#You can see how much I know about storytelling by the fact I don’t even know how they call technically aspects of a story

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

trying so hard to balance being rightfully pissed off at how much hbo slashed the budget for s2 and my disappointment with some of the very rushed plotlines and character arcs by remembering the two month period of time where we didn’t even know if we would get a season two or if we would be left with ed crying in the window as our last ever shot of him and we would never get to see the crew reunite and ed and stede reconcile at all. just swinging back and forth and back and forth bc like

i’m so incredibly grateful for what we have

but at the same time i’m mad as hell bc this show deserves better

but i don’t want to let my anger abt how hbo is treating this show get in the way of me enjoying what we’re getting

but also i deserve to be angry about the studio treating this show like shit and i don’t want “enjoying what we’re getting” to be seen as letting hbo off the hook

this show is always going to be important to me but i think the way the budget cuts are incredibly palpable throughout the entirety of season 2 will always stand out in my memory, too. i get that in the time between season 1 and season 2 i had put this show on a hyperfixation pedestal and there was probably no way for me to be entirely 100% satisfied without a single complaint about the new episodes but so much of this season feels sloppy and rushed. season 1 was practically a masterclass in efficient storytelling but you can tell in s2 no amount of efficient writing can make up for the fact that they just didn’t have the time to do everything they needed to do, and so sacrifices were made with some of the arcs. i’m enjoying the season but i can’t help but mourn what s2 could’ve been with just two more episodes.

[necroworldbanshee]

After Tumblr put yet another post about the who’s-mdzs-narrator discourse on my dashboard (and a very insulting one at that) I’m starting to wonder… does English storytelling work in a different way from how it works in my language? Or it’s just that nobody here can tell narrator from pov?

This is going to be long.

[Disclaimer: since I'm not from an English-speaking country, I never actually studied storytelling in English, so I might not knows the correct English term for everything.]

In both my first and my second language, we have:

Narrator = the one that narrates the story. It can be internal (a character narrates) or external.

Focus = the point of view from which the story is narrated. It can be internal (one or more characters pov), external (objective narration) or zero (the narrator knows* everthing = omniscient narrator).

*knowing everything =/= telling everything

Sometimes you have an external narrator with an internal focus, but that doesn’t make the character which pov we're seeing the narrator.

Internal focus might also change during the narration. Different sections (chapters, paragraphs, sentences...) of the story might use different povs.

If there’s a single pov for the whole story, that’s called fixed internal focus. If two or more povs alternate, it’s called variable internal focus. If the story has two or more parallel povs, that’s a multiple internal focus.

And you don’t need to take writing/reading classes or be an author to know this. It is literally in my 7 y/o nephew's summer homeworks.

Anyway, in mdzs we have:

Narrator speak in third person = external narrator. Easy.

Narrator knows everything that happened, in every moment and in every place, knows characters' thoughts and feelings = zero focus / omniscient narrator. Still... easy? At least, I think that's easy.

I think what confuses people here is that we get mostly Wei Wuxian's thoughts and feelings, but... that's because this is Wei Wuxian's story, you know? It doesn't mean the narrator doesn't have access to other characters thoughts/feelings. It's just that (most of the time) they're not important for Wei Wuxian's story.

Also, not every omniscient narrator has to tell us everything from the begging. That's actually a quite old-fashioned type of narration.

In any case, it's not like we don't get other characters' povs ever.

For exemple:

Jiang Cheng seethed. He very much hadn’t expected this outing to be so wretched. Originally, he had come to help Jin Ling, who would turn fifteen this year and thus should be embarking on his career, competing with other juniors for experience and reputation. Jiang Cheng had carefully sifted through the options before choosing Dafan Mountain as their hunting grounds, and then covered the area with nets to scare off cultivators from other clans. Because the nets would make navigation very difficult, they would have no option but to leave, thus eliminating the competition and leaving the prey to Jin Ling. Though four hundred spirit-binding nets cost an exorbitant price, it wasn’t much to the Yunmeng Jiang Clan. The actual destruction of the nets was a small issue—the big issue was the loss of face. The fact that Lan Wangji had done such a thing made bitter resentment bleed from his heart and circulate up towards his head—the higher it got, the more resentful he became. He narrowed his eyes, and unconsciously or not, began stroking the ring around his right index finger with his left hand.

[from "Pride II", Fanyiyi's tl]

Here we have Jiang Cheng’s pov. The narrator tells us Jiang Cheng's previous actions, his thoughts and his feelings. This couldn't happen if the narrator was Wei Wuxian.

And then again:

“Sizhui, you’re the most mature of everyone. Take care of them. Do you think you’re up to it?” Lan Sizhui nodded. “Don’t be afraid,” Wei Wuxian said again. “I’m not afraid,” he replied. “Truly?” “Truly.” Lan Sizhui even smiled. “Senior Mo, you and Hanguang Jun are really similar.” “Similar?” Wei Wuxian said with surprise. “How are we similar?” He and Lan Wangji were clearly as different as the heavens and the Earth. But Lan Sizhui just smiled, said nothing, and led the remaining people outside. I don’t know either, he thought silently. But you two just feel similar. It feels as though as long as one of you two seniors is present, I don’t need to be scared of anything.

[from "Flora V", Fanyiyi's tl]

Here we can see both Wei Wuxian's and Lan Sizhui's thoughts. A very big and clear sign of omniscient narrator.

Another thing that people in this fandom don't get the way I expect them to is the difference between an omniscient narrator and an external narrator with variable or multiple internal focus. This might be tricky I guess, but mdzs doesn't have an alternation of povs, nor parallel povs. So, still omniscient narrator.

And, before someone says "but that's just because mdzs switches between fixed internal (from Wei Wuxian’s pov) and zero focus": fixed means fixed. If it changes every other sentence to add informations the character doesn’t know, it’s by definition omniscient! Omniscient narration doesn’t have limitations. It already includes every character pov and much more. You don’t need anything else!

So, mdzs has an external narrator with zero focus (= omniscient narrator) that narrates Wei Wuxian's story and sometimes withholds informations for plot reasons. And I don't think that makes it an unreliable narrator**. That's just standard narration to me.

Now, given my non-existent knowledge about English literature, what I’d like to know is: do these things work differently in English? Or people on Tumblr should just open a book from time to time?

Not that it really matters, since mdzs isn’t an English novel. What we should actually wonder is how Chinese storytelling works.

** Unreliable narration should be about the narrator's credibility, not about how many informations it gives you and if they're presented plainly/in a transparent way or not. About this, I've once read a really good article about how nowadays it's the reader that has become unreliable, in the sense that the reader doesn't even try to understand the story or make deductions anymore.

[zahri-melitor]

What can you infer about the editorial meddling Young Justice went through?

Oh god. It’s like the old quote about pornography: you know it when you see it. Spend enough time reading comics and you can just tell.

Notable problems with the Young Justice 2019 run that smack of interference:

You can really tell there was external pressure to include Steph in the run and that she was not originally intended to join the team or appear any further than occasional cameos such as the flashbacks at the Hall of Justice as a link to Tim’s final scene in Tynion’s Tec run. Structurally her story makes no sense whatsoever for how to put a plot together. Steph’s not an original Young Justice character, the run already was supporting two new female characters plus a reboot of Amethyst introducing Amy to a new generation, even before we look at the crossovers from other titles in the imprint. The fact they ended up throwing in a single issue entirely about 'what Steph has been up to and her fight against Cluemaster' in the last section of the run makes it even worse, as that was valuable page time wasted pandering that could and should have been used to give Jinny Hex or Keli Quintela more development.

The entire ‘Drake’ situation, which for a costume change had very little build up, was under-designed, and then disappeared with Tim back in the Robin costume between two panels. It was a test balloon from someone that was comprehensively shot down by some mix of the fandom and editorial, and I remain convinced that DC is gunshy about a new costume and identity for Tim all the way up to the present day because of how badly it was handled.

It was being used as the anchor for Wonder Comics, leading to the required mega crossover (that also spilled over into Bendis’ Action Comics to give it some more space), putting even more pressure on the title to be telling a big crossover story when it was still trying to re-establish “your favourites are back” and suggesting potentially expanding the Young Justice lineup out to around thirteen characters, a massively oversized team that the title was not set up to handle.

Lost in the Multiverse was where the story started to get bogged down by being pulled in too many directions by expectations.

It’s also super telling that the last third of the book got turned over to essentially doing one-shot character pieces about the Core Four, the last defence of a run that can see cancellation coming and doesn’t feel confident launching a new story arc they don’t expect to get to finish. Some of this stuff was clearly background character work they would have preferred to have dripped out over a longer run.

Also I know I’m repeating myself, but having the Tim piece focus on Steph mostly, in the frame of Tim and Steph’s relationship? That’s not where I’d be spending my time when looking at Tim Drake in the focus of Young Justice. How he’s coping with his returned memories of having two or three different lives now? Thinking about what ‘Tell Conner you’re sorry’ means? Discussion about his feelings in terms of moving on from being Robin or not? Nah let’s talk about Steph's problems with her dad instead. That’s not a natural fit compared to what everyone else got and does not follow from any of the preceding story.

Still ropeable that the whole set of storylines about regained memories and alternate timelines doesn’t get to intersect with Lois Lane (which spoilers but also is committed to storytelling about ‘people have memories of other places bleeding through’ prior to the full Infinite Frontier retcon) or explore how those memories change things for Tim, Bart or Cassie (Kon at least does get a story about reconnecting in Action).

And that’s just off the top of my head, ignoring any of the more subtle signs.

I love Young Justice 2019. It is a run that adores Bart, Kon, Cassie and Tim (and particularly Bart. I cannot explain to you how much this story adores Bart if you’ve never read it) and the opening 6 issues make me feel warm and fuzzy every time I read them in terms of how cleverly it works to explain how we get everything back. There are clever subtle moments in the text that give a lot more depth to the story that are implied rather than spelled out: how Cassie suddenly remembers Bart when Bart comes near her, suggesting that her returned memories are a Speed Force side effect from being a lightning rod to Bart; Cassie and Tim sense Kon using TTK and recognise it as familiar, something the new characters cannot; the fakeout in the art where when Tim’s memories are restored, he sees Cissie in his memories, but unless you know the exact YJ98 page being referenced you’d think it was Steph; etc.

But gosh it would have been so much better if it had not been required to devote so much page time to crossovers and to pandering to fans, among other elements.

[jolieblack]

Something finally came to me! (I usually can’t write to prompts to save my life.)

May Prompts 2024 by @calaisreno

May 24th: Imperfect

We've always done things the wrong way round.

We moved in together at a time when we knew no more than four or five facts about each other. Significant facts, granted, such as John being a war veteran and me having no patience with idiots, but neither of us could have claimed to have had anything even close to the full picture at the time. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if either of us had. Only on my really bad days, though.

I don’t have all that many of those any more, luckily. And when I do, I have plenty of good memories to help me pull myself up again. Take the ones of how we confessed our love to each other to a beautifully decorated room full of people in festive dress and in even more festive spirit, to much applause and cheering and well-wishing. Yes, you heard that plural right. Those are two separate memories, years apart and in two different places. I got to go first, and it wasn’t even me who was getting married at the time. That’s another thing that most couples would do differently. Coordinate it a bit better, at least.

The second time around, as a lot of you will remember well, it was John's turn to talk, and I‘d been told in no uncertain terms to keep my mouth shut and say nothing, not even to correct his grammar, till he was done. I can now attest that it is true that the groom never gets to have a say in anything at his own wedding. Someone got his late revenge there. And believe me, that doesn’t depend on whether it’s one groom or two. Yes, and I know there are still people out there even in this day and age who feel that it’s not normal to have two grooms at all. They can all go away and never show their ugly faces again where I can see them, or smell the foul breath of the bigoted filth they’re spouting. That’s not the wrong way around, that couldn’t be more right for both of us.

But we did other things the wrong way around, too. In most romantic stories, killing someone to save the person you love is usually the culmination of long mutual trust and dedication. It‘s supposed to be the crowning glory, the final sealing of a bond that has long been in the making. It’s not supposed to be the starting point. And John is usually the more patient of the two of us, but when it came to this, he could barely contain himself for 36 hours after our very first meeting before he did it. Ever heard of timing and pacing, Doctor, I hear you people wonder? And he’s supposed to be the one with the talent for good storytelling. The timing was good, though. The timing was excellent. There’s another 'what if' for you that is no fun to contemplate at all.

There is killing out of love, and - I have to say it, I can’t not, I‘d be lying by omission if I didn't - there's also dying out of love. I doubt, however, that there’s anyone out there who has ever put a more elaborate effort into pretending to die out of love than I have. As far as I‘m aware, that’s not really a romantic convention, either, and I sincerely hope I haven’t started a trend. I honestly can’t recommend it. Effort is well and good, and I dare say the execution in my case was flawless, but I can’t deny there was a certain lack of forethought as to the emotional impact on both parties concerned. Don‘t try this at home, folks.

People also usually date first, then start cohabiting, then get married, then raise children together. Please don’t ask me to define at what time in our lives exactly John and I were dating and when we weren’t yet. To this day we have never been able to agree on a definition for this mysterious activity that emphatically, according to John, for whatever reason, does not encompass two people who like each other going out together and having fun. But it is an undisputed fact that we had been raising a child together for a good while before we got married. And we have been going out together and having fun for years uncounted now. Crime scenes never fail to work that particular magic on us. Oh wait, no, that was another example I had on my list for what most other couples do differently. Hang on, do I see a certain Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard raise his hand in objection? Raising both hands, actually, showing us… what, seven fingers? Is that the number of couples working for the Metropolitan Police that you know personally who have met at crime scenes? Or are you reminding us of the number of times John and I were actually kicked off a crime scene because we were enjoying ourselves entirely too much, and were told not to come back till we could behave like adults? I could have sworn those were more than seven occasions, but I‘ll take your word for it.

Talking of raising a child together, I‘m sure Rosie will say a word or three about that herself later, but I have never understood why most of you had doubts about the practicability of that particular endeavour. Let me just tell you that a baby carrier is entirely compatible with a cashmere scarf, or didn’t you know cashmere can absorb up to a third of its own dry weight in liquid? And it got only easier from there when Rosie grew older and stopped affectionately drooling on whoever enjoyed the happy privilege of holding her and carrying her around. She hasn’t demanded being carried around in a good while now, and I don’t know what our poor old backs would say to that these days. But we were talking about happy memories, weren’t we, so there’s another. And at least in the metaphorical sense, I hope you know, Rosie, that you’ll be held and carried for as long as you want and need, as long as we both live. You were my daughter even before I was your father’s husband, and that has been one of the greatest honours bestowed on me in my life.

Because this is who we are, isn’t it, our crazy little family, where nothing is as you’d expect it to be. But we still wouldn’t have it any other way, topsy-turvy, weird, flawed and utterly imperfect, but also utterly us, unique, one of a kind. I don’t know if it was fate that threw us together, or if it really was just a whim on the part of the comfortable, corpulent, bespectacled gentleman sitting at this table over here, smirking with his trademark benevolence. But there’s a debt of gratitude to be paid there, and today is a good day to do it. In this at least, we’re doing the conventional thing, but who’s to say we’re not allowed to do that at least once in a quarter-century.

So, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends and family from far and wide, I give you: John Watson, the man of my life, the man at my side for over thirty years, and for exactly twenty-five years in the legal sense on this very day. Please raise your glasses with us to the next twenty-five. And for God’s sake stop snivelling like that, Mycroft. You’re embarrassing the whole room.

[tiredcreatur3]

hello! i was “quite” delulu last night because of how hot toji is 🥵 (yes, i am blaming it on toji)

so, i imagine dilf toji (duh) picking reader up from a night out with the girls and reader is drunk as fuck, not black out drunk tho. anw, so they get home and reader is just rambling and babbling on and on, and then she suddenly had just felt horny, just out of nowhere. so she asked toji to fuck her but toji was like “hell, nah. you’re drunk” and she kept on insisting but toji, the gentleman that he is, still said no. And so after a whole lots of arguing and reader whining and pleading toji to fuck her, toji still didn’t cave in and just decided to do reader’s skincare routine for her and yk get her changed into her comfy clothes. toji does her skincare blah blah blah and then afterwards he tells reader to start taking off her clothes as he picks out her pajamas and shit. Toji went into the big ass closet and started looking through her clothes. Once he found some clothes, he went out to the bedroom and saw her riding the pillow on the bed. toji didn’t do anything and just stood there, watching her. After she came, he went to her and help her to change into her pajamas (literally ignoring the fact that he just saw her getting herself off) and then he lulled her to sleep. The next morning, reader asks toji about what happened last night and toji went into detail about everything that happened the night before except for the whole riding the pillow on the bed part. He thought that it’d just be a little secret/special memory that he can keep lol. The end

i don’t know if this made sense but i hope you can make the most out of it. I’m sorry for my extremely bad storytelling skills (?) and bad grammar but if you will write about this, feel free to change anything about the story. This is somewhat fluffy/suggestive but if u want to turn it into smut, feel free to do so! I also am not sure if this will be sent to you but i truly hope you see this. Thank you so much and i love your writing for toji!!!! ❤️

thank you sweetheart, sounds like so much fun! :)

he wasn’t surprised to see you being held up by your girlfriends as he drove up to the club you were meeting up at, sighing softly as he stopped the car and got out, carefully picking you up and carrying you to the car, wishing the others to get home safely, ignoring the little snickers as he walked away with you giggling in his arms.

the drive home was surprisingly quiet, you being too busy staring at your lover, glossy eyes watching him as you just wanted to nuzzle up into him and fall asleep on top of him.

“i-i missed you, t-to.. ‘m so-sorry i got drunk.” you whispered out quietly, feeling a little bad now, knowing the older didn’t mind you going out and all but he hated seeing you like this, not even being able to hold yourself up. of course he got a little mad, worried that if your girlfriends were there, what would even happen to you.

“i missed you more, little girl. just got me worried.” he let out, pressing a small kiss to your forehead as he let you hold his hand, carefully rubbing his thumb across.

getting you home was also easy but then your lil chattery mood was turned on, telling him all about how nice it was, how much fun you had and telling him all the details about your friend’s love and sex lives which he really didn’t wanna hear but he could never say no to you.

“-‘nd she said w-we should try this toy ‘cause it f-feels really good..” you let out, humming quietly as you suddenly got all silent, staring at the male as he took your heels off, the older looking up at you.

“t-to.. i really want you.” you whispered, carefully lifting your skirt up and revealing your panties and the male immediately stood up and shook his head.

“baby not now, okay? you’re not sober. c’mere.” he said shortly before taking you into his arms, ignoring the little horny babbles of yours, knowing he had a really good self control and shit like fucking his partner while they’re wasted disgusted him. it just felt dirty and wrong.

he set you down on the bed, brushed your hair and did all the things you always did before going to bed, knowing you’d be oh so sad the next day, waking up with makeup smeared all over and tangled hair.

“i’m going to go get your clothes off the rack, yeah? ‘ll be right back.” he whispered, giving you a short kiss which left you all needy, longing for your boyfriend, the booze getting you all hazy and so oh so horny.

it took him a bit longer, finding the jammies so he eventually settled on panties and his shirt, knowing that was at the end of the what you loved to wear the most.

he walked back into the bedroom, wanting to let you know that he was going to change you into sleepwear now but.

oh.

seeing you all out of it and desperate, letting out little tired sighs and whimpers as you rode your pillow, still in your clothes, the male just speechless.

he didn’t say anything, partially because he didn’t know what to say and partially because he didn’t want you to stop. knowing his good little girl needed some release but the way he was raised and the way he felt like about doing things to others while they’re unresponsive, this was all he could do. just watch, watch you rub your poor little clit against the soft material, having caught you riding that pillow a few times before, assuming it felt really good so who was he to stop you?

he just wanted to sit down next to you, help you, praise you how good of a girl you were, how well you were doing, seeming oh so tired and yet your dumb needy cunt wouldn’t let you rest.

he waited for you to finish, licking his lips and swallowing once he could tell you were close, body getting all shaky, those little sounds dying down as you soon came, curling up into a little ball, eyes half lidded as you looked up to the male once he came to the bed, still in the denial that toji wasn’t there until then.

“i-i took care of it, t-to..” you hummed out quietly, spreading your legs and showing the male that pretty little pussy of yours, all wet and bright pink, having pushed your panties to the side for better friction, the cotton material all drenched from your juices.

“my good little girl.. i’m sorry, princess.” he said softly, kissing your forehead as he gently ran his thumb across your puffy clit before carefully taking your panties off and changing you into the shirt and fresh panties.

the next day, you couldn’t remember a damn thing, waking up on top of toji, in his shirt with your makeup off and hair brushed and put into a low bun as usual.

the male explained all the things that happened but deciding not to tell you what happened after, keeping that as a little memory for him whenever he feels like jerking off and all he has to do is just remember you humping your pillow and whimpering for him oh so sweetly.

[magnusbae]

I mean, I can't NOT prompt "Emotions are a luxury I don't have time for." with Dreamling 👀

🤘 five-and-dimes

OKAY ADMITTEDLY it does fit Dreamling very well doesn't it—? I was going to give half an hour per piece and accidently digressed way too much with this one..... whoops...? Thank you for the prompt dear 🥰💖

Dreamling || 1,174w || lowkey hurt/comfort but with ~hope

▾▾▾

“Don’t you feel anythi— fuck.” Hob stops, forcing the words back down with a thick swallow. He cannot afford himself to speak in anger, no matter how badly it burns in his veins, no matter how scourged by Dream’s aloofness he is. It doesn’t matter that he should have the right for anger. Dream is simply not a being you could, or should, be angry with if you hope to keep him in your life.

Angry or not, justified or not. Hob wants him in his life, very much.

“Dream, listen.” Hob starts, running a hand over his own face, nails scratching uncomfortably over the side of his cheek. “I get it, okay.” He really doesn’t but this is not the point “but seriously, you do have feelings, I know that you have…” his voice wavers and he gestures at the space between them, unable to voice it lest Dream would flee again. “Please.” his voice strains with the burden of it all. Wanting so much, needing so much—being forbidden from even voicing it, let alone having it.

"Emotions are a luxury I don't have time for.” Dream’s voice is deep, booming, as aloof as it could possibly get. He sounds like he’s reading a ready-made script, like he’s following the lines long since prepared.

Hob recoils, physically takes a step back, wants a distance between himself and Dream’s rejection. He should have expected it, in fact, he assumed he might get worse and yet— “Bulshit.” The short silence that follows is pregnant with tension, both momentarily silenced by Hob’s boldness. Hob is as surprised by it as Dream, apparently is.

Dream comes around first, eyebrows knotting, storms cracking in the depths of his eyes. His lips thin, the corners tug down and then he opens his mouth to deliver what Hob is sure would be either a really bad reprimand or his final words to him.

He cannot have it. If only for the simple fact that he doesn’t only want Dream in his life, but factually needs him. He doesn’t know what’s life would be worth without knowing that in the end of every story there will be Dream to share it with, a confidant, a keeper of his journey.

“I think that you’re afraid—” the words rush out without a thought, he steps forward, hurrying to finish before this would blow out of proportion “—because I know that I am petrified.” The words burn true on his tongue, there’s a dull ache in his chest, his lungs feel too full and empty of air. “I am horrified that you might leave, I am terrified that you might not lo— accept this, I am…” he swallows, his throat is closing with the emotion of it all. He cannot stop, not now that he had finally started. “I get it Dream, I know that you are, that we are… different but…. “ His hand falls by his side, no amount of gesturing would express what he feels.

He runs out of words. He was so certain he had them all when this conversation started, now he can hardly even remember what brought it about. He didn’t prepare for it as well as he thought, he doesn’t know how to word it, how to phrase it in a way that would convince Dream to give this, them, a chance. Damn.

His chin drops and he stares at the ground, burning disappointment makes his hand tremor. He closes his fist.

He is no poet, no storyteller, no writer. He is no Dream to pick and choose the right words. He’s only a man. Only a man who loves a being beyond his comprehension, very, very much.

Fuck, fuck it all. Fuck. He is about to lose him, isn’t he?

The pain in his gut is a twisting thing, like a knife slicing through the guts. Shitty death, he’d know. He dares to glance up when Dream doesn’t speak, half expecting to see him gone. Instead, there’s something softer in Dream’s eyes when he meets them. For the first time, Hob’s attention is drawn to the unnatural void in those eyes, the glint of distant stats. This is…

“Am I…” his mind struggles through the spell of dizziness, his consciousness readjusting its grasp of the surroundings. The shadows are longer, the shapes are bent a little too far, the colors are not quite right.

“I am dreaming.” He understands when he finally sees the landscape for what it is, Dream, for who he is. “Oh shit.” His cheeks color red, he is aware of the incredibly uncomfortable material of the shirt he used to wear some few hundreds years ago.

“I yanked you into my dream, haven’t I.” This is, even more than before, not how he had hoped to confess. Not even close.

“Hob,” Dream’s voice bleeds to every fiber of the dream-scape, infusing it with power, making it feel tangible, more clear, in focus. “You dream very loudly.” There’s an odd note to his voice, if Hob was to attempt and pinpoint it, he’d have to admit it sounds like astonishment.

“Sorry,” he answers, abashed. “I, uh, suppose you can’t just…” he gestures at his own head with a motion that resembles wiping chalk off of a board. “Maybe…?” he adds, hopefully.

He doesn’t regrets his feelings. He would, though, like to at least be awake when Dream rejects him, It feels only proper.

The idea of simply not raising it up at all is one that had crossed his mind frequently, and yet he knows that sooner or later he’d slip again, that he wouldn’t be able to to continue pretending like this isn’t an integral part of who he is, like this isn’t something that he feels.

Sooner or later, he’d tell Dream of The Endless that he is helplessly, hopelessly, truly and deeply— in lov…

A finger again his lips distracts him from his thoughts. “Very loudly.” Dream scolds quietly, wistfully. He sighs then, the weight of it almost buckles Hob’s knees. Dream seems to ready himself, like he is expecting a great deal of suffering and is braving himself for it. He looks exhausted. Worn down. Won over.

Hob immediately dislikes that look, it speaks too much of Dream’s past. Too much of what had made Dream as closed off as he is. Too much of what hurt him so badly. Hob wants him to be…

“Very well, Hob Gadling.” Dream’s words distract Hob from his thoughts again “We shall speak of it further in the waking world, according to your wishes.” Dream looks away into the distance, his finger lingering on Hob’s lower lip, it’s cool. “I must go now, so long.”

He does not sat farewell. Hob’s mind centers around it. Between one eye blink and another, Dream is gone, golden sand scattering behind.

“What…?” Hob’s mind is already fuzzing into an incoherent haze of shapes and shadows, only distantly concerned with what just transpired.

Only vaguely he wonders if he should feel loss, or…not?

[heyclickadee]

Saw another “why would Tech even be interested in Phee” take out in the wild, so here’s a partial list of Phee’s many attractive qualities, because the double standard of every other character vs Phee is exhausting:

(Quick disclaimer—this isn’t me saying anyone has to like the ship. You don’t. It’s fine. Don’t ship things you don’t want to ship. Dislike the way it’s been written in the show if you want. Ship these two with other people or with no one if you want. I don’t care. This is just me being tired of people being weird about Phee):

1. She’s smart. She can improv her way through dealing with death traps and she’s got an area (areas) of expertise that Tech knows relatively little about. That makes her interesting. Also hot.

2. She’s gorgeous. Look at her. She’s ridiculously pretty.

3. She’s a great storyteller. Yeah, she changes her stories every time, but that’s at least part of why Tech is paying attention, because he notices that.

4. She’s a stone cold badass. And she’s a FUN stone cold badass. Disarmingly charming stone cold badass.

5. She’s a remarkably good person. She steals artifacts so that refugees can hang on to a bit of their culture in diaspora. This seems to be what pushes Tech from, “Oh, she’s interesting,” to, “OH. SHE’S BRILLIANT AND I MIGHT BE IN LOVE.”

6. She’s not nice, but she is kind, and that’s honestly a quality that she and Tech share. Phee isn’t soft, she’s not going to talk in therapy speak, she’ll push a little hard sometimes, but gosh darnit if she isn’t the person who would always stop to help someone with a flat tire (or respond to finding out some friends are broke, jobless, and on the run by immediately taking them back to her secret refuge so they can rest and recoup).

7. She’s incredibly direct and unafraid to speak her mind and…okay. This is going to get long. And I know some people will disagree with this, and that’s fine because everyone is different, and wants different things. But. Speaking personally from my point of view. The fact that Phee gives as good as she gets would be a really reassuring quality to have in a partner. I see a lot of myself reflected in Tech, but one of the many, many ways in which we’re very different is that I’m a consummate people pleaser, and Tech is very much not. At all. I don’t think he has a people-pleasing bone in his body.

But, here’s the thing—about half of my people pleasing comes from being terrified that I’ll say or do something that inadvertently hurts someone, and that person won’t just tell me or give me the chance to explain or make things right. And for how that relates to dating, I had people—friends and family—keep trying to set me up with incredibly shy men through most of my early twenties, no matter how many times I objected, because they had this perception that I was soft, wishy-washy, and needed to be treated with kid gloves. And…no. I’m opinionated as hell. I’m relatively confident about certain things. I just shut down my ability to project any of that because I was terrified of running roughshod over people without meaning to. But when I’m around someone who I know is willing to disagree with me, who I know will explain why, and who I know will push back if I take something too far? About 90% percent of my people pleasing and social anxiety evaporates. I know I don’t have to walk on eggshells around them—and that they aren’t going to walk on eggshells around me, either. They’re going to be direct about their issues and treat me like a freaking adult.

And, honestly, the fact that Phee doesn’t walk on eggshells around Tech (who also gives as good as he gets—Tech isn’t soft, nice, or shy and retiring; he’s confident as hell and he should be, because hot damn)—is. I don’t know. I like that she’s direct, and that she will recognize and pull back if she’s gone too far. This is projecting a bit, but, speaking personally, I would rather be with someone who treats me like an adult and tells me what’s up even if it’s uncomfortable than someone who never, ever tells me when they’re upset because they’re afraid of hurting my feelings and just lets me stew in social confusion all the time.

8. She can more than hold her own in a fight and she carries a sword around. That’s hot, I’m sorry.

9. Phee’s fantastic with Omega. She talks to her like she’s a person, she doesn’t ever shut Omega down, she’ll tell her stories, she’ll joke around with her, and she’s generally very respectful while also not holding her to the same standard she would if Omega were an adult. She’s even a little protective of Omega, even though Omega isn’t at all her responsibility. I think the moment that took Phee from ‘cool’ to ‘fantastic’ for me was towards the end of ‘Entombed’ while the Deadly Giraffe of Death was collapsing; Phee’s right there trying to shield Omega alongside Hunter. And. Like. Omega is Tech’s baby sister, he’s probably going to notice that how Phee treats her. Massive points in her favor for this.

[norahastuff]

There’s a lot to like about The Winchesters, but I think one of the reasons it hits so hard for me is that it solves my biggest problem with the finale. Personally, I don’t have a problem with tragic endings. The season 5 finale of Spn has a tragic ending, and I think it’s a wonderful feat of storytelling. Aside from the fact that 15x20 tried to pretend it wasn’t tragic and tried to make it seem like Sam and Dean standing alone on a bridge in Heaven was a happy ending, what I hated most about the finale was they had to flatten Dean into a two-dimensional caricature of himself to do it. Aside from maybe the revelation that Dean stood outside Sam’s apartment at Stanford for hours trying to psych himself up to go in because he was nervous Sam would turn him away, there was no moment in the episode that Dean felt like the complex, nuanced character we had come to know and love over the past 15 seasons. He had no desires or characterisation beyond pie, car and Sammy. There was no sign of all the growth we’ve seen from him, no hint of his own needs, wants or sense of self. I mean, he wasn’t even allowed to interact with his own heaven before Sam showed up. Even after his death, he was never allowed to have anything that was just his. 

Look, I’ve said all this a hundred times before – if you look at my 15x20 tag, it’s basically just this sentiment repeated over and over again – so why am I saying it again now? Well, because The Winchesters is fixing that. The mission Dean is on is all his. It’s not about Sam, or pie or whatever surface level bullshit that finale tried to boil Dean down to. He’s going back to the past, he’s meddling in something insane because he sees value in it, and in the process going on a journey to understand himself better. His narration makes it pretty clear that through this quest he’s learning to contextualise his own life and feelings better. The past presents the future, after all (full disclosure, that’s an Ugly Betty episode title that I just really loved and use far too often in casual conversation), and one of the biggest hang ups in Dean’s life was that he was given this mythologised version of events and expected to believe them. Mary was this perfect saintly mother who sat at home baking cookies all day before she was brutally, and through no fault of her own, ripped away from them. John was the perfect mild-mannered husband and father who only slid into anger and obsession after he lost his perfect wife. 

Eventually Dean realises that none of that is true. Mary couldn’t cook. She was a hunter. She was involved in the circumstances that brought about her own death. She was a complicated person, and in the end he got the chance to see that knowing the real her, flaws and all, was infinitely superior to believing the white-washed fairytale about the perfect martyr that John created after she died. There’s also the fact that John was never the perfect husband or father, even before Mary’s death. We get maybe one reference to that in Spn, how in Dean’s heaven in season 5 he remembers John and Mary fighting and John moving out for a few days, but not much else. The focus is very much on how John turned into a neglectful parent and an angry man after Mary’s death. But The Winchesters is working hard to dispel that lie. John always had this anger in him. Mary even calls him out multiple times on how he’s using her and their relationship as an excuse to avoid his issues. She straight up uses those words. There are also references to how raising your kids to be soldiers and being their drill sergeant rather than their parent is one of the worst things a parent can do to their child. 

Anyway, as interesting as it is to see all these things addressed in the Spn universe, what’s so damn satisfying is seeing Dean realise it. Dean’s on a mission to learn more about his past. To understand that our parents and where we come from shapes and moulds the people we become, but it doesn’t have to define us forever if we don’t let it. By accepting his past and finding out the truth about who his parents truly were, he can accept himself and move forward, free of whatever baggage that had been dragging him down for so much of his life.

And the greatest part about all of this, is that Dean’s the one driving this story. It’s not God, or his father or even his duty to take care of Sam which dictated so much of his life and his choices before. This is about Dean’s choices and who he is as a person and what he wants. It’s funny because as little as we saw John Winchester in season 1 of Spn, he was very much the spectre hanging over the story, and the search to find him is what drove much of the plot throughout the season. Much of what his sons were doing was in reaction to him. And now in The Winchesters, Dean himself is the spectre that’s been hanging over the season. He’s the one making the big moves and steering the action. He’s the one everyone, friend and foe alike, is looking for. He’s the one who gave John the note and put this whole thing into motion. After the ending of Spn took away so much of his agency and everything that makes Dean Dean, he’s finally getting it back and then some.

I’m excited to see how the season’s going to end, but I’ll forever be happy that this show gave us Dean being his own person again. He’s the one picking the music this time.

[rotzaprachim]

i don’t want to be overly essentialist or talk outside my cultural lane but... there is something so intensely not anglo-’murican about the way the way andor treats death and it’s so fascinating and refreshing. like on one level this is a show profoundly about death from the very structure of its narrative, but it’s about how you live knowing you will die rather than the glorious death-from-martyrdom-death-as-redemption narrative, and therefor, inversely, about the profound interconnections between the dead and the living and those on the liminal in-between. now we have maarva���s death, and the very introduction of her death comes through the assembled chorus of communal voices who have come to clean her house and take her to rest. (i also love the fact that maarva died, explicitly, of old age and so many of the other related issues. i don’t think you can make the case that the empire *wasn’t* involved because she’s someone so utterly and clearly destroyed by its actions, but i do like that this was a so-called “ordinary” death, because of the thematic purpose that even “ordinary” deaths are heartbreaking and awful and worth remembering.)

andor makes it canon that there are communal aid organizations- i immediately think chevra kadishas! though many cultures have their own organisations and social structures for how to support the grieving and honour the dead- which is just one of the ways it highlights community and the complexity of interpersonal relationships. the daughters of ferrix are introduced an episode earlier, and i realised on a rewatch with my family that the daughter of ferrix - keezy maybe?- introduced at the beginning of the episode is also mentioned by bee in the first episode as being someone who helps maarva with her dinner and medication. we don’t see maarva’s body go alone, we see her transported through the streets by the women of ferrix. andor makes the case of elder care as communal connection and antifascist work, AND that it is done by the same people as those that bury the dead. and the way that andor is building up t having the season finale be the funeral, the thing that drags cassian home and into the line of fire being his mother’s funeral, the storytelling possible about funerary customs and memorialisation as acts of cultural resistance and aggressive rehumanisation... i’m too verklempt to say much more but i think the way this thematic arc is so intertwined with cassian’s time in narkina 5 and the scene with him and melshi at the end of the episode like! no one is lovingly honouring every one of those men with two-day funeral ceremonies through the streets. NO ONE remembers but cassian and melshi. two episodes earlier ulaf died, but the closest thing he had to the daughters of ferrix was the doctor, the fellow prisoner, who refused to learn his name and quietly euthanised him in the hallway. until we know more there were nearly five thousand other deaths. and the episode ends with melshi saying, it’s our duty as survivors to carry the weight of memory so that other people will know and remember this. they are also carrying the weight of mourning those whose time it was not to die. fuck. this show guys. it has me 

[postmodern-blues]

A full live breakdown of my reaction and thoughts to the Variety interview because I feel like I’m going crazy.

- I fucking KNEW Reitman was going to reduce each cast member to one aspect of themselves. I FUCKING CALLED IT. Pretty sure I laid it out in a dm exchange with @mrs-jake-blues. Reitman, you goddamn bastard.

- “Like that Peter Jackson documentary about The Beatles- What was it like when certain songs were written?” Make a documentary then. What the fuck are you doing making a biopic style movie when you had access to all the people you wanted to interview. Tell the truth rather than making the story into a movie and the people into characters. I can’t tell you how excited I’d be if they were making a documentary about the first SNL episode.

- SO glad that Rosie Shuster’s actress got to speak with her directly. That is a comfort, in fairness.

- I’m still furious about who they picked for Gilda. Young hollywood beauty standards are a disease. They could have spent 2 extra minutes finding someone who was as interesting and distinctive as Gilda. someone jewish even

- “I wanted to talk to Lorne, but Jason didn’t think that was a good idea” what the fuck does that mean. Are you kidding me? Why??

- “The internet is very abundant” girl come ON

- “Oh, I didn’t have to meet him and I didn’t have to try and figure him out because he’s a different man” are you saying that people fundamentally and irreconcilably change as they grow older and more famous, retaining not even a spark of their former selves? Jesus Christ just one conversation man

- “One of the things that Jason was really clear about with us as soon as we got going was that we were trying to capture the spirit of this moment in time and the essence of these people at this moment in time” I don’t know man that just seems like a super weak excuse for why the still living members of the cast and crew weren’t more involved. Why does your movie have to be some kind of ultra special time capsule if the people it’s about didn’t really get a say in how they were portrayed?

- “We didn’t have to think about them ten years later or even think about them once they had been affected by fame” that would be much more interesting though. You know that, right? Because then you’d be forced to write and portray them as complex people rather than stock characters for your boy wonder self insert fantasy

- “We were representing them, not recreating them.” What???? It sounds like you’re doing the opposite, actually.

- “Being on set and seeing everybody in their wardrobe, it was like, oh my god these are like superheroes or like shakespearean characters that everyone is familiar with that we’re getting the honor to show our interpretation of” Okay if he’s talking about the actual CHARACTERS, like Emily Litella or the bees or whatever, FINE. But you can get the same thing just by putting on a conehead mask on halloween. But if he means the players?? Insane thing to say. They’re not characters, they’re people. Two of them died young. There is an excess of storytelling and mythology surrounding them, but they are in fact people. To call them characters and to claim you can have an “interpretation” on them is laughable. This is the kind of shit that gets biopics torn to shreds. You can’t just take the history of a living human person and reduce it to an acting exercise. You’re doing everyone a disservice.

- “Dylan’s voice is insane in this movie” Unbelievably offensive. At least I’m getting some confirmation that O’Brien is attempting a Canadian accent but girl wtf is wrong with you why would you say that? Dan Aykroyd actually sounds like that! It’s not insane; it’s his fucking voice! Christ alive

- “I did not do a lot” And there it fucking is folks. My worst nightmare made flesh. Every single fucking nitpicky thing I’ve said about this movie made manifest and validated in one little sentence. The guy playing the most interesting guy ever to grace showbusiness: Dan Aykroyd, who is a fascinating, multilayered, quirky, abundantly creative, unlikely genius, who has given us the greatest and most beloved films in the past century. He didn’t research to play that guy. I’m shaking with fury it’s just so unbelievable. And Reitman has a direct line of access to the actual living breathing human man! The man who, as author Daniel de Vise described, went so far as to offer the details of his route to school for de Vise’s newest book. Aykroyd would be willing to talk, I know it. Jesus H tap dancing christ I cannot even fucking believe it. Worst case scenario.

- “In that way, you followed Jason’s direction” die

- “The idea is to capture one piece of essence of the character. You can’t actually replicate a person.” Insane shit. I thought the idea was to capture a moment in time? This is just further solidifying my fervent belief that this could have been a documentary. A documentary can do WAY more and go WAY deeper than a movie with regard to historical stuff like this. ESPECIALLY when you have the people in question sit down and explain themselves. You can’t replicate a person, so why make them characters? Why not try your hand at documentary filmmaking instead of making this all about you, Reitman?

- “I was in terror that I’d ruin my career over trying to do this.” “Are you serious?” Okay at least Chevy’s actor gets what a big fucking task this is. Everyone else is acting like it’s no big deal to do no research and stumble your way through playing one of these people. At least he respects that this is a legacy worth PREPARING FOR

- “You spend a lot of time in this film watching these people not performing but living” GREAT POINT. ALMOST LIKE YOU SHOULD GET TO SPEAK WITH THE PERSON AND GET A SENSE OF THEIR VOICE AND MANNERISMS. HMMM

- I really respect Chevy’s actor right now actually. Not only did he go in depth with interviews trying to get a sense of Chevy as a person, but he actually seems to have picked up Chevy’s inflections and mannerisms and such in a way that is convincing. As someone who has watched a lot of Aykroyd interviews (as many as say someone playing him should) I can list specific vocal and physical habits of his for you in detail. I get the sense this guy could do that for chevy, that gives me a small sense of relief.

- Thank GOD Garrett’s actor got to speak with him. Garrett is fucking old, guys. Can you imagine if instead of a shitty poorly researched biopic starring bland young people, we could have an in depth and stylistically pleasant documentary starring all the still living people who were involved before a lot of them die?? Because remember most of them are in their 70s and 80s??

- If they make Garrett “the black one”… if they make his whole character about how he’s the only black guy. I’m literally gonna kill myself. Super inspiring guys. Great job. I don’t really have any reason to think they will but the way they talk about him just irks me slightly

- “He was going through a lot more than just having to perform” something you’d only know by talking to him, once again.

- “Jason was spot on with his writing” based on everything I have seen I am very much inclined to disagree. Jason doesn’t seem to give a shit about reality

- “The one thing I’m not going to do is I’m not going to watch any of the first season of SNL” from GILDA’S actress is CRAZY. How do you know what her characters and physical comedy are like then?? What the fuck that is so insane. Why would you do that??? My confidence in the quality of the Gilda performance just dropped back to zero.

- “Our dressing rooms were designed and catered for our characters’ personalities” weird as shit. Stop calling them characters.

- “There was this clip of Gilda that I had never seen before” Literally insane. Unfathomable.

- “Gilda was the fairy dust, Garrett was looking for his identity, Chevy is an ego that needs to be humbled, Aykroyd is this genius that’s like filtering a firehose through a straw, each one had like one thing to focus on that was their journey” Congratulations Mr. Reitman you’ve officially read the introductory paragraph of a 500 page book about SNL. Usually a sane person would finish that book before presuming to turn its subject into a movie. But fuck man whatever.

To be completely honest the thing that kills me is the smugness with which he delivers all of this. It’s like he feels entitled to this story because his late father was of the set that produced this era of comedy history. And Ghostbusters, I get. Ghostbusters is Ivan Reitman’s legacy, and it makes sense to pass it on to his son. I love the new Ghostbusters movies. But this is different, man. This isn’t yours. And everything about this interview and the promo just oozes with presumption. I truly believe that if he really gave a shit about telling this story in a way that was meaningful and paid hearty homage to the people involved, he’d make a damn good documentary. He has the connections to make it happen and the stylistic eye to make it memorable. It could be the next STEVE! (martin). But he chose to make a biopic comedy, and he chose to tell his actors not to research, not to speak with the subjects of their portrayals. And he seems to think it’s some kind of big flex that his actors don’t know shit about the 70 somethings they’re playing because “it’s just a moment in time”. Horseshit excuse, dude. This group of people matters to me. The complex dynamics and the internal grappling with fame and the comedic theses of each one (I mean, comedy MEANT something to Gilda Radner. She performed with purpose. To fail to watch the most famous examples of her prowess is absolutely inexcusable), it’s all important. And Reitman is acting like it’s not. All that’s important is that his name comes up in the same sentence as the legends he wishes he was. Fuck all the way off.

And seriously, I mean, I know I’ve been snarky about the Aykroyd portrayal without any real reason, given how little we’ve gotten of him, but the confirmation from the horse’s mouth that O’Brien barely did any research justifies all of it. Absolutely revolting development. My confidence in this movie (such as it was) has waned to absolute zero. I will not abide by this being how these people and this show are remembered. Congratulations, guys, you Bohemian Rhapsody’d one of the most important moments in comedy history. Exeunt.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Why I don’t Use the Great Wheel Cosmology

For those of you who might not know, “The Great Wheel” is a name given to the arrangement and relations of planes that’s provided for the “default” d&d setting, and is assumed to be going on in the background of 99% of all published d&d material. It arranges the planes in a looping sequence vaguely based off the alignment chart, with wordily embodiments of the most extreme forces of good, evil, law, and chaos existing at the cardinal points. Souls depart from the material plane and are drawn directly to whatever plane most aligned with their alignment, to either live on in an eternal state or to become outsiders of their particular domain.

Over the years that I’ve run this blog I’ve stated time and again my distaste for the great wheel cosmology, meting out my critiques in bits and pieces as they were relevant to whatever I happened to be writing about at the time. This has happened so much that I wanted to collect all my gripes in one place so I could link back on it instead of reexplaining myself each time. So without further ado, brace yourself for an opinionated nerd telling you his in depth opinions about something that absolutely does not matter: 

The whole point of a cosmology is to describe the natural order/structure of the universe, and the great wheel describes a universe that’s effectively just the christian dichotomy of heaven and hell with a few extra steps. It’s a fundamentally moral view of how the multiverse works, and makes “right” and “wrong” not only into objective facts, but a geography you can walk across, travelling from the most morally correct place to the most incorrect place with just a couple of protals. 

This system is painfully rigid, not only removing any nuance over whether a course of action is correct, but preventing any competing worldviews from even existing: you can’t have differing belief systems/schisms of faith when you can go out and see proof of the rightness of the great wheel. Much like with how d&d handles gods, this paradoxically removes the idea of “faith” from matters of worship, which to me removes the whole point of having gods in the first place, reducing the big questions around death into a moral assembly line with one of a select number of pre-determined outputs.

It’s no stretch to say that the great wheel is just the alignment chart canonized as a fundamental part of the game world, and while we’ve all grown past the fundimentally black and white morality of the alignment chat It still mystifies me that d&d uses the great wheel as a piece of worldbuilding upon which most campaigns are supposed to be set. 

This boggles my mind because d&d has a much better and simplier cosmology upon which campaigns can be set, one that makes no moral judgments and instead allows for the infinite creativity that the game is supposed to be all about. The astral sea is an infinite expanse of possibility, where worlds are spun together from thoughts and dreams paralleling the process of creation that goes into the act of storytelling itself. What better way to explain a multiverse that functions on narrative tropes more than it does physics? Where hope really can prevail against wickedness and rule of cool supersedes the dictates of fate.

To end with a couple of personal gripes, the great wheel is really kind of boring? As a selection of afterlives about half of them are idyllic natural landscapes with nothing really going on and the other half are unplesant caves/wastelands suffering some kind of fucked up weather event. Most of it is painfully eurocentric when it comes to visions of the afterlife, and those planes that DO stand out ( The crashing metal cubes of Acheron) are more weird for the sake of weird. 

I can’t help but focus in on how much the great wheel doubles down on the game’s weird hodgepodge of colonialist belief structures. While WOTC has hastily amended out “always chaotic evil” over the past couple years, they still set their material in a cosmology where creatures like orcs/goblins/gnolls are born evil, drawn to evil all their life, and are doomed to suffer eternally in various hells because “evil” is in their very nature. This isn’t good worldbuilding, it’s the authors seeking some kind of weird vindication for their own beliefs by creating a group of people they can feel morally justified in punishing, and we all know where that gets us.

[lavendermoonlitskies]

The nature of Aziraphale & Crowley’s relationship (Good Omens)

So I know I have like 30 followers and probably no one gives a shit what I think, but the internet’s the internet and it’s free to post on Tumblr so who cares

I have gone back & forth a bunch on what I think of the “discourse” (if we can even call it that?) surrounding Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship in Good Omens, and I think I’ve settled on something.

I am still very much for the “why does this criticism only seem to come up when the pairing in question is of the same sex (or played by actors of the same sex)” argument against the whole “why can’t they just be friends” criticism that comes up in response to a lot of queer media, however, I can see why it doesn’t necessarily apply here. At least not in the same way.

In the book, and subsequently in season 1, their relationship is entirely up to interpretation. The information we are given at that point about their past can absolutely either be seen as platonic OR the grounds for something more. I don’t think it’s wrong to say you think it’s one way or another. With the way that their relationship works at this point in the story, they have a lovely friendship and if that’s the point where the progression of their relationship ends, that’s all well & good.

However

Moving on to season 2, we get a little more. There are people saying that the romantic element that has been added kind of ruined it, and I would like to respectfully disagree with that. First of all, the surviving author of the original novel is directly involved with the writing, so I have to say I find it kind of hard to say that anything has been ruined when it’s still directly from the mind of one of the people who wrote it. He is writing it with what the two of them had planned originally in mind. (I believe he said at some point that season 2 is a sort of stepping-stone between the original book and the sequel that he and Terry had in mind)

Second of all, the romance didn’t exactly come out of left-field. As I said earlier, you can interpret their relationship in season 1 however you like, but the notion that their relationship may actually be more than just a friendship is an interpretation that was clearly explored in the second season. Neil Gaiman is not one to shy away from queer storytelling, so if that is the direction he wants to take it, that’s where it’s gonna go. It’s 2023, LGBTQ+ representation in media is far less taboo than it used to be, and so he has virtually no reason to filter their relationship into something that he doesn’t actually want it to be as the writer.

If you want my personal opinion, I think that season 2 being “quiet, gentle, and romantic” is foreshadowing for their relationship’s progression season 3, so I can definitely see the romantic undertones that have more or less been there the whole time (of course depending on how you interpret it) being brought out into the limelight. (I know he said that season 3 will most definitely not be those 3 things, but that’s not to say that none of those elements will be showing up at all)

All in all I don’t think it’s wrong or “homophobic” to interpret their relationship however you see it, but in terms of my own theories, I think that if the fact that the (once again quiet, gentle, and romantic) season 2 is a “stepping-stone” between seasons 1 and 3 is true, their friendship is evolving into something more.

[ihopesocomic]

Sorry for the mini-essay but I think people massively underestimate how much hard work and dedication goes into a Passion Project. People think that creators who make free content, who do their work as a hobby and not as a job, must only get enjoyment out of it.

That’s not how it works. Doing it purely because you want to doesn’t automatically make the more challenging, frustrating, or (gasps) TIME CONSUMING parts of the project any less burdensome. If anything, it makes it worse because you aren’t being paid for all of that labor. You’re just doing it for the sake of doing it, and as rewarding as it can be, it can also be demanding.

Im finally publishing a fanfic for the first time and don’t get me wrong, it’s been great to get feedback on my work and interact with a community. I love that there are usernames and profile pictures I can actually identify because they’re regulars on my work.

But does that mean I don’t have to constantly redo work because I don’t like how it turned out? No. Does that mean I always update on time? No. Never get burnout? No. I still very much go through all of the things paid writers do, because the Creative Process is difficult and demanding no matter what they paycheck is or isn’t.

And all of that is just if you guys WERE missing updates, which you’re NOT. So like… these complaints are not only very entitled and ignorant, but also just confusing. People really just be mad for the sake of being mad, I guess?

Anyways yeah, free content creators are still content creators, and passion-driven hard work is still hard work. You two are cranking out absolutely STUNNING visuals, compelling characters and engaging worldbuilding every single week and that’s amazing. Thank you for your hard work and I’m sorry about the twerps that don’t appreciate it enough!

Ah the price we pay for being human and having a brain, amirite haha

It's to be expected, to a certain point, that people simply don't understand that things like comics and cartoons take time. General impatience is something that can be ignored. If people asking for updates bothered us, we wouldn't post anywhere ever haha You gotta have at least SOME backbone if you want to do a comic. Or anything really.

Comics are a TON of work, and I knew this going in cuz I've done shorter comics before. It is not to be treated as if its easy. (Well, its easier than animating a whole series by yourself LOL) There's a lot of pre-comic planning that people don't tell you about. And that's just the stuff you have to do before you even start drawing. Of course this only applies to long-form storytelling, there's different rules for different kinds of comics.

And I won't even get into what it takes to making the comic itself, there's a lot of parts that need to be considered like formatting, time-management, what shortcuts you have to take to save on labor, and getting across as much information as you can in a short amount of time, while using mostly visuals. It's a skill, so it can be learned haha

A lot of doing comics is on-the-job training. Which I know can be frustrating for perfectionists, but from a reader's perspective, part of the joy of webcomics is seeing how far the art has come. And you can't exactly get out a webcomic if you keep redoing things over and over. You'll burn yourself out even faster. This is why it's important to have a plan lol it just makes it easier to adjust if you have to change things, than if you have no plan at all.

Even if RJ and I for whatever reason no longer felt passionate about this story, and wanted to move on to something else entirely, we wouldn't leave everyone hanging. We'd tell everyone what happens one way or another. Because too many people just abandon a story just to tell another one, and that's not fair to people who were here to read a story that appealed to them.

But the entitlement of people sucks, the constant heckling, the fact we can't moderate our own comment section, and more importantly Webtoons just sucks as a site anyway. - Cat

[bestworstcase]

Hello, long time lurker and fan of your analyses here. There is one thing that I've been thinking over in relation to how people in the fandom react to Salem, that I'm puzzled with.

I followed one blog because of their posting about a game, and the villain of the game have extraordinarily similar circumstances to Salem, and that got me reflecting...

Both of them had tragic circumstances (or at least, implied), both of them were "corrupted" by "dark creatures" and considered "evil" because of it, both were betrayed by loved ones and both had their faith in the gods shattered and rejected them and deride divinity, but I see that there is much more analyses, understanding and sympathy for the guy than for her.

He wasn't portrayed to be very sympathetic in the game (in fact, he wasn't that present, showing up mostly at middle-end) and most of his characther was informed by a movie and a dlc, and yet...

Why would that be? It is because gamers are more prone to sympathyze with villains? It's because Salem's a woman, or that people are more willing to see depth in video games than in animation? It is lack of media literacy?

Thank you for your time!

it’s gender. mostly

(*without knowing the other story it’s difficult to say how much narrative framing contributes to the disparity, but framing can have a significant influence; by this i don’t mean whether the character is portrayed sympathetically per se but more, whose perspective do we see? what details are given focus?

salem as a character has been kept extremely opaque—the lost fable is narrated from ozpin’s perspective so we don’t really know why she does anything, we only know why ozpin believes she did everything; to understand her v1/v3 soliloquies we need context given in v6 and arguably v9 before it’s possible to start piecing together what she’s really talking about / what she really means, etc—and that’s something rwby does on purpose, because it’s Making A Point about the power that storytellers have over their audiences, and truth being more difficult to come by than asking for just one side of the story.

which has the effect of making salem a difficult character. the thematic point the story is making with her character is that it is really, really easy to fall for dehumanizing propaganda if that’s the only source of information you have. to see beneath the surface with her you really need to pay close attention to what she says and does and be very skeptical of what other characters say about her, including the authoritative spirit of knowledge [i.e. you need to pick up on ruby only asking specifically for ozpin’s side of the story AND that it’s never stated by anyone that jinn’s answers are objective factual truth AND that the lamp probably works like the staff in that she answers the exact wording of the questions put to her]. because the narrative we’re getting about her is heavily steeped in in-universe propaganda designed to convince people that she’s an unreasonable, deceitful, supremely manipulative and malevolent, inhuman monster.)

<- but with that being said. fandom is always much more critical of female characters than male ones, and it tends to be much more difficult to persuade a fandom to dedicate this level of interest and energy to a female character than a male one. you can see this in action even within just the rwby fandom: compare the fan reception of raven vs taiyang, for example, with leaving her child in the care of two loving parents because she felt unable to take good enough care of yang being styled as the worst most horrid unforgivable thing a mother could do whereas letting his five year old "pick up the pieces" is often… flat out ignored in favor of headcanon that he’s the best dad ever.

or just the fact that the vast majority of the fandom regards the lost fable fight as "salem murdered her kids, ozma died trying to protect them" even though that is explicitly contradicted by what’s shown on screen with both ozma and salem being equally aggressive and oz having no idea what happened to those girls from the instant the fight began because he wasn’t thinking about them; they BOTH killed their kids in their fury at each other. but the fanon is that salem murdered her children on purpose in a vengeful rage and ozma was a good dad—in its most extreme form this becomes the Dadpin Nonsense.

(there is also an extremely funny talking point in dadpin circles to the tune of "if ozlem were gender-swapped no one would question that salem was abusive!" as if a) tauradonna shippers who scream and cry about blake being abusive don’t exist and b) dadpin people wouldn’t eat ozpin alive if he was a woman)

it’s complicated by the reality that salem does do a lot of very horrible things—terroristic attacks, enabling a serial killer by using him as her attack dog, her abusive treatment of cinder, everything she does to lionheart, sacking atlas, razing vale—and her moments of restraint or mercy are very easy to miss (she actively disguises her own release of her hostages in 8.9 for example) and again you have to be very attentive to detail to pick up on the fact that she cares about cinder. so it isn’t like she has an obvious "good side" juxtaposing all the atrocities, which means except for those who make a conscious decision to try to figure out what’s going on in her head while keeping an open mind, no one is going to see anything but the atrocities.

and again, fandom in general is a lot more willing to do that with male characters than female ones.

i think the clearest sign that It’s The Misogyny is the sheer amount of extremely widespread, extremely entrenched fanon there is about salem that is straight up contradicted by the text. her supposed "disdain" for humanity, for example; people act like it’s outrageous and nonsensical to suggest that salem thinks highly of humankind in the abstract (despite her indifference to individual people) even though… in both of her soliloquies she speaks quite highly of mankind… or her supposed "obsession" with magic, never mind that she barely uses "real" magic herself (most of what she does is Grimm Stuff, and she uses dust to make her grimm battlewhale fly) and never mind that she keeps flat out warning cinder that magic "comes with a cost." etc. this is a kind of flanderization driven by people disregarding what she says/does and mentally inserting generic villain tropes to fill in the gaps of story they miss by doing that, and then these ideas become memetically repeated often enough that they become the accepted lens through which everything she does is refracted.

(and that is how you get nonsense takes like "salem calls emerald’s semblance a semblance because she’s furious that this pitiful imitation of REAL MAGIC somehow fooled her, not because 'semblance' is what that kind of magic is called." this is why salem’s the only adult character who’s read as condescending and disdainful when she refers to the 17-19 year olds as children, even though all the older adults and some of the teenagers themselves do that. etc. there’s a preconceived notion that salem is disdainful of humanity and the text is bent to fit that reading even to the point of creating the absurd double standard that it’s… wrong for salem to use the same language used by every other character in the story?)

this kind of sexism is covert and usually subconscious; it emerges out of disinterest and an unexamined reflex to read female characters as less competent / less moral / less complex / less trustworthy / less rational etc. than their male counterparts, often with a side helping of blaming bad things male characters do on female characters instead. (eg see team rwby being blamed for things ironwood does in v7-8 by certain circles, or the constant "everything oz does is justified because salem evil" drumbeat).

watch how fast this fandom turns on summer rose once she turns out to be neither a martyred paragon nor a slave.

[thestobingirlie]

Hiii I would like to ask you a questioni because I really likes tour point of view on stranger things. Objectively, do you think there's any chance stancy is endgame?

these two asks are pretty much exactly the same, so i figure i’ll just answer them both in one lol!

so, from an objective standpoint i do think there’s a chance for stancy endgame. the duffers have proven before that they are capable and willing to break up a couple and push together another within one season (two if we’re including the season of flirtatious behaviour prior). if anything i’d say stancy’s chances are slightly stronger than jancy’s was post-s1. if only because s4 very explicitly laid out all the issues with jancy, while pushing stancy as a couple. whereas with s1, there’s nothing that really outright tells us that stancy would be having the issues they did in s2 (s2 had to demonstrate those issues, then break stancy up, while s5 wouldn’t be as confined to that for jancy).

i also think bringing back the love triangle just to completely disregard it the following season would be very weak writing. and that’s not to say that the duffers are the best writers in the world, but generally they seem to know what they’re doing. there’s a reason stancy was a couple at the end of s1 — it wasn’t solely a way to drag out drama but a real attempt at thinking about what nancy would’ve done as a result of steve surviving the season.

jancy was very clearly the original endgame. however, the duffers have shown that they’re willing to adapt from their vision for the sake of better storytelling. steve was supposed to die in s1. but they enjoyed what joe keery brought to the show as steve too much! all this to say, they’re not completely rigid in their writing. jancy being the og endgame, doesn’t mean they will be now.

from a slightly more emotional and personal standpoint, i do think stancy is the better endgame option. steve represents hope for nancy. freedom from her trauma, all the stresses that have been weighing on her for the last four seasons. while, right now, jonathan is knee deep in it all. he hasn’t even begun to pull himself out of it! let alone contemplate how to properly help nancy. he thinks ignoring her and pushing away his problems is the best way to deal with it, but we can see that it isn’t (if s2 stancy taught us anything lol). could jonathan grow out of that in the space of, what, five episodes? i don’t know.

steve’s development up to this point has taken multiple seasons. but he’s grown as a person. he’s learnt. his relationships have helped him become a more well-rounded person. the kind of person willing to prioritise nancy. to help her heal.

none of this means that stancy will definitely be endgame! because ultimately none of us know what the duffers are truly going to do. the fact that they’re willing to deviate from their original plans, if anything, proves that we can’t necessarily put all our eggs in one basket lol. but i do think they have a chance.

[ifthesewings--couldfly]

My Long, Spoilery Review for Inside Out 2

Despite me having decided to wait for Inside Out 2 to drop on Disney Plus before seeing it, the quantity of clips circulating on social media made it absolutely impossible to stay spoiler-free until the next three months or so, and since critique and public alike seemed to really like this movie, I decided I wanted to see the whole thing before I got spoiled for good. I know I probably played the Big Mouse Game by doing so and I’m not happy about it, but from a storytelling standpoint, Inside Out 2 did deserve to be enjoyed as a whole.

‼️ATTENTION SPOILERS AHEAD‼️

The movie is as good as everyone makes it out to be. The new emotions didn’t feel like they came out of nowhere like I initially thought (except for Nostalgia, which I found forced and mildly annoying) and the new concepts, like Riley's Sense of Self, are brilliant. One of my favorite scenes was Joy visiting the place where the Sense of Self is kept along with Sadness. I liked how the topic of Anxiety was handled in a non-clichy way, and how she wasn’t made to be the villain, but in the end, she turned out to care about Riley just as much as Joy and the other emotions did. The only reason why she bottled them up was why she genuinely believed they were getting in her way of helping Riley. The pacing of the movie seems a little fast as first, but the idea of setting it during a three-days hockey camp is the perfect timeframe for the story they wanted to tell: a new situation, but still, not one that could have consequences in the “real world” if you get what I mean. I found it to be the perfect scenario to tell how things that might seem “the end of the world” to us, in the end are not actually that serious. In the end, this isn’t one of those movies that makes you say “I like the sequel better than the original” but rather “this continuation is so natural, it feels like first and second movie are two parts of a whole.” Pixar is building a way more solid franchise than anything Disney has done recently - I consider the two studios two separate entities - and if this level of quality is being kept, I actually wouldn’t mind an Inside Out 3.

Now, for the things I liked less.

The emotions were too “personified” if this makes sense. I didn’t like the fact that emotions can somehow feel emotions themselves (e.g. Anger stating that “He can’t always be angry”, or Joy stating that it’s hard for her to be positive all the time). I didn’t also like the fact that emotions can apparently have feelings for each other. I perceived an unsettling intention of pairing up Riley’s emotions from the creators of this movie. Sadness with Embarrassment, Joy with Anger, heck even Fear with Anxiety (“I can change her”? Really?) I don’t know what the creators were trying to do here. Non-canon ships are fine, they’re the soul of every fandom, but when they’re being fed to you by the creators themselves, it comes off as weird. Disgust simping over Lance Slashblade was a fun gag, but trying to imply the emotions could get together as couples was really not. And speaking of forced things, I feel the inclusion of mixed-technique animation to be somewhat forced and proof that both Disney and Pixar are falling behind in terms of technical innovation. At this point, it’s clear they they are no longer the standard for Western animation.

My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5