#(so i'm guessing it's not so much for the novel as much as it is there for marketing reasons. by which i mean one piece)

[isinuyasha]

Alternative Ending

In Japan, where censorship wasn't an issue, the ending scenes of "The Untamed" were shown in this order, giving Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji their well deserved happy ending after their emotional reunion.

[ipreferfiction]

i am living in hell (i read the revan novel)

as the old republic discord knows, for some godforsaken reason i decided i wanted to subject myself to karp's revan novel. it was... almost worth it for all the wrong reasons. if this thing was satire? i'd give it top marks.

unfortunately it's not satire, so i'm giving you people a very honest book review of the hot flaming dumpster that is Revan by Drew Karpyshyn. revan spoilers below, etc etc etc, also if you like the revan novel unironicallly this post is not for you in any way shape or form. if you, like me, have heard horror stories of the revan novel and want to know if it's worth it: this is your review.

(note: author shall henceforth be referred to as karp, karpy, or karpshit because i do not have enough respect to look up how to spell his name more than once. also because he deserves it.)

GENERAL OPINION:

on a standard scale of 1 to 5 stars, karp's revan gets a 1 in terms of genuine quality. on that same scale based on whether or not it entertained me, it's a solid 5. karp's writing is irredeemable, his pacing is complete garbage, and i'm not sure he's ever met an editor or a real woman in his life, and good god does it make for an entertaining book. it's a horrible addition to legends canon, but i laughed so hard i cried in multiple spots. no, he didn't intend this, but karp is not the one star wars author who has rights (shoutout to my boy Timothy Zahn) so he can shut up about it. it has some (some) almost redeemable qualities, introduces my favorite old republic character, and is mostly just generally bad in a "how did this get published" way. i'll be breaking it up into three categories to go over in more detail: actual decent parts, things that were so bad they actually entertained me, and genuinely bad parts that had zero redeeming factors. starting with the smallest, let's get started. the rest is below the cut because this is going to be a long post, sorry.

DECENT CONTENTS OF THE NOVEL:

not many, as a matter of fact. let's just get that out of the way first. now, karpy has no full rights as an author, but i will give him slivers of a right for his depiction of Nathema. Meetra Surik feeling as though the void was going to consume her, scatter her into atoms across the entire planet, was fascinating, and her enduring sensation of being hunted by something metaphysical was amazing. the way the entire planet made even sound and color feel devoid of any sort of emotion actually made me envision what Nathema was really like, and it gives a perspective even swtor doesn't. likewise, the bare bones of what karp was trying to convey about the emperor were excellent.

oh: also the introduction of Scourge. he is my beloved and everything about him is absolutely fascinating, karp just can't write.

another fraction of a right goes to the few lines karp spares for describing the way the mask turns Revan into a symbol. that... is exactly what the mask does and what the mask is. we've also got the bits where Canderous is reunited with Clan Ordo and relaxes for the first time in years - possibly since the war itself - and look, that made me feel things. it was a good reunion, and it's clear how much the Mandalorians value clan and family.

i will also say this. the depictions of multiple people getting hit with force lightning were viscerally realistic in a way that karp's writing never actually manages to be anywhere else. descriptions of searing pain, burning flesh, bubbling skin - they were good, genuinely good and actually horrifying. as far as good things go, though, that about concludes the list.

THINGS SO GENUINELY BAD THAT THEY WERE GOOD:

this is most of the novel right here. karpy's writing somehow consistently manages to come off with the sort of description one expects from a cheap romance novel, despite any actual romance being largely nausea-inducing. there are - my count may be incorrect - somewhere around eight or nine uses of the word primal, and exactly zero of them are good. also this is a screenshot from revan's pov that is somehow supposed to be read with a straight face and made the entire discord server laugh so hard they started crying. i am serious. karpshit published this. revan why does this read like you think scourge has a crush on you.

honorable mentions along a similar vein include the fact that every time revan and canderous interact, it reads like they're an old married couple. they were definitely flirting. they share a tent on rekkiad. revan gets bitchy about canderous sneaking out to visit his. wife? she was a person who sure existed, more on her in the next section. canderous kills his wife for revan. said wife tells him to choose between Clan Ordo and revan and he chooses revan! without hesitation!

scourge. just... every single one of his POVs. he's so unnecessarily dramatic, he has a weird fondness for force leaps, he's paranoid as all fuck and is fairly convinced that Everyone is trying to kill him. he lets himself get shot multiple times because his armor can absorb it. he plays 5d chess with himself every time he tries to figure out if something is a trap or not. he wants a seat on the dark council. he's dramatic, has this been mentioned? he keeps stabbing things because he's too annoyed with them. i genuinely think karp's bad writing enhances these chapters because the amount of times i started laughing aloud were unparalleled. take this, for example:

the writing is genuinely abysmal, and that's about the quality karpshit's fight scenes always come across as, but oh boy did it make me laugh. karp's attempts to write a Very Intimidating Sith just sort of ended up with... very much not that. such as the time he jumps over a three-meter fence and lands in what karp assures us is a three-point stance. i lost it. it's hysterical. this is a SITH LORD and his cape is described as billowing behind him as he jumps. he's so needlessly dramatic and it's ridiculously in character, from the constant complaints about rain in his first chapters to his on-sight desire to murder Sechel (that rivalry is also a highlight of the book. it's written so badly and it cracks me up every single time. the highly evolved skills of a true coward still makes me laugh. oh scourge at least you're in character here).

in an effort to not spend this entire section talking about scourge: the weird and hysterical double manipulation thing where Revan is trying to manipulate Scourge into letting him out and Scourge is trying to manipulate Revan into telling him things and they're both entirely aware of what the other one is doing but there's an incredible certainty that They Are The One In Control. it clearly wasn't meant to be funny, because karp takes himself too seriously, but it was hysterical. the return of scourge's mental 5d chess matches with himself and revan thinking... what he thinks in the first screenshot of this section. no one can read this with a straight face and i love it.

...i got very derailed there. in my defense, karp thinking scourge should be taken seriously is very very funny. but, in only tangentially scourge-related things, the fight with Vitiate! containing some of the absolute best lines in the book (in terms of humor, of course. not quality. what do you think this is, goodreads?) my personal favorite is this absolute gem that i don't have a screenshot of because i was too busy screaming about it to the discord:

"No!" Revan screamed from the ground as bits of his friend rained down on him in the form of unrecognizable shrapnel.

yes. this is about... T3. i am dead serious. karpshit decides to have T3 join the battle by shooting at Vitiate with his flamethrower. in retaliation, Vitiate unleashes the full power of the Dark Side on him. he explodes into thousands of little tiny pieces. the above line happens. i was laughing so hard i was legitimately crying. this is so fucking funny. the entire scene of the battle, revan just being turned into crème brûlée by force lightning... and poor little T3 goes out with a quite literal bang.

and now an aside as scourge commits some more murder and it is revealed literally as an offhand mention for the first time in the novel that scourge can use his lightsaber with his left hand as well as with his right. at this point i think karpshit was just throwing darts at the board to see what his latest skillset should be, but it's equally in character. and then comes my second favorite line from this section, a true gem of wit and humor:

Scourge hesitated before joining her, taking a moment to survey the situation, memories of his vision of their failure still fresh in his mind. What he saw was not good.

which, in this circumstance, means revan half-cooked behind his mask and T3 having been made into bestie confetti. yes, i think not good adequately describes this, wouldn't you agree?

and now, some honorable mentions of lines that made me wheeze because they were so utterly abysmal. from the beginning of the book, when scourge was (as per usual) killing some people:

Holding his lightsaber high above his head with both hands, Scourge charged the downed speeder.

i'm... karp are you certain you know how fights work? are you really sure? are you? and then there's the time he describes a three year old as having dark and brooding eyes.

(just read the book, the entire thing is written like this and i'd end up with another revan novel if i tried to copy everything that was this level of abysmally bad.)

and for the grand finale...

KARP PLEASE JUST STOP:

this here comprises basically everything he tries to do with the Force, every single line about, containing, or even remotely mentioning Bastila, basically Meetra's entire character, the name Vaner, Vaner's existence, Bastila somehow being attracted to this Revan, Meetra again, this particular flavor of heterosexuality, and karp's entire writing style. this is why the book is genuinely bad in bad ways as well as funny ones.

the writing style is self-explanatory, you've all seen the screenshots. he's mediocre at his best points, and utterly dull at the worst. unfortunately, karp's particular flavor of misogyny also seeps in. this becomes very evident with Bastila - but my least favorite part is when describing the rumored backstory of Vitiate, talking about what six-year-old Tenebrae did to his entire family.

for background: Tenebrae was a bastard, the son of a poor farmer and the lord of the entire planet, Lord Dramath. there were instances of similar things happening throughout our own medieval history, and they generally had a name: rape. it is incredibly unlikely that Tenebrae's mother was in any position to give consent to the Sith who ruled the entire planet, regardless of whether or not she was married. so naturally, when Tenebrae's adopted father, the woman's husband finds out (unnamed mother "confesses the affair"), he flies into a fit of rage and attacks her. Tenebrae subsequently snaps his neck. he is in fact still six years old. and then we are treated with the following line:

Tenebrae made her suffer for months as punishment for betraying the family, torturing her with the Force as he honed his powers.

yeah. not at all weird, gross, and misogynistic, karpshit, thanks for making me read this.

and it gets worse. not in Tenebrae's case, luckily, but with Bastila and Meetra. i won't go over the whole essays people have written about both their characterizations - suffice it to say they're equally bad, both used pretty much exclusively as props for Revan in various unappealing ways. but the worst part about how karp writes them is the jealousy. Bastila sees Meetra as some sort of threat to her and Revan; the worst offender is this passage from Bastila's first POV chapter.

(as a side note, the constant descriptions of both Alek and Meetra as Revan's underlings/subordinates really rubs me the wrong way and is not at all accurate, but that's another essay.)

the women are pitted against each other, with Meetra much later feeling jealous when Revan says i love you too to the holovid of his wife and three year old son because apparently the bond he shares with Bastila is much deeper than the one Meetra has with him. Bastila's entire character is reduced to the wife of Revan and the mother of his child, and Meetra is little better off. her entire death is over in the span of a sentence and a half, and her ghost is tied to Revan, literally giving him her life's energy so he can resist Vitiate. it's no surprise the outcry over this novel was strong.

because you all don't deserve to suffer through much more of this, the ending complaint is reserved for the clear lack of understanding karpy has for the Jedi Order and the Force itself. revan is described as using both light and dark - even though he's supposedly a Jedi, and the two sides of the Force cannot be used together for any sustained period of time. either you turn your back on the dark, or you fall. but no; revan's special breed of arrogance means he offers to teach his understanding of the Force to other Jedi, and sees the council as backwards and hidebound for refusing, never mind that he's married and with a child on the way. karp claims that Bastila was redeemed through Revan's love for her, that he was redeemed through love - and once again shows the issue that many writers have of conflating emotions and attachments. attachments are unhealthy, things you'd choose over the greater good and things that lead you to the dark side. emotions, including love and relationships, can and have been had in healthy ways by Jedi before. clearly not revan, but others. and this misunderstanding runs through the entire novel, making most of revan's POV chapters utterly insufferable (along with his arrogance and general existence as drew's self-insert mary sue).

CLOSING COMMENTS:

as with everything, you have to decide for yourself if this is worth it. the writing is bad in enjoyable ways, but there are swaths of the novel that i would gladly ignore if i ever did a reread (not that my self-loathing would be that bad, i don't think). the misogyny is a genuine problem, and karp is a very bad writer. on the other hand, you do get some lore and context for things, and scourge's pov chapters especially are. mostly funny in how bad they are, and sometimes actually leaning towards mediocre. i've laid some evidence on the table, so make of it as you will. and may the force be with you if you attempt this, because it sure wasn't with karpshit.

[fictionadventurer]

.

[reki-of-the-valley]

Let's be honest, it was only a matter of time before I did this:

the Sk8 fam + what they read (novel wise)

Although Reki is a lot more attracted by manga (he loves the art), he also likes romance novels, Queer YA romance novels to be exact, but he'll read all kinds. Often it's just because they're extremely predictable so he can laugh at them, but he also finds comfort in them (especially in the Queer YA ones, especially before he's out or even realizes he's aro and bi). Also, when he and Koyomi were younger, she would get romance novels and he would get fantasy hero novels and when no one was looking, they would switch their books. It was their little secret for years.

Langa is a binge reader. He'll go years without reading and then just have this burst of energy and tear through 6 novels in 3 weeks. Once he's absorbed in a book, there's no getting him out of it. He's very much a YA fantasy type of person and chivalric tales like the tales of King Arthur and mythology in general. If he's going to read, he doesn't want to be in the real world. That's how he gets so absorbed in them; he gets lost in these new worlds.

Miya is an avid reader, especially of English novels. It starts with a school assignment, their first assigned novel, which he gets a really good grade on. Reading in English was, at first, just a flex on the other kids who were struggling, but then he really got into it. He found really good books and it was so much easier to find good recommendations in an international language. When he learns that Langa has a pretty good collection of books, he just borrows those and in exchange, he "accidentally" bumps into Reki so he stumbles and falls on Langa (Langa never agreed to this)

Cherry reads classics, but his favorite period is the European Renaissance. There are so many new ideas going around and the way it affected literature is very interesting to him. It's a history/literature lesson which he finds very important. It's so much more educational than those picture books Joe reads, that illiterate gorilla

Joe is the ultimate "I never learned how to read" type of person. Yes, it's not true, he can read just fine, but he just doesn't have the time or energy to dedicate to reading. While Cherry could curl up in his reading chair for hours to read, Joe would much rather be anywhere else. However, he does read the books Cherry gives him. He pretends he doesn't, but he does and he does enjoy them (Cherry makes sure to not give him anything too heavy), so he has a small collection of books Cherry's given him.

Shadow reads heavily symbolic novels. Those books that make absolutely no sense? Yeah, he loves those. There are no wrong answers to their interpretation, so he has fun coming up with something. Usually it's actually pretty smart readings, but sometimes it's also completely ridiculous because there's just... nothing. He can't make anything of the words he's just read. It always surprises Miya when he sees Shadow reading because "The clown knows how to read??? I thought you were literally illiterate" which gets Shadow yelling at him (Miya finds it hilarious)

[pearl-kite]

Starting to think I'm over-practicing this presentation

Also feels super weird to not be allowed powerpoint. I get it, but it feels weird. Like, I can't even show piccytures? No birbs? You gonna just magically know what a cooper's hawk is?

[hotwaterandmilk]

“Did you know? They say that being accomplices is the closest kind of relationship in the world...”

[justrandomspams]

[eijiroukiriot]

kirishima “ei-chan” eijirou. age 14. who looks kinda nerdy so you look over at his notes when you don’t get what’s going on in class only to find that he’s been scribbling variations of CRIMSON RIOT CRIMSON RIOT RED RIOT?? RED RIOT CRIMSON RIOT MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE for the last ten minutes. who is panting his guts out and looks pale and clammy but still refuses to stop doing pushups because he’s 50 away from surpassing the record written on the gymnasium whiteboard. who does a speech about why he wants to become a hero for an english presentation and he has notecards but he’s clearly not looking at them and you can’t tell the reason he’s speaking so loud and standing so rigidly is that he practiced his speech all night and is worried about messing it up or if he’s completely adlibbing and just that passionate about this and while he speaks everyone in the room is kind of sharing looks of “there’s no way he’ll get in but he cares so much that it makes me feel bad” only to be proven completely wrong when the test results come in two months later

[galadhremmin]

ever start writing a fanfiction so removed from canon and so centered on 1. original characters 2. only a vague imprint of the world you are supposedly writing fanfiction of left 3. themes entirely different that halfway through the first chapter you're like... wait a second. Am i just. Did I trick myself into writing original fiction. Is the only thing binding me to the category 'fanfic' in fact the names at this point, for which I basically invented personalities because they have none in the original-- and underlying ideas that never actually show up for the reader?? oops.

[rotzaprachim]

anyone have recs for fics from any fandom that have really good prose and writing style AND/OR writing styles that play with canon in interesting ways, either through imitation or purposefully making the style diverge? 

[therovers]

I don't know what I was thinking.

Kissing me? Why, I'm that repulsive?

No! No.

[scimitar-and-longsword]

Not to be pedantic... but TOG is not a Graphic Novel. It’s a comic. Graphic Novels are their own form of media, and yeah, sure they overlap with comics in a lot of ways but like- that’s like saying movies and TV shows are the same because they are both watched on screens.

[meteorjam]

I know a lot of people really loved WinTeam in UWMA even more than DeanPharm and while I do like WinTeam, the established relationship domestic married life DeanPharm dynamic just really has a vice grip on my heart and refuses to let go

[yuugami-tan]

FINALLY CAUGHT UP ON ALL THE BIG INAZUMA QUESTS

[enibly]

this is a post about kpop and closets and gay rights, but really it’s about how classic children’s lit gave me unrealistic expectations for life (and really, isn’t that every single post i ever make?)

oh my god someone asked miya on vlive if she would have a wife and she floundered so much trying to answer without outing herself! girl you gotta pre-practice your answer to uncomfortable questions you KNOW you are gonna get! drill those reactions like you drill dance moves!

I do appreciate how transparent she is tho, whether she means to be or not. I would imagine that most gays, at least the adult ones, can pick up on the code language and very un-encoded body language very clearly here. however I’m still unsure how well the teens pick up on it- I know I took ppl at face value at that age, even when they were basically living in a glass closet. ahahaha some funny memories about that

anyways, I appreciate Miya trying to avoid being rude to the gays while still staying in the closet- as I know from youthful experience, that’s certainly not easy and at its heart, it’s a losing battle :/ 

so I hope that Japan/Korea make gay adoption fully accessible asap so that Miya (and all my other queer brethren) don’t have to pretend to be straight just to have a family. And if that doesn’t happen in time, then I hope Miya finds a nice lavender marriage when she wants to

Video + translation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22CJAoqcQJI by GWSN - Girls In The Park Translations on Youtube (they’re doing great work!)

[ghostnebula]

I cannot believe this needs to be said AGAIN but apparently it does.

Literature is NOT a direct reflection of reality, or of the morals/values/beliefs of the author. Literature is an ETHICAL LABORATORY.

It’s a safe place for experimentation and exploration. It allows us to explore ethics in a way that doesn’t have real-world consequences. In writing, we are able to experiment with ethics and morality in way that may not be possible in our real lives, and we are able read about and engage with these topics in ways that cause no real harm if they are interacted with appropriately. 

We can use literature to safely explore the real human experience with laws, religion, art, culture, etc., and the darker stuff: vices, “dark” themes, violence and cruelty, the dark side of human nature. Framed appropriately, these “experiments” in ethics can serve can a lesson in spite of their nature.

The ethical laboratory of literature is effectively the “bridge” between laws, rules, and ethics, and real human experience. It helps us understand and find answers to ethical questions encountered in our daily lives, and more importantly, it helps us explore the various alternatives to those questions and answers in a safe space free of real consequences. It allows us to explore the limitations and potential interpretations of the laws and rules we live by: Which ones can be broken, and why? Which ones exist for good reason, and why? By playing around with questions of ethics/morality and their interpretations, literature broadens our understanding of the impact of our actions on the people around us, and helps us to better understand the ambiguous nature of morality and the laws we’ve created, while allowing us to use the knowledge as a learning tool for our everyday conduct. 

Is all literature inherently a paragon of morality and justice? No! That’s the whole point! The whole fucking point is that we can use literature as a tool -- as a laboratory -- through which we can conduct moral experiments and explore the potential consequences without actually having to face real-life consequences, because authors don’t go around committing real-life crimes “for the vine” or whatever the fuck. It’s an EXPERIMENT. IN ETHICS.