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spockandawe · 4 years

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ANYWAYS LET’S TALK ABOUT THAT FISH BOOK

Okay, I finally finished the silly thing. I don’t know WHY i stalled out for so long, twice, but I DID IT. As of writing, Hanji is up to translating chapter ninety-something, but I finished on mtl because I have the patience of a toddler.

And... let’s see. I’m not going to rehash the entire plot when I’ve done that before, but I definitely enjoyed it VERY much. I enjoyed it most in the first half of the book, I think, when things are at MAXIMUM batshit levels. I was there for the chaos of an ancient chinese prince falling in love with his pet fish. I wanted things to be as ridiculous as possible for as long as possible.

To be clear, the book never stops being ridiculous, but it does get a lot more.... sedate and less-silly as it goes on. It makes sense, as the relationship is firmed up, the characters keep fewer secrets from each other, and Li Yu is established as a major part of this high-ranked nobleman’s household and is formally married to him. It’s only natural that there are fewer hijinks where he slaps the Emperor’s favorite concubine in the face, or foils assassination attempts by sneaking into Jing-wang’s bed.

The book did come... close to losing me for a while, probably somewhere around the 80% mark. I won’t go into too much detail, but spoiler warnings for the last major plot obstacle, and one of the side characters. So, after Jing-wang and Li Yu are married and come back to the capital, there’s attempted sabotage and then an attempted rebellion from inside the imperial palace. It gets thwarted, thanks in large part to Li Yu’s supernatural fish powers. After this point, Jing-wang’s path to the throne is pretty much locked in stone. But... there are some side characters who didn’t do anything wrong and got dicked over by the actions of the traitors. And then, there’s Chu Yanyu, who was Jing-wang’s spouse in the original novel, and who in this novel has been THOROUGHLY rejected.

(full disclosure: mu tianchi/li yu/chu yanyu ot3. will i explain myself ever? can i explain myself? we just don’t know, but i stand by it)

Anyways, Chu Yanyu had been held in limbo slash semi-prison at Jing-wang’s estate after the sixth prince (who he loved) handed him over as a gift. When Jing-wang went to go do military things, He was miserable. Chu Yanyu was freed, and returned to the sixth prince, who had just married a lady. Chu Yanyu was kinda jaded and was like ‘mmmmm, you could just give me to your dad as a gift’, and the sixth prince was like ‘really? :O’ and did so, though what they did was get the Emperor drunk and steer him towards Chu Yanyu’s room, so that when he woke up in the morning he thought he’d done something, and made Chu Yanyu a concubine because that’s the ancient emperor version of doing the right thing, I guess.

But after the rebellion, Chu Yanyu realizes that even if he tried to win the Emperor over, the Emperor is getting old, and after he dies, what is Chu Yanyu going to do with himself? Live in seclusion forever? He’s still young, with his whole life ahead of him?

So... he tries to get ahead by sabotaging Jing-wang and Li Yu. Which, dick move, bro. But also, the things he says aren’t WRONG. Chu Yanyu makes some VALID POINTS. But the others see through his plan and make him look like a liar anddddd then he gets beaten sent to the Cold Palace, where he has no allies to support him, most of his valuables get stolen while he’s injured from the beating, and then he can’t afford decent medicine and his face and one of his legs don’t heal right. and he has to eat candles because he doesn’t get enough food. THE END. (for chu yanyu). So that...... upset me! I was not stoked about that! And the story then steered itself towards ‘it sucks that widowed women are shamed out of remarrying, can we fix that?’ which, slightly uplifting i guess, but not the wacky hijinks I signed up for.

Fortunately, the book ends on a DELICIOUSLY wacky note. I’m going to continue calling it fishswap, because homestuck is buried deep in my brain by now, but Li Yu finishes the main quest the system gave him, and gets the opportunity to visit his original home for two days. The kids are still too young to safely bring them all, so he brings...... Jing-wang. But he wakes up in his house with no husband there, and has to go looking for him. He doesn’t find him as a human, though. You’ll never guess what animal Jing-wang is. You’ll NEVER GUESS XD

Anyways, that was legit delightful, and reminded me of everything else I love so much about this book. Because I do really love it! It’s so much fun, even if it does get less balls to the wall crazy as time moves on. It’s such a BIZARRE premise, and I’m still genuinely + pleasantly surprised that such a wild idea was written out in a way that was so sincere and silly at the same time. The end of the Chu Yanyu storyline will never not depress me, but there is a LOT of very, very sweet other stuff in the book that brings me joy. Even when the children show up, they’re not the same kind of madcap fun that you had at the beginning with just Li Yu and Jing-wang, but they bring a different and charming blend of humor to the table. So I recommend it a lot! I plan to keep following along with Hanji to see everything I missed through an mtl lens, and I plan to keep recommending this book to people until they tell me to shut up XD (my friend did recommend a different book to me the other day, and apologized for it not having any fish romance in it, and i was like GIRL, PLEASE, I HAVE STANDARDS)

#the disabled tyrant's pet palm fish #long post/#cnovel rec

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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How Malignant’s Monster Calls Back to Stephen King

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This Malignant article contains spoilers.

Malignant has a twist so wild you need to see it to believe it. Seriously, stop reading right now if you have even the faintest interest in watching James Wan‘s latest horror offering. You really don’t want to spoil this for yourself. Sure, you’ll either really love or absolutely hate the movie’s batshit third act, but the experience of watching the twist for the first time is worth the price of admission.

If you have watched the movie, maybe you left as astonished as I did. After all, the first two thirds of the movie play like a standard giallo-inspired slasher film before things go completely off the rails. You might say that some of the clues were there all along — indeed they are, maybe you saw this coming from a mile away — but when you thought you’d put it all together, did you really expect Wan to go through with something so ridiculous? I certainly said, “No, that can’t be it” to myself midway through the movie when the clues started adding up. It’s a new direction for Wan to be sure…

But Wan’s first trip into a new sub-genre of horror isn’t necessarily without outside influence. There’s a bit of David Cronenberg mixed with hints of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but for the most obvious inspiration you have to look to the King of Horror himself.

Before we talk about Stephen King, you might be wondering what the hell was going on with Gabriel in the first place.

Gabriel Origin Explained

Safari Riot’s cover of the classic Pixies song “Where Is My Mind” seems so out of place when it first blasts through a scene in the movie, an over-the-top accompaniment to what seems like your standard slasher flick, but it’s actually incredibly appropriate — not just for the massive tone shift but the plot itself. (“Where Is My Mind” is also the iconic tune that accompanies the final scene of Fight Club, another tale of split personalities.) Madison’s (Annabelle Wallis) mind has been playing tricks on her (and the audience) the entire time. She thinks her creepy childhood imaginary friend Gabriel has somehow taken corporeal form and started murdering everyone who had a hand in “separating” him from her. But little does Madison know that the separation was much more literal than her simply forgetting a figment of her imagination when her baby sister Syndey (Maddie Hasson) was born.

It’s Sydney who discovers the truth when she goes back to the institution where Madison spent her early childhood before being adopted by their mother Jeanne (Susanna Thompson). In the basement of the abandoned Simion Research Hospital, Sydney finds the harrowing tapes that reveal Madison’s past with her “imaginary friend.”

Madison was born Emily May to a 15-year-old girl named Serena (Jean Louise Kelly as an adult, Madison Wolfe as a teen) who is forced to give her away to the institution by her mother due to Emily’s…medical condition. In a stunningly gruesome sequence of body horror, we learn that Emily was born with a parasitic twin attached to her head and spinal cord, which allows it to control her movements and thoughts. The doctors at Simion at first diagnose Gabriel as a “massive teratoma,” a malignant tumor that can grow with fully developed organs and tissue, but as we see in the movie’s opening sequence, they soon learn that this is something much worse and decide to cut him out off of Emily for good.

But they can’t get rid of Gabriel completely. Because the siblings attached at the brain, the doctors are forced to remove as much of Gabriel as they can, hiding what’s left inside her skull. Of course that means that Gabriel never truly goes away. He continues to speak to Emily, now Madison, from inside her head, at one point almost convincing her to kill Jeanne while pregnant with Sydney.

While Madison eventually forgets her “imaginary friend” as an adult, Gabriel returns after Madison’s piece of shit husband Derek (Jake Abel) brutally slams her head against a wall during an altercation. (Let’s just say I’m glad he’s dead.) The injury reawakens what’s left of Gabriel, who can reemerge through her head wound to control and contort Madison’s body and go on his killing spree. Madison experiences these murders as visions, as she watches her sibling slash his way through all the doctors that tried to destroy him as well as the mother who gave him away in the first place. Madison’s only able to stop him after he’s already massacred a police station full of cops and prisoners and made his way to the hospital to kill Sydney and Serena. Using the mental link she has with Gabriel, Madison manages to lock her sibling away, promising that next time he reemerges, she’ll “be ready for him,” setting up an inevitable sequel and a new horror franchise for Wan.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Gabriel and the Dark Half

Constant Readers will undoubtedly spend the weekend pointing out that Gabriel’s plot to control his sister in order to go on a murder spree is very reminiscent of one of Stephen King’s most famous books and movies, The Dark Half. The book and the movie directed by the late, great George A. Romero tells the story of Thad Beaumont (played by Timothy Hutton in the film), a writer of literary fiction in a bit of a slump by day. But he has a far more successful career by night as the author of dark crime novels under the pen name “George Stark.” Yet, the success of his Stark books feels like a curse to Thad, who is driven to heavy drinking and other vices when “the spell” of Stark’s prose. Now, a recovering alcoholic, Thad wishes to leave Stark behind and just write the literary fiction his agent and editor deem “boring.”

When the truth about Thad’s pen name comes out, the writer sees the perfect way to bury his career as George Stark once and for all — by throwing his pseudonym an actual funeral at the local cemetery. But Mr. Stark doesn’t like that very much. Thad’s pen name inexplicably “rises from the grave” to kill everyone he blames for his death — Thad’s editor, agent, and more.

You’re probably thinking it was Thad all along, but this is more than just another case of split personalities. Like in Wan’s latest, Stark was once actually very real, the sibling Thad absorbed in utero…except for a couple of teeth and an eye living inside of Thad’s brain. The “tumor” is removed from Thad’s head as a child, but he’s somehow unknowingly kept the spirit of his sibling alive through the books he writers, undoubtedly under Stark’s dark influence. It’s the kind of gory, supernatural twist King is best known for, and Wan sets out to celebrate the book with style. Mind you, this obviously isn’t a direct adaptation of King’s work but more like a spiritual successor to the book that pushes the plot much further into the ridiculous than even the writer did in 1989. Leave it to Wan to dream up an action sequence where a backwards (literally), contorting serial killer stabs his way through a building full of people to the sound of shredding guitars.

Even if you think Malignant‘s third act twist is an absolute mess, I’d argue it’s at least an interesting mess, a daring experiment in a corner of the horror genre we’ve not seen enough of in the past few years. Will this experiment lead to a new movement in body horror movies just as Saw for better or worse inspired years of “torture porn” movies and The Conjuring brought us the horror expanded universe? That remains to be seen. At the very least, Malignant is the kind of movie you’ll want to debate about with your friends as you exit the theater, even if it’s just to say you absolutely hated the twist. Aren’t you at least glad you saw it for yourself? The twist just isn’t as good on paper.

Malignant is out now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.

The post How Malignant’s Monster Calls Back to Stephen King appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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watchmakermori · 5 years

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so I finished The Lost Future of Pepperharrow and I would like to YELL™

(spoilers obviously lmao)

I feel like this book is the beautiful combination of the warmth and softness of Watchmaker and the PERIL of The Bedlam Stacks and it works?????? incredibly well????? even though I liked The Bedlam Stacks, I felt like I struggled to visualise the setting far more than I did with Watchmaker, perhaps because I was just less familiar with it. however, im REALLY glad to say that Pepperharrow was just as vivid and beautiful as Watchmaker, if not more so.

I loved the soft, almost localised conflicts in Watchmaker, but I really adore how Pepperharrow took the whole concept of clairvoyance and explored the broader implications. Of course people would want to replicate Mori’s ability. Of course they’d want to abuse his ability in matters of war. It felt like it had a realistic amount of scope while also keeping the character-driven heart that made Watchmaker so good

the whole concept of past and future ghosts....light fossils.....imprints of intention......it’s so fuckin on brand. I loved it, even if I did guess that was what was going on fairly early on. I just adore how natasha pulley goes for the most absolute buckwild ideas (clairvoyance, moving statue people, floating explosive wood, ghosts) and rationalises them in this nitty-gritty way

the fact that owls have a minor precognitive sense is just another batshit implication of this novel and I’m absolutely in love with it

mori being angry with arthur conan doyle for reasons he can’t remember absolutely had me howling.

when the ghost dinosaur showed up I was YELLING

holy FUCKING shit she went hard with the Thaniel and Mori content in this book. we hungry bitches have been fed. highlights include:

every fucking time they called each other by their first names. I almost passed out when Thaniel first called Mori ‘Kei’. I almost passed out every time following

Thaniel!! Pining so hard!!! The fact that they’ve been living together for four years and yet neither one of them has ever fully understood just how in love the other is with them. the sheer relief thaniel feels when mori kisses him back after returning from Russia made me want to cry

“how’s that watchmaker of yours?” Fanshaw totally fucking knows that mori and thaniel are in love, he’s just a real one. you can’t change my mind

Mori knocking Kuroda off his horse and saying ‘should’ve held on’ was the biggest dick energy moment I’ve ever witnessed

thaniel’s jealousy towards takiko...........

the flashback to them sleeping on the floor together at Filigree Street at Christmastime......tender handholding..........soft...

the fact that when mori and thaniel first show up in japan everyone just seems to be looking at thaniel like ahhhh so THIS is your trophy husband

“Isn’t that what impoverished young artists usually do with old millionaires who fall in love with them?”

the whole fucking ending.....mori really went through all that shit and arranged everything so daringly and carefully just to give thaniel (and thousands of others) a chance at a long and happy life...fuck all romance except what these guys have I stg

on a similar subject, while I really liked the subtlety of thaniel and mori’s relationship in Watchmaker, I am so grateful to Natasha Pulley for making it more explicit in Pepperharrow. it’s undeniably canon in the first book without being some annoying plot device to illustrate the homophobia of the period, which is wonderful. that said, the threat of discovery was handled really well in Pepperharrow and felt like it had a proper bearing on the characters’ behaviour. it felt like it deepened Thaniel’s character, too. that moment where he tells takiko that he doesn’t know what he’d tell his sister if she found out about him and mori made me ache.

Six!!! is a delight!!!!! It seems to me that she’s coded as autistic, but I just loved how lively and odd and loving her character was. the mature, respectful way that both thaniel and mori behave towards her was so nice to see

takiko was a fucking feral delight. I ache for what she did for mori, but her whole character was so strange and incongruous and alive. she felt incredibly unique, and I love how brash she was.

it’s pretty fucking amazing that, even after the first book and all of grace’s doubts, this book still managed to make me doubt mori all over again. I really felt takiko’s conflict over him, and finding out the truth about countess kuroda felt like a huge weight had lifted from my shoulders. the fact that that the whole plot and everything mori does is just to give people (thaniel included) a fighting chance against the disease that would’ve killed her was an unexpected but really satisfying twist

also: grace!!!!!! I’d actually have loved to see more of her, but considering that I didn’t expect to see her at all in this sequel, I’m really glad she played a role. I wish I could’ve seen matsumoto more. I love that dandy idiot bastard

kuroda was really interesting. his dynamic with mori is fascinating??? the sort of begrudging respect but bitter rivalry they have?? the countess is definitely right that kuroda is a bit in love with him. all that shit about thinking he’s a death god?? sounds gay to me fellas

this was one of the things I loved about Watchmaker, but god bless natasha pulley for writing historical fiction without feeling the need to make the dialogue stiff and overly-formal. even though the time period is victorian/meiji, the characters feel as bristling and alive as anyone in a contemporary story. I also love that she decided to represent the uncouth and coarse side of japanese, which isn’t seen that often in fiction - definitely remember to read her notes at the end of the book where she explains her reasoning for that! It’s really interesting

I just want to thank her again for giving mori a green scarf in response to my fan art. what an absolute star. she’s made my entire year. i’m high-key low-key in love with her

I also want to thank her for giving mori and thaniel a happy ending. as a writer myself, I’m a big fan of bittersweet and even grim conclusions, but there are times when giving the reader the happy ending they long for really is the bravest and boldest choice. knowing that I can go away and imagine a long and cosy life for thaniel and mori brings me so much delight. I’m going to miss these boys beyond measure

#im so emotional #the end of the book gave me the big shivers but in a happy way #the lost future of pepperharrow #the watchmaker of filigree street #keita mori #nathaniel steepleton #grace carrow #takiko pepperharrow #natasha pulley

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farmerlan · 4 years

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Farmer Lan’s Rewatch Guide to The Untamed - Episode 1

HERE WE GO I am strapped in with my Topo Chico and ready to take on Episode 1 of The Untamed. It’s going to be wild. I have no idea what I’m doing. If you’re reading this and have a better suggestion on how I should format everything, feel free to tell me because right now this is just the diary of a madwoman.

CAUTION: Due to the chronological differences between the novel and the drama, there will be instances where I bring in references further along in the novel and/or drama to explain what is going on, so there will be spoilers if you haven’t finished the series.

[Starting scene – there’s a voiceover of people rejoicing over WWX’s death, we see a chaotic battlefield and people fighting over the Stygian Tiger Amulet (here forth abbreviated as the STA because abbreviations are my jam). WWX commits suicide by falling off a cliff, LWJ tries to stop him and then JC sends him to the depths of hell. Flash to the present when some storyteller is narrating this story, and we’re told 16 years has passed since the Nightless City incident and WWX is seemingly gone forever – although his body has never been recovered despite extensive search efforts.]

Differences from the novel:

In the novel, there is no mention of clans trying to fight over the STA during the bloodbath at Nightless City. It’s definitely true that the existence of the STA and WWX’s unchecked power led to the actions of the Nightless City, but it was a combination of multiple events that led up to the battle, and not an explicit cause and effect.

It is also explicitly stated during Chapter 1 as people recount the tale of WWX that he destroyed the STA prior to his death.

In the novel, it is stated in Chapter 1 and confirmed by WWX himself (in Chapter 43) that WWX’s death was caused by his own power rebounding upon him and he ended up being torn apart by his own undead creations. So unfortunately the epic cliff scene was entirely scripted for the drama.

13 years has passed in the novel vs. 16 years in the drama. I can’t remember if there was an exact reason why they switched up the timeline, but just know that the timeline of the novel series of events itself is also very confusing and I will probably do a post with my take on it sometime later.

[Cut to present – WWX is summoned by MXY’s sacrifice, there’s some weird mask action going on, WWX creates a ruckus at the arrival of the Gusu disciples, they set up shop with the Demon Summoning flags, tell WWX to go wait inside and then they wait for the spirits to come their way.]

Differences from the novel:

The mask does not exist in the novel. In the novel, the body that WWX is summoned into is that of MXY’s, and MXY is a different person in every way from WWX in terms of face, height, etc. So everyone who sees WWX thinks he is MXY up until he finally reveals himself. It’s obviously a stylistic choice made to reflect why no one can recognize WWX in the drama series even though they are played by the same actor, because otherwise I can see how it can get confusing for viewers.

WWX is shown to be playing the WangXian melody in the room but this does not happen in the novel, although it does lead to a pretty epic snark from my favorite boy LJY about how awful WWX’s playing is (which IS in the novel, but happens later in the story instead). WWX does NOT use a flute at all until the Da Fan Shan arc in the novel. Also Jingyi, never stop being you.

It is not explicitly mentioned that MXY went to Lan Ling Jin sect in the novel at this current point, only that he was accepted as a disciple by a sect before being kicked out. We find this out later.

Other than that, the scenes with MXY closely follows the novel up until the Demonic Left Arm (DLA) to show up.

[WWX is hauled in to confess his crimes by Matriarch Mo, things go to shit in about 3 seconds and the disciples realize they need to call for backup STAT, the flare for LWJ is sent. WWX realizes this needs to end fast in order to avoid meeting LWJ and exposing himself. A-Tong becomes possessed by the DLA, dies, and then the DLA possesses Matriarch Mo. Attempts to restrain her fail and WWX revives the other now-undead Mos to fight her.]

Differences from the novel:

The sassy verbal takedown of Matriarch Mo by WWX is indeed in the novel and just as great.

The drama identifies the black marks on the victims’ necks as being caused by the STA. There is no such scene in the novel. Basically, there is no mention of the STA being the cause of ANY of this, because in the novel, it’s not.

In the novel, the disciples send flares for back up but are uncertain how quickly back up will arrive, and they definitely did not specifically call for LWJ. However, WWX realizes he needs to intervene to end this quickly because the spirit is too powerful for the disciples to deal with, and he can’t leave the Mo household until the revenge curse put upon him by MXY is lifted (i.e. until everyone MXY wants dead is dead).

A funny scene that gets left out of the drama is: Matriarch Mo leaps to attack LSZ, who can’t dodge in time. Instead, WWX literally KICKS LJY into her path because he knows that the Gusu robes are imbued with magical protective spells, so he basically used LJY as a human talisman as a last resort. LJY did not find this funny, and WWX plays the “I didn’t do anything, I have no idea what I just did and I can’t be held culpable because I’m batshit crazy” card. Ah, my boys.

[LWJ appears just as Matriarch Mo appears to have gotten the upper hand, and subdues her with the POWER OF MUSIC dundun (also sensually massaging the guqin strings helloooo). WWX is hiding but HE IS HERE for all of his boo’s actions. LWJ clarifies that the DLA is a spiritual sword ghost with traces of the STA, everyone gasps because didn’t WWX die? OR DID HE NOT? Time will tell, my friends. Anyway, with the DLA subdued for now, LWJ hears the footsteps of WWX running away and chases after him but sees nobody. He thinks….”WEIYING IS IT REALLY YOU??” WWX A MYSERIOUS PERSON (to be revealed...but OK it’s NHS I told you there would be spoilers) gives money to the storyteller, and then we see WWX with Little Apple and he has one more wound left on his arm, indicating there’s someone else he needs to kill on behalf of MXY.]

Differences from the novel:

In the novel, WWX leaves the moment he hears LWJ’s guqin and does not stay to spectate.

See above re: no mention of what caused this, and certainly no discussion of the STA.

There’s no mention of LWJ suspecting that it is WWX in MXY’s body, or even suspecting that he has returned at all.

In the novel, the four wounds left as a physical reminder of the body count for the revenge curse is for the three members of the Mo family and for A-Tong. Therefore, WWX leaves the Mo family effectively free of his debt to MXY, but in the drama, he is shown to still have one remaining person left to kill…dun dun dun.

Storyteller man is not around in the novel – consider him a convenient voiceover tool for the drama ha. Thanks to the @redisthecolouroffate for the catch, I missed this but this is also the episode where NHS first shows up to reward the man for his storytelling, which is a nice bit of foreshadowing done by the show which is not in the novel at all.

Overall Thoughts

The drama does a really good job of setting the tone from the beginning. There’s not too much deviation here compared to the first five chapters of the novel (which covers this whole Ep 1 arc) since the majority of it was to set up the premise for the show and introduce our main characters.

The main difference here is we can see the drama is already setting itself up for the STA to play a much bigger role than in the novel. In the novel, our protagonists really have no idea what is behind the DLA at this point, and they certainly don’t immediately assert that it is a ‘sword ghost’ that has been tainted by the STA. In the novel, the only explanation for the DLA at present is in Chapter 5, when WWX notes that the spirit is more powerful than most, given that this spirit has already claimed three lives in the span of a few hours. WWX also deduced that this was the arm of a person who died by dismemberment, and to summarize the novel, the ghost arm is effectively trying to find the rest of its body. Until then, it moves between ‘live hosts’ like a parasite.

Also – WWX is also noted to be wearing badly applied make up in the novel but not in the drama. It is clarified in Chapter 1 that MXY was homosexual and was kicked out of his cultivation sect as he harassed a fellow male disciple and is now basically a gay lunatic, which is unfortunately not a great look in ye olden days.

Lastly, cute tidbit in the novel in Chapter 3 that didn’t make its way into the drama – WWX secretly marveled at LSZ’s knowledge and manners, and wondered “Who in that godforsaken, old-fashioned place (referring to the Cloud Recesses) could have brought him up/taught him so well?” OH YOU’LL FIND OUT WHO HA.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #lan wangji #wei wuxian #the untamed #魔道祖师 #episode 1 #it's about to get crazier #cql #recap

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sarpazoa · 3 years

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tw incest + abuse mention, spoilers for ep 16 and after:

yo fuck this fujo scriptwriter... i mean idk wtf i was expecting but i just watched these yt videos on “uncovering” what was actually said in shl when the actors were acting (pre-dubbing) bc apparently ppl have lip-read (?!) and figured out what was in the script at that stage. and like :^| yeah the original novel was prob fujobait but so many of the lines that were changed are so overtly sexual for no reason instead of just explicitly romantic like i thought it would be :^\ i genuinely liked the dialogue... obviously the nuances in wordplay and everything are really impressive (and inevitably go over my head bc i don’t know the language 😔) and with gong jun + zhang zhehan’s chemistry it’s rly a delight to watch but that was so. their romance is v much not subtext in the show which is rly cool but like did there have to be that many innuendos lol! why are u so fucking obsessed w how two fictional men have sex seek fucking help u homophobic weirdos... ugh

also i haven’t read tian ya ke and i don’t particularly feel a desire to do so even tho i’m obsessed w shl but apparently the side characters are much more developed in the show than in the book including the relationships that they have with other secondary characters some of which were invented for the drama. which brings me to what really made me uncomfortable: there were lines initially that implied scorpion king has a “romantic”/sexual relationship with his father, zhao jing (who i didn’t even realize was his adoptive father until the video designated it as a very important distinction. like im abt to start mauling u) that were dubbed over to not make this... dynamic 🤢... as apparent. and this was also a drama-only addition. like god wtf !

why is this kinda shit so fucking popular in these freak circles like why is incest so romanticized like this! it’s literally ridiculous there was no reason to add in this aspect to their already toxic relationship other than for fetishizing it as some taboo/”forbidden love” crap. seeing the lady talk about this in the video... it’s clearly not viewed by fujos (or whoever their target audience was for this) as scorpion king having been and continue to be abused by his father, and i don’t have enough faith in this scriptwriter to assume that this topic is going to be gradually explored in an authentic and meaningful way or something. i just hope xie’er kills him

ik the actors (probably 😞) didn’t play their roles like that bc i saw smth abt zhao jing’s actor being disgusted at ppl sh*pping them on weibo BUT THEN growing to be supportive of it along w scorpion king’s actor LIKE Y R U LETTING UR BATSHIT FANS CONVINCE U THAT THIS IS OK... it’s just plain fucked up please just stick to ur initial instinctual response to this wtfdghdgjdshd like now that shl is super popular and the actors have gained a lot of recognition i know they have to maintain like a tolerant attitude to all of this crazy shit so their images are good but man i wish they’d just tell ppl off for this shit... zhang zhehan being asked in interviews what he thinks abt being called laopo/wife... and him just being like [sigh] whatever makes y’all happy like king i am so sorry. these fujo fans r a disease and maybe these adaptations should’ve never been created. we need to kill bl and gl labels and the ppl that write for them i’ve had enough i’m doxxing the scriptwriter and just completely eviscerating them i hope u reincarnate into a dung beetle

#🥬#just ranting -__-#also ik a couple of u are watching/planning to start watching so lmk if u want me to tag spoilers in a certain way or if it’s enough that i #tag them as shan he ling if u already have like the whole show blacklisted or smth

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sammysreelreviews · 5 years

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Counting Down My Top 20 Films Of The Decade: Part 1

Ok so I wanted to include pictures for all 20 films so I broke the decade list into two parts! The second part will have a way longer and more sentimental intro but I’m lazy so this one is gonna be short. If you want to read my other decade lists you can read all the television ones here, here, and here AND you can catch my previous movie ones here, here, and here! Hope you enjoy the list these movies are films I’ve seen over and over again and I know you’re gonna scratch your head at a few of these but hey I like what I like okay?! As always *THERE WILL BE SPOILERS!!!*

20. The Kissing Booth (2018)

Yes you read that right I indeed put Netflix’s The Kissing Booth on my decade list. Why you ask? Well because it’s literally the perfect movie to put on for background noise, it’s cheesy as fuck which I love, and Jacob Elordi is a fucking smoke. DEAL WITH IT!

19. Project X (2012)

Project X has a special place in my heart because it came out when I was my wildest in college. It’s a party movie that never stops the momentum and honestly has one of the best soundtracks like ever. Also the car in the pool is just fucking legendary.

18. Assassination Nation (2018)

This may be one of the most underrated films fucking ever!? The story about a town that goes batshit after everyone’s internet history is exposed is wild from start to finish. The film focuses on four besties (Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef, Odessa Young, and Abra) who have each other’s backs when the town turns against them. Bella Thorne, Bill Skarsgard, and Cody Christian are also in this! I started to write a think piece on this movie cause I really think it says a lot about today’s society but maybe I’ll finish and release it in 2020! If you’re a woman please watch this movie! Also did I mention that, Sam Levinson the creator and writer of Euphoria, also wrote this! If you love how batshit Euphoria is this is that times ten!

17. Thoroughbreds (2017)

I only saw this movie cause it was the last movie Anton Yelchin (RIP my king!) was in and even though he had a small part in this dry dark film became one of my favorites. Besides Anton being perfect, Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke give fucking brilliant performances as ex besties turned partners in crime. If you like Gossip Girl, dry humor, and murder this is the movie for you!

16. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

I knew Leonardo DiCaprio was a phenomenal actor but I didn’t really get to see his full range until The Wolf of Wall Street. Leo is always acting serious on screen and in my experience and opinion it’s easier than being genuinely funny. Comedy is hard cause you either have it or you don’t but boy did Leo have it in this one. This movie is long but every fucking scene is bonkers. My favorite might be the fight Margot and Leo have the morning after he comes home drunk in his helicopter. “YOU WOKE UP SKYLA!” Iconic, truly. My fellow film buffs may fight me but I honestly think this is one of Scorsese’s best.

15. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Christopher Nolan was absolutely in his motherfucking bag when he was given the job to direct a Batman trilogy. There’s been so many god damn Batman movies but none of them hold a candle to any of Nolan’s and the third installment had a lot to live up to after The Dark Knight but boy did it rise to the occasion. Bane (Tom Hardy) was a super villain who people still do impressions of and Anne Hathaway does not get enough credit for her rendition of Catwoman! Ok before I forget, Joey King is in this movie but in the flashbacks you think she’s someone else and she wasn’t famous then but I knew who she was so I knew the twist at the end of the movie. Sorry I had to get that out there. Any who, no one has made a superhero franchise, besides Into the Spiderverse, that good well like ever! And no one has ever made a third movie in a series that fucking good like, ever.

14. The Duff (2015)

The movie based on the best selling YA novel was the last great teen rom com we had in YEARS before Lady Bird and Booksmart happened. I mean it’s actually fucking hysterical and I feel like it’s vastly underrated. I personally saw it because I stan miss Bella Thorne, who is excellent in it may I add, but I think everyone should watch The Duff I HIGHLY recommend it!

13. Love, Simon (2018)

Fun fact, I saw Love, Simon in theaters THREE times. Did I cry every time i saw it? Yes. Did I see it because I have a thing for Nick Robinson? Yes. Did I write a review for it that you can read here so I don’t have to talk about it for a 4th time on this blog? Yes. Watch this godforsaken movie and if you want more LGBTQ+ movies to watch check out this list of my absolute favorites here.

12. About Time (2013)

About Time is the best rom com of the 2010’s. PERIODT! Ok I was gonna end it there but honestly guys I fucking LOVE this movie so much! First of all, I have a huge girl crush on Rachel McAdams like she’s literally perfection. Domhnall Gleeson is so charming and funny in this you can’t not love him. The scene when he goes back in time and his daughter changes to a boy!? I was SHOOK. The scene where he goes back in time to see his dad again before he dies!? I CRIED REAL THUG TEARS. If you like movies that are funny, good, British, sad, have elements of time traveling, and lovey dovey, well this is the god damn movie for you. This movie should also be a tourism ad for Cornwall cause I’ve been dying to go there ever since.

11. It Follows (2014)

It Follows was the film that made me start this blog! I’ve written about it too many times to count so my review (that I wrote four years ago!) for it is here if you want to read it. It Follows started the modern horror renaissance and it has haunted me ever since the first time I saw it and that’s why I love it so god damn much.

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mykedrop · 4 years

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Persona 5 Royal Thoughts

Alright so there’s a lot I want to talk about here. Fair warning, this write up is actually like, really damn long. Also like HUGE spoiler warning below the cut! I played the original when it came out, bought a PS4 practically only to play Persona 5 not even knowing if I’d like it. But I did! I loved it, loved all of it. Beat the game in just over 100 hours I think. Easily became my second favorite game ever. So now here comes Persona 5 Royal, adds a bunch of new stuff, a lot of little stuff and some pretty huge additions and reworks, includes all the dlc from P5 which is nice. It’s a strictly better version of the game I already thought was amazing enough.

I remember being a little wary of going for it and reading a non-spoiler list of all the changes, which are actually A LOT when you list them out. Then I thought about how much I loved playing the original, and figured I’m not doing much else right now, so I got it. And BOY that game just checks all the boxes for me. It’s the same game, but better now. There’s a little more depth to playing the game and more stuff!

One of the biggest additions and probably my favorite addition is Maruki’s story and confidant. Everything involving him I thought was incredible. First of all the man is a dreamboat. Secondly great voice actor. Thirdly the story built around him was really awesome to play through. Every time some new story beats came through while playing through the first parts of the game I always thought how great it all fit in. It made sense, it kind of opened up the world of the game a little more narrative-wise and it all felt right. And the SONG (Ideal and the Real) that plays in Maruki’s office is so GOOD. That song plays in my head 24/7 and I love it. He’s got such a great personality and story and it was a great time getting to rank him up. The song ALONE made me want to hang out with him as much as possible. It’s an angle I wasn’t expecting, his story I mean, and while the “right” choice was pretty clear, it still made me think about what he was trying to accomplish. And they drove the point home real hard during the final stretch of the game before you figure out what’s going. It’s so hard to look at your friends having such a good life and go, “yeah no I don’t think so.” But that’s a whole different discussion. It felt sort of morally ambiguous, which was really cool. And I also like that Maruki gives you a choice, not only once but twice. Which again, gives you pause, even if only a short one.

So that brings me to another one of the biggest additions: the new palace. BOY I love this palace. From the way it’s first introduced so early on, to how you keep peeking in every once in a while making a little progress here and there. Until finally you’re able to just go wild at the end. This palace feels like the team designing this was told go all out. The aesthetic, the mechanics, the layout. Going through this I had a big ol smile on my face the entire time at how different it felt compared to those in the original game. Those are good too, don’t get me wrong. I don’t have any palaces I dislike. But I can easily imagine some ideas and how incredible some palaces would be with the level of detail and complexity of Maruki’s palace. It’d be kind of ridiculous and extremely difficult no doubt, maybe even a little too much to ask for I think. Anyway, seeing the garden section of the palace for the first time was INCREDIBLE. They went so crazy with making almost every part of that palace look amazing! And that last area was easily my favorite of the palaces in terms of looks and theme. They did a good job of conveying the scale of that giant tree where the treasure is at with those stairs. Plus it’s another great moment to show of the smaller details of the palace like some flowers, the lighting, some other really neat effects. It was great! And the whole boss fight at the end was so fantastic to watch! I’ll say that even at the hardest difficulty, my SO (who is a turn-based combat FIEND) didn’t have too much of a difficult time with the fight. But the mechanics of it were so interesting! I loved the ideas they went with. Again it felt like they really gave it their all with this palace. The story beats during the fight were incredible as well, and they gave me one of my favorite moments back that used to be in the Yaldabaoth fight: Press X to Fire! The fight with Maruki at the end was also pretty novel too, and so dramatic! The snow falling at the end, the glass platforms collapsing, it all looked so GOOD. One of my favorite things in any game like this (remake/remaster/GOTY version/etc.) is getting to listen to NEW MUSIC. And this palace KILLED IT with music, as did the rest of the game as usual. There’s no feeling that compares to being right at the edge of beating a Persona game. And this palace was a hell of an out of the park home run. After 170 hours, it was so bittersweet to beat the final boss and move on towards the rest of the story. I loved playing through that palace and it’s a shame I’ll never get to experience it for the first time again.

On to one of the more advertised additions: Yoshizawa! My first thought when I saw her way back when when they first revealed her is I thought she’d be a female protagonist. Which I thought would be INCREDIBLE. Even if it’s not exactly my preference, I would’ve been so HYPE to romance one of the guys. I didn’t really think about it from a gameplay standpoint, as there are way more girl confidants than guys, but still I thought it’d be fun to potentially explore that! Obviously that wasn’t the case, but now on to what I think of the new confidant! I love her! Like absolutely 100% love her so much! Let me tell you just how those concept meetings went down when they were making Yoshizawa: Cute girl, in cute clothes, who has a cute personality. Done, the perfect character. Of course she’s much more than that, but on the surface level it’s easy to see where they were going with this character. Playing the game I had zero idea about her eventual involvement in the final section of the game, so seeing her only have 5 confidant levels I was a little disappointed! Maxed her out as fast as possible and waited... Seeing her story woven through the original narrative was also super fun. Like Maruki, I really liked seeing her in places where she wasn’t before, and adding new scenes and such around to flesh out her character throughout the first two semesters. Then came the new part of the game after the holy grail fight. I was absolutely not expecting that twist with Yoshizawa. I had no idea that they would go somewhere like THAT in this game! It totally caught me off guard and I LOVED IT. What an incredible story all around. And like super fucked! The whole reveal moment was FANTASTIC! Had my jaw on the floor and everything! Her entire confidant was fun, using her in combat was fun, and her romance path was extremely fun! There’s nothing I don’t like about her really. She had such a wild story and such an amazing arc that I can’t not love her! She’s not my favorite confidant, but still adding in a new character like her into such a tight-knit group like the phantom thieves that i already loved as is is such a risky move! It’s so hard to improve upon a dynamic like theirs I think, but they made it work when they needed to! Anyway I love her character a lot and her story and all that. Beautiful.

Speaking of adding new characters to a dynamic, this might be my favorite addition/rework in the entire game: Akechi. Holy crap I can’t tell you how much I LOVED HEARING AKECHI JUST GO OFF EVERY BATTLE, or while we went riding through mementos, or just all his new dialogue and confidant level ups. Akechi very quickly and easily became one of my favorite parts about the new part of the game. His character was such a HUGE CLASH with every other character in the party, especially Yoshizawa! Which I have to imagine isn’t an accident. He is fuckin CRAZY. Unlocking his Showtime attack was BONKERS. That whole sequence with Yoshizawa and Akechi in Maruki’s palace was so GOOD. Having Akechi be part of the team was an amazing breath of fresh of air. Trust me when I say I have ZERO problem or complaint with the overly positive nature of the party. But MAN it is FUN to see Akechi just be an ABSOLUTE ASSHOLE. Every new interaction with Akechi was a TREASURE. Dropping the “detective prince” act was 100000% the right move. Even more fun was seeing Haru and Akechi’s interactions in mementos. The way every character acted towards him was pretty good, but something about Haru’s overbearing positivity towards him was really fun to watch. I can’t stress enough how much Akechi added to the experience of the final act of the game. His persona? Badass. His personality? Absolutely cutthroat and also badass. His hair? Still incredible. Also the only character in the game who will only play 701 in darts. That threw me for a fuckin LOOP the first time I invited him out for darts. Dude is a STUD in like every way. Love Akechi A LOT. He singlehandedly brought the experience up from an 11/10 to a 12/10. This game is so much better with Akechi being able to go batshit crazy. One of my favorite interactions is during battle: when you heal the whole party, with Akechi and Ryuji being two of the active members, depending on their order, you’ll have Akechi say “No time for thanks” right before you hear Ryuji say “Thanks!” Just thought that really exemplified how much of an ass he is, and how much I love him for it. He is THE badass asshole character this game didn’t know it needed but absolutely deserved. How much of a bad ass do you have to be to able to look at your inevitable death in the face and say “this is how it has to be.” One of the coolest parts of the whole game is him not only accepting his eventual fate, but actively driving you towards making that decision.

Next up I suppose I’ll talk about Maruki as a character. Love the way he was included, and liked all his interactions with all the characters during the first part of the game. He’s just so likable and honestly very relatable for me. Helping people through counseling has always been a personal goal of mine, so it’s always interesting to see how characters doing the same are portrayed. And while his overarching plan is something I don’t agree with, wanting to help people drives you to do crazy things sometimes. I felt for the guy. I enjoyed all the hangouts with him, and felt like I really understood his goals. The way his entire story was crafted did an incredible job of divulging all the right information at the right time. Before Akechi 2.0 came around, he was my favorite part of the game! I love the confidants and the stories they tell and interacting with them and all that. I looked forward to ranking up Maruki and trying to see what he was all about. The more I learned the more I liked him. Before, during, and after the palace my feelings about him didn’t change much. The man went crazy sure, but I still couldn’t bring myself to hate him or even dislike him. I love the man! My SO had no mercy for the man during the boss fight, but I felt bad seeing her kick his ass! I thought they did a good job mixing up the motivations for Maruki as a villain. Making him a confidant made it so much more difficult to picture him as the big bad evil guy. Plus he has like one of the best songs tied to him in Ideal and the Real. I’ll mention that as much as I feel is necessary.

So now I’ll go through all of the smaller details that I really liked in no particular order. Kichijoji was a great destination, gave me a lot to do over the course of the game. The phone calls after you hang out with a confidant are a very welcome addition! It’s a way to fit in more dialogue which I always love, and gives you a chance to rank up the confidant a lot quicker. There’s the fact that Morgana no longer forces you to sleep nearly as often, letting you at least mess around in LeBlanc, which helps rank up your social stats. I LOVE THE DARTS MINI GAME. And I’m so glad it also gave you an upgrade for your baton passes. I did not play enough darts. The jazz club was also MY JAM. Again more dialogue, great music, and a fun way to give your confidants new skills or stat boosts. One thing that I find really funny is the way they handled Valentine’s Day. They CHANGED IT. I know they added a lot of new stuff to them for new story reasons. but they CHANGED THE CONTEXT OF THE DATES. For example, in the original P5, Kawakami makes it VERY CLEAR what’s going down later. Ann too! But in P5R, that context is GONE LMAO they really went and changed the dialogue to be less sexual. It’s strange, but mostly I found it funny considering Takemi’s max rank conversation is untouched, among plenty of other ones. Anyway White Day was a GREAT addition! The final part of the date overlooking the city is AMAZING. That reveal made my jaw drop. Speaking of things that changed, the Christmas date also changed, and I like the change a lot! Watching the snow fall from the window on the bed was a great touch. The changes to boss battles and some parts of palaces because of the grappling hook were very welcome. The grappling hook itself was also extremely handy. The thieves den is an incredible addition that adds SO MUCH NEW DIALOGUE AND CONTEXT THAT IT’S A CRIME THAT IT’S HIDDEN IN THE DEN! Anyway. I’ll never say no to new personas. The showtime attacks are a GEM. The new music in this game is AWESOME. I can’t stop listening to the soundtrack. I really enjoyed getting to see a little bit of the dynamic between Sojiro, Futaba and Wakaba. I never knew just how much I wanted to see that until I saw the bit of it in the late part of the game. I don’t remember if it was in the original game, but I LOVE that one of Yusuke’s battle lines is “How do you want to do this?” LOVE IT. Oh Chihaya’s confidant boosting fortune reading was SUPER CLUTCH. Extremely good quality of life right there. I love the extra little bit they added to the warden’s confidant, getting to take them out of the velvet room and show them around. Super cute. Iwai’s gun customization was pretty sweet. Adding Jose to mementos was strange, but very welcome! It made going around much more interesting. Oh speaking of, buffing Ryuji’s instant kill was a GREAT idea. Haha Morgana go vroom vroom. The alarm in the velvet room was also awesome and made making the perfect persona a million times easier.

It’s been a few weeks now since I’ve finished the game, and it’s unfortunate that I can’t remember more of the little things. This whole write up has been an on and off thing since I finished P5R. Still I love the game and don’t really have any complaints. Well maybe one: LET ME FEED YUSUKE. Someone please feed that man. I forgot how much I loved playing the original game, and going through it again with all the new stuff was a total pleasure! And obviously the 3rd semester was an incredible experience. If you like the original a lot, and it’s been a while since you played it, get P5R. If you never played the original but were interested in it, get P5R. Anyway that’s all I got to say about it.

#Persona 5 Royal spoilers #Persona 5 Royal #P5R #P5R Spoilers #Persona 5 Spoilers

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gingerpeachtae · 5 years

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Concentric [6]

masterlist

Words: 4.7k

Genres: fantasy!AU, angst, fluff, enemies to lovers, eventual smut (?)

Warnings: spoilers for season 7&8 of Game of Thrones

Summary: You had been ready for the end of the semester. You had been ready to spend time away from your best friend, Jimin, and finally move on from the feelings you harbored. Yet, after your friend was forced to reveal a secret, you found yourself in a new world that was chock full of magic, war, and wonder. So, here you were, basically thrown into your own fantasy novel, with your best friend on one side, and six male warriors on the other.

A/N: Here it is! I ended up finishing it later than usual but earlier than anticipated, so instead of waiting till 11:59, imma just post it now!It’s a bit on the shorter side so I sowy but it’s what ya’ll get since I basically wrote this in one day oof. thank you all for reading... engoy! 😘

You were walking alongside Jin, who was currently babbling about how difficult it was to have to cook for the members of his kiela all the time.

“You just can’t imagine the stress! And they eat like animals!”

You looked at him out of the corner of your eye as you ducked beneath a branch. “Honestly, Jin… I don’t feel that bad for you because you were the one who turned down my help, remember?.”

At your retort, the Saeni huffed then mumbled something along the lines of maybe letting you help cut the vegetables or some other tiny task from now on.

You chuckled and repeated what you had told him before, “If you ever want or need help, just let me know Papa Jin. I’d be happy to lend a hand.”

Brushing some leaves out of your face, you sent the black-haired male a smile, hoping he would understand that you genuinely just wanted to help and not try to steal his “caretaker position.”

You waited until he sent you a smile back, and then you glanced around to see how everyone else in the kiela was doing. Personally, your legs wet sore as heck, and your feet felt like they were about to fall off from all the walking and running you’d been doing, but the others seemed to be in no distress at all. Then again, they were definitely more used to this kind of hiking than you were.

You had been on the move for a couple of hours, still trekking toward the group’s destination. The only difference was that now you knew what that destination was.

I hope that makes you happy, chickpea brain.

After Jungkook had left you and Jimin alone earlier, you were finally able to sit down and have your much-needed talk with your best friend.

“I don’t have an alarm! How the hell am I supposed to do that!?”

Jimin let out an exasperated puff of air. “You literally just got punched in the face… and making sure you’re up on time to get punched again is what you’re worried about?”

“Hey, if getting punched a few more times helps me learn how to protect myself, then I’m doing it.” You sat back down on the mat and looked up into Jimin’s brown eyes. “Enough about Coco and punching, though. We need to talk.”

Leaning back on your hands, you titled your head to the side. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re a prince?”

“Wha-who-I-not-n-no!” He stammered out. “I’m not a prince, don’t be ridiculous.” He ran a hand through his apricot locks and avoided eye contact with you.

“Oh, save it, Slim Jim. I know you’re a prince, so don’t even try to lie.”

The half-Saeni let out a groan, closing his eyes and tugging at the roots of his hair. “Who told you? It was Tae, wasn’t it? That feather-brain can never keep his mouth shut.”

“Oh my gosh, it wasn’t Tae. Have some bloody faith in your brother, would you?” You rolled your eyes. “It was the bad guys from yesterday. They said something about it after they knocked your ass out.”

Your friend dropped his hands and blew out all the air in his lungs before he finally replied, “I’m… I’m not really a prince. Some people just call me that because my father was the previous king.”

“So, what? You’re an ex-prince?”

“More like a bastard.”

“Wait, so you’re like the Jon Snow of Illain?” Your eyes twinkled in excitement.

Jimin raised his eyebrows and looked down at your buzzing figure. “You know that Jon wasn’t actually a bastard, right?”

“Eh.” You waved your hand dismissively. “With how the writers treated that information in season eight, he might as well have still been one.”

“That… is a fair point.”

The conversation died down and all you could hear was the sound of the forest for what seemed like several minutes but was probably only ten seconds.

“Jimin…”

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jimin had sat down next to you and explained why knowing his heritage was dangerous, for you and him. He began his story by having you recall how his mom had stumbled into Illain (you still weren’t sure how that would happen, but hey, no point wondering about it now) and met and fell in love with his dad. What he had left out, was that his dad had been the king of Illain and was already in an arranged marriage. He didn’t love the queen and vice versa, but nevertheless, he had to keep his relationship with Jimin’s mom a secret. Both because it would have been considered taboo in addition to how it would have caused an uproar among the court officials.

Shortly after Jimin’s mom found out she was pregnant, the queen discovered the relationship and… she had not been pleased. She ended up murdering Jimin’s father and tried to kill his mom as well. Luckily, she had been able to escape back to Earth with the help of a friend, who had been one of the few who knew about her.

Once the king’s guard (who didn’t exactly excel at their job, in your opinion) caught the queen and interrogated her, it was reported that she kept saying that she wanted to see Illain fall into chaos and how she needed to eradicate the “key within the bloodline.” Whatever that meant. Nobody could really make sense of her, it was like she had suddenly went batshit insane.

After the events, nobody thought much of her words, beyond them being those of a crazed person. The world grieved and then crowned a new king. Eventually, the Saeni forgot about what the previous queen had said… until five years later. Stories rose up about an anarchist who preached about unleashing pain and suffering upon all of Illain. Those who felt as though the world was against them, that life hated them, that the gods mistreated them, were captivated by his message and joined his ranks. They began terrorizing Illain in the name of an unknown person, Uzjuk, and were soon known as the draikensu, or “the dark ones.”

Over the years, the draikensu had somehow learned that the deceased king had had a child out of wedlock, and they turned their attention to finding that child. To finding him and eradicating the “key” that lived within him. Nobody knew what they meant by that, but it was clear that it was not safe for Jimin to be honest about who he was. Which was why he goes by Chim in Illain and why he didn’t tell you the full story from the beginning. Those who know of his heritage are not only in danger themselves, but they also put Jimin at risk of being exposed. The only ones who are supposed to know are Jimin’s kiela, his father’s friend (who was the new king), and now you. Though, obviously, somebody else must have figured it out because the draikensu from yesterday had known.

As for your destination, Jimin had informed you that he had been summoned to the royal palace. He didn’t know exactly why and neither did his kiela, who had been sent to retrieve him, but the king had said he was needed urgently.

What a fucking shit show.

You had gotten some answers, but in their wake, more questions had sprung up. Who the hell was Uzjuk? What was the “key” within Jimin? Why did the king need him? Do the Saeni even train their royal guard? You pondered the questions as you stepped around a big hunk of rock that was covered in moss. Yet, although more unknowns had arisen, there was one thing you definitely knew: there was no way in hell you weren’t going to learn how to fight now. It was only a matter of time before more of those draikensu fuckers came after Jimin again. You needed to be ready. You wanted to help protect him. There was only one week left of travelling before you reached the royal palace, and you didn’t know what was going to happen once you got there. Would you be able to continue training with Jungkook? Would you all turn around and go back to the tree bridge?

Ugh. More questions!

No matter the case, anything was better than nothing, so you were going to make the most of the asshat’s training in the upcoming week.

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! Come on, little scorja! Wake your cute ass UP!”

You groaned and tried to push the weight on top of you off, but it only collapsed onto you even more and began poking your sides.

You cracked an eye open and whined, “Tae! Let me sleep!”

It was so damn early that your petals from yesterday were still in effect.

“Nu’uh! A little flower, aka you, told me yesterday that you needed to be up two hours earlier than usual to go to school.” He hoisted you up and you hung limply in his arms, making him hold your dead weight. “So, I’m your alarm clock and I say it’s time to get up!”

He emphasized his words by giving your body a hard shake. You reacted by slapping a hand over his face and then smacking him again and again in various locations on his head.

“Where’s the freaking off button?”

You continued smacking him until you heard his whimpers of how he had just wanted to help. You looked up into his pouting blue eyes and instantly succumbed to them.

Dammit. He knows how to get to me.

“Ugh, fine.”

He beamed, mood instantly shifting back to delighted. He gripped your head in his hands, squishing your cheeks and contorting your face into a forced, closed-lipped smile. “Ah! There’s that pretty, scorja smile!”

That made you genuinely laugh, and you peeled his hands away while stuck your tongue out at him. Then you pulled him into a hug, and whispered into his ear, “Thanks for waking me up, Tae.”

“You’re welcome,” he whispered back. “Oh! Here are your petals for the day.”

You took the delicate objects out of his palm and popped them into your mouth, stretching once their disorienting effects went away. You looked around and noticed that, besides Yoongi giving the two of you a glare for waking him up, the rest of the kiela was still snoozing away except for…

“Good, you’re up. Let’s go.”

You looked over your shoulder and saw Jungkook dropping down from a tree. He had a bow and quiver in his hand, and you wondered where he got it from since you hadn’t seen them before.

“I’ll see you later Tae Tae!” You parted after giving the Saeni a kiss on his cheek.

“They grow up so fast.” He wiped away nonexistent tears as he returned to his on-watch spot. “Learn lots and be safe!

You approached the burgundy-haired Saeni while chuckling. “Good morning, Coco.”

He grumbled out a “good morning, human” and started walking into the trees, leaving you to trail after him.

Jogging to catch up, you asked, “Where’d you get that bow? It’s not Tae’s and I didn’t think anyone else had one, besides Jimin of course, but his is… I don’t know where it is.” You briefly paused to admire a funky looking plant with wavy leaves before continuing. “Is that Jimin’s?”

Jungkook raised a brow at your talkative attitude, bewildered you were that peppy after just waking up. “Not Jimin’s. It’s a spare we keep in a … magic locker? I’m not completely sure how it works, but Yoongi is able to tuck things away into a space and I asked him to bring this out for you last night. It’s one of Tae’s old bows that he used during training. It’ll be easier for you to draw with.”

“Oh. Um, thanks for having him do that.”

It was another small glimpse into the thoughtful and soft side of Jungkook that often, or more like ninety-five percent of the time, disappeared around you.

After the two of you had walked far enough into the foliage to not wake up the others, Jungkook abruptly stopped, which caused you to stumble as you tried to evade running smack dab into his back.

As you regained your balance and moved around to face him, he said, “Okay, today we’re going to start by correcting your pathetic punching technique and then we’re going to do some tests with various weapons to-”

“You’re going to let-”

“Uh… I’m not finished.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

You couldn’t stop your snort. “Geez, who are you? Tyler the Creator?”

“No. I’m Jungkook the Maknae.” He said in a serious tone, lifting his chin up.

You blinked at him. “I… literally cannot stand you.”

“Perfect. We’re on the same page then, sweetheart.”

“Sweetheart? Wooow.” You smirked and placed your hands on your hips. “I’ve really gotten an upgrade on my nickname.”

“I swear to Exia, if you don’t let me finish, little human-”

“Oop. There it is.”

He growled.

“Alright, alright.” You raised your hands to signal your peace. “I’ll stop and be a good girl for you.”

Jungkook’s body froze and his pupils dilated as he stared at you. The only movement coming from his form was now the rising and falling of his chest.

You furrowed your brows. Sure, your words could’ve sounded a bit sexual, but you didn’t think you had to worry about the male in front of you thinking that way. Not with his low opinion of you. Plus, some part of you was still convinced that the boy was celibate as hell. Though, you found it odd that he wasn’t moving or taking his green eyes off of you.

“Jungkook?” You pursed your lips.

His eyes bugged out at your voice and he looked away before clearing his throat. “Ah, as I was saying, we’ll test out different weapons to see what kind of fighter you’ll be. Hence why I got the bow. You’ll also try out some throwing knives, a dagger, and a short sword.”

Anticipating your question, he quickly rolled his eyes and said, “Yes, I’m letting you use my short swords.”

“I just figured that you wouldn’t want anyone else touching your shit. Especially me. You seem a little… possessive in that way.”

He shrugged, shifting his gaze to the leaves above his head. Though you didn’t miss his hand moving to gently touch the handle of his ruby dagger.

That must be the thing he gets stingy with. I wonder what’s so special about it?

“We won’t be trying out a normal sword though, because, quite frankly, you just aren’t strong enough for that.”

You couldn’t even get mad at him for saying that since it was probably, most likely, definitely true.

Before anything else happened, Jungkook set down the spare bow and its quiver and led you through a series of static and dynamic stretches. Even though you already knew how to properly warm up your body, you were a dancer for crying out loud, you let him do his thing. Not only did you not want to piss him off, but he was also the one who offered to train you, so you were going to listen and do as he instructed… But he didn’t need to know that you were more focused on the birds’ singing and chirping than his voice while you stretched your quad.

“Alright, I want you doing that before every session, got it?”

You gave him a salute after brushing off your dirt-covered butt. “Aye, aye captain.”

He then directed you to show him how you held your hand during a punch. You did so, and he immediately sighed. He took your fist in his rough, scar-covered hands and turned it this way and that, observing and clicking his tongue in dissatisfaction.

“At least your thumb isn’t inside your fist. It’s good you know not to do that.” He prodded at the appendage. “Move it to rest below your curled fingers, between your pointer and middle fingers.”

After allowing him to adjust you as he saw fit, he also told you to squeeze your fist more, but not to the point of cutting off circulation. You listened attentively to his directions as a crisp morning breeze ruffled both of your hair. When he was pleased with your first, he nodded.

Tapping the knuckles of your ring and pinky fingers, he said, “Never lead your punch with these because it’ll break the shit out of your hand. And don’t try to make contact with this part,” he rubbed the flat part of your fingers that was between the knuckles, “always make contact with your actual knuckles, okay?”

“Okay.”

He went on to show you the proper stance as well as the best way to utilize your weight and momentum in an attack.

“Before I have you practicing actual punches on me, I want you to just practice the action to get the movement and feeling down so that you’re comfortable with it.”

With that, he told you that you were now going to start working with some weapons. Not to learn any advanced moves with them, but to simply see if you had a natural affinity for a any certain type. Your mind reeled a bit at how he wanted you to practice before punching, but was about to hand over some weapons and just… let you have at it? It seemed a wee bit backwards to you, but oh well. You were honestly more surprised with how patient and informative Jungkook had been thus far. He had yet to be condescending or snappy toward you. Instead, he gave off the impression that he was… excited. It was apparent that he really enjoyed fighting, both physically and conversationally. Even if it was just teaching a little human like yourself the basics, his voice was lighter and his eyes brighter than they usually were in your presence.

You were brought out of your head when he handed you a throwing knife, the coolness of the metal making you jump out of your thoughts. The blade was about ten inches long with cut-outs and it had a thick, sharp point. He told you that the end you hold when throwing depends on the blade, and to always hold whichever end is heavier, as it creates a more forceful throw. You hummed, and he moved on to show you how the grip the knife: pointer, middle, and ring fingers on one side, thumb on the other, and pinky finger curled at the bottom. When you finally grasped the blade correctly, he made a noise of satisfaction and eased it out of your hand. Then, he demonstrated how to move your body and follow through on the throw. He repeated the motion a couple of times and on the third he calmly released the knife and it embedded itself deep into a tree trunk a solid 25 feet away.

You whistled. “Well hot damn, Coco.”

He smirked at you and told you to go through the motion. You felt like you were transported back to when you were in little league softball, learning how to throw a ball for the first time. After several minutes of you throwing nothing and him tweaking your form, he gave you another knife identical to the previous.

Taking a deep breath and settling yourself into position, you waited for a big gust of wind to subside. Once it passed, you brought your arm back, took a small step, and threw the knife forward. Er… you had wanted the knife to go forward. You must have released prematurely, though, because it went up and to the right instead. Wincing, you held your breath as you waited for the asshat to say something about your misshap.

“Again.” He only handed you another blade.

This time, the knife went forward, but it still missed the tree by a good 10 feet.

“Again.”

Another blade. And another miss. This one to the left of the tree, since you had tried to compensate for your previous blunder.

“Well… that wasn’t as bad as Namjoon hyung, I’ll give you that. Though it still kind of sucked.” His green eyes met yours and you were shocked to see that they held no malice. “And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know ‘it’s your first time,’ but I don’t think you’ll be our new Hobi, sweetheart.”

“I… yeah, me neither.” You released a stream of light laughter as you thought about your failed attempts. “What’s next?”

“Dagger.” Jungkook reached behind him and withdrew a short, curved blade.

“What the heck,” you gasped, “I didn’t even know you had a dagger back there.” You ogled at him like he had just performed a magic trick.

He raised an eyebrow at you, mouth slightly curving upward. “That’s kind of the point, little human. It’s supposed to be hidden.”

Once your awe at his abracadabra moment faded, he asked if you had ever used a dagger before.

“No? Well, um, not before the… tent,” you said in a small voice.

“Oh, right.” He coughed awkwardly. “Uh, so anyway, you know how to use it on a surface level, yeah?”

You gestured to the end of the dagger, which was gleaming in the morning sunlight. “Stick ‘em with the pointy end.”

Come on… there was no way you couldn’t say that.

He looked at you blankly for a few moments, and you were about to tell him it was just a reference, but then he tipped his head back and yelled.

“Not that fucking line again! Chim wouldn’t stop saying it one summer and it haunts me!”

“Wait, you know Game of Thrones?”

“Is that what it’s called? I don’t know, sure. But that’s a quote from the wolf girl, right?”

You excitedly nodded and clapped your hands together rapidly, hoping you could take a short break and talk about the show.

The burgundy head moaned in defeat. “And to think I already had all the reasons to not like you, you go on and say that.” He chuckled to himself in pity.

You didn’t join him, though. The brightness of your eyes died at his words and you looking away from him.

Why are you so upset, Y/N? You knew he didn’t like you.

Well, maybe if he wasn’t so fucking back and forth between being civil and then saying something like that out of the blue, it wouldn’t be so shocking. You had also thought that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t dislike you anymore after the whole draikensu ordeal. Or at least, you thought that he wouldn’t be so openly vocal about it. Looks like you were wrong.

When he realized that you had gone silent, and he thought back to what he had said, his green eyes widened.

“I didn’t-I mean, I don’t…” He sighed when he saw all the playfulness gone from your y/e/c eyes when you returned your gaze to him. “Anyways, here’s how you use it.”

Eventually, you disregarded his comment and focused on the matter at hand. You knew you wouldn’t be drawn toward fighting with a dagger, especially after the other day, but you didn’t want to half-ass your way through it. After going through the dagger and the short sword, both of which you were mediocre at, Jungkook picked up the bow.

Prior to handing it to you, though, he presented an arm guard. Quickly slipping it over your wrist, you grabbed the bow and one of the arrows he offered.

Much to his surprise, you already knew how to notch an arrow. You threw a smirk his way. You also vaguely remembered the basic grip and stance for archery, so you fell into what you hoped was the proper form.

Thank you, middle school archery seminar.

Ignoring your smug display, Jungkook crossed his arms and told you to draw back. Gritting your teeth slightly at the tension, you did and waited as circled and assessed you. After a while, your arms were beginning to shake from holding the position, your muscles not used to that kind of exertion.

“You need to raise your arm a little bit.”

He stepped up right behind you, bringing his chest flush to your back, in order to correct your form. As you felt his firm front pressed against you, you flashed back to when you saw him shirtless. To when his muscles were out on full display and his thick thighs were evident through his damp plants. You recalled how utterly good he had looked, half-naked and dripping water.

Shit. Y/N, snap out of it!

You shook your head like the physical action would make the thoughts fly out of your mind.

“No?” You heard Jungkook question.

“Wha-huh?”

“I asked if feels comfortable for you? The position?”

Hell yes, does it feel comfortable… AH STOP IT! HE’S TALKING ABOUT THE SHOOTING POSITION, YOU HORNY IMBECILE!

Coughing, you choked out a yes. He looked down at you in confusion for your weird reaction, but instead of inquiring about it he just hummed and stepped away.

You were almost appalled with yourself. Yeah, he was really good looking, hot even, but how could you be thinking about the asshat in that way? You know, the person who basically hated your guts? Not to mention the fact that you had a big, fat, lovey-dovey crush on your best friend… and Jungkook was most definitely not your best friend!

You seriously wondered how he could make you feel so many different things in such a short span of time. You had gone from perky, to teasing, annoyed, happy, excited, disappointed, angry, and finally hot and bothered all within two damn hours.

You were so confused by this male and his words and actions. It was truly exhausting to try to keep up with his mood swings. You dropped your arms with an irked sigh, lowering the bow and bringing some relief to your straining arms.

“Everything okay?” The Saeni asked, his voice sounding slightly concerned.

“Yeah, I’m just… my arms aren’t used to this, and they were hurting. Go ahead and make fun of me for being such a weak, little human.” You had tried to add some fire behind your last statement, but it came out with barely a flicker of heat. You were just too confused as to whether you wanted to be turned on, mad, spiteful, or ashamed.

“Whoa, hey look, I’m sorry for what I said earlier… about, you know, not liking you… it’s just-I don’t-”

“You don’t have to like me, Jungkook. I don’t need every person I come across to like me.”

“It’s not that, it’s-I don’t know-”

You whirled around to face him, and you could see that his face was heating up. Yours was too, but yours was in complete frustration.

“Well, if you don’t know, then can you figure it out for fuck’s sake? If you like me, then great, like me and be pleasant toward me. If you don’t like me, then fine, don’t like me and be a dick.” You were in his face at this point, poking his solid chest with your pointer finger. “I just need you to fucking stop with the going back and forth! I never know which Jungkook I’m going to get, and I’m constantly worried I’ll say something to set you off and I don’t know what it’ll be, and it’s so. Damn. Annoying!”

You turned back around and raised the bow, shooting at a nearby tree. Although it didn’t hit where you had aimed, the arrow still thumped into the trunk nonetheless. Jungkook gaped at you as you angrily faced him once more and shoved the bow at him.

“I want to be an archer. And I want to learn hand to hand fighting. Does that sound good with you? Alright, perfect.” You didn’t even give him a chance to reply before you began stomping your way back to camp. “Thanks for the lesson Coco, I’ll practice the punching and see you bright and early tomorrow.”

As the burgundy-haired male watched your back vanish into the trees he let out a curse and crouched down, gripping his head with both hands. He stayed that way for minutes, letting himself be enveloped by the sounds of the leaves, birds, and bugs… but it wasn’t enough to make the sound of your echoing voice disappear from inside his head. He released a loud noise of annoyance and frustration, and moved a hand to clutch the handle of the dagger strapped to his waist before whispering to the trees, “What the fuck am I doing?”

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songofdefiance · 5 years

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Okay. My waterworks seem to be stopping, so let’s dig into this season. Spoilers for Stranger Things 3 under the cut.

Overall? I really liked it. It was absolutely batshit insane, very different from the past two seasons (both of which I also really liked), and it was pretty much like being on a roller coaster for eight hours straight.

Highlights: El and Max’s friendship, Joyce being a total bamf, Robin!!!, the effects, the monsters, the fights (which absolutely had me on the edge of my seat every time). Almost everything else was also very good, in my opinion. And the music! The music was fantastic! (Reusing ‘Heroes’ at the end of season three made me break down again though.)

Lowlights: my biggest problem with this season? They made Hopper really unlikable. And I mean REALLY. The whole reason I loved him in seasons one and two was because they made him into more than the stereotype that he first seemed to be, and then in this season they just... turned him into the biggest douchebag on the show. Yeah, I said it. His angry moments weren’t funny. Thank GOD Joyce was there to take him down a peg. Though she shouldn’t have had to, because he should’ve been acting like a fucking adult.

Will didn’t have as big of an arc this season as I was hoping; they mostly just used him as a Mind Flayer radar. I did like that he was more involved in the Party’s battles than he has been in the past, though.

Billy’s sacrifice was... well done, I guess, but it didn’t really hit home for me. Maybe if he wasn’t such a dickwaffle last season?

And again, Hopper’s attitude throughout the season kinda ruined his sacrifice for me as well. The main reason I was crying was more for Joyce and El’s reactions to his death than his death itself. His letter was very touching, though, and I wish that we had seen more of that from him this season. Season one and two both conveyed that he is capable of that. Again: season three made him into a jerk.

I know a lot of this season was about the kids growing up, but I do wish there had been more familial moments than what we got. I realize it was the “summer of love” or whatever, but those family moments are one of the biggest highlights for me from seasons one and two, and I’m just now realizing that their absence seems like a gaping wound.

Alright, here’s stuff that I don’t really have an opinion on but I want to talk about anyway:

It really is anyone’s guess where they’re going with next season. The Party is split up; El, Will, and Jonathan have all left Hawkins. (I’m not sure where they’re going, but didn’t Bob say Maine last season? Uhhhhhh isn’t that where all of Stephen King’s novels are set?) I’m absolutely dying to see some kind of sibling dynamic between El and Will - I love when they interact, and ONCE AGAIN they barely did this season.

As for the post-credit scene...

1. The Russians said “not the American”. I have two theories about who they’re talking about. My first thought was ‘Hopper’, as unlikely as it seems, because hey, why not? Now that I’ve had time to think about it, though, I have a second theory, one that’s far more likely: that it’s Brenner. We never saw his body, and Matthew Modine keeps dropping cryptic af hints on social media. Who really knows though?

2. Okay I’m honestly stumped on how they got their hands on a demogorgon. Did they manage to open the gate in Russia too? Did they open the one in Hawkins wide enough for a demogorgon to come through, then take it captive and take it back to Russia to experiment on? How is this going to come into play next season?

Here’s hoping that next season will give us more about the Numbers. Whatever anyone else says, that was one of my favorite parts of season two.

I’m also not sure how they’re going to raise the stakes even higher from here. I guess the only way they could is by bringing the actual, original Mind Flayer into our world. I feel like they’re not going to do that in season four, since they’ve said that they’ve got five seasons planned (I think).

One last thing: despite what I’ve said above, I do think it’s possible that Hopper isn’t dead. But in my mind, in order for him to not be dead, there’s only one place he could be: the Upside Down.

And I honestly think I’d rather he was dead.

#amaya talks #stranger things #stranger things spoilers

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clarascuro · 5 years

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Clara Reads City of Bones Part 2: Lord Help Me, I’m Back On My Bullshit *Spoilers*

I haven’t written about this in a week. I was using the fact that my copy had a shirtless dude on it as an excuse not to read it or be seen with it, but my lovely lovely friend lent me her copy, so now I can take it with me everywhere! Thanks, Ailinn!

The Characters

Now last time, I don’t think I really expressed this with enough force, but I hate the characters in this book with every once of strength in my body. They suck, they suck so much, and I’m stuck with them for the next 500 PAGES. So let’s take a look at our motley crew and dive into why I want to beat them senseless and leave them for dead:

Clary Fray: Clary Fray is not a name. I need to get that out of the way. If you walk up to me and introduce yourself as Clary Fray, I will laugh in your face, because that is so very obviously a fake name that you make up on the spot. Clary Fray is the kind of name you’d get if you fed a baby name book into a predictive keyboard and told it to come up with one of it’s own. It sounds like a makeup line for women with very low self-esteem. I wish the actual character was as entertaining as her name is, but to be entertaining, you have to actually have a personality. Clary draws, which is only slightly higher than reading on the list of Passive Activities to Trick Your Readers Into Thinking This Blank-Slate is an Actual Character With Agency. Did I mention she has no agency? She doesn’t find anything for herself, she has to be led there by love interests mysterious strangers, and when she encounters things out of the ordinary, things like demons, faeries, angels I’m assuming, she just accepts it, because if she doesn’t accept it, then she won’t fall in love with the bad boy, and the Cassandra Clare can’t write definetely--not-Harry Potter porn. Clary is dull, infuriating, and lucky for me, the point of view character for the whole book. Blech.

Simon: Simon is Clary’s best friend who’s in love with her. He doesn’t get any character traits (and given the other personalities we see, I’m using that term lightly) outside of that, because he doesn’t have any bearing on the plot besides that. He’s also one of the few poc in the book

Alec: He’s here, I guess. He’s one of the magic guys. That’s about it so far. I think he plays piano.

Isabelle: I genuinely have no idea what this character is supposed to be. I assumed that she was going to be Clary’s rival in love, and that they would hate each other. They way she’s written suggests that she’s supposed to fill that role. She’s catty and hot, which in YA-Land mean she’s an enemy, but Clary gets along with her too well for her to be even a minor antagonist. Maybe it’s because, again, Clary is not a character. She’s a waifu body pillow. You can’t conflict with anyone of you don’t have any thoughts or feelings or desires, but still, I can’t think why she’s written this way if she’s not going to fight with the lead. I get this uncomfortable, gross feeling reading her. She doesn’t ever do anything super mean to the lead, but the book spends so much time painting her to be this sexy, dangerous seductress who’s out to destroy you, even though she hasn’t really done anything. There’s a scene where Clary dreams that Isabelle is naked and being all sexy and evil, but outside of just Being Hot, Isabelle hasn’t done anything to earn that reputation in Clary’s mind. I don’t know why Cassandra Clare’s doing this. Is it because of misogyny? I think it might be misogyny.

Jace: Oh, Jace. Sweet Jace. I would pay to have you run over by an eighteen-wheeler. Jace is a bad boy, but actually he’s just a dick. He’s an angel (I think) and he’s a bastard garbage man who deserves to be beaten with a rough switch. He is smug, he is rude, he makes fun of Clary all the time, and he’s totally gonna kiss her in the next few chapters, because life is unfair. Jace is not human, and he looks down on humans, for being human. How dare they. If I had the choice to either spend half an hour with Jace Bonecity, or chew off my own leg, guess who’s getting a prosthetic leg, babey!!! He’s not even the entertaining kind of bastard. Cardan from The Cruel Prince is complete bastard, and he’s entertaining as fuck, mostly because that book is better written, but also because Cardan is a disaster gremlin who doesn’t care about the consequences and is also madly in love with his mortal enemy, which is vastly entertaining to watch as it plays out. Jace is just mean. He sucks and I hate him.

Other Characters: Basically just Clary’s mom, who’s keeping a secret from her and also dies or something (I cared not one ounce) and her Uncle Luke. The only reason he’s noteworthy is because he says he doesn’t want Clary to call him “uncle” because it “...reminds him of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” ajklajkhakjfh????? what the fuck does that even...like people aren’t rolling up to family reunions like “oh shit sorry Uncle Robert, i’m just gonna call you bob now, cause this very common familial address reminds me of an mid-nineteenth century anti-slavery novel that most people these days haven’t even read” like??? what the fuck? Have I mentioned Luke is white? I’m guessing that since Clary’s mom is very obviously like magic or something Luke is her magical servant or bodyguard or whatever, and it’s a reference to the Uncle Tom stereotype that the book helped popularize, but it was like...a throwaway line. Like a joke or something. Not like...foreshadowing a major plot development. Did this book have any editors?

The Plot

I may have mentioned this before, but the plot straight up sucks. In the space of three or four chapters, Clary:

discovers magic is real

watches someone die

runs away from her mom

runs back home when her mom is attacked

gets attacked by a monster

gets taken to a magical school or whatever

This might not seem like a lot, but it all happens so fast that I was getting whiplash reading it. Things just happen, and Clary never sits down to process them or anything, so the reader never gets time to process them before the next batshit thing happens. These are all dramatic plot points, but the characters are so dull and the writing is so bad that you don’t care that they’re happening. Clary finds out that magic is real and she’s just like “:/ gotta go get coffee now” I’m genuinely angry that the writing is this poor. I should care that magic is real, I should care that her mom dies, but I just don’t. I don’t care if Clary lives or dies, because I don’t care about Clary. SO MUCH has happened in the span of like, fifty pages, but it feels like nothing’s happened, because the writing never changes and Clary’s reactions never change. How can I get invested in the story if the main character’s not even invested?

The Dialogue

You know those out-of-context B99 quotes that people like to make into memes about their favorite characters? That’s basically 90% of the dialogue in this book. Every other line is this punchy, hip, little quip to make you go “wow. these characters sure are fun and hip, just like me, the Average American Teen” but actually they are very bad. I don’t feel like I’m reading an exchange between two characters, I feel like I’m reading an Instagram writing prompt. Cassandra Clare also likes to punctuate her trendy dialogue with a lot of descriptive tags. People in this book are always rolling their eyes and biting their lips. It doesn’t add anything to the scenes, it just pulls you out of the story and reminds you that you’re reading a book by a middle-aged Jewish woman. Please note: I in no way discriminate against Cassandra Clare for being a middle-aged Jewish woman. I myself will be a middle-aged Jewish woman some day, if the Shadowhunters fandom doesn’t kill me first. My only point is that she’s out of touch and her writing sucks.

Rating So Far

4/10-It fulfills it’s basic role of being a book, but there’s not much entertainment value outside of that. At this point I’m keeping myself entertained by imagining Jace has a booger hanging out his nose during every scene and everyone else is just too polite to point it out.

#Clara Reads City of Bones #shadowhunters #city of bones #im tagging this to the fandom because i wanna start some fights

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that-quiet-girl-who-writes · 6 years

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Alone Here (CB.)

A/N: HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!! I am ashamed that this is my first gay fic, like really? It’s been a year. Annnnnndd I changed a bit of the plot, don’t hate me.

Summary: You suggest that you and Cheryl go on the couples lakeside cottage weekend to keep each other company as the only two single people there (spoiler, you’re not single by the end of the trip)

Pairing: Cheryl Blossom x Bi!Pan!Lesbian!reader whatever you want

Word Count: 3710

Warnings: Swearing, implied b*ghead and Varchie sex (it’s during the “lodge lodge” episode, you know the one with the robbery? and the murder? oh, riverdale), coming out, crying, angst, fluff, Cheryl being Cheryl, annnngst, more crying, hot tuuuuuuub, and another dash of angst

Masterlist

It didn’t matter who you asked, every single resident of the town of Riverdale would say that these last few weeks had been stressful. Actually the last few months had been pretty bad. It had been this constant on-edge feeling that you couldn’t shake. There was constantly some sort of threat in this strange place and it was so hard to forget about it. So it was no surprise that once the black hood was caught, Veronica Lodge was ready for a relaxing week end away.

“It sounds heavenly, V.” Betty said in way that made it obvious she needed some time out of this crazy town and away from her creepy brother. I understood how she felt, I had had my fair share of run-ins with the mysterious Chick Cooper when I was over studying at Betty’s house.

Veronica had just finished describing her family’s cottage (if you could call it that, it was probably the size of mine, Betty’s and Archie’s houses combined). She had invited Betty and Jughead to come with her and Archie for a weekend in the woods, away from parents, school and anything else that could possibly cause chaos. While Betty asked Jug if he wanted to go, Veronica turned to me. I was sitting alone on one of the couches, totally fifth wheeling in this room full of sappy couples.

“Y/N, I would totally invite you, but this gonna be a big romantic getaway and I know how much you hate our lovey dovey PDA, so I just figured you be better off with a weekend away from us.” She said.

“Definitely. However much I want to spend time at the lake, my room and my laptop beat sitting in a room of lovesick couples anyday.” I responded. A lakeside vacation would be amazing, but I wouldn’t be able to enjoy any of that if I felt alone the whole time.

“It’ll be a good chance for me to work on my novel.” Said Jughead.

“Excellent!” Veronica exclaimed. “But remember, the point of this luxury weekend is to relax and unplug.”

“Luxury and weekend.” Said a new voice. We all turned our heads to see Cheryl strut into the room, stopping between Betty and Jughead and clasping her hands together. “Two of my favourite words. So, where are going and how extravagant of a wardrobe should I pack?” She asked, putting emphasis on “where”.

“Sorry, Cheryl, it’s kind of a… romantic couples only weekend.” Veronica said.

“I see, of course, my mistake. Well, have fun with your romances.” Cheryl said, clearly embarrassed and ready to leave the room. There was this look on her face that I’d never seen her with before, like her stone cold facade had been broken down for a few seconds. It hurt my heart to see her like that. Maybe that not-so little crush I’d had in freshman year hadn’t entirely disappeared or I wouldn’t feel so bad about the tone of her voice at the moment. Honestly, I was standing on the edge of a cliff ready to tumble down into the dark depths of the horribly exhausting thing we call love. So I did what anyone who felt this way would do.

“Cheryl, wait!” I called for her to turn around. I sat up and looked at Veronica, who was confused. “V, how many rooms does your place have?”

“Um, I don’t know, five or six?” She told me.

“How about Cheryl and I come, but we keep to ourselves? You guys get your romantic getaway and Cheryl and I get to at least getaway without feeling like totally losers.”

“Yeah, I guess that would work, I mean if you want to, you’re welcome.”

“Perfect.” I looked over at Cheryl. “What do you say Bombshell? You and I spend a lakeside weekend chilling in the hottub and making fun of these four and their heart shaped eyes?”

“Not idle, but okay. I’ll pack my swimsuit.” She said with the signature Blossom smirk.

During the hour long drive that it took to get to “Lodge lodge”, I could practically feel my tensions being left behind in that batshit crazy town. Even with the queen of evil sitting in the seat next to me, I felt relaxed. I call Cheryl terrible things in my head (it’s just pent up frustration) and I’ve always feel a little bad about it until she goes and does something evil. Like this morning, for example. Right before we got in the car, Archie said something that Cheryl didn’t like, so she went straight up to Jughead and told him about Archie and Betty sharing a kiss in front of her house. It made the car ride incredibly awkward because Betty didn’t want to sort this out in front of us and Jughead didn’t seem to want to talk about it all. At least it was quiet.

Once we got there, I grabbed my bag off my lap which I had just held onto since it was so light (because all I had packed was a swimsuit, pajamas and a change of clothes). Veronica had Archie bring the rest of the bags in. He looked like a donkey carrying it’s owners luggage through the desert with the amount of bags hanging off both of his arms.

Cheryl looked stunning, but she wasn’t really dressed for the cottage. In fact, when I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Cheryl without heels (not the that I minded).

Veronica welcomed us and brought us each to our respective rooms. The couples were on the east side of the cottage and the loners were in the two rooms on the west side. Each couple went to their room right away and closed the door. I started to wonder what would happen if Betty and Jughead broke up. Would we all just pack up and go home to avoid the tension? Were we really going to miss the chance at relaxation because those two couldn’t sort out their problems? Was I really gonna miss the chance to Cheryl in a bikini?

I walked out of room when I was done unpacking my stuff. It literally took one minute considering I brought three outfits and nothing else. The Lodges were rich, I figured if I needed something, they’d have it stored somewhere. Looking down the hall it felt haunted. It was too quiet and empty and that made me feel lonely because I knew that the happy couples were perfectly content to be in their rooms with each other. Me? My room felt as empty as the hallway did. So I ventured down the hall to find the only other person who could possibly feel this way at the moment. I could see Cheryl’s door open, so I walked and leaned against the frame. She was also unpacking, but she had a lot more than I did.

“Hey.” I said.

“Hello, outcast.” She said looking up at me for a brief second.

“Why did you tell Jughead about that kiss? Did one of them do something or…?”

“Oh, Y/N/N. I thought you would know by now that it’s my duty as queen bae of Riverdale High to let a student now when they are being lied to.” She smiled.

“Right… you sure you don’t just adore the chaos?” I ask, “Don’t get me wrong Cheryl, I love it too, but these guys are friends and I’m supposed to watch out for them.”

“Well, fear not. Between you and me, Jughead and Betty are a strong couple, they’ll get through it.”

I just watched her for a second. She was really pretty, I mean evil, but gorgeous.

“Why did you come?” I asked. For the first time since I had known her, Cheryl didn’t have some sort of witty comment or sharp answer ready for me. She nearly stumbled over her words.

“I… whatever do you mean?”

“When I said ‘Come with me as my friend to this romantic couples retreat’, why did you say yes? I mean, I don’t know about you, but in the short amount of time that we’ve been here, those four have managed to make me feel more alone then usual and they’re not even talking to each other.”

“You feel alone?”

“Well, yeah. It’s like when we’re at school and I’m hanging out with them, at least they’re are other single people around me. Out here it feels like I’m the only loser for miles.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, I’m alone here too.”

“Yeah, but you’re Cheryl fucking Blossom. You could have any guy you want.” She looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t.

“You never answered my question, bombshell.” I said, trying to change the subject. “Why did you come?”

Before she even answer, the silence of the cabin was broken by the squeak of mattress springs. Over and over and over and over.

“Oh my god.” I groaned. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. This is exactly what I wanted to get away from.”

Cheryl rolled her eyes as the noise didn’t stop. “Let’s go.” She said. I followed her down the stairs and outside onto the massive deck, complete with the fanciest outdoor cottage furniture I had ever seen. From outside, the only thing we could hear was the chirp of birds flying across the lake. It was a nice, peaceful contrast to the multiple kinds of tension that surrounded the inside of “Lodge lodge”.

Cheryl and I didn’t talk a whole lot. When it started to get dark, we decided we should go inside and get some sort of dinner. As it turns out, Betty and Jughead had made up, Archie and Veronica had gotten out of bed and they were all sitting around the living room. There was still tension though, and part of me was willing to sleep outside if it meant getting away from it.

“Fear you not though, I have just the antidote. Step one: Clothes off, swimsuits on.” Veronica said. “That means you two as well.” She clarified as Cheryl and I walked in. The next thing I knew I was gawking at Cheryl who was looking flawless in a red bikini. I had thought that I looked decent, but I was really questioning if I even looked okay as the HBIC slipped into the hot tub right next to me.

The next half hour was weird. That’s the only way I can describe it. Weird. Veronica was convinced that to get rid of the tension, she and Jughead should kiss. I have no idea where the logic in that was and apparently neither did Cheryl because I kept unintentionally looking at her and the expression on her face told me she was very pleased with the mess she had made.

After the “Vughead” kiss, the couples immediately left the hot tub, Betty and Archie on edge, Jughead and Veronica smug. Cheryl and I, we were holding in laughter. The second the sliding glass door closed and we were out of sight, we stopped trying to hold it in.

“What just happened?” I laughed.

“I have no fucking clue.” Cheryl responded. “But like you said earlier, I adore the chaos.”

“Oh god, this is gonna be a mess. What was Ronnie thinking? What was Jughead thinking? Why are straight people crazy?” I said, still laughing a bit.

“It’s in their DNA, not ours, thank god.” Said Cheryl. Wait. Was Cheryl not…? Was it possible that after all these years that I had thought she and I couldn’t possibly together, I was wrong? I didn’t care if I was overstepping boundaries, I had to know.

“Cheryl?” She didn’t respond. I looked into her eyes and realized that she knew she had slipped up. She hadn’t meant to say that, she had been laughing and not thought about it.

“Cheryl are you hiding something?” I asked.

“I think I should go back to my room, we’ve probably been in here too long.” She rushed to get out of the tub, but I grabbed her arm.

“Cheryl, you can talk to-“

“Get your filthy outcast hands off me!” She nearly screamed. It was so quiet out hear that I heard it echo over the lake, but I didn’t let go. She tried to jerk away from me, but being a loser in high school means you know how to fight, so she wasn’t getting away from me any time soon.

“I said let go!”

“Not until you talk to me!” I yelled back.

She leaned down and lowered her voice, “There is nothing to talk about. And if you ever even insinuate that there is, I will have you ruined, shunned by the entire school for the disgusting little snitch that I know you are, so let go and leave me alone.”

“No.” I said firmly. I stood up out of the water a bit so that I was eye level with her. “You need to talk. I know you do. Don’t tell me I’m wrong because I can see right through it.” I let my voice become a bit more comforting, “Cheryl, I have been exactly where you are right now. You can’t stand in front of me wearing the same mask that I had to rip off. I know what that mask feels like, ok? It’s too small and after a while it starts to suffocate you. You’ve got it take it off and the only way you can do that is by talking to someone. So talk to me.”

Cheryl’s stone cold expression had subconsciously softened into a sad, scared one. “I can’t.” She said.

“Then let’s start with the little things.” I gently pulled her back to sit down in the hot tub. She didn’t fight it.

“I asked earlier why you came with me, you didn’t get the chance to answer.”

She looked hesitant, but she breathed in deeply and let the answer out. “I wanted to get out of the house. My mother has invited these lowly men from around town inside so that she can… comfort them. In exchange for money.”

I was shocked. Cheryl had not once mentioned her home life to me or anyone else as far as I knew. “That’s horrible. No mother should be doing something that disgusting, especially with their child in the house.”

“There’s no stopping it, she thinks it’s the best way to make money and we need it.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“I know.” She sighed.

“I understand why you came with us now. Staying in the woods with a group of losers is better than that.”

“I don’t think your losers.”

That came as a surprise to me. “Really?”

She shook her head. “Also, my mother is not the only reason I sprung at the opportunity to come with you.”

“What’s the other reason?”

“I wanted to spend time with you.”

My heart rate sped up instantly. “Why?”

She stared into the water with a slight smile on her face. It was a sad one, but it was there. I could practically see it in her eyes, she was screaming for me to ask her the right question. I knew because that had been exactly the way I was when I was in the closet. I would answer the question without hesitation, but only if somebody asked it.

“Cheryl, do you like girls?”

“Yes.” She answered simply.

“Does anyone know?”

“My mother does. She thinks it’s unnatural.”

“Do you think she’s right?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I think that it’s in my head and that I need help, but other times, I know she’s wrong. I know that this is me and she just can’t see it.” Tears started to pour down the redhead’s cheeks. I wanted to reach out and wipe them away. I wanted to kiss the places where they had been and tell her that she never had to be this sad again, but I wasn’t exactly sure where I stood with her right now. I mean we weren’t friends exactly, sort of just classmates. But after this, could ever just go back to the way it was? She was upset and I didn’t want to make it worse, so I opted for something a little less intimate then practically confessing my love. I grabbed one of her hands in both of mine as she rested the other one of hers against her forehead and cried.

“I wish your mother could see you. I wish that she was better to you, Cheryl because you deserve so much better. The fact she doesn’t understand, that she’s not willing to try, that just shows that she doesn’t deserve you. You will be so much better off without trying to live up to her standards, you’ll be better off once you know that you’re already above them, so high above that she can't even see you anymore.”

Her tears didn’t stop, but they slowed as she looked up at me. Even upset, I was sure I had never seen anyone as beautiful in my life. My heart just kept getting faster as this look of pure adoration and thankfulness reached Cheryl's eyes.

“I… there’s still one more thing I need to tell you.”

“What?” Just as I asked the question, the bubbles in the hot tub ceased and water became still. We had been in here an hour. “Do you want to get out and get dressed and then we can talk?” I suggested.

“Sure.” Cheryl said and I got up and grabbed two fancy towels off a stack that Veronica had brought out earlier. I tossed one to Cheryl and we went inside. We heard the bed springs the second we opened the door, making us both groan in frustration.

“Again? For fuck’s sake.” I pulled the towel over my ears.

“Those two need to learn to keep it in their pants when they’re in a house full of people.”

“Damn it, you can still hear them from the living room.” Veronica said, walking down the stairs with Archie right behind her.

“Wait a smoking hot second.” Said Cheryl, who apparently had a hidden talent for being able to hide how she was actually feeling like she was up for an Oscar. “That’s the mystery detective duo up there? And here I thought they skipped sex ed. class.”

“Don’t be nasty, Cheryl, what they do or don’t do in the bedroom is none of our business.” Ronnie said.

“Yeah, until we’re the audience to the audio.” I added. “By the way, the walls in your room are just as thin, so think about it before history repeats itself.”

Cheryl and I left the wide eyed couple at bottom of the stairs as we went to change and dry off. I sat in my pajamas on the edge of my bed, not really sure what to do. I could hear Betty and Jughead, now downstairs, talking and laughing with Archie and Veronica. I couldn’t hear Cheryl. At the moment, she was the only one I cared about, so I went to her room where I found her doing exactly what I had been; sitting on the edge of her bed, not sure what to do.

I knocked on the door frame, “Wanna talk?” I asked.

“Not particularly, but I’m sure you won’t let it go.” She didn’t say it in the usual sassy, stone cold Blossom tone, but in a sad, broken down one.

“If you really don’t want to, I’m not gonna make you.” I told her.

She took a deep breath. “No. I need to talk to somebody and I’m pretty sure that if I don’t do it now, I never will.”

“Okay.” I walked over to the bed and sat down. I instinctively grabbed her hand before I remembered that Cheryl Blossom hates it when people try to comfort her or show sympathy. But she didn’t tell me off or rip her hand away, so I let mine stay there. “So what did you want to tell me? Before we got out of the hottub?”

She wouldn’t look at me and I saw a couple of silent tears roll down her cheeks. I stayed silent as well, giving her as much time as she needed.

“I realized that I was bi about six months ago because I started to have feelings… for…”

“For another girl.” I finished her sentence so that she didn’t have to. She nodded her head.

“...for you.” She added. Okay, my heart actually stopped this time. It had been beating so fast that it actually just stopped for a second. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me, it was too much.

“I’m sorry.” Cheryl said. No, no, no, this was not a mistake, I needed to tell her that. I told myself to breath again.

“Cheryl, you have nothing to be sorry for. You have no idea how much you mean to me, how much it means to me that you just said all of that, that you’ve told me everything that you have tonight.” I reached up to brush some loose strands of hair out of her eyes. I wanted to be able to see them when I talked.

I didn’t get the chance to though, because Cheryl leaned in and kissed me before I could tell how embarrassingly long I had had a crush on her. That was probably a good thing. She tasted like cherry chapstick, which I would’ve been expecting had I not made a point to not think about kissing her this past year. I guess there wouldn’t have been any point to imagining it considering it would never have ever even compared to Cheryl actually kissing me.

The hand I had been pushing her hair back with ended up on the side of face, the other still holding onto one of hers. She used her free hand to pull me closer to her and we only stopped kissing for a second before I pulled her back to me, both of us laughing a bit at just how much we wanted to be here, holding each other. That’s how I knew.

I wasn’t alone here.

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Taglist (All stories): @nerdyandexhausted @runs-with-sciss0rs @kapolisradomthoughts

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hindbodes · 6 years

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The Floods: Lost ...its structural integrity somewhere back there

Colin Thompson has been a great illustrator for children’s books, and occasionally a very neat author. But don’t let that cloud your judgement, because this novel is exactly as bad as it looks. The illustrations here certainly aren’t his best work, but lately they have been his only work, as his art style has morphed into this flat, computer-generated collage of photos and gritty rubber humans.

By the time it was over, this book put into me more than four instances of something in the narrative being overpowered, at least one pretty big continuity error, numerous typos, and even that thing the author sometimes does where he uses the wrong name to address a character. It also, of course, had the usual Belgian racism, because Colin Thompson still hates Belgian people for some reason.

If you’re not familiar with The Floods, it’s a gross children’s novel series about these morally dubious witches and wizards - a family - who do gross and sometimes epic shit, with very few reality-limitations put in place. I’ve been following it for quite some time.

Within the first two pages of the main story of Lost, Colin Thompson abruptly establishes that two of the main characters - and I’ll get back to you on how “main characters” is a weird concept in this series - got married and had a kid, who not only was very developed for a baby, but could literally talk in every word of the English language within a month of birth. Which is something that I expect by the next book to become another thing Colin Thompson completely forgets.

The book is about two women, Edna and Maldegard, keeping themselves occupied by traveling all over the country of Transylvania Waters and giving streets, towns, and mountains their own names. Because there weren’t any before. Which concerns me. I don’t recall the third-book-prequel having no names for anything, and I hope I just didn’t notice. In short, they’re mapping Transylvania Waters for the first time.

One thing I’m quite grateful for is that sometimes Colin Thomspon does designate things that The Floods are incapable of. The list is short, but the things that are on it really help. One of them is this thing in The Floods: Lost where Winchflat is super powerful at creating technology and can make a machine for anything, but there’s a really bizarre shack in the middle of a courtyard that he can’t penetrate or even use X-rays to look into. It’s one of the more Douglas Adamsian parts of CT’s bibliography. One time a paper booklet in a library told me that if you’re looking for more authors like Douglas Adams, try Eoin Colfer or Colin Thompson. The way I see it is more “Eoin Colfer is the poor man’s Douglas Adams, and Colin Thompson is the very poor man’s Eoin Colfer. Colin Thompson is also a very rich man’s surreal weirdo and therefore quite often worth it”.

Colin Thompson has a serious problem with “show, don’t tell”. I know that sounds crazy, because of how this is a book and “that’s how books work”, but I assure you that Colin Thompson still manages to abuse saying what happened instead of describing events like they’re actually happening. The last four Colin Thompson novels I read felt like almost the entire thing was a timelapse of seasons passing, and things end up being incredibly dialogue-driven.

100 pages of saying what happened later, interesting events in the story start to happen. There seem to be a number of villains in this sequel, and an asshole shapeshifter who’s in the form of a house, with a downright cannibalistic monster wife of his who he wants freed from prison, is the first one to make an appearance.

I don’t want to spoil how they take this man down, but it’s partly redundancies in writing and partly some pretty funny ideas that didn’t end up fully-fledged in my opinion. It sounds like a spoiler that I reveal he’s disguised as a house, but don’t worry, the book makes it incredibly obvious before telling the audience the reveal about four paragraphs later.

While that’s going on, there’s this subplot about how Mordonna and Nerlin, the parents, are trying to set up parliament in Transylvania Waters, to give the illusion to tourists that the country is a democracy or something. They live as kings and queens in a castle, and it’s not, but that will become clearer soon.

For some reason, CT goes ahead and chooses nerds as the acceptable target for narrator’s abuse, and the minor characters for the role of trying to set up a political party of the people.

Colin Thompson makes a pretty good point about how parliament sucks, especially when he says it’s because one party spends 3 or 6 years doing one thing, and then somebody else gets voted in and spends the same amount of time doing the opposite, but I don’t think the scene where Mordonna’s seven grotesque children suddenly walk in and get rollcalled just to form a bigger political party - The Royal Party - than the nerds’ one so that the nerds don’t get to have any say, sets a better precedent for the future. These characters? Well, the Floods are a pretty established large family, but they only used to get the spotlight. Nowadays, Colin Thompson always pushes his original main characters out of the spotlight, and other characters become “main” characters, purely as a freak accident. The book doesn’t give a single line to Valla or Merlinmary.

After the shapeshifter thing is resolved, the next villains are all Winchflat’s fault. Using a bunch of bones they found, this overpowered joke of a scientist character uses his cloning machines to bring fossilized creatures back from the extinction of time. Somehow, they are developed and aware enough to function in this new world quite quickly, not going into shock from the changes made to the world or having to relearn the alphabet.

First, Winchflat brings back an intelligent chicken, who starts a conversation with Winchflat. Of course this means Colin Thompson is gonna throw down that Ethel reference, because he sure loves his Chicken Named Ethel. He also brought back a whole bunch of regular chickens, oddly enough.

Basically, the chicken Ethel has delusions of grandeur and wants to be the rightful leader of everything in sight. This is a pretty funny prospect, but if the joke was handled right, it would still be spoiled by the overdose of characters-finding-it-funny-themselves-and-laughing. So I guess it wasn’t handled right then...

Naturally, the chicken gets totally dominated by The Floods, because of course it did. That’s how it works. Winchflat’s next mistake is to bring a four headed accountant - homo calculus - back to life, which actually ends up being a lot scarier than one would expect.

Good Stuff, Bad Stuff

This book isn’t perfect, but there’s at least one thing in there that considerably had an effect on me when I read it. I’ve already said a lot of bad stuff about this book. There is good stuff in it. I will tell you that thing.

As it turns out, that four-headed accountant from the pre-historic ages that Winchflat reanimated wasn’t just a joke about how “accountants suck” but actually something quite sinister, even bringing up a few dark implications about how the world used to be.

The creature’s name is Fiscal Matters, or just Fiscal. He has four bald heads, a cut moustache on each one, and pairs of glasses. Kinda looks like a caveman. His complusion is to count things, regardless of the value of what he’s counting. All homo calculus do that, and earlier on it’s said that many species went extinct because this behaviour bored them to death.

Winchflat talks to Fiscal for a bit, and then some pretty scary revelations happen. First, Fiscal thinks Winchflat is a servant to him, because apparently in the past, all witches and wizards were servants to his race. You can only wonder what kind of batshit insane forces were powerful enough to subdue the race that Winchflat comes from, but anyway...

Fiscal, second, wants Winchflat to open the strange room in the middle of the courtyard. You know, the weird one that Winchflat can’t open. Winchflat tells him about that, but then Fiscal says “I know how to open it.” So whatever’s in that crazy fucking shed, Fiscal knows what it is and wants to get in. It’s made worse by the fact that Fiscal Matters is getting increasingly aggressive with his “servant”.

The last one is that inside the weird room is a thing called The Ark of the Incontinent. The book never reveals exactly what it is, what it looks like, or how it got its name, but Fiscal wants to go in there so he can contact the rest of his species in outer space. They’re still alive and out there.

The resolution to this arc is pretty anticlimactic, but still unsettling. Basically, after Winchflat tells Fiscal to stay there and not open the door so he can walk away and consult his family, he gets back to find Fiscal counting stones on the shack. Counting how many stones are in the wall is the only way to access The Ark of the Incontinent, and Fiscal can’t, because the amount of stones changed over time and there’s no longer as many in the wall as there are supposed to be.

By the end of the book, Fiscal is still there. He’s still counting, and still hasn’t got into the shack. The Flood family just leaves him to his own devices, and feels perfectly secure about letting somebody with membership of an advanced, dangerous race keep trying to open the one doorway to contacting that race and unleashing war on the planet. Mordonna messes with Fiscal by changing the amount of stones in the walls randomly every now and then, but I think you can imagine how eventually that might turn out to be a bad idea. The probability involved sounds very dangerously high to me.

Lost

Guys... I don’t know. I have been reading this book series for a very long time, and wonder sometimes why I put so much effort into it. I always tell myself “this book will be the last one I read” but it never sticks. I guess I just still think there’s something in there that’s entertaining for me, and maybe there is. I don’t know if I want to continue reading until the very last book or not.

Bottom line is, it’s SBIG. SBIG at best, really. You read what I said up there, you know what’s wrong with it. And I think previous Floods books were better. But lately, as I finished reading this book, I’ve felt more interested in reading the next one. Colin Thompson finally gave continuity nods to things like The Knights Intolerant, which is a really big step forward for this series and means future books might have something I want to read. Read the book if you must, but I’ve been down the path of reading a sequel book before reading its pre-books. It doesn’t go well.

Your alternative is to read 9 big-text-novels until your quest to read the comedically-bad Lost pays off, but I think you have to be a pretty big Colin Thompson fanperson to want to do that. You either read one book in the middle and feel confused, or you read all of them in order and feel disappointed.

You know, fuck it. I’ve been told that books will set you free, and my eyesight and quota-for-consuming-fiction aren’t getting any better - I should just borrow the next book. I should borrow The Floods 11 and do something with my time that involves entering a weird and fantastical story. No more days of nothing but videogames, browser feeds and let’s plays...

#Colin Thompson #The Floods #The Floods Lost #talking about a book #full version of this post (in the notes) has amusing pictures from inside the book

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mycaptainscabin · 6 years

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So, Fannibals, I Just Finished Reading Red Dragon . . .

. . . AND . . .well . . . I didn’t love it. I also read Hannibal Rising which I found marginally more interesting, but still . . . not mind blown.

Back to Red Dragon, which the show is based on. As I said, I didn’t love it.

I appreciated it though. And I appreciated NBC’s Hannibal even more, and what Bryan Fuller did with it.

Spoilers will follow and I’m too tired to put a cut.

In the book Will and Hannibal never had therapy together. Hannibal never worked with the FBI. In fact, Will and Hannibal literally met once. And Will knew the killer was Hannibal, and Hannibal knew Will knew, and Hannibal almost killed him. The book focuses on the Tooth Fairy/Great Red Dragon. He’s the main villain and HE IS FASCINATING. He is SCARY. He is also weirdly empathetic. (It’s the cool motive (kinda?) still murder thing.) We get to see his backstory in the book, his childhood, the abuse he suffered, what made him the way he was. And it hurt. And it was scary as hell. And yet you still want him to get caught. The twist with Reba and the faked death IS in the book and I was glad. Because that was good stuff! I loved all of that.

Will is married to Molly for the duration of the book. Their relationship seems good at first but toward the end you see it start to crumble, but we’re not really let in on the details? Will’s mind is primarily focused on the case when we’re in his point of view. And he’s honestly really boring. There are a couple of moments where he has an IDEA and a CONNECTION is made and it’s awesome. It’s like, OH THERE’S WILL GRAHAM! But for the most part, I found him depressing. I found him flat and sad and lacking the clever wit and sharp as hell mind that Brian Fuller gave him. Most disappointing to me though is how little Hannibal is even mentioned. He’s not in the story. Will speaks to him once in person, for a moment, outside his prison cell as he does in the show, and then he receives I think 3 letters from Hannibal through the story. Hannibal isn’t scary in that book. He’s a polite criminal locked in a cage and I can’t feel fear of him. I found him flat as well. I’ve seen it said around the web that Anthony Hopkins (who was brilliant I do admit) played Hannibal as a psychopath, and Mads Mikkelsen plays him as the Devil. It’s true in the book too. He’s a run of the mill psychopath who’s polite and outwardly refined. But he’s a barely mentioned side thread, a ghost from Will’s past who honestly doesn’t even seem to bother Will that much. In Hannibal Rising, which is about Hannibal’s childhood, we get to see where he came from and the horrors that made him what he is, and that was fascinating too. Some of that is touched on in the show, but not all the details are given. Again though, I found Hannibal strangely flat, uncomplicated and lacking in depth. Clever, yes. Bold, yes. Violent, yes. Brilliant, yes. But not exciting. Not terrifying. I will eventually get to Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, the novels, but I’m taking a break. Because thus far I have been disappointed. And quite honestly the movie, Silence of the Lambs, disappointed me as well. (And I love both Foster and Hopkins.) Perhaps I’ve been spoiled, or too desensitized, but the show tops everything I’ve experienced of Hannibal thus far. And hats off to Fuller. He turned so many characters into women, who are men in the books. Alan Bloom to Alana Bloom. Freddy Lounds to Freddie Lounds, and I know there was at least one other. Also, in the book it’s the male Freddy Lounds who is tied to Francis Dollarhyde’s wheelchair and has his lips bitten off. And then he actually is burned to death in said wheelchair. (I listened to it, I may be spelling names wrong.) Fuller did not kill off a female character in such a violent and visceral way and instead put Chilton in the lime light for that important part, where we get to see the Dragon reveal himself. And Chilton doesn’t even die! Byran took a story that’s good, and turned it into something brilliant. I am saying nothing against the Author. But I believe what Bryan did surpasses the books, makes the story so much more compelling. And I don’t know... maybe I’m just not afraid of Hannibal Lecter? I feel, honestly, that generally if you’re polite to him, and stay out of his affairs, he’ll leave you in peace. He is, by far, much scarier in the show than the books or the one movie I did watch (Silence of the Lambs). The nuance of Mads performance and the polite ‘person suit’ make him far more terrifying. When we finally see him going batshit and trying to kill Jack it’s utterly exhilarating and horrifying. To have seen the depth of his politeness, made him seem so harmless and benign, even as we know he’s screwing Will over slowly and deviously. We just can’t quite believe it. Until suddenly, there he is, the killer, the cannibal. Only when we get to see him trying to kill Jack do we really see the depth of his violence, because even before that, every time we see Hannibal killing someone one, it’s still, on some level, polite. Even with Beverly, we don’t see enough of it to see the depth of how terrifying he can be. I don’t feel any of that in the books thus far. In Hannibal Rising he was killing with a purpose, a need to avenge his beloved little sister. And that’s not scary to me. What happened to her was so gut-wrenchingly disgustingly awful that to me Hannibal’s actions were almost justified. He promised her . . . he promised his sister, whom he loved. And he kept his promises. Someone feel free to tell me if he’s scarier and more interesting in Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. I want more of him in the stories. I want to see more Hannibal. Not just the people around him. I want to know why people were so afraid of him before NBC’s show aired. Because I’m just not convinced. Not till right here was I convinced enough to actually feel fear:

#Hannnibal #Red Dragon #Hannibal Rant #gif #NBC Hannibal #Red Dragon novel #someone tell me if it get's better in the books

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