#and that unevenness isn’t necessarily a bad thing i don’t think because love is inherently a gamble

[whoslaurapalmer]

finished rereading the raven cycle and you know how last year i said i could be pickier about the raven king but didn’t want to? this year i did want to! 

-i mean, i love the raven cycle. interesting magic, very comfy, would sell my soul for the gangsey.  -but most of this post is gonna be me complaining about the raven king  -the tl;dr of it all is ‘the pacing of the raven king is too fast and too slow at the same time. it’s not that i think it was terrible, but i don’t think it was written as successfully as the previous books. i think, because the pacing of the book is so uneven, that the balance between events, and perhaps the balance between the magic and the characters own inherent internal coming of age power, is off. oh btw i am considering reading call down the hawk but Have Concerns’ 

-noticed the ‘blue is calling gansey from the phone/sewing/cat room and gansey is calling blue from the bathroom-kitchen-laundry’ parallel which i thought was very, very cute. that has my whole heart  -also noticed a lot more of gansey’s whole person just constantly thinking about (or not-thinking about) his death  -BUT THEN THE PROLOGUE TO THE RAVEN KING SMACKED ME IN THE FACE AGAIN HOW COULD I FORGET THAT GANSEY LIKE. LITERALLY KNOWS HE’S GONNA DIE AND THE RAVEN KING IS HIM TRYING MAKE SURE EVERYONE WILL BE OKAY AFTER HE’S DEAD -I CANNOT HANDLE RICHARD CAMPBELL GANSEY THE THIRD MY GOD THIS BOY 

-canNOT overstate how much i really do love gwenllian.  -i love her so much. i love her so much  -same with malory. still love him. 

-okay i guess i appreciated artemus a little more -i think my thing is like. do i have a problem with blue being part tree? no not necessarily. but the pacing in the raven king is so uneven that i think what i dislike is how the reveal happened  -no i don’t know what i’d do differently!!  -every time i disagree with a writing choice in a book i try and think ‘now lulu, as someone with a Literal Degree In Putting Words Together, what would you do differently?’ which is a REALLY good writing exercise but mostly just ends up with me going ‘uhhhh. idk. probably have to backtrack a couple plot points and restart from there. no i will not elaborate.’

-last time i thought the raven king moved too fast and this time i agree but also thought it moved too slow?? -i devoured the first three books every time and then both times i read the raven king i kept putting it down because i thought the pacing was so off, so i was simultaneously interested and not interested in what was going on -too fast re: there were A LOT of characters going on, laumonier and piper and henry and neeve and plot points were just piling up and more like slamming together than converging (piper being laumonier’s daughter and henry’s mother being seondeok especially feel less like pieces falling into place than, oh look! ~a thing!!~), ALSO GOD NOAH NEEDED TO SHOW UP MORE (just like. a smidge more noah. would’ve put a lot together), and the speed of finding glendower/driving back/gansey dying/the epilogue -too slow re: somehow so many things are happening but nothing is happening in some parts, some parts dragged, people are just moving around with no real direct sense of working towards the end, blue and gansey were at lunch while adam and ronan were in cabeswater that one time?????????????  (-not that they can’t get lunch. but they had time to get lunch???????)  -oh i think the four of them maybe felt the most disjointed as a group in this book, which is again not necessarily terrible, but a thing  -and these things are just so disappointing because i thought the pacing of the first three books was so GOOD!! things take their time to happen but HAPPEN and i love that so much!!!!  -i do feel bad criticizing the raven king bc i know maggiestief was going through health problems at the time and it took longer than she wanted to finish. but i am still criticizing it because it’s still a very unsatisfying ending 

-reading this time i felt EVEN MORE FIRMLY that gansey should’ve been glendower, and even went so far as to consider, is the text saying he’s glendower, it’s just not explicitly stated?? because of all the parallels??? of gansey being old and young at the same time, gansey + his own magicians, the parallel between glendower shoving that guy in a tree and gansey wanting to do the same to ronan over the pig, the timelessness of the things gansey loves, the Power of command in his voice, a resurrection in the first place  -and i was going to just say, yeah, it’s there, until i got to noah’s chapter again. -i think noah deserved at least one chapter per book (and maybe more during the raven king) and that would’ve made an already tight plot even tighter, especially in the raven king.  (-i was also thinking that if gansey was glendower then something else would’ve happened when they found him, no i still do not know what) 

-big respect though to maggiestief saying glendower had to either be dead or evil and by that page number there wasn’t enough room for him to be evil -and big respect to the fact that, of course it’s not about teens finding a hero, it’s about teens becoming heroes (these thoughts also pulled from her twitter reread), finding glendower (alive) would never have been narratively good or satisfying  (-especially because it makes sense that glendower was dead all along -- if gwenllian was put to sleep wrong, who’s to say that glendower wasn’t, too?) -BUT, IT ALSO MAKES SENSE IF IT’S GANSEY  -but then you have like. the whole time it wasn’t even glendower. it was noah  -which is why i wanted more noah!!! to better lead to that!!!!!!! cause i feel like that kinda comes out of nowhere!!!!!  -the balance of the magical and the real is just off in the reveal i think  -man i don’t know. this is a lot of words. 

-i also appreciated adam’s character arc better this time, which was really nice. -but i still feel no great attachment to ronan and adam’s relationship  

-you know what. i want more mr. gray and maura -idk if i agree with him leaving henrietta. much like the previous paragraphs and my whole gripe with the raven king, it’s not terrible but i don’t think it’s done well, as well as it could’ve been, as well as the previous books  -also! more adam and persephone would’ve been good 

-i was rereading maggiestief’s tweets where she reread the books and i forget which thread this was in but she picked out one of the ‘character x says something that makes character y reevaluate every single interaction previously’ lines and she was like ‘that’s all these books are’ and i was like ‘YEAH MAGGIE. I FEEL LIKE I SEE THIS LINE EVERY SINGLE SECOND.’ and not necessarily in a good way  -sometimes you can reuse a line and it is a parallel or a connection. sometimes you are just reusing a line over and over. 

-she also mentions writing arguments from a point of, both characters are right, or think they’re right, or as right as they can be or something to that effect  -which i really like, and i absolutely 100% see in her writing  -and so i don’t know if this is just a me thing, because i have this obsessive need to backtrack through even the tiniest disagreements after the fact to calmly figure out where i’m coming from and acknowledge where the other person’s coming from, so while i like that every character comes from a place of ‘i’m right’ i feel like it leads to a lot of arguments left unresolved  -but i think that’s just me feeling like everybody should always talk everything out as much as possible so  -and like resolution doesn’t have to be a big dialogue acknowledgement  -but i still didn’t feel like it left a lot of room for these characters to really work towards change -they do change! but i wanted to see it more 

-oh hey so. did gansey successfully sell of monmouth? did ronan get a diploma anyway? 

-me: ‘thing’ is ultimately a vague, unspecific word and should be used sparingly in a narration, much like ‘interesting’  maggiestief: /flinging out ‘thing’ all the time me: you know what, though???? sure, good for her 

-i like henry. but he’s written terribly, the poor guy comes OUT OF NOWHERE too and should’ve shown up earlier more than his two times in blue lily lily blue, and adam and ronan’s super casual racism towards him is like..................................................................mostly unchallenged and really unnecessary  -if a racist comment is going to remain unchecked and unchallenged by the narrative and the characters, what does it accomplish? -especially because it never ever shows up again or showed up before -and gansey just kind of scoffs it aside and blue doesn’t even really truly call it out which is like, the amount of other things gansey will call out???? the amount of stuff blue will call out??????? AND THEY JUST LET THAT GO?????? -so, again! it’s not necessary!! it does nothing!!! it just adds unchallenged racism that has no place!!!!!!!!!!!!

-also reading this time i felt like maggiestief went out of her way to just not say what race blue was  -that shouldn’t be a thing you just repeatedly dance around and never confirm for your main character 

-so my library still does not have the ebook for call down the hawk but i am vaguely considering buying it to read it but also....................i don’t know -i did read the first eight chapters because they were online and i’m like. Intrigued but also?????? Concerned. idk. idk

-looking at it from a distance i have the same concern with it that i do with king of scars.  -do i think dreamer trilogy is necessary in the way that it explores things that are set up in the raven cycle and have big potential consequences? yes. the hunt for the ‘greywaren’, kavinsky proving that there are other dreamers, trying to make sure a dreamed thing can still exist if something happens to the dreamer, the possibilities and limits of dreamers, ronan trying to dream another cabeswater, ronan’s fear about what’s real and what isn’t/what he dreamed and what he didn’t dream, and maggiestief clearly loving writing ronan and wanting to write more of him -do i think those things are executed well in the dreamer trilogy? from what i’ve read about it, maybe not????  -especially re: ronan and adam’s character arcs????? -which i feel like, stupid and bitchy being picky about. -change and recovery do not happen in straight lines. but i think this kind of cycles back to the way she writes arguments with like, is it too unresolved to the point that no change, either positive or negative, is happening?  -ugggg also makes me worry that i just wasn’t Reading it enough or thinking about it enough  -my additional concern is that maggiestief should’ve maybe had firmer rules for what can and can’t be taken out of a dream  (-yes i suppose that limiting the very nature of a dream goes against the power of ‘the dream’ so it makes sense for it to be limitless BUT i feel like especially the dreaming of people is gonna paint you into a corner if you’re not careful)  -but i am also BIG worried re: the character arcs.  -also where ronan’s character arc is after the raven king, do i think he would do the reveal in mr. impossible?? i...........do not know  -well i didn’t think so AND THEN I READ OPAL which i kind of enjoyed, with reservations, which is mostly back to ‘is no change happening’  (-i love that opal is like, ‘ronan’s inner child’ or whatever it was and i liked her more this time around but last year when i read the raven cycle i was like ‘but what’s the point of taking opal out cause they just kind of shuffle her around?’ now, what was the point of taking opal out if they’re gonna put her back??? and actually almost COMPLETELY IGNORE HER in the short story????? there was so much potential there for her and ronan and it didn’t happen...........) -nightwash kinda just happened too, huh.  (-in general ronan bringing his nightmares back with him is like. God Perfect) -but this all really takes me back to maybe there should’ve been limits on dreaming -also after reading the first eight chapters, i’m like -i 100% respect maggiestief for not wanting to rewrite the raven cycle and not wanting to just write about henrietta, i absolutely do -but it feels so strange to read about ronan and adam and not read about gansey and blue as well?  -which isn’t TERRIBLE, but.  -but when i see like, single lines from or little sections i’m like ‘oh that looks like a good time’ because i do like the way maggiestief writes because a great deal of it is so rhythmically poetic and beautiful, but so is a great deal of the raven king while still being disappointing.  -i feel like i’m just gonna feel about it like how i feel about the raven king honestly -and well king of scars.......

-ANYWAY -might read it. might not. still going back and forth on this a lot. i was leaning towards, i’m gonna do it, but now i’m leaning more towards, i don’t want to, i want to keep the image of these characters where i like them, and right now i am aggressively combing through fanfic because i care a great deal about post-raven king trauma discussion and that’s mostly what i want at the current time

[crazyd4esq]

Sorry if this is a little uncomfortable, but given your opinions on fanservice and hentai with underage characters, I'd like to know your opinion on cosplayers/burlesque performers who dress as sexy versions of such characters. Being that it's more a costume and less a portrayal, would that be problematic?

Nah, it’s cool. c:Anyhoo, this is a tightrope well worth walking.  I guess one of my immediate thoughts is that a person choosing to dress a certain way is inherently waaay less problematic than a character designed to be sexy because the person has agency and the fictitious character by definition doesn’t have: anything and everything about a fictitious was a choice by the writer/artist/designer/etc.  I also think that portrayal is an integral (if not indispensable) part of cos(tume)play, but unless the person is out for age play (ew, fucking no) then their real age still governs.  To be honest, aside from that cringy possibility, the main focus shouldn’t be (and usually isn’t) age anyway (Edward Elric would have a Napoleonic complex whether he was 15 or 50, Dilandau Albatou would be a giggling cheek-obsessed maniac at 15 or 50, Katsuki Bakugo would still shriek about wanting to kill his friends and loved ones at 15 or 50, etc.).  So right there I tend to think it’s less problematic, but I feel like I’m dancing around the issue.So here’s the real issue as I see it.  The overwhelming majority of female characters (regardless of age) in anime, video games, comics/graphic novels/manga/etc. are designed primarily to be sexy (or at least designed with being sexy as a major goal), to the point that there are some really fucking idiotic plot contrivances that are just expected at this point.  Flying superheroes wear miniskirts, armor has boob plate and boob window, veteran dragon knights ride their mounts in bikini bottoms, combat miniskirts and stiletto heels exist, etc. etc. etc.  I could probably max out the word count just listing that shit, but instead I respectfully refer you to bikini armor battle damage’s tumblr (they do a much better job explaining and eviscerating this shit than I could).  Here’s the thing, though:IT IS NOT YOUR JOB TO RIGHT THE WRONGS OF PERVERTED IDIOT WRITERS AND ARTISTS.Off the top of my head, I like Momo Yaoyorozu because it would’ve been so easy to make her into a stereotypical rich bitch or waifu character, and instead she actually comes off more like a 3-dimensional character … unfortunately she’s also the second-string fanservice character (after Midnight).  Meaning, well, have you seen her superhero outfit?  Have you?  Have you seen the fucking modified sling bikini she wears into battle (along with heels, because of fucking course high heels are the best possible footwear for running on uneven terrain)?  If somebody wanted to faithfully cosplay her superhero outfit (and not do an AU version, I mean), then they’d have to let it all hang out.  (The same thing would go for Eijiro Kirishima, incidentally, but that’s far closer to idealization than objectification, so instead a better example off the top of my head is basically every female character in the entire Soul Caliber franchise.)  In this case, the person is under no obligation to tone down the sexiness that the creator forced upon the character.So here’s the spin-off issue.  Obviously sometimes the character design becomes more sexy if the cosplayer is older.  Speaking from personal experience, I didn’t realize that Misty’s original outfit is basically a half shirt and short shorts until this woman I had a crush on in college cosplayed as her.  This issue is, of course … not an issue.  Really, the only thing I can think of is: DO NOT BE ASHAMED OF YOUR BODY OR SEXUALITY.  PLEASE DO NOT.  YOUR BODY EXISTS FOR YOUR OWN PURPOSES, NOT TO CONFORM TO OTHERS’ STANDARDS.Imma be blunt: shitting on someone for how their faithful cosplay looks because of how their body alters it (based on height, weight, curves, skin color, physical disability, etc.) is bodyshaming.  It is bullying a person based on their body’s unique characteristics.  Not much else to say on that, other than there’s just no need for that.  Ever.And then, of course, is the other spin-off issue.  Obviously there are some cosplayers that add extra sexy.  As to that … I’m more ambiguous.  I can immediately think of some pokemon cosplays (and I mean cosplayers cosplaying pokemon) that have far more visible tiddie than I recall from the tcg, video games, anime, or (to a lesser extent) manga.  Any time someone starts introducing that stuff to a franchise aimed at kids, they need to be careful lest they turn into their fandom’s equivalent of My Little Pony: FiM’s cloppers.  By the same token, I guess the “injected sexy” cosplay can depend heavily on the source and the fandom.  Going back to Soul Caliber, it doesn’t seem that out of place for someone to do a “day at the beach” style (read: bikini) Ivy … as opposed to, say, a dominatrix Nurse Joy.  (And before anyone brings up that pedotastic pokemon manga, I’m not touching cultural dissonance here, just western cosplay.)  Of course, it’s not so ironclad; Steven Universe arguably lends itself far more readily to overtly sexual fanworks (not an insult) than MLP:FiM, but a kid can still google it without being bombarded with images of Pearl going down on … well, you know.  At the same time, it’s kind of demeaning and can send a very unfortunate message (that a character’s identity, personality, and uniqueness aren’t as important as their looks), and that’s not even getting into the frankly repulsive issues surrounding re-enacting “accident groping” and the like (cosplay obviously isn’t consent, but that really blurs things and can, you know, fucking trigger a sexual assault survivor like me because “hur hur that happens to the character all the time uwu). Injected sexy can push things down an unfortunate path, and sexualizing a child is bad enough when it’s the creator doing it.And so, in conclusion, I see 3 types of sexy in cosplaying.Sexy by Creator Fiat … is not problematic.Sexy by Cosplayer’s Body … is probably the least problematic.Sexy by Injection … can be problematic but isn’t necessarily an issue depending on stuff like the medium and the target demographic.At its core, 99% of cosplay just isn’t problematic, or at least doesn’t gain any new problematic elements beyond those already present in the anime or whatever (though there can be more than enough problematic shit being inherited from the medium).  A lot of times, though, it says more about the people who are raging at someone’s creativity, passion, and (admittedly) body and sexuality than it does about the cosplayer. (Just please don’t fucking do gag molestation or sexual assault, I’d rather not have to worry about getting a panic attack when I’m trying to look up cosplay.)And here’s a final thought for you: I *have* done “sexy cosplay“ and am looking to do it again.  It’s just that my sexy cosplay focuses on confident and visually striking characters (Reigen Arataka, All for One, Young Joseph Joestar) which in turn makes me feel confident and sexy.  (That’s not a dig on cosplayers that favor characters with more revealing outfits, just personal preference.  Hopefully this makes sense!!!)  However, you might have noticed that, with one possible exception, all of those characters are “covered up” (hell, they all wear fucking suits or the like most of the time) … so is it possible that at least some of the complaints about cosplay being problematic are just the latest version of the old misogynistic “cover up” body policing? ;)Hopefully that makes sense.  This was kind of a rush job.EDIT: Fleshed it out, talked about my own cosplay experiences.EDIT2: Looked up some cosplay, nearly had a panic attack because two "enthusiastically consenting” cosplayers were reenacting nonconsensual groping scenes, got salty and has to comment.