#I can't believe that the student that appears in this ending credit scene is actually an adult woman!?...

[celibibratty]

This wude ending is worse than i remembered, it's a kinda of weird ending, like, we die, then we awake up in a place that seems like a heaven, then we walk to the top of the mountain, the character looks happy, then they close their eyes and the screen gets black and we hear a deep breath, credit start rolling

[nightswithkookmin]

GOING ON A HIATUS

Thanks to everyone who's taken the time out to read my posts and has enjoyed it so far. It's really been fun and entertaining exchanging thoughts and having these much deeper ship discussions.

I thought this issue was gonna go away but I woke up this morning to more people messaging me about finding my last video analysis on several other platforms without appropriate credit.

But that's not disturbing. The disturbing part is the people sliding into people's DM'S on other platforms to get them to take down my video because they don't want people sharing my content on other platforms as they believe it would only make my blog popular.

For those worried about this whole credit business, thanks for showing this much concern for me? I really appreciate the love and concern if it's from a genuine place of concern. Thank you...

I think some of you already know this by now or might have figured it out, I am a law student, I am very much well aware what is and what isn't within my rights? Lol

I honestly didn't see this whole credit thingy as a big deal. It's not. Not to me. Lol. I repost people's photos without credit too all the time. Often, it's because I don't know who to credit and most time my lazy ass just forgets to. Lol. I think it's normal? It's inconsequential I mean.

The videos I use are usually often water marked by the appropriate owners so I don't go through the hustle of figuring this whole credit business out. If I should decide to come back here again I will check that habit of mine?

While this whole credit business is not a big deal to me, malicious slander and defamation to my character is and I don't take it lightly.

It has been brought to my attention that some Jikookers from Tumblr have since been sliding into people's DM's on other platforms asking them to take down my video and or remove the credit they give to my post.

They are telling people I am problematic, calling me the Taekook Lives of the Jikook community. That I have been spreading lies about Jikook, that the Jikook Tumblr community hates me or something like that and to further caricaturize me and make me appear more evil in order to get people to turn on me and hate me, they make up the most ridiculous lies about me claiming that I believe a notorious serial killer is innocent.

Now I have since deleted my YT account because I don't want my colleagues to find out I am into shipping too lol- shipping is a guilty pleasure of mine and I know how this fandom works unfortunately. I've been a silent part of it since 2014. I mean it's started already. The Doxing and shit.

The original post under which these replies are from couldn't save sadly as my account has been deleted but you can see from my notifications the general feel of what my interests outside shipping looks like.

I am interested in a myriad of topics, from literature, Aliens, writing, Harry Potter, history, activism, advocacy, philosophy, law, politics, NASA, and mystery and murder among other things.

My quora is mostly filled with notifications from my Book community and True crime community and often I do share my thoughts and answer questions with regards to the psychology of murderers, legal evidence, notorious villains in literature- well I guess now you know the kind of lawyer I want to be if and when I'm able to complete law school.

But what has my interest in these topics got to do with Jikook and shipping please?? How does this prove I hate Jikook and spread lies about them?

This Kookie Min Monsta person slipped into someone's DMS and asked the person who had put up my video analysis to take it down or discredit me because to her I am problematic. She is not the only one.

You want so bad to paint me black- no pun intended just to win an argument? You claim I am the evil malicious person here but I am not the one sliding into people's dms trying to take credit away from people for their hardwork, spreading hate and negative energy, making things up to manipulate people's perception of others and get them to hate and turn on them- and all because of A SHIP? Damn. This is pathetic.

Who died and made you the gatekeeper of the jikook shipping community? Honestly antics like these don't work on me try again.

I made a video commentary on my Booktube YT account- yes I am part of the book YouTube community as well sue me or better still slip into their inboxes and tell them I voted for Trump therefore I hate chipmunks.

The commentary I made on YT months ago was when I was in the highs of finding a new passion and it was on Ann Rule's book, The Stranger Besides Me- a true crime novel on Ted Bundy which I found so poorly written that at the end of the book it left with me wondering whether or not Ted Bundy was guilty at all!

The Author's writing style which deviates from most writing styles of True Crime novels I have read gave me trust issues as I stated in the video. It felt more as if she was writing a made up fictional novel than an actual True Crime novel but because she knew Ted Bundy in person she made it seem as if we just had to believe her account.

Then there was this whole thing about the police not being able to match the DNA samples taken from his rape victims, to his own Semen because his Semen was DNAless- in lay man's terms. I'll spare you the technicalities involved.

As I stated in that video, I do believe Ted Bundy was guilty but I do not have much faith in the Judicial system, or criminal procedures or even the Author of that book- a sentiment most people within the true crime community share as well. We just had differing views on whether the writer's style took away from the narrative and waters down on the extent of Bundy's guilt.

We had a Similar conversation about Chris Watt. If the community I was engaging in didn't have a problem with my commentary why do you? Please don't meddle in things you know nothing about. It's embarrassing.

The conversation about whether or not Ted Bundy is innocent is moot but a philosophical one. It has nothing to do with Ted Bundy's guilt but more so the criminal procedures involved in his case and the different accounts that exists surrounding his case.

He was electrocuted, he confessed to his crimes no damn person with brains would think or assume he is innocent and I never said anything of that nature drew any conclusions to that effect.

Besides, I moved on from Ted Bundy a long time ago. Now I am into the Serial Killer who writes death poems and signs it off with drawings of the size of his dick at his crime scenes- mind your own business please or don't and let's have an intellectual discourse about him? Lmho.

I am also into cat memes if you care to know and have a whole IG dedicated to cat memes. I believe human beings are the most dumbest species in all the galaxies and when the Aliens arrive I am snitching.

When my mind is at rest, I often wonder if Aliens have masculinity complex and if they do whether or not their masculinity is contingent on the size of their dicks or whether they have to engage in a battle to the death with an alien grizzly bear to determine who is the man.

I love BTS memes too- a little too much and often end up debating over the internet with random people over whether BTS memes are funnier than cat memes- I'm weird, true. But how does all of that make me a bad person?

It's crazy how these people can go on these other platforms to ask people to take down the credits to my posts as well as my posts itself but can't ask people who run to these other platforms with misinterpretations of my work to take those down.

Instead they come on here to call me out for people's interpretations of my work?? It doesn't work that way. You are the author of your own opinion and interpretation of other people's work. You don't call out the original author for someone's opinion of their work. If that were so I would be emailing Stephanie Meyer for Anna Todd and her After series. Get some education.

I have since blocked this person and others whose Tumblr I have been able to find thanks to all those that's helped me finding them on here.

My gf also tried reaching out to the persons who shared my post after we realised this was becoming an issue and had asked them to credit her or my blog- but honestly I don't care about that yet she won't give it a rest. Lol. My ride or die this one. Sigh.

However, we realized soon that this is not about 'stealing' credit- can't call someone out for not giving credit when I suck at that myself. Lol.

This is about people's malicious intentions and their attempts to silence me and take away my right to freedom of expression however way that they can. This is wrong and evil.

I honestly don't care for all these ship politics these people are engaged in. I've had enough intelligent conversations to know the distinction between arguments that flows from bruised egos and actual conversations around a subject matter.

This whole I am right, she is wrong politics... y'all get that the point of having an opinion is not to be right, right? We all cant have the same perspective and you can't call someone a liar for holding views that is different from yours. That is a bizarre mentality to have.

As I stated in my post, that content I made was a rebuttal to the Taekook theories running around on the internet alleging JK glared at Tae when he pulled on his shoulder because he was jealous Tae and Jin were having fun behind him. He wasn't. He was worried Tae was gonna expose him and JM holding hands behind Suga.

If you don't think they were holding hands then Taekookers were right and his reaction was because he was Jealous of Taejin I guess...

But thats your truth. That's not my truth. I don't believe Taekook is real. JK isn't jealous of Taejin he is not Twelve- but then again he was sneaking around behind Suga holding his boyfriend's hands so I guess he is twelve? Lol. Jikook!

Do you.

But please stop the evil malicious attacks and seek immediate help. There is such a thing as right and wrong and this is just plain wrong. Your Karma and chakra are in the negative nodes and you need to fix it. It is not funny anymore.

Thank you to everyone who has shown genuine concerns for me in the past few days and thank you so much for trying to stand up for me. There are good people on here and I have met and interacted with a lot of them and thank you so much for such a wonderful experience and insightful discussions.

I don't hate people because of our differences in thoughts, beliefs, opinions. There's always room for dissenting opinions in every sphere. At the very least, we can agree to disagree and shake on it. But You can't make up shit about people just to prove your opinion is right and their opinions and views which differ from yours are 'wrong.

I am not a victim though, and they are not bullies, psst. They are just vile pathetic human beings exposing the greens of their insides. What you do says more about who you are as a person and human being. And this is who they are.

Just be a nice decent human being. That's what this world needs. Fix whatever is broken inside of you and free your mind and spirit. Hate is never the answer.

I'm going to be away for a while because I have studies, work and other interests I want to pursue at the moment- it's just my AADD flaring up so if you see me henceforth raving about Nana at least you'd know why. Lol. She's wrecking my Jimin bias. Lmho.

Spread positivity, do the right thing, stand up for a good cause and keep supporting Jikook. Jikook is real.

Until we meet again.

Signed,

GOLDY

[elenajohansenreads]

Books I Read in 2021

#83 - Shadowmarch, by Tad Williams

Mount TBR: 69/100

Beat the Backlist Bingo: Cover features your favorite color prominently

Rating: 1/5 stars

Well, that was a slog.

So I have a history with this piece of intellectual property. I was introduced to Williams as an author in college (1998) because several of the friends I made my first year were big fantasy nerds--no surprise there--and I was perfectly ready to move on from my high-school-era love of less sophisticated fantasy authors. I borrowed The Dragonbone Chair from one of those friends and off I went.

So in 2001 when news about Williams writing an online serial went around, and I saw the $15 price tag...well, I was a perpetually almost-broke college student still, and sure I spent money on books, but that was a high gateway, because a) I didn't own my own computer yet, I was borrowing friends' or using the computer lab to write papers and such; and b) sure, a chunky fantasy novel might be $7 or $8 in paperback, but it was portable, easy to reread whenever, and nobody had tablets or smartphones or e-readers yet, so an online serial publication was definitely not portable. Even fifteen dollars seemed like too much for the inconvenience of a book I could only read sitting at a computer, and couldn't read all of at once.

I was genuinely angry about this shift away from the paradigm, and much like Williams vowing this serial was online only and would never be published traditionally (which I distinctly remember but don't actually have a source for) I too vowed that I would never read it.

I held out much longer than he did, if my memory of that claim is even true. But I'm wishing now that I hadn't bothered.

This is bad. Not even close to the level of quality I expect from Williams, based on the earlier Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, as well as War of the Flowers--which was weird but I enjoyed it--and the Otherland series, which was even weirder and not always good, but yeah, I still enjoyed that too, for the most part.

Who am I supposed to care about in this book? I'm no stranger to multiple protagonists, but there are simply too many here, meaning none of them get the development time they would need to be interesting. I'm trying to wean myself from the complaint that protagonists need to be "likable," because a character can be a jerk and still be interesting, but few of these protagonists are particularly likable either!

1. Barrick is a whiny jerk who folds under pressure and abdicates responsibility to his sister, and then makes a spectacularly bad decision for no reason other than to set up some tension at the end, and his future arc. If it's because he's "mad," bad plot reason, and if it's because he's affected by the more general shadow-madness, well, I guess he could be vulnerable to it like anyone else, but that's pretty flimsy too. 2. Briony is a fairly standard "if only I weren't a woman, people would take me seriously" princess who doesn't fold as much under pressure but is dealt a really raw deal. I'll give her credit, she does legitimately try her best to rule her lands, but she's also kind of a whiny jerk like her brother, too. 3. Quinnitan is...pointless. Sure, I see how the end of her arc in this book echoes those of the Eddon twins, but there is no direct connection between her plot and anyone else's. And I mean that literally, if there's anything that ties her story to any other single part of the book, I simply do not see it, it's buried in lore or foreshadowing that was lost on me amid the sheer weight of nearly 800 pages of plodding narrative. I read all of her scenes constantly wondering why I should care, and the fact that her arc is a very basic harem plot, "I don't want to be a token wife but really what choice do I have?" sort of thing, doesn't help, because on its own it's incredibly unoriginal. 4. Chert is marginally likable, because he's arguably got the most defined personality and most personal growth in the book, as a person of a "little" race who is distinctly not human--I get a mix of gnome and dwarf, with a faint whiff of Podling from The Dark Crystal--and who deals with an unexpected foundling by taking him into his family and trying to make it work, even when that foundling is really a big blank space in the story who still manages to get into trouble. 5. Captain Vansen gets points from me for being the guardsman deep in unrequited love, which is a trope I would absolutely eat up with a spoon. The problem is, the object of that love is a protagonist I don't care for (Briony,) leading me to question what the eff he's thinking that he can even admire her from a distance, let alone be in infatuation/love. And his plot arc is mostly "something goes wrong that's not really has fault but everyone blames him anyway." Which got dull.

Chert and Vansen are most of the reason this book gets a second star*, honestly. Chert's scenes with the Rooftoppers are generally pretty excellent, even if they're mostly tied to a plot arc that I don't care for.

The other thing that's getting me about this is that it feels like a deliberately grim-dark retread of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. You've got a castle that's the seat of current government but used to belong to the enemy--the enemy that no one is sure even exists anymore, that lives in a land far enough away to feel distant but also somehow close enough to be threatening, once people believe in them again. That castle is perched upon magically important ruins/caverns, and that enemy has forms of magic/communication that affect humans and can cause or appear symptomatic of madness. There's a race of small likable people who aren't quite dwarves or any other "standard" fantasy race, but are still somehow cute/appealing. There's a crippled prince who's not really well-liked. One of the primary female protagonists is a young woman who laments the limitations of her womanhood under the patriarchal feudal system of the world.

And to someone who's never read either of these series, that list of similarities could mostly read like fairly common fantasy tropes, and I forgive anyone who reads this review and thinks that. But I've read MSaT probably ten times all the way through in the twenty-plus years since I was introduced to it, and I feel like I've just been handed the same story again, with a thick coat of gray paint slathered on it and a few details changed--and those changes are basically always for the worse. No one in this story can be said to be a direct equivalent to Simon, who gets a very clear hero's journey, but if I'm supposed to slot Barrick in as a Simon/Josua mashup (that crippled prince problem) then it takes the entire book to get Barrick out of his comfort zone and on his journey, where Simon got booted from the castle at the end of the first act of the first book.

And that gets at the underlying problem that is at least partially fueling all other problems--this book is clearly just the first act of the larger story, and yes i know! that is what first books do! but this also doesn't have a lot of forward motion on its own, and it doesn't resolve anything aside from the mystery of a single murder at that happens near the beginning. Seriously, all other plot threads get kicked down the road with the "and now they're exiles" theme that the ending has assigned to most of the protagonists. Chert doesn't suffer that fate, but the ending of his story line--also the end of the book itself--is the foundling reasserting that he doesn't know who he is, which is not new information. We've literally not known who he is the whole time, except that we do find out who his mother is, but don't find out how he was taken or why he apparently hasn't aged as much as he should have or what the Qar intended by sending him back "home." The identity of his mother is basically the least important question surrounding him.

I truly feel like I just read a 750-page prologue, and that is not a good feeling.

*Yeah, I told myself this was a two-star book, but by the time I wrote the whole review, it's not and I can't pretend I still believe that. This is a one-star book. This is so bad I don't want to go on with the series, even though it almost has to get better, now that most of our protagonists are out on their journeys. And because it could hardly get worse, right? But this already took up so much of my time (I had to take a week-long break in the middle to binge some romances, as a relief from all this grimdark toil) and even though I've managed to collect secondhand copies of the rest of the series, and they've been sitting on my shelves for a few years waiting for me to invest my energy into them...I'm giving up. Not worth it.