bluehourskyeli

[bluehourskyeli]

I was teaching kids today and they got fixated on the usual ‘are they dead now?’ question when I was talking about historical figures. So I was just like ‘Yes, they’re dead now, everyone who was alive in the 1800s is dead now.’ and then one kid was like ‘Except for you’.

[bluehourskyeli]

How do you feel about the Sabrina Carpenter discourse?

honestly extremely funny that people are so mad about an image that's so tame. people are talking about it like it's hardcore pussy out p o r n and then you google it and it actually looks like a perfume commercial that decided to get a tiny bit risqué

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wife saw me taking this pic in the CVS and sighed so loudly

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watching Seven Samurai

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time to bring back a classic.

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Claudia de lioncourt

Happy father day to this little dad killer!

Commission based on leyendecker painting

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[bluehourskyeli]

a quick “why is my life so bad” checklist

how’s your sleep schedule

have you eaten or drank anything besides sugar and caffeine

how long have you been sitting in one spot

have you gone out in public recently

have you taken a shower/brushed your teeth/groomed yourself properly

have you spent time doing an activity that doesn’t involve a screen

etc

[bluehourskyeli]

The following plot is so tedious to me:

- heroine is supposedly bad and clumsy at stuff, an underdog, doesn't believe in herself

- there's a guy who is very, very hot but in a dangerous way and he's real mean, guys, real mean and she really hates him and there's good reason because he is so mean, just so mean

- he clearly hates her too for being the enemy or for being weak or being clumsy or whatever

- except that he keeps failing to kill her when he has the chance and his insults sound weirdly like ~advice on how to survive the difficult situation they're both in and sometimes he smirks at her and it's weirdly ~hot except that's IMPOSSIBLE and she is so definitely not attracted to him because that would be STUPID when he is so MEAN and he wants to KILL her

- until one day it turns out to her COMPLETE AND UTTER SURPRISE that isn't trying to kill her at all, he's actually PROTECTING her and he's been so HARD and MEAN to make her tougher because he has seen her POTENTIAL

- and then they kiss

The thing is. I could absolutely love this plot and I do when it's done right. Because enemies to lovers can be excellent and people concealing their motivations and not being what they seem is also excellent. But the problem is how poorly it's executed. There are several issues:

- this plot and characterisation is now so standard that as soon as a male character is described as antagonistic and yet conventionally attractive, I expect him to be madly in love with the heroine for no reason and I'm instantly reading a double motivation into everything he says or does. This is a problem in the hands of an unskilled writer because it means his antagonism poses absolutely no threat. Of course he's not going to kill the heroine! He's growling in a threateningly constipated way because he's trying to conceal his boner! The apparently subtle, hidden motivation is neither subtle nor hidden to the reader.

- Well, okay, fine, you might say. Why should it be subtle or hidden? It's okay to know genre expectations in advance! We all know Poirot will find the killer! Yes, but we don't know who the killer is, right? There needs to be some kind of mystery! If I can see the massive plot twist coming from the first paragraph in which the character is introduced then it's a really shitty plot twist!

- Furthermore, it makes the heroine look UNBELIEVABLY STUPID. This is particularly a problem in stories which are setting the heroine up to be SUPER SMART. If they are this clever, getting by on their wits, self-aware, why are they SO FUCKING OBLIVIOUS to the fact that the hot guy who they're obsessed with is really into them? "Why isn't he trying to kill me?" she muses thoughtfully to the reader. "I wonder what Machiavellian game he's playing?" she debates with herself endlessly. HE WANTS TO FUCK YOU, ROSEBUD, it's not that deep. If this were a genuine mystery, the reader could analyse it alongside the heroine, and feel shock at the revelation too but instead she comes across as an absolute moron and none of her internal debates are remotely interesting.

- ah, I hear you say, but haven't you forgotten the concept of dramatic irony? Knowing that Hector will die doesn't lessen the impact of hearing him debate whether to go out and fight Achilles and in fact increases pathos and tragedy. So surely knowing where a plot is going doesn't lessen its impact? Well, first of all you're not Homer writing the Iliad, Shirley, so jot that down. I just think you have to have some concept of writers craft to pull of dramatic irony successfully. If the narrative was ironic or even mocking towards the supposedly smart heroine's blindspots that would be one thing. If there were actual consequences to her for being a dumbass that would be another. But the narrative doesn't do that. It asks us with complete seriousness to believe Hot Mean Dude is a massive threat to heroine and that heroine is a very super intelligent super smart person. The narration of these books is SO flat. And first person present tense? Good grief, it's the WORST.

Beyond all this, I realise yet again how different my taste in men is to, apparently, most women. Massive dudes with muscles, tattoos and weird eyes who insult me continuously just aren't of any interest to me at all. I'm bored just reading a description of their appearance clearly designed to arouse female readers. Physically, emotionally, anything. I'd be off pining over a scrawny bookworm with asthma who's a minor character there to make witty quips under his breath, show me no interest whatsoever, and die pathetically in the final battle of book 2 out of 3.

And relatedly, I'd love to read about a heroine who is clever and competent and interesting. Like, genuinely. But the problem is their stories being told in first person, present tense. It's the most intimate of narrative styles which means if the narrative is dull, wooden, lacks flair or style or interest and yet is apparently the inner narration of the Smartest Person Ever, it's quite hard to suspend my disbelief.

Writers need to study the art of narratology a bit more and how being an unreliable narrator should extend beyond not picking up on the fact that you have the hots for your hot enemy who also has the hots for you.

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funniest aspect of TGCF for me is when these hundreds of years old, extremely powerful supernatural beings act like middle schoolers. gege, what if you think i'm ugly. yeah i have a wife, but you don't know her she goes to another school. I wanted to be f-f-f-friends. feng xing thinks women have cooties

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i open this app way too confidently in public

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I am Arran, god of the most important thing

EDIT: if y'all don’t wanna use your name use your username

[bluehourskyeli]

luo binghe is a character that makes me really uncomfortable, and him being in a relationship with shen yuan even more so, to the point where I just block people who actively post about the ship (especially in a positive light) since I can't selectively exclude tags here and want to trawl #svsss without cringing out of my skin. normally I would block you too.

however your posts are actually so fucking amusing and witty (and committed to never portraying luo binghe as capable of a healthy relationship) that I just can't bring myself to do it. I'd miss out on so many bangers 😔

congrats on the achievement of being funny enough not to block even though you post a ton about a ship that I can't stand!

Close enough welcome back Ming Fan