enjoy for what is “correct”.

This is how you get people saying crazy stuff like “Enemies to Lovers can only work well when neither of the characters are aligned with something inherently evil” or claiming that it’s morally wrong to ship characters with an uneven power dynamic. Like…enemies to lovers is a trope that is defined by pushing and pulling between the parties involved. The power dynamics are subject to change and that’s what makes it so engaging. Why are you so obsessed with defanging the core ethos of the trope?

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Why is Azriel's approach to Nesta set up as so different to all others' and kind if the narrative is also asserting that the others' approach is the correct one? It makes them extra cruel to the readers because there is a kind and understanding man among them.

That’s something that puzzles me a bit. Azriel’s feelings towards Nesta are substantially less intense, especially where they pertain to any form of resentment he might feel over Feyre’s past experiences. Azriel generally isn’t actively hostile to Nesta, but it remains clear that he’s complicit in their maltreatment of Nesta. His passive behaviour can be easily overlooked when you have the active abuse perpetrated by the likes of Rhysand and Cassian to compare to.

One part of me wonders if Maas believes that it would be just too out of character for Azriel to harangue Nesta the way Cassian does. He’s a silent type, which means that any need to defend Feyre would manifest in a more understated or internalized way. There’s also the fact that I find Azriel kinda bland. I don’t think he’s as fully-formed as the other members of the IC and that might factor into why his approach is so different. Maas is more interested in the loud and cathartic reactions to Nesta’s behaviour that culminate in visible displays of loyalty. Azriel doesn’t quite have the dimensions for that yet.

This answer is all over the place, but all in all, It’s definitely a strange phenomenon to witness. The IC’s approach is positioned as necessary, yet Azriel is still allowed to not entirely take their side. It definitely makes the IC look especially cruel.

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Idk if you accept recs but a recomend the locked tomb books for you, It's not perfect but both the protagonists are two brown woman, and honestly, such breaths of fresh air. (maybe because they aren't supposed to be heros in the first place) and the author actually let them be GNC, and have ambitions, and be messed up, and yk, affect the narrative in any way. and even have *GASP* Pixie/Buzz cuts. Besides it's just really funny. I think it will really fit your vibe.

Funny that you should recommend The Locked Tomb to me because I actually read all three books about a year or two ago. Your inference was correct anon, because it really did fit my vibe.

I think that The Locked Tomb serves as a great example of the heights female characters can reach when they actually go against the grain. Not just in appearance, but the moral compass of each character varies so wildly compared to the comparatively smaller range of morality that other female characters are afforded in other series. They’re allowed to be messy and GNC in a way that feels like the literary equivalent of drinking ice water after wandering a barren desert.

Ianthe and Harrowhark are my darlings, but I was very surprised by how endeared I was to Gideon as well. The bond that Harrowhark and Gideon had absoloutely floored me the first time I read Gideon the Ninth. Then Harrow the Ninth pushed me even further into Locked Tomb brain rot with that insane perspective shift. Overall, I really dig it.

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You can tell that the people who still argue about whether Rumi and Jinu’s relationship should be seen as romantic or not have never watched K-dramas before. All of their scenes together, how they act towards each other, every movement, every touch (Jinu’s embrace to save Rumi, secretly meeting up, being mistaken for being a couple and then trying/failing to disprove it, the pride and prejudice hand touch, romantic duet about their feelings for each other) are like references to scenes you often see happen between the main couples in romantic K-dramas.

The artists who worked on this film have shared that their reference videos for the Rujinu scenes are mostly from romantic K-dramas. And K-dramas are commonly very slow burn on the romance, it would take 8-10 episodes or even longer before the main couple kiss. So I wouldn’t be surprise if the filmmakers and writers decided that it would be best/much more organic and earned if Rumi and Jinu kiss in the sequel after reuniting.

Also, “resurrection and reincarnation so that the lovers reunite” is a very common trope in K-dramas, especially if it involves the supernatural. The most popular k-dramas I could think of that has this trope are Goblin, Legend of the Blue Sea and My Demon. My Demon is very similar to Kpop Demon Hunters in the sense that the male lead (a demon too) sacrifices himself and dies after saving the female lead, he literally disintegrates like Jinu, but he is resurrected and reunites with the female lead in the finale.

We can’t progress as a society until everyone is forced to study a curriculum of K-dramas. I think K-pop Demon Hunters did an amazing job with the references they made to classic K-drama tropes and cliches and it made the film even more fun.

Before I saw the movie, I thought that the Rumi/Jinu implications were going to be fairly subtle and maybe even downplayed. This is just because I’m so used to expecting the typical: “Can’t a man and woman just be friends?!” schtick from movies nowadays. I feared that the romantic subplot was as good as dead. But then…even from the first scene, Rujinu proved me wrong. It was so obvious that it’s hard to believe that there are people even arguing about it.

Now that we know that a few sequels are in order…I think it’s safe to tentatively hope for a Rujinu outcome in future films. I’m truly so so grateful that the creators of the film are fans of K-dramas and down with the specific kinds of romance they offer. If they bring back Jinu in a later film (something I think is very likely) I will reach a level of Rujinu insanity that has not yet been achieved.

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What are your thoughts on Daenerys Targareyn? So you think in the books she will have the same ending as her counterpart did?

I’ve only ever read a handful of chapters from ASOIAF, but my fondness for Daenerys is strong as ever. Even though I’ve never read a full book in that series or watched a single episode of Game of Thrones, Daenerys Targaryen and her stans are special to me.

There’s a lot of overlap with the fandoms I frequent and Dany stans. I don’t care what anyone says, they are like kin to me. I deeply sympathize with the anguish of a character being hacked to death by incompetent writers, and I can connect the butchering of GOT’s Dany to a number of other characters I love. Do I think that she will have the same ending as her GOT counterpart? Lord I hope not. I need Dany stans to win, and I think any ending similar to that of the show would be a travesty of the highest proportions.

[theweeklydiscourse]

Modern fandom has this nasty trend of people forming their political identities around liking the correct media ™ and then using that moral justification to explain their trigger happy attitude towards policing people’s interests. It seems more common in fandoms that skew younger, partly because they’re in the beginning stages of developing their political views and partly because they’re want a straightforward way of signalling those views. But when fandom is your politics, you’re bound to run into a situation where you’re forced to justify your personal likes and dislikes through a moral framework. This creates a situation where people incite the most inane discourses ever because they can’t tolerate the discomfort of seeing content they dislike or interpretations they disagree with. And by framing it through a moral lens, they deny their personal responsibility to moderate their own internet experience because they are firmly convinced that their views are morally correct and thus, must be enforced.

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How do you feel about book 1 Nesta? I know why she is written that way I am purely talking about the character, her motivations, opinions etc.

I think the idea Nesta’s resentment towards her father and contempt for Feyre is pretty interesting. A dignified lady like Nesta having an inferiority complex when it comes to Feyre’s more practical skills is a good foundation for a story. In fact, it could be a story on its own.

She’s rather mean to Feyre, and that meanness is made worse by the way she neglects her personal responsibility as a member of the household. Look, I still think the idea that Feyre doing ALL of the housework was unrealistic as hell, but on a watsonian level…Nesta is admittedly a bad sister in the beginning. I like that ACOTAR Nesta is a bit more raw if that makes sense. After Maas elaborated on her character more I feel like she started to become a bit overcooked. This was not helped by Maas’s bizarre fascination with making her suffer.

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Kpdh was just a movie though. A lot easier to make the characters consistent and the theme coherent. Even acotar book 1 was alright in that regard.

Despite ACOTAR’s flaws, it is admittedly the most tightly written and edited book in the series. But after that? It completely falls apart.

You’re right, consistency over the course of three books is more difficult than a 1.5 hour film, but it isn’t impossible. Maas could choose to edit her books more, she has the resources to hire editors to keep her stories consistent and pick up on the finer details. Unfortunately, she has no incentive to do this because the series sells just fine as the inconsistent and badly written mess that it is.

Her books got longer, they started to ramble more too. There was less thematic coherence (if there was any to begin with) and she began making room for every possible indulgence that could fill 700+ pages. She also threw in a number of additional pages to extend her already overly ornate prose.

The mediums are different, that much is certain. But K-pop Demon Hunters is still leagues above Maas’s best work. Is it flawed? Absolutely. I definitely have my issues with certain story decisions, but the bottom line is that KPDH is a story that is paced and executed far better than the likes of ACOTAR.

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I mean yeah, Rumi is a whole person outside Jinu. She has her own life and doesn’t depend on him, compared to Feyre whose whole life revolves around Rhysand and he legit makes decisions for her. Heck, Feyre isn’t even her own person anymore- her mind, her soul and her own death all is connected to Rhys now.

Even though Jinu plays a crucial part in the movie, it‘s clear who the important figure is (Rumi). Although acotar is suppose to be about Feyre, Rhys took the wheel from her since acomaf. Like it‘s all about what he accomplished, what he did for Feyre and how „great“ he is.

I don’t know if I could even say that the books are about Feyre when Rhys is heavily involved.

Rumi’s arc feels more like a real story as opposed to Feyre’s, whose character moments are often just a pretext for romance. The thing about Y/Ns is that they’re painfully dependant on the presence of the desired subject (the love interest) when it comes to their characterization. This is especially apparent with Feyre, whose values and personality undergo a radical shift from ACOMAF onwards. These changes are in service of complimenting Rhysand, who the author is actually interested in exploring, but only through the lens of the Y/N.

Rumi exists independently from Jinu, and stands on her own as a character. She has a specific conflict with her friends and family that Jinu’s presence compliments. Both of them can stand on their own without relying on one another for their senses of self. Feysand unfortunately cannot say the same. The minute Rhysand is seriously considered as a love interest, the entire series becomes The Rhysand Show where everyone is completely obsessed with his super awesome greatness. This is what makes his relationship with Feyre so inferior to Rumi and Jinu’s romance.

[theweeklydiscourse]

Rhysand's hardcore fans used to annoy me the most but now it's Feyre's hardcore fans. At least the former don't bring feminism into it when you talk about some fucked up thing she did to another woman or most of the other morality points. She's both fictional and real at the same time in this weird way where everything she did was just the author's fault for making her ooc but you aren't allowed to say anything against her. She's words on a paper, she's not real, if the author has written words than paint a horrible picture of her, some people are going to talk about it but no, they become evil antis who can't handle female characters.

“She’s both fictional and real at the same time”

Feyre is one of those fictional characters who people discuss as if she’s a real person. Consequently, criticizing Feyre is akin to criticizing a real-life woman with real experiences, making further discourse impossible. She’s a tool that is frequently confused for an independent agent. I’m convinced that this phenomenon is an effect of the pernicious wish-fulfillment fantasy that defines ACOTAR. The fact that Feyre is a blank slate allows readers to project their personal experiences, opinions and feelings onto her and mesh themselves with Feyre.

It’s so funny when these readers try to invalidate criticism by pulling the “You can’t handle female characters!” card, as if they don’t completely despise Nesta. As if Maas’s characters are genuinely well-written…what a joke. Nevertheless, they mesh their views of themselves with the Y/N vessel and thus, convince themselves that an empty vessel embodies the complexities that exist within themselves. Coupled with the fact that ACOTAR is read by a good number of younger readers, I find that people overly identify with characters like Feyre. So, it hurts their feelings when their chosen vessel is discussed and criticized as a tool, instead of being given the same grace that they would extend to themselves (a real human).

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yknow i mean obviously at some point you have to just say that someone Doesn't Get It--but i think 'bad media literacy' is like, y'know, so often just a dodge to avoid acknowledging that the thing that the people who idolize walter white or whatev are responding to is v. much there in the text

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Why didn't Leigh Bardugo just call it Queen of Storms when it's clearly Zoya's story and Nikolai is just a love interest? I don't hate or love Zoya but it's so obvious that the author isn't even interested in writing about "The Boy King" so why advertise it as such?

Bardugo knows her beloved boys draw quite a crowd. I think she likes Nikolai, but couldn’t resist the urge to stick it to the critics of Shadow and Bone by turning Zoya into the shiniest and most glorious heroine to ever exist…or so she thought. I don’t particularly like Zoya, and I especially don’t like how her character is used as a mouthpiece to retroactively fix the things people criticized about the Shadow and Bone trilogy.

Nikolai (in spite of his numerous flaws) was a very interesting part of Shadow and Bone, and Bardugo was keenly aware of that fact. Just as she’s aware that the Darkling is one of her finest creations. Nikolai was a character who had a great deal of potential, enough so that he could draw in the readers to read about the progression of his story. As such, Nikolai needed to be the central element of her new duology. But this is where the bait and switch comes in…because Zoya wasn’t nearly as compelling during the trilogy as Nikolai. Thus, she baits the readers with Nikolai and then switches to a heavily edited version of Zoya that’s tailor made (lol) to be everything Alina wasn’t.

Unfortunately for Bardugo, the irritating self-righteousness remained and she couldn’t quite shake her habit of giving 21st century politics to characters in an entirely different societal and cultural context.