#feel free to write up your own show/ship review if you feel so strongly

[masezace]

little off topic for my blog, but i started watching a new show since a friend mentioned it was good and i'd heard positive things about it, so i just wanted to talk about it a little bit (probably never again after this since this isn't a fandom blog, but it's the only one i have rn so idc it's going here)

the show is Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous, and just going on looks alone, despite my love for dinosaurs and the Jurassic Park franchise i never would have considered it. it appears to be very much for kids, and as i'm in my late twenties now i'm not particularly interested in especially kiddy media. however a friend my age enjoyed it and mentioned it has a canon lgbtq+ couple in it among the main characters, so of course i just had to watch it. i had already been hearing that despite its initial appearance and premise, it was surprisingly good for a kids' show, so i had already been curious, but i was even more keen after knowing there were queer characters, and not even the adults, the kids themselves (in a kid's show?!! what a time to be alive), so i finally sat down and watched it.

[spoiler warning, both minor and major, for the rest of this post btw, so continue reading at your own risk if you haven't seen it yet/are still watching]

the show overall

okay so firstly, i am coming at all of this from the perspective of a writer, so my observations are from a technical standpoint more so than just as a fan of the show. and honestly, it really is a well-written show as a whole. is it geared towards kids? definitely. there are plenty of jokes/gags in it that just don't appeal to me as an adult, but beyond that, there was plenty to appreciate as an adult.

the writing is actually phenomenal? there were several points in the series where i just sat back and mulled over the way a scene went, what the thought process behind writing it was like, how well it was executed, and how important it was to the characters and overall plot.

the suspense is spot on, nothing gets dragged out too long, and i will admit there have been a few scenes throughout that actually got me; i jumped! it's actually scarier than i expected a kid show to be, but i'm so glad they went where they did because it really elevated the experience.

the pacing overall is very good, adequately engaging for kids' short attention spans (and us adhd adults 🥲) but not too short either to a point where things felt abrupt or unfinished. plot arcs are well developed and tied up nicely. also, as a bit of a dinosaur nerd, the array of dinosaurs in the show is super broad and satisfying! very fun stuff.

character element

imo the real gem of this show is the character development. honestly it's just *chefs kiss*

the characters grow and change so much and so realistically over the course of the show, it's honestly so much better and more satisfying than the character growth in most adult fiction/media recently.

the growth in ben (who btw was def my favorite character by the end of s1) and kenji in particular were my favorites and, in my personal opinion, the most interesting. the way ben started out anxious, cowardly, and rule abiding to a fault, then grew into a brave, confident, adventurous little pyromaniac gremlin, then had that stint later in the series where he regressed a bit-questioning himself-until eventually ultimately striking a great balance and really coming into himself was just... peak character writing.

kenji started out overconfident, lazy, and overly concerned with money/status. but that arrogant overconfidence and laziness slowly turned into responsibility, and a desire to protect his found family, and the realization that it's the people in your life that really matter most.

honestly what i mentioned only scratches the surface in terms of those two characters, there's certainly more that can be said about them (as well as all the others) but i'm not really in the mood for a deep dive character analysis atm. just trust me tho when i say these characters are so well done and each one of them have arcs that are super satisfying to watch play out.

queer representation

and as for the queer couple? yasmina and sammy are PERFECT. it was so beautiful watching their relationship grow from one-sided to mutual friendship, to loyal devotion, then to love. they were set up incredibly well and incredibly naturally. i have like, no complaints when it comes to them. i don't even know if there's anything i can say that would add to things, they were just a really awesome couple to watch become canon, they're the beautiful and painfully needed representation we all beg for in tv and movies.

shipping, chemistry, and intent

but oh goodness... probably my only real complaint about the entire show would be how benji (ben x kenji) and kenji x brooklyn (kenlyn? brookji? idk and idrc) were handled. because for all that this show did SO much beautifully right, they really screwed the pooch here, sadly.

i'm gonna start by saying that the writing in this show, as with most, is deliberate. what i mean by this is that despite having no clue who it would be because my friend thankfully did not even spoil me as far as the genders of the queer couple, i clocked yas and sammy as the would-be queer couple as early as season one (actually it was between them and benji, but more on that later). i could already see the chemistry, because it was deliberately written in.

shipping is subjective. anyone can ship any character, and in most cases it's pretty easy to see how there could be (romantic) chemistry between fan pairings based on their personalities, their arcs, etc. and that's okay! ships don't even have to have any canon support to be valid, because shipping is for the fandom, and it's for fun (i have a few rarepairs and crack ships across different media that i just love).

but onscreen/written romantic chemistry is a lot less subjective (to clarify, it is subjective whether or not the chemistry is good, but it's not subjective about whether or not it exists). there are literally scenes written with the sole purpose of building the romantic tension and/or chemistry between planned couples (some of which even have absolutely zero plot relevance, which usually is not advised tbh, and most of which are the cliches/tropes you see in literally any romance ever written, some are just disguised a little better than others. but make no mistake, it's all the same set of cliches. there is nothing new under the sun), as well as intentional, key moments within scenes that have other purposes. they are essential to establish romantic pairings.

and typically, the foundations for these couples are laid VERY early on. always within the first or second season (well, at least they are when the writer actually knows what they're doing and has at least a rough plan/outline for the entire series & characters. this is usually a large part of what separates the good chemistry from the poor chemistry. an author who knows who the couples are going to be and has a plan from the beginning to build them up is going to be more successful in creating a believable relationship with good chemistry. one who does not plan, or makes last minute plans will almost certainly fail, and the couple is just going to suck). when the set of characters you're working with are going to stay the same for most or all of the story, you start immediately.

i don't mean to toot my own horn, because i think it's because i'm a writer so i just pick up on narrative patterns very easily, and pretty much always clock the planned couples within the first few episodes of any series, and by the end i am right like 9 times out of 10.

that being said, do you know whose deliberately written chemistry i also clocked in jwcc? ben and kenji's.

kenji and... brooklyn?

no offense to people who like/enjoy kenji and brooklyn, you are free to love them, but the way their romance was written is... quite possibly the weakest point of the show. it felt like they were just trying to appease the upsetto heteros in charge, because there was definitely another het pairing that had a lot more potential than kenji and brooklyn (hello darius x brooklyn aka darilyn, you would have actually made sense because your relationship had amazing buildup and multiple standout scenes from s1 on. dgmw, i love that we got a m/f strong, supportive, purely platonic friendship out of them, i live for those and we really need more of them. but we could have had that with kenji and brooklyn, or darius and sammy, or ben and yas, literally any other pair instead).

kenji and brooklyn as a couple came out of absolutely nowhere. i honestly think they decided to shove them together last minute, and had no actual plan for them until they were working on s4. because their development barely started at the VERY end of s3 (the abruptness of him caring about her being held hostage so much more than literally anyone else in their group despite them having like zero buildup to that point gave me whiplash), but honestly didn't really even become "meaningful" development until s4, over halfway through the series. the two spend the first 3 seasons basically not particularly gaf about each other individually, only as part of the whole group and on an equal level with everyone else. they otherwise have no deliberate narrative foundation. it just starts in s4 with no prior hinting. which makes their development rocky and difficult to believe. the funny thing is their characters literally have dialogue (in s4) trying to draw comparisons/parallels between them to say that they especially have a lot in common and like??? no? they really don't? not any more so than any other two kids in the group. their relationship just, really falls flat.

it was disappointing to see it take such a massive spotlight in the series for almost all of seasons 4 and 5, overshadowing the friendships that have been the focus of the show and should have remained so, to the point where at times it just felt like i was watching some stereotypical het highschool romance. genuinely, it made s4 & 5 more of a drag to get through. yasammy and ben and yas' growing bond (which by the way was so sweet, it had the strongest queer solidarity vibes good lord, i sure wonder why yas chose ben out of everyone to come out to first, hmmm) were some of the few things that kept me invested, otherwise i would have dropped it if it had leaned much farther into becoming the kenlyn show than it already was. especially when it was that pair so much of the focus was given to, even though we had so readily and perfectly available, the pair that could have, should have been: benji. which finally brings me to:

ben and kenji

benji's foundation was laid in s1. their interactions, the situations they found themselves in, were deliberate (on the writers' part). i'm even gonna go out on a limb here and say the pairings were fully established in s1e3, even with parallels between yasammy and benji (sammy clinging to yas and ben clinging to kenji throughout the episode), and darilyn gets the beginning of their development too.

even though they bicker a lot in the beginning, they clearly care about each other? kenji protects/helps ben multiple times, and there are definitely some looks ben gives kenji at times. at the end of s1, the one who seems the most deeply effected over ben's "death," other than darius (understandably since he's the one who failed to save him), was kenji! immediately after it happens, we get two close up shots, darius and brooklyn then yasmina and sammy. after which, we go back to the whole group with kenji in center frame, the focus is intentionally on him. it is only kenji who drops to his knees at the loss, and then we get a close up of just kenji. he was saved for last, and he was alone in frame (tbf bumpy was in frame too, but i'm talking humans here), which implies his feelings are especially important in this moment. that is the reason for solo close ups.

after ben's "death," kenji takes to always wearing ben's fanny pack, and up until bumpy--who ben cares VERY much about--got separated from them, kenji was the one who (however briefly) took over her care, ensuring she got off the monorail with them, and he's extremely distraught, more than pretty much all of them, when they can't find her, and he's last to leave when they decide to accept that ben's gone. even when they do leave, he's distant and distracted and his mind is clearly still on ben.

other than darius, kenji is the only one (if i'm remembering correctly) to mention ben/say his name after they lost him, upset because he was actually trying not to think about him. he has clearly thought about ben, probably a lot, because it's hard not to be reminded constantly when you wear something that belonged to a deceased loved one. and frankly, he appears to be the only one who dwells on him that much.

when ben reappears alive (which btw he found the group again because of kenji's butter knife, hello), the frames literally purposely focus on kenji's reaction. he's the one in the foreground every time they show him and brooklyn in that scene. he is the first one to say ben's name, the first one to go to him and hug him, and the scene takes special care to highlight kenji's strong emotions at ben's reappearance, lingering on his teary face as the focus for a bit even after brooklyn enters the frame to hug ben (because she is not at all an important element in the scene at that moment). just like when ben "died," the way this scene is written and shot HEAVILY suggests that ben holds significant importance to kenji, specifically. because again, the focus here is on kenji and ben almost exclusively, with brooklyn as only an afterthought lol. and quite frankly literally everyone else's reaction to him being alive was pretty lackluster compared to the special attention they gave to kenji on this.

and then in s3 we have the infamous hat scene, where darius and ben are in the limo and ben sees and mentions kenji's sailor hat, looking sad and sounding like... longing?? then directly after we switch to kenji realizing he forgot his hat?? the scene has no real significance tbh other than to draw a connection between ben and kenji. like, it acts as a transition to switch to the pov of the group on the boat, but it was entirely unnecessary? why not just have darius say something about the others and then show them on the boat? if there were no special relationship between ben and kenji, it would have made far more sense if they really wanted it to be ben to say something, that he sees the hat, and sadly says something along the lines of "i hope the others are okay/doing better than we are right now/etc" which implies that the hat made him think of everyone, their whole group. rather than what we got... which very much implies that he was mostly just thinking about kenji 💀 and then kenji thinking about the hat at the same time ben's looking at it and thinking of kenji. like, this is.... a very blatant connection being made by the writing/directing here.

all of that. so many deliberate connections made between ben and kenji, they had a very solid foundation laid for a romance to develop, and by all intents and purposes one already WAS developing according to the show's own subtext. which was why up until s4 obliterated the idea, i was positive the queer couple in the show was either going to be yasammy or benji. it was extremely obvious imo. but as soon we started getting the typical, loud, cliche "we are going to pair off these characters" scenes for kenji and brooklyn, i knew we were getting yasammy and not benji (to be clear, i'm not at all upset about yasammy, they're beautiful and i love how their relationship was done, i wouldn't have had it end any other way for them. but i do personally prefer benji, i just like their personalities and dynamic more. and i feel they had so much potential that got wasted to make way for a far less interesting pairing between kenji and brooklyn. why can't we have 2 queer couples, huh? and if we really needed a minimum of one hetero pairing to appease whoever needed appeasing, darilyn was right there).

but then??? their like entire bond just gets dropped (honestly ben himself gets pretty heavily sidelined for almost all of the last two seasons, which is criminal imo). mostly so that a rushed kenji x brooklyn can be established. like there are still a few small moments here and there in early s4, and one episode in s5 (ep 10), but from early s4 till pretty much the end of the series we hardly see them have any meaningful conversations or interactions, meanwhile literally every other combo in the group does.

it's so weird? why build up benji so deliberately over the course of multiple seasons just to like, fully discard it for a pairing with far less chemistry, even after the chemistry-building scenes they shared, some of which literally had no other purpose than to affirm their connection? even though they were very sparse, the moments benji had were just so blatant (kenji leaps into the rock crevice right onto the back of a saber tooth to save ben?!!?? like he literally was just willing to exchange his life for him like that?? he basically says that he wasn't really thinking, he just did it. so he moved out of what, emotional instinct, that's what we're meant to intuit from that series of events? implying that he specifically has strong emotion and doesn't think things through when it comes to ben? because he doesn't do that kinda stuff for any of the others in the group! even better, this parallels when sammy jumped on the nothosaurus to save yasmina. and then the way benji look at each other after it's over??? hello??? and then how kenji pulls both brooklyn and ben in for that hug a couple minutes later... side eyeing the writers for that choice. they knew what they were doing there and they were evil for it). i just can't see any reason to have dropped them like they were, after all the development they shared for 3 seasons. confounding. biggest disappointment of the series.

i know this probably reads to some as just "wahh, my ship didn't become canon" nonsense. but that's not why i'm bugged. this wasn't just a ship i liked and wanted canon despite no actual narrative support, as most ships tend to be. this ship did have narrative support. there was intent behind many of their scenes together, lingering looks and little things that matter narratively and are always used to signify a stronger/special connection. and it led nowhere, for no good reason. that bothers me. writing that implies and promises something, but never delivers on it. like a person who never finishes their sentences (think Dr McPhee from Night at the Museum). ultimately it's not a HUGE deal or anything, at the end of the day it's just a ship and just a kids' show. but as a writer, it's just irritating to see something like that be done. what can i say 🤷

conclusion

even despite the wasted potential between certain pairings, and even though i do think the first three seasons were superior to the last two, overall i really enjoyed the show, and for what it was, it was really well-made. the overarching focus was of course on found family and friendship before anything else, which i absolutely love, and it was masterfully done. out of 6 kids, all of them had at least one or two meaningful bonding moments one-on-one with another in the group, so every possible combination had their moment to build strong, believable friendships with each other. i'm just so surprised by how good it was as a whole honestly, good enough to binge over the course of a week. i will happily recommend jwcc to anyone willing to give it a watch regardless of age, because i definitely think there's no age limit for a good story, no matter the medium it's told in. :)

[impostoradult]

This is time that was allotted to these storylines by canon, offering an expectation of meaning and importance, offering what results in a promise—not time the fans imagined or made up, not something they feel nebulously entitled to, but time they spent on plots the canon gave to them. (Cas means something to Dean after all these years and a love confession. Bucky means something to Steve after all these years and a snap. Jaime’s project of growth and his meaningful relationship with Brienne is something worth investing in.) But instead of saying, yes, you spent all this time watching these scenes, feeling these moments, taking this in—you grew with this character, with these relationships (grew in many cases away from the set starting point)—here is your promised meaning, again and again, these properties snatch the rug away and then pretend blithely they cannot understand why “entitled fans” are so upset.

I’ve been meaning to write my version of this argument for a while now, and I suppose this article is just as good a reason as any.

My thesis, in short, is that lack of queer representation actually isn’t what is creating ~the problem~ here. What’s creating the problem is the overriding power of heteronormativity as a kind of ‘trump’ story logic that is allowed to steamroller everything else into oblivion. (And yes, there actually is a substantial difference between those two things)

Sub-thesis 1: Representation Actually Isn’t A Strong Argument for Destiel (or any particular ship/character)

Controversial, I know.  The representation argument (while an extremely valid argument as applies to popular culture in general) is actually not a very good argument when it comes to why Dean should be explicitly queer and Destiel should have been consummated. 

For one, there’s no reason -- exclusively from the standpoint that it is a moral imperative that queer people are represented in media -- why any particular character or set of characters should be that representation. The ethical cultural mandate to represent marginalized groups does not mandate that any one character or set of characters in any particular given story be that representation*. Yes, even if you as a member of that marginalized group happen to identify with that character. Even then, it isn’t OWED to you. (I think writers should take those trends of identification seriously, and think about what it means to marginalized groups, and act accordingly. But I don’t think it creates an OBLIGATION)

*I’d argue the primary caveat to this would be in stories where the character’s situation or arc is directly related to struggles experienced by that marginalized group (i.e., casting mostly white actors in stories where those characters are experiencing racial oppression)

For another, if representation of queer characters were primarily dictated by fandoms, 90% of queer characters in media would be white, conventionally attractive men. (That might be overstating it a bit, but fandoms have serious biases when it comes to shipping and what kind of characters they latch onto for queer interpretation, and that’s one of the reasons I’m grateful queer representation is not primarily linked to our tastes/preferences). 

The representation argument is a very valid argument when examining popular culture as whole, and when looking at broader trends for example, within a genre, or a whole network. But no particular TV show is obligated to make particular characters within it queer just because representation is a moral imperative as a broader cultural issue. 

Sub-Thesis 2: Heteronormativity Creates Stupid/Badly Constructed Stories

The actual problem here is how heteronormativity creates a kind of trump logic that overrides coherent storytelling. 

I’m not upset about what happened on Supernatural because I think we missed out on representation. There is actually plenty of ~better~ representation elsewhere, and there will continue to be more as time goes on. The representation issue is peripheral at best when it comes to analyzing what went ‘wrong’ with Supernatural. 

The key issue here is that stories need to make sense, not just in terms of plot (although that matters), but in terms of character growth, emotional arcs, etc. The ending of Supernatural is bad because it treated massive pieces of character growth and one of the most significant emotional arcs of the whole show as if it was ultimately inconsequential -- which is bad storytelling and doesn’t make sense. 

And YES, we are ‘owed’ stories that make sense. It’s not entitled to want a story to be coherent, because coherence is what makes a story a story, and not just a series of random meaninglessly assembled plot points/fictional anecdotes. 

The problem is, Hollywood writers keep writing themselves into situations where emotional coherence basically requires an explicitly queer dynamic (or at least a strongly subtextual one), and then just being like...but these characters aren’t queer so we can’t do that. Instead, let’s end Steve’s arc by sending him back in time to live a heterosexual life with Peggy, disregarding the HUGELY significant plot points related to Steve/Bucky which grounded multiple entire movies within the MCU (Winter Solider, Civil War). Let’s end Sherlock by inventing a random, long-lost Holmes sister never remotely hinted at or foreshadowed and make that incomprehensible plot point the finale, when the entire series has been grounded in John and Sherlock’s relationship. 

Let’s make it canonically clear Cas’s love for Dean is the one single act of pure free will in a world with a malevolent God trying to manipulate everyone’s lives for his own amusement, and that Cas’s love for Dean is the only thing keeping the primary story-universe of Supernatural intact, because every other version of Sam and Dean in every other universe kill each other as God intended. Let’s make it clear that Cas’s betrayal of heaven due to his love for Dean is literally propping up their entire universe, but then end the story by pretending like it’s not that important after all. Castiel who?

And it’s just like...THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE! It doesn’t make fucking sense. It’s bad writing. So why would you do it? (I mean, I being a bit facetious here. I know exactly why. Because the precious feelings of homophobes will be hurt, and companies don’t want to lose out on their money) 

It’s not entitled to want a story to make sense. It’s not entitled to want major plot points and character arcs and emotional dynamics to have resolutions that follow from what came before in the story. 

And I’m sorry, but you are a ridiculous person if you watched Dean grieve Castiel’s ostensible deaths in s7 and s13 (both times becoming nearly catatonic, nihilistic, more self-destructive than usual, and borderline suicidal over losing Cas) and try to argue to me that his shrug-it-off attitude towards Cas’s death/loss in the finale makes any goddamn sense at all. 

It is utterly inconsistent with everything that has happened before in Supernatural regarding Dean and Castiel’s relationship. It’s incomprehensibly incoherent and just stupid. (And that is just the absolute tip of the incoherence iceberg because to fully explain why the ending of Supernatural re: Destiel doesn’t make sense we’d have to review over 300 episode’s worth of content, and there isn’t time for that) 

I’m just so sick and so tired of being asked to pretend to be stupid because you know, man, heterosexuality. They’re not gay!!1! 

The exhaustion I feel, as a queer viewer, in fact is not borne out of lack of representation. The representation issue is very much on an upward trajectory and I’m not worried about the future of TV not being queer enough. I’m not. 

The exhaustion and frustration and anger I feel as a queer viewer is borne of having to repeatedly watch stupid endings to good stories because the story can only make sense if you make it queer (you cowards). I’m tired of being asked to develop dumb amnesia disease in order to consume endings to stories that had to blow everything up at the end to (re)enforce a heterosexuality that can only stand on a foundation of utter incoherence and contradiction to monumental things that came before it.

I am JUST SO TIRED of being asked to sacrifice my intelligence, my basic logic and critical thinking skills, and my ability to remember basic narrative beats at the alter of almighty Heterosexuality, supreme ruler of all cultural output and destroyer of good queer things. 

Heterosexuality isn’t owed my stupidity, and I’m not entitled for wanting stories to make sense. YOU are entitled for demanding my stupidity when you wrote that dumb shit and expected me to act like it wasn’t dumb simply because it was heterosexual. 

No, the heterosexuality is exactly the reason it IS dumb. 

[its-bound-to-get-loud]

Speculating about sexuality

It’s time to get a little controversial on this blog. Or at least talk about a controversial subject. I’ve recently seen some fandom discourse about this subject from multiple sources. A lot of people have the opinion that discussing a celebrity’s sexuality is a bad thing, something you shouldn’t do. I strongly disagree.

Full disclosure, I’m a Larrie. I’m a 1D fan who believes Harry and Louis are a couple. I’m also a 5SOS fan. Now I know many 5SOS fans seem to be wary of Larries in particular. I know some people have taken it too far sometimes. But also, it’s hard to compare Larry/1D to 5SOS in many ways, because Larry and 1D themselves have done a lot of things to encourage fans looking into things they normally might not. It feels to me as if 5SOS fans saw the things that happened in the 1D fandom, turned around and decided to do the exact opposite. This is a good thing in some ways, but it also leaves no room for critical thinking.

Now back to 5SOS. I’ve had a few conversations about this topic and what it comes down to is this. 5SOS are famous, they live a life that’s (partially) being seen by the public and the media. Now this will sound cold, but it’s a fact: 5SOS are a product. When we interact with them on social media, we interact with a product. In the end they want to keep selling their music to us. In order to do so, engaging with fans is part of their job. It doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy it, it doesn’t mean they’re not genuine. If you work in a supermarket part of your job may be stocking shelves. You have to do it because it’s your job, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it as well.

Part of the product that is 5SOS is their relationships. We see their girlfriends plastered over their social media, they mention them in interviews, etc. That’s not something they HAVE to do generally speaking. If we are to assume that (for argument’s sake) all 3 current 5SOS relationships are genuine, then they don’t have to show us their girlfriends if they don’t want to. This means they either choose to do so, because that’s what they want, or these girlfriends are being presented to us for a reason (PR, bearding, etc.). Which of these it is, is for you to decide. Both options make them become part of the product. We are allowed to question that product, since we are the ones consuming it. If the person in question has made comments that can be regarded as them hinting at not being straight they open the door even further. You cannot tell someone to come over and then slam the door in their face because they get too close.

If 5SOS want to they can keep their relationships private. Their social media profiles are not the same as ours. They are a representation of the product they are. A representation of their image. That’s why celebrities often have private profiles as well, where they can share private things that they don’t want to share with the public.

The 5SOS girlfriends themselves are a product as well. They all have careers that involve being in the public eye, they are just as well selling us a version of themselves. 2 public people dating does not mean we automatically HAVE to see that they are dating. Celebrities can keep things a secret or low-key if they want to. In fact, I’d dare to argue they have more tools to do so than you and I.  

You can look at it like this, if I’m buying a laptop I’m doing research online, I’ll check out reviews. I’ll ask questions at the store. I question the product before I buy it. That’s not that different from what we do as fans. Before we buy their music we question if this is a product we want to buy. Most of the time that’s an unconscious decision we make. Sometimes a product can becomes unsatisfactory after a while and we choose to move on from it. I know it sounds cold, but it’s not that different with celebrities. If 5SOS keep showing me their public girlfriends on their public social media, I get to question that. If I come to the conclusion that I think that what they are telling me is false. I get to discuss that. Being a fan does not equal always taking things at face value.

There’s also a double standard in this fandom. Some people are more than willing to yell about how problematic and toxic the girlfriends are in their opinion. Which means they are allowed to poke into (what they think is) a real relationship between 2 people. When Luke says Teeth is about Sierra, they question his words and don’t hesitate to say their relationship is toxic. But when it comes to sexuality suddenly that’s a no go. I am absolutely not a fan of the way some of the way girlfriends behave. As long as this happens in a fandom environment I am also fine with talking about that. But if you disapprove of one thing and then do something similar, maybe it’s time you start practicing what you preach or leave people to have their own opinions.

This doesn’t mean you should tell the guys directly that you think their relationship is not real or that you think they are not straight. You don’t harass their friends, their crew, and their family about this. Discussing a celebrity’s sexuality/relationship should stay limited to fandom spaces. With social media it’s a lot easier for celebrities to see what we say about them. Therefor I always suggest being mindful of what you say (they may be a product, but they are still people). Personally it’s why I enjoy Tumblr, because most celebrities don’t go on here and (most of the time) we can safely discuss things that are more difficult to discuss in a place like Twitter. I will say, just because we are questioning a product, it doesn’t mean we get to be rude in the process. You generally don’t go to the store and start yelling at the salesperson if you don’t agree with what they tell you.

People seem to think it’s disrespectful to say someone is gay. Why? Is there anything wrong with being gay? Absolutely not. We live in a society that’s very heteronormative, being straight is seen as the “default” sexuality. It should not be. If you’re going to argue that it’s disrespectful to say someone is gay, then please also don’t assume they are straight. You can have personal thoughts, sure. I have personal thoughts on the specific sexuality of the guys in 5SOS as well. But I keep in mind that my personal thoughts aren’t a fact. I could be wrong. So unless someone has specifically stated their sexuality it’s best to not assume anything and keep an open mind.

Then finally I want to briefly touch on a topic that goes hand in hand with what I’ve talked about: shipping. Some people have a problem with shipping when it comes to real people. For some people shipping is just enjoying the idea of 2 people together even if you think they aren’t. While other people truly believe in that relationship. There’s nothing wrong with any of that as long as it doesn’t become invasive. It all comes back to what I’ve said before. We are consuming a product. The relationships between the 5SOS guys are a huge part of that product. The chemistry between them is part of why we love them. I’m not saying they are pretending to like each other. I fully believe their chemistry is genuine, but it does help sell the product. It also means that sometimes the guys/their team plays into that chemistry to sell the product.

They guys should not have a problem with fans shipping them together, because it’s not up to them to decide that. They sell us their relationships, so we get to form opinions about that. If we stay in our own fandom space and do not become invasive by showing them or people around them fandom content (fics, headcanons, manips, etc.). Then they should not come into our spaces and invade stuff we enjoy in that space. I get super uncomfortable whenever I see celebrities reading fanfiction or being read fanfiction. Fanfiction about them is not for them. It’s made for fans to enjoy and they should stay away from that. I want to encourage you to go and read this answer* about shipping real people. Because sometimes other people’s words say it better than my own words ever could.

With that we have reached the end of this post. As usual I am always open to discuss this in an adult manner. If you feel like you have anything to add to this discussion, feel free to send me an ask/dm. Or reply to this post. If you like/agree with what I write I would love it if you reblogged this post. That’s the only way more people can see it. My blog is small, so reblogs are very much needed to keep the discussion going. Don’t think of coming in my inbox and yelling at me how everything I said is wrong and bad and awful, because it is only going to get you blocked. If you don’t agree, that’s fine, but I’m not going to tolerate any hate.

Finally, just because you are allowed to speculate and question whatever 5SOS or any other celebrity/influencer tells you, doesn’t mean you have to. If that’s not your cup of tea, then that is more than fine. The reason I wrote this post is because we need to stop making people who think critically about the things they are being told, feel guilty about what they do.

* Please note that the author of this post does not have anything to do with what has been written in this post. If you have a problem with anything in this post, please direct it to me and not them.

[aboveallarescuer]

Daenerys Targaryen in A Storm of Swords vs Game of Thrones - Episode 3.1: Valar Dohaeris

In this series of posts, I intend to analyze precisely how the show writers downplayed or erased several key aspects of Daenerys Targaryen’s characterization, even when they had the books to help them write her as the compelling, intelligent, compassionate, frugal, open-minded and self-critical character that GRRM created.

I want to make it clear that these posts are not primarily meant to offer a better alternative to what the show writers gave us. I understand that they had many constraints (e.g. other storylines to handle, a limited amount of time to write the scripts, budget, actors who may have asked for a certain number of lines, etc) working against them. However, considering how disrespectful the show’s ending was to Daenerys Targaryen and how the book material that they left out makes it even more ludicrous to think that she will also become a villain in A Song of Ice and Fire, I believe that these reviews are more than warranted. They are meant to dissect everything about Dany’s characterization that was lost in translation, with a lot of book evidence to corroborate my statements.

Since these reviews will dissect scene by scene, I recommend taking a look at this post because I will use its sequence to order Dany’s scenes.

This post is relevant in case you want to know which chapters were adapted in which GoT episodes (however, I didn’t make the list myself, all the information comes from the GoT Wiki, so I can’t guarantee that it’s 100% reliable).

In general, I will call the Dany from the books “Dany” and the Dany from the TV series “show!Dany”.

Scene 1

Summary: show!Dany and show!Jorah are on a ship. The two discuss a) the dragons' growth, b) whether it's worth being complicit in the slave trade or not and c) the Dothraki's seasickness.

We begin the episode with this conversation about the dragons:

JORAH: They're growing fast.

DAENERYS: Not fast enough. I can't wait that long. I need an army.

Is it true that Dany needs the dragons to conquer Westeros and wishes they were bigger than they are at this point in the books? It is:

Another year, or perhaps two, and he may be large enough to ride. Then I shall have no need of ships to cross the great salt sea.

But that time was not yet come. Rhaegal and Viserion were the size of small dogs, Drogon only a little larger, and any dog would have outweighed them; they were all wings and neck and tail, lighter than they looked. And so Daenerys Targaryen must rely on wood and wind and canvas to bear her home. (ASOS Daenerys I)

However, that's not all there is to their relationship. Dany loves them as she would love her own human children:

They are my children, she told herself, and if the maegi spoke truly, they are the only children I am ever like to have. (ASOS Daenerys I)

Because she loves them like a mother would, she pays attention to how they grow and develop and act like a mother would:

Dragons always preferred to attack from above, Dany had learned. Should either get between the other and the sun, he would fold his wings and dive screaming, and they would tumble from the sky locked together in a tangled scaly ball, jaws snapping and tails lashing. The first time they had done it, she feared that they meant to kill each other, but it was only sport. No sooner would they splash into the sea than they would break apart and rise again, shrieking and hissing, the salt water steaming off them as their wings clawed at the air. (ASOS Daenerys I)

That level of care and attention (and her own cleverness in the choice of the word "dracarys") is what allows her to figure out how to order them to breathe fire on her own:

She took a chunk of salt pork out of the bowl in her lap and held it up for her dragons to see. All three of them eyed it hungrily. Rhaegal spread green wings and stirred the air, and Viserion’s neck swayed back and forth like a long pale snake’s as he followed the movement of her hand. “Drogon,” Dany said softly, “dracarys.” And she tossed the pork in the air.

Drogon moved quicker than a striking cobra. Flame roared from his mouth, orange and scarlet and black, searing the meat before it began to fall. As his sharp black teeth snapped shut around it, Rhaegal’s head darted close, as if to steal the prize from his brother’s jaws, but Drogon swallowed and screamed, and the smaller green dragon could only hiss in frustration.

“Stop that, Rhaegal,” Dany said in annoyance, giving his head a swat.

“You had the last one. I’ll have no greedy dragons.” She smiled at Ser Jorah. “I won’t need to char their meat over a brazier any longer.”

“So I see. Dracarys?”

All three dragons turned their heads at the sound of that word, and Viserion let loose with a blast of pale gold flame that made Ser Jorah take a hasty step backward. Dany giggled. “Be careful with that word, ser, or they’re like to singe your beard off. It means ‘dragonfire’ in High Valyrian. I wanted to choose a command that no one was like to utter by chance.” (ASOS Daenerys I)

She feels a lot of pride for them and knows how to distinguish each of them:

Every man of them, from captain to cook’s boy, loved to watch the three fly … though none so much as Dany.

[...] Viserion’s scales were the color of fresh cream, his horns, wing bones, and spinal crest a dark gold that flashed bright as metal in the sun. Rhaegal was made of the green of summer and the bronze of fall. They soared above the ships in wide circles, higher and higher, each trying to climb above the other.

[...] Drogon was aloft as well, though not in sight; he would be miles ahead, or miles behind, hunting.

He was always hungry, her Drogon. (ASOS Daenerys I)

Now, does this scene prevent any of these aspects from being true for show!Dany as well? No. That being said, not only these aspects don't come across as strongly in this scene (aside from how proud she is of them), it's also important to notice the show's priorities: they would rather focus on how show!Dany is dissatisfied with their slow growth because of her need to wage war and take back the Iron Throne (which, as I said in this post, is only a means to an end rather than the end that Dany really wants). Benioff describes Dany as "fiercely ambitious" and says in this video that "what she wants, more than anything, is to return home and to reclaim her birthright". I can't agree with these descriptions, so I need to call out this scene's priorities.

*

Related to how Benioff feels about Dany, we also have show!Dany saying this:

DAENERYS: Not fast enough. I can't wait that long. I need an army.

At this point in the books, Dany isn't even thinking of that, she is thinking that she will go to Pentos and meet Illyrio.

“From Meereen I am sold to Qohor, and then to Pentos and the fat man with sweet stink in his hair. He it was who send Strong Belwas back across the sea, and old Whitebeard to serve him.”

The fat man with sweet stink in his hair ... “Illyrio?” she said. “You were sent by Magister Illyrio?”

“We were, Your Grace,” old Whitebeard replied. (ACOK Daenerys V)

(Now, it could be argued, like @rainhadaenerys​ did in this meta, that show!Dany has more agency than Dany when she realizes, on her own, that she needs an army. It's a valid perspective that can coexist with what I'm saying here.)

This change doesn't bode well with the fact that they are choosing to portray the Iron Throne as show!Dany's most important goal when, like I just said, this is not what primarily motivates Dany. They are making show!Dany more ambitious (which, again, is not a bad thing in and of itself) than in canon and will have her pay the price for that later on.

*

JORAH: We'll be in Astapor by nightfall. Some say the Unsullied are the greatest soldiers in the world.

DAENERYS: The greatest slave-soldiers in the world. The distinction means a good deal to some people.

If D&D were following Dany's characterization, she wouldn't be aware of how deplorable and unacceptable slavery is at this point:

“...In Astapor you can buy Unsullied.”

“The slaves in the spiked bronze hats?” Dany had seen Unsullied guards in the Free Cities, posted at the gates of magisters, archons, and dynasts. “Why should I want Unsullied? They don’t even ride horses, and most of them are fat.” (ASOS Daenerys I)

Some people could argue that show!Dany's awareness of these issues from the get-go is a good change. However, I think it detracts from Dany's character development quite a bit. As @khaleesirin​ says here:

Dany’s supposed arbitrariness and hypocrisy ranging from “why wasn’t she against slavery earlier?” to “why did she leave Astapor?” stem from the fact that her beliefs, her core principles, were “anti-foundational”; they didn’t come from some pre-existing knowledge she adapted as a priori truth. They were all a result of her actual experiences. (x)

With this change, show!Dany misses out on the chance to receive this sort of growth; it detracts from her arc being of someone who develops her political goals and moral values along the way and may actually later validate claims that Dany is too self-righteous (she never was). Now, to be fair to the show writers (and I know this can be hard), particularly to Weiss (who, at least back in 2013, seemed to be much more sympathetic towards Dany than Benioff), he knows that Dany was a slave herself and that that informs her feelings and eventual actions against the masters (And so does Emilia Clarke). Even so, I have to say: I don't think Dany would have gone to Astapor if she were fully aware of the implications of being complicit in the slave trade.

“Khaleesi,” he said, taken aback by her fury, “the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained—”

“I have heard all I care to of their training.” Dany could feel tears welling in her eyes, sudden and unwanted. Her hand flashed up and cracked Ser Jorah hard across the face. It was either that, or cry.

Mormont touched the cheek she’d slapped. “If I have displeased my queen—”

“You have. You’ve displeased me greatly, ser. If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

~

“I want to sail now, not on the tide, I want to sail far and fast and never look back. But I can’t, can I? There are eight thousand brick eunuchs for sale, and I must find some way to buy them.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

In these passages, we find out that witnessing the Unsullied's training is so hard for Dany that it makes her cry. It makes her question Jorah's honor as a knight for having thought that it was okay to bring her there. It makes her want to leave Astapor and never look back. I would say that Dany is an accidental queen (in the sense that she only became one for very specific circumstances, namely that all the men around her died) and, similarly, an accidental revolutionary - not in the sense that her haters argue (i.e. she just wanted an army and it became convenient to free the slaves), but rather because she only ended up in Astapor for very specific reasons: a) she didn't know how wrong slavery was and thought that slaves were treated like normal servants and b) she needed an army (not because of her "ambition", but because she realized that she shouldn't depend entirely on Illyrio and remain a beggar queen).

Show!Dany, on the other hand, knows that slavery is unacceptable and still sails to Astapor. Some things remain like they are in the books despite that change: like Dany, show!Dany still feels empathy for the slaves and risks a dragon solely because she wanted to free them. However, on a superficial read, it gives a bit of weight to the notion that she is too ambitious or that freeing the slaves was only a secondary goal to that of getting an army. Even if show canon can still disprove these claims, it's frustrating because they would be even easier to debunk if the show writers had been more faithful to the books.

*

JORAH: Do those people have any better ideas about how to put you on the Iron Throne?

DAENERYS: It's too beautiful a day to argue.

One of Dany's core traits is that she is open-minded and accepting of feedback, both positive and negative.

“A queen must listen to all,” she reminded him. “The highborn and the low, the strong and the weak, the noble and the venal. One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.” (ASOS Daenerys I)

~

The old man had not wanted to sail to Astapor; nor did he favor buying this slave army. A queen should hear all sides before reaching a decision. That was why Dany had brought him with her to the Plaza of Pride, not to keep her safe. (ASOS Daenerys II)

~

“Your Grace, I did not mean to give offense.”

“Only lies offend me, never honest counsel.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

This characteristic, however, doesn't come across in this scene, in which show!Dany is brushing off any discussion and trying to retain her own opinion on the matter. 

Now, this is not to say that there aren't moments in which we see show!Dany listening to her advisors and following their counsel (there are many) - heck, even now, she is following show!Jorah's advice since she is still going to Astapor despite her misgivings. 

However, considering that:

a) the show is, in this episode, adapting parts of ACOK Daenerys V and ASOS Daenerys I and II (all of which contain explicit moments of Dany asking for advice and feedback and truth from her advisors, even if they disagree with her),

b) the show will later try to paint show!Dany as reckless or dangerous when she doesn't listen to her advisors and

c) there's a widespread misconception that Dany (especially the show version) is unable to consider other people's perspectives... I end up looking askance at this scene. 

They could have written many others (such as any of the three examples from the books that I showed above) that would have left us with a different impression of Dany. Worse scenes will come, of course, but I'm taking note of every single thing that may have helped to mischaracterize Dany in the eyes of the general audience.

Also, unlike show!Dany (who isn't shown onscreen offering either counterarguments or "better ideas" than show!Jorah's advice to turn Astapor), Dany is shown onpage making lots of questions to Jorah's counsel before deciding to follow it:

“How am I to buy a thousand slave soldiers? All I have of value is the crown the Tourmaline Brotherhood gave me.” (ASOS Daenerys I)

~

“Those are Illyrio’s tiger skins,” she objected.
“And Illyrio is a friend to House Targaryen.”
 (ASOS Daenerys I)

~

“There will be dangers on such a long march ...” (ASOS Daenerys I)

~

“What if Captain Groleo refuses to change course, though? And Arstan, Strong Belwas, what will they do?” (ASOS Daenerys I)

While it could be argued that Dany is not offering "better ideas" here either, that's not my point: my point is that Dany is being shown here as an active player who takes part in discussions of which course of action to take, which is not what we tend to see in the show. Indeed, there are plenty of moments in which the series has show!Dany follow her advisors' counsel with no objections or complements of her own at all. That's why there are lots of different flavors of misconceptions about Dany: when it comes to whether she listens to people's advice or not, some argue that she can't think on her own and depends too much on them, some argue that she is too self-absorbed and never listens. In D&D's case, they have said that show!Dany has only relied on the men around her for the first two seasons, which is blatantly untrue in the books - see examples of Dany making her own decisions in both AGOT and ACOK here and here. Their misunderstanding of Dany is what makes me wary of this scene (for it is informed by said misunderstanding), so it's necessary to point out that what it intends to convey about show!Dany isn't what the books intend to convey about Dany.

*

Then, we have this:

DAENERYS: It's too beautiful a day to argue.

(Dothraki man vomiting)

JORAH: You're right. Another lovely day on the high seas.

DAENERYS: Don't mock them. They're the first Dothraki who have ever been on a ship. They followed me across the poison water. If they'll do it, others will. And with a true khalasar ...

JORAH: The Dothraki follow strength above all, khaleesi. You'll have a true khalasar when you prove yourself strong. And not before.

This exchange may be brief, but it is wrong and offensive on so many levels.

First, show!Dany seems to suggest that she is interested in expanding her khalasar when she says that "if they'll [follow her across the poison water], others will", which is something Dany never expressed any desire to do in the books.

Second, both show!Dany and show!Jorah think that the former doesn't really have "a true khalasar". Why doesn't she have a "true khalasar"? Is it because they are too few? Is it because show!Dany hasn't proven herself strong (as show!Jorah puts it)? In any case, both suggestions are bullshit. Dany does consider her "meager" group (as she puts it) a khalasar:

“We follow the comet,” Dany told her khalasar. (ACOK Daenerys I)

~

Yet even as her dragons prospered, her khalasar withered and died. (ACOK Daenerys I)

~

Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts too. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Also, while I've criticized the underdevelopment of Dany's khalasar before, each of them have different reactions to traveling at sea, so the show's portrayal manages to make their lack of characterization even worse:

Her brave young bloodriders had stared off at the dwindling coastline with huge white eyes, each of the three determined to show no fear before the other two, while her handmaids Irri and Jhiqui clutched the rail desperately and retched over the side at every little swell. The rest of Dany’s tiny khalasar remained below decks, preferring the company of their nervous horses to the terrifying landless world about the ships. When a sudden squall had enveloped them six days into the voyage, she heard them through the hatches; the horses kicking and screaming, the riders praying in thin quavery voices each time Balerion heaved or swayed. (ASOS Daenerys I)

Perhaps more importantly, unlike what show!Jorah says, Dany's khalasar is already devoted and faithful to Dany ever since she walked out of the pyre unscathed with three dragons. They already think that she is strong:

She was naked, covered with soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away ... yet she was unhurt.

[...] The men of her khas came up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.

And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men and women and children, and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and forever, hers as they had never been Drogo’s. (AGOT Daenerys X)

~

“We follow the comet,” Dany told her khalasar. Once it was said, no word was raised against it. They had been Drogo’s people, but they were hers now. The Unburnt, they called her, and Mother of Dragons. Her word was their law. (ACOK Daenerys I)

~

Jhiqui had braided her hair Dothraki-fashion, and fastened a silver bell to the end of the braid. “I have won no victories,” she tried telling her handmaid when the bell tinkled softly.

Jhiqui disagreed. “You burned the maegi in their house of dust and sent their souls to hell.” (ACOK Daenerys V)

At this point, Dany doesn't have to prove herself as a leader to anyone because she has already done so. However, D&D seem to think that show!Dany still has to. What's even worse is that this plot point will be forgotten; show!Dany's khalasar will only make a brief appearance in season four and then disappear until she's captured and later unites all the khalasars to her cause. Then, when show!Dany crosses the narrow sea in season six, the Dothraki's fear of the "poison water" will no longer be an inconvenience (even though she is carrying thousands of them). It's lazy writing that, nonetheless, undermines Dany's character.

Finally, while at least they have show!Dany empathizing with the Dothraki the way Dany also does in the book, I wish the writers had made show!Dany empathize with the Dothraki based on her experiences like Dany does, because it highlights that Dany is humble and views herself as an equal to them:

The Dothraki distrusted the sea and all that moved upon it. Water that a horse could not drink was water they wanted no part of. They will learn, Dany resolved. I braved their sea with Khal Drogo. Now they can brave mine. (ACOK Daenerys V)

This scene may last for less than two minutes, but, as you can see, there's still a lot of wrong (or at least questionable) to dissect in it.

Scene 2

Summary: show!Dany is given a tour of the Unsullied barracks by Kraznys while show!Missandei translates his Valyrian into the Common Tongue. Show!Dany is outraged by their training, but show!Jorah still urges her to purchase them. On the way to the ship, show!Dany is distracted by a child who turns out to be an assassin sent to deliver a deadly manticore to kill her. Show!Barristan impales the manticore with his dagger and the child leaves. Then, show!Barristan introduces himself to show!Dany and offers her his service.

Considering how other aspects were poorly handled, I think Dany’s discomfort with the Unsullied’s training was translated relatively well from the books to the show. Even so, I wish they had added more of Dany's emotional reactions:

“What is he doing?” Dany demanded of the girl, as the blood ran down the man’s chest. (ASOS Daenerys II)

~

“How can that be?” she demanded through the scribe. (ASOS Daenerys II)

~

“No names?” Dany frowned at the little scribe. “Can that be what the Good Master said? They have no names?” (ASOS Daenerys II)

~

Dany’s mouth surely twisted at that. Did he see, or is he blind as well as cruel? She turned away quickly, trying to keep her face a mask until she heard the translation. Only then did she allow herself to say, “Whose infants do they slay?”

“To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it before its mother’s eyes. In this way, we make certain that there is no weakness left in them.”

She was feeling faint. The heat, she tried to tell herself. “You take a babe from its mother’s arms, kill it as she watches, and pay for her pain with a silver coin?”

When the translation was made for him, Kraznys mo Nakloz laughed aloud. “What a soft mewling fool this one is. Tell the whore of Westeros that the mark is for the child’s owner, not the mother. The Unsullied are not permitted to steal.” He tapped his whip against his leg. “Tell her that few ever fail that test. The dogs are harder for them, it must be said. We give each boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs. It makes for a good strong lesson, we find.”

Arstan Whitebeard tapped the end of his staff on the bricks as he listened to that. Tap tap tap. Slow and steady. Tap tap tap. Dany saw him turn his eyes away, as if he could not bear to look at Kraznys any longer. (ASOS Daenerys II)

Even the part where show!Dany is horrified by the discovery that the Unsullied are forced to kill a baby while its mother watches (which at least the show writers rightly focused on) doesn't convey a lot of emotion like in the books... It doesn't seem like show!Dany is struggling to hide her revulsion or that her blood pressure is lowering because of her anxiety in the moment. I understand, however, that the directors never allowed Emilia Clarke to express too many feelings in her portrayal of show!Dany, so I don't tend to blame her.

I also want to take note of what is in line with the Unsullied's training in the books:

The Unsullied are forced to stand for a day with no food or water to prove their discipline and strength.

The beginning of their training, the drilling from dawn to dusk and the mastering of the weapons.

The Unsullied not being considered men.

The Unsullied not moving even after their nipples are cut off.

The Unsullied needing to go to the slave marts to kill a baby before its mother’s eyes.

There are some things that were changed or omitted, however:

Even more Unsullied die during their training: only one boy in four survives rather than one boy in three. (Which makes it even more disgusting that they will try to frame "conciliation" with and "mercy" towards the slavers as the better path in the later seasons)

No mention of the “wine of courage”, which the Unsullied drink in the books to feel less pain and endure any torture.

No mention of the puppies that the Unsullied are given only to be forced to kill a year later (and, if they don’t, they are fed to the surviving dogs).

No mention that their names are changed every day so that they lose their sense of individuality. This will be included on episode 3.5, however.

Kraznys is not shown whipping Missandei and other slaves.

Overall, the show gave us enough reasons to understand why show!Dany's rebellion against the slave masters is righteous.

The biggest problem of the scene was replacing Barristan for Jorah as the advisor who is with Dany when she meets the Unsullied: it gives room to the perspective of a slaver, who attempts to normalize the masters' treatment of the Unsullied. This undermines how abhorrent and unjust their training is. Right off the bat, we have our first sign that the show will turn into slavery apologia (to the point of later comparing Dany to the Nazis and the Ghiscari slavers to the Jews via subtext).

In the books, there is a Doylist reason as to why Barristan is with Dany when she meets the Unsullied for the first time: his presence and opinions emphasize how wrong and unacceptable the training of the Unsullied is.

“I call that madness, not courage,” said Arstan Whitebeard, when the solemn little scribe was done. He tapped the end of his hardwood staff against the bricks, tap tap, as if to tell his displeasure. (ASOS Daenerys II)

~

“You have lived long in the world, Whitebeard. Now that you have seen them, what do you say?”

“I say no, Your Grace,” the old man answered at once.
 (ASOS Daenerys II)

~

Arstan Whitebeard’s face was still, but his staff beat out his rage. Tap tap tap. (ASOS Daenerys II)

~

“Bricks and blood built Astapor,” Whitebeard murmured at her side, “and bricks and blood her people.”

“What is that?” Dany asked him, curious.

“An old rhyme a maester taught me, when I was a boy. I never knew how true it was. The bricks of Astapor are red with the blood of the slaves who make them.”

“I can well believe that,” said Dany.

“Then leave this place before your heart turns to brick as well. Sail this very night, on the evening tide.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

That's not to say, of course, that he was the one who motivated Dany to begin her abolitionist campaign (that's her decision and only hers), only that his appearance influences the framing of the scene (just like show!Jorah's appearance does). It also has negative implications for show!Dany's characterization, since, as @yendany​ said here, Dany may have unconsciously desired to have someone with an anti-slavery stance (like hers) by her side when she chose to have Barristan accompany her to meet the Unsullied.

Also, having show!Jorah be with show!Dany when she sees the training of the Unsullied means erasing the fact that, in the books, Dany left Jorah on the ship because he forced a kiss on her and she no longer trusted him enough to be alone with him. Erasing this event from the books means that Jorah's creepy and disrespectful behaviors toward Dany are, in the show writers' opinion, irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, which is horrible. I will talk more about this issue in the post discussing the things from the books that the show completely left out, but I still felt the need to briefly address this here.

Replacing Barristan for Jorah also led to one of Dany's best assertions to be cut:

“Better to come a beggar than a slaver,” Arstan said.

“There speaks one who has been neither.” Dany’s nostrils flared. “Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and
I ... my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?” (ASOS Daenerys II)

In the books, this scene highlights a few things:

Dany is not looking for an army because she is "fiercely ambitious", but because she lived in poverty for years and saw her brother not getting the help he needed (something she also experienced in Qarth, despite having dragons). She knows it's not a good idea to rely entirely on others, which is why she went to Astapor. (besides her ignorance, which I already explained above and in this post)

Despite empathizing with the slaves' plight, Barristan did not go through what they went through (he is a well-intentioned ally, as you will). Dany, on the other hand, did. She was a sex slave once and does not need to be reminded that being complicit in the slave trade is morally wrong. She still remembers "how it felt to be afraid".

Show!Jorah would never say that it's "better to come a beggar than a slaver" because he is okay with slavery, making it harder for this assertion to be added. It wasn't impossible for the show writers to have added it, however - they could have simply had show!Dany be less confrontational and say, by her own initiative, that she knows what it is like to be sold and that she hasn't forgotten how it felt to be afraid. To be fair, as I already said, Weiss shows awareness that Dany's empathy is informed by the fact that she was a slave before, but there isn't any scene in the show explicitly making that point, which is quite a shame. Instead, most of the scenes seem to communicate Benioff's reading of the events:

Benioff: Idealism is wonderful, but it's not gonna happen if you're idealistic, you gotta be a realist. She feels like she has this almost divine mission and nothing is gonna prevent her from achieving it. (x)

~

Benioff: For Daenerys to win, ultimately, she's gonna have to be just as ruthless as the others, and maybe even moreso. (x)

This idea that show!Dany needs to be a "realist" makes it very likely that Benioff (and who knows which other writers) sides with show!Jorah on this discussion. This also explains why his perspective is being favored to the detriment of show!Dany's and show!Barristan's.

Also, I've already written an entire post about how Dany is not primarily driven by prophecies or destiny or, as Benioff puts it, a "divine mission".

Also, he misses out on the fact that Dany's idealism in the books (and even in the show) actually pays off. As I said here:

Like with Viserys and Drogo, Dany is influenced by both of their [Jorah's and Barristan's] recommendations and apply them in different ways while forging her own path: she will not help to maintain the oppression of the slaves like Barristan advised her, but she won’t play by the rules (because they view human beings as objects to be sold and invalidate her moral values, so they shouldn’t be acknowledged as such to begin with) like Jorah advised her: she will break the rules because of her moral duty (as she sees it) to free the slaves.

And yes, this act of rebellion will have negative (and unintended) consequences later in ASOS and ADWD, but it was still righteous and necessary for it to have happened for the reasons expressed in these links. To summarize them, ending the supremacy of the masters will always be a good thing, and this wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for Dany's idealism. The books validate her idealism instead of belittling it.

*

DAENERYS: How many do you have to sell?

MISSANDEI: She asks how many Unsullied are for sale. (Kraznys points eight fingers) 8,000.

KRAZNYS: Tell the Westerosi whore she has until tomorrow.

MISSANDEI: Master Kraznys asks that you please hurry. Many other buyers are interested.

I'm singling out this part of show!Dany's talk with Kraznys and show!Missandei because I don't think the show writers really understood why Dany asked "how many do you have to sell?" in the books. First, let's see the context in which she made that question:

“Tell her it is well she came to Astapor, then. Ask her how large an army she wishes to buy.”

“How many Unsullied do you have to sell?”

“Eight thousand fully trained and available at present.[”] (ASOS Daenerys II)

As I said in this post, Dany doesn’t ask how large an army she wants (though she admits she needs soldiers), but rather how many Unsullied he has to sell. This is one of the several hints that she wants to rescue them all (not her interest to buy an army), even she must go to extreme lengths to do so. See also this passage:

“I want to sail now, not on the tide, I want to sail far and fast and never look back. But I can’t, can I? There are eight thousand brick eunuchs for sale, and I must find some way to buy them.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

She doesn't have to find a way to buy eight thousand of them. Jorah himself had only advised her to buy a thousand. But then, again, it's because she wants to free them all.

In the show, this doesn't come across. Aside from her uneasiness about the training, the show cuts all of the other moments hinting that Dany will do against the slave trade rather than be complicit in it.

“The Good Master has said that these eunuchs cannot be tempted with coin or flesh,” Dany told the girl, “but if some enemy of mine should offer them freedom for betraying me …” (ASOS Daenerys II)

~

Dany knew she would take more than a hundred, if she took any at all. (ASOS Daenerys II)

It wouldn’t have been hard to have her say it out loud that she will take “more than a hundred, if any at all” or that she can’t leave the city now. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to ask Kraznys about what would happen if a hypothetical enemy offered freedom to the Unsullied.

*

To be fair, we also see show!Dany saying this to show!Jorah while they are going back to the ship:

DAENERYS: 8,000 dead babies.

Like the Dany of the books, show!Dany is also distressed at the systematic killings that allowed for the Unsullied to become who they are, so I can't say that they are only making her motivations be about the need to get an army (though, as I showed above, they overfocused on that need too). Anyway, this brings me to this part:

DAENERYS: 8,000 dead babies.

JORAH: The Unsullied are a means to an end.

DAENERYS: Once I own them, these men ...

JORAH: They're not men. Not anymore.

Unlike in the show, Dany is the one who reminds Jorah that the Unsullied are no longer men. However, the reason why she does so is completely different from show!Jorah's:

“How many men do they have for sale?”

“None.” Was it Mormont she was angry with, or this city with its sullen heat, its stinks and sweats and crumbling bricks? “They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick, like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? They don’t even have names. So don’t call them men, ser.”

“Khaleesi,” he said, taken aback by her fury, “the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained—”

“I have heard all I care to of their training.” Dany could feel tears welling in her eyes, sudden and unwanted. Her hand flashed up and cracked Ser Jorah hard across the face. It was either that, or cry.

Mormont touched the cheek she’d slapped. “If I have displeased my queen—”

“You have. You’ve displeased me greatly, ser. If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

I will quote myself on the significance of this scene:

Here, Dany recognizes that no human being should ever have to undergo the sort of systematic abuse and torture that the Unsullied were forced to experience in order to become as subservient as they are. Dany recognizes how dehumanizing and unacceptable that sort of treatment was for making them “like one man” meant for sale (or “not men” at all) - that’s why she tells Jorah to not call them men: she asks that he doesn’t erase their suffering and talk as if the way they were treated was, in any way, acceptable.

Jorah doesn’t understand any of this, though. While his advice for Dany to go to Astapor ultimately paid off because of Dany’s actions, we should remind ourselves that he did her no favor. I’ve already shown in another post how he still has no problem with slavery even after being exiled, and you can see that in the next passage below: he can’t understand why would Dany be angry at him for advising her to go to Astapor to buy them nor why would she be appalled by how they are treated, so he tries to normalize the situation by focusing on how effective as a force they can be (“the Unsullied are chosen as boys, and trained…”). That’s enough for Dany, who rightfully slaps him in the face.

She makes it clear here: if he were her true knight, he wouldn’t have brought her to Astapor. (And that he forced a kiss on her and looked at her breasts without her consent makes her anger even more pronounced, rightfully so.) Thankfully, Dany is a true queen, but not because of him.

Does any of this come across in the show? No. For one, as I said above, show!Dany is given less agency because she needs to be reminded that the Unsullied are no longer men and her righteous anger toward Jorah is erased. For two, show!Jorah's perspective is again prioritized and never called out as immoral like in the books. (Again, the show writers' bias in his favor is showing).

*

Their dialogue goes on like this:

DAENERYS: Once I own an army of slaves, what will I be?

JORAH: Do you think these slaves will have better lives serving Kraznys and men like him or serving you? You'll be fair to them. You won't mutilate them to make a point. You won't order them to murder babies. You'll see they're properly fed and sheltered. A great injustice has been done to them. Closing your eyes will not undo it.

While it's true that Jorah also gives arguments as to why Dany should buy the Unsullied, they are different ones:

“I saw King’s Landing after the Sack. Babes were butchered that day as well, and old men, and children at play. More women were raped than you can count. There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him. Yet I have never heard of these Unsullied raping, nor putting a city to the sword, nor even plundering, save at the express command of those who lead them. Brick they may be, as you say, but if you buy them henceforth the only dogs they’ll kill are those you want dead. And you do have some dogs you want dead, as I recall.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

We'll see some of these arguments from ASOS Daenerys II being expressed in episode 3.3, but that's not my point: my point is that the show writers prioritized show!Jorah's point of view so much that they created new arguments for him to make show!Jorah seem, as Benioff puts it, "realist". In the books, for instance, Jorah never acknowledges that “a great injustice has been done to them” - he only focuses on how they'll be useful to Dany and how they'll cause less collateral damage (which is what Dany wants). So, again, we had foreshadowing for the show's turn into slavery apologia right from the beginning of show!Dany's storyline, especially when one compares it to the books (which are far from perfect; I've already criticized, for instance, the books' lack of attention to the freedmen's perspectives. Even then, however, I doubt they'll be justifying slavery any time soon).

*

Then we get to the scene in the docks. Honestly, I don't understand why they changed it so much. I’m not even referring to the fact that it takes place in Astapor rather than Qarth, but rather to other two major divergences.

First, in the books, Jorah notices that he and Dany are being followed:

As they made their way toward the next quay, Ser Jorah laid a hand against the small of her back. “Your Grace. You are being followed. No, do not turn.” (ACOK Daenerys V)

Dany makes plenty of questions and observations about the followers as she observes them:

Dany let her glance sweep over the strangers. The brown man was near as wide as he’d looked in the platter, with a gleaming bald head and the smooth cheeks of a eunuch. A long curving arakh was thrust through the sweat-stained yellow silk of his bellyband. Above the silk, he was naked but for an absurdly tiny iron-studded vest. Old scars crisscrossed his tree-trunk arms, huge chest, and massive belly, pale against his nut-brown skin.

The other man wore a traveler’s cloak of undyed wool, the hood thrown back. Long white hair fell to his shoulders, and a silky white beard covered the lower half of his face. He leaned his weight on a hardwood staff as tall as he was. Only fools would stare so openly if they meant me harm. All the same, it might be prudent to head back toward Jhogo and Aggo. “The old man does not wear a sword,” she said to Jorah in the Common Tongue as she drew him away. (ACOK Daenerys V)

She also has a very funny scene with a merchant; he wants to sell a platter for an expensive price and she keeps asking for it to go down, but she is actually only using the platter to pay attention to how the two men following her look like and what they will do. It’s a scene showcasing both her cleverness and her sense of humor:

“A most excellent brass, great lady,” the merchant exclaimed. “Bright as the sun! And for the Mother of Dragons, only thirty honors.”

The platter was worth no more than three. “Where are my guards?” Dany declared. “This man is trying to rob me!” For Jorah, she lowered her voice and spoke in the Common Tongue. “They may not mean me ill. Men have looked at women since time began, perhaps it is no more than that.”

The brass-seller ignored their whispers. “Thirty? Did I say thirty? Such a fool I am. The price is twenty honors.”

“All the brass in this booth is not worth twenty honors,” Dany told him as she studied the reflections. The old man had the look of Westeros about him, and the brown-skinned one must weigh twenty stone. The Usurper offered a lordship to the man who kills me, and these two are far from home. Or could they be creatures of the warlocks, meant to take me unawares? (ACOK Daenerys V)

Second, in the books, a Qartheen offers Dany a jewel box:

A Qartheen stepped into her path. “Mother of Dragons, for you.” He knelt and thrust a jewel box into her face.

Dany took it almost by reflex. The box was carved wood, its mother-of-pearl lid inlaid with jasper and chalcedony. “You are too generous.” She opened it. Within was a glittering green scarab carved from onyx and emerald. Beautiful, she thought. This will help pay for our passage. (ACOK Daenerys V)

It makes sense for Dany to fall into this person's trap because she was receiving gifts from the Qartheen and people from other regions all the time during her stay simply for being the Mother of Dragons. (Which is not to say that they ultimately helped her; they did not)

In the show, a random child somehow captures show!Dany’s attention enough so that show!Dany follows her for no reason and then gets fooled. It doesn’t make much sense and actually portrays show!Dany as someone who is easily distracted by things. The only detail that is salvageable is that show!Dany is able to guess that the assassin was sent by the warlocks, just like Dany applies the knowledge she had previously received of the Sorrowful Men to correctly identify the person who tried to kill her as one.

*

Finally, we get to show!Barristan's introduction.

DAENERYS: You know this man?

JORAH: I know him as one of the greatest fighters the Seven Kingdoms has ever seen and as the Lord Commander of Robert Baratheon's Kingsguard.

BARRISTAN: King Robert is dead. I have been searching for you, Daenerys Stormborn, to ask your forgiveness. I was sworn to protect your family. I failed them. I am Barristan Selmy, Kingsguard to your father. Allow me to join your Queensguard and I will not fail you again.

First, as I said above, the show erases most (if not all) the moments in which Jorah attempts to isolate Dany from other men and make her distrust them. This moment is one of those:

“You know him?” Dany asked the exile knight, lost.

“I saw him perhaps a dozen times ... from afar most often, standing with his brothers or riding in some tourney. But every man in the Seven Kingdoms knew Barristan the Bold.” He laid the point of his sword against the old man’s neck. “Khaleesi, before you kneels Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who betrayed your House to serve the Usurper Robert Baratheon.” (ASOS Daenerys V)

Jorah's description of Barristan in the books is much less flattering than the one from the show because Jorah is hellbent on isolating Dany from other men.

Second, I know most fans think that having Barristan reveal his identity right away was ultimately a good choice for practical reasons (i.e., it would be too easy for the fans to remember Barristan's actor and figure out his identity), but I think this change ultimately did far more harm than good.

How did show!Barristan track show!Dany? Why would he think she was going to Astapor? How could he have known if he didn't have Illyrio's (or anyone's) support?

How was he aware that the warlocks sent an assassin after Dany? In the books, he saves her on a rush, after the manticore left the jewel box. In the show, he drops the ball before the manticore leaves it. For some unknown reason, he already knew that it had the intent to kill her.

In the books, Barristan is supposed to serve as a positive contrast to Jorah's negative behaviors when they are both put on trial for betraying Dany's trust. Because show!Barristan reveals his identity early on, the contrast is lost.

Barristan is the one who tells Dany about Jorah's betrayal in the books. Since it wouldn't make sense for show!Barristan to only tell show!Dany about this later on, the show writers had the Lannisters randomly think that Dany is a threat, that Dany and Jorah are a good duo that must be separated and that sending a letter pardoning Jorah would necessarily do the deed. Not only that's stupid (Jorah received and sent letters without Dany's knowledge in both mediums), it also validates the idea that show!Jorah is good to show!Dany (something that the showrunners think is the case). These are all unfortunate consequences that arose from the early reveal of show!Barristan's identity.

By revealing himself earlier, show!Barristan loses his arc from the books, which was partly about finding a liege who was morally worthy of being served after he spent years in the service of bad kings. (He might say later in episode 3.5 that he's looking for the right person to follow, but his actions don't show it in any way.) That Barristan hid his identity and only pledged his sword to Dany because he realized that she was more than Rhaegar's sister, but also a queen in her own right, speaks volumes to his character development and to how we're supposed to see Dany in a sympathetic manner. Unfortunately, the show writers (especially Benioff) don't like Dany very much. As this review hopefully shows (and others will make it even clearer), they go out of their way to undermine her intelligence and empathy and humbleness and all of the other traits that make Dany who she is, while GRRM goes out of his way to portray Dany in a sympathetic light, with this chapter review from @turtle-paced​ showing a perfect example of how he does so.

Third, I don't understand why the show made the question of whether show!Dany would accept show!Barristan's service as the episode's cliffhanger. First, book readers would already know that she would. Second, show!Barristan won't be treated any differently in the next episodes than he would be if they had met earlier (aside from show!Jorah's distrustful remarks). Third, I don't like how leaving this scene as the episode's cliffhanger makes us wonder if show!Dany will be merciful or not. We can point to her later actions and realize that she will be, but this shouldn't have been a question in the first place. It helps to mischaracterize Dany in the eyes of the public audience and doesn't convey that some of Dany's core traits are being open-minded and forgiving.  

In the books, Dany doesn't really feel angry with Barristan. It's more that he becomes collateral damage after she finds out that Jorah, the person she trusted the most at that point in time, was lying to her from the very beginning:

“...And since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises.”

He cannot mean ... “You are mistaken.” Dany looked at Jorah Mormont. “Tell him he’s mistaken. There’s no informer. Ser Jorah, tell him. We crossed the Dothraki sea together, and the red waste ...” Her heart fluttered like a bird in a trap. “Tell him, Jorah. Tell him how he got it wrong.”

“The Others take you, Selmy.” Ser Jorah flung his longsword to the carpet. “Khaleesi, it was only at the start, before I came to know you ... before I came to love ...”

“Do not say that word!” She backed away from him. “How could you? What did the Usurper promise you? Gold, was it gold?” The Undying had said she would be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love. “Tell me what you were promised?”

“Varys said ... I might go home.” He bowed his head.

I was going to take you home! Her dragons sensed her fury. Viserion roared, and smoke rose grey from his snout. Drogon beat the air with black wings, and Rhaegal twisted his head back and belched flame. I should say the word and burn the two of them. Was there no one she could trust, no one to keep her safe? “Are all the knights of Westeros so false as you two? Get out, before my dragons roast you both. What does roast liar smell like? As foul as Brown Ben’s sewers? Go!”

Ser Barristan rose stiff and slow. For the first time, he looked his age. “Where shall we go, Your Grace?”

“To hell, to serve King Robert.” Dany felt hot tears on her cheeks. Drogon screamed, lashing his tail back and forth. “The Others can have you both.” Go, go away forever, both of you, the next time I see your faces I’ll have your traitors’ heads off. She could not say the words, though. They betrayed me. But they saved me. But they lied. “You go ...” My bear, my fierce strong bear, what will I do without him? And the old man, my brother’s friend. (ASOS Daenerys V)

Before she knew about Jorah's deception, Dany is more puzzled and surprised about Barristan's identity reveal than anything else:

She was more confused than angry. He has played me false, just as Jorah warned me, yet he saved my life just now.

Ser Jorah flushed red. “Mero shaved his beard, but you grew one, didn’t you? No wonder you looked so bloody familiar ...”

“You know him?” Dany asked the exile knight, lost.

~

“Why are you here?” Dany demanded of him. “If Robert sent you to kill me, why did you save my life?” He served the Usurper. He betrayed Rhaegar’s memory, and abandoned Viserys to live and die in exile. Yet if he wanted me dead, he need only have stood
aside ... “I want the whole truth now, on your honor as a knight. Are you the Usurper’s man, or mine?”

~

“Quiet,” said Dany. “I’ll hear him out.”

In this sense, I think Emilia Clarke's expression manages to capture how the Dany of the books must have felt when Barristan's identity was revealed; perplexed, but also grateful that he saved her life.

Also, they have show!Dany ask show!Jorah if he knows show!Barristan without the proper context: in the books, she only makes that question because he made an unpleasant comment about Barristan. In the show, she asks if he knows who he is in a way that makes her seem more dependent on him than it would have been if they had been faithful to the books.

My comments on the Inside the Episode 3.1

Benioff: For a great leader who is doing something unpopular for a certain segment, whether it's the Warlocks or the slave masters or whatnot, she's creating a lot of enemies, and powerful enemies, and those people are going to try to stop her regardless of how powerful she becomes, and it's something she's actually, in a weird way, used to, because she grew up running from assassins with her brother, you know, from the time, from the earliest time she can remember, she was being spirited from one city to another one step ahead of Robert Baratheon and the assassins, because there were so many people who wanted to destroy the Targaryen family and make King Robert happy and now there are thousands out there for all sorts of different reasons because she's made even more enemies, but, I think in her mind this is just the price you pay for being Daenerys Targaryen, for being the last of the Targaryens, and it's not going to stop her.

Benioff is not entirely inaccurate when it comes to Dany feeling that she's always been on the run:

It was not by choice that she sought the waterfront. She was fleeing again. Her whole life had been one long flight, it seemed. She had begun running in her mother’s womb, and never once stopped. How often had she and Viserys stolen away in the black of night, a bare step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives? But it was run or die. (ACOK Daenerys V)

ASOS Daenerys V is particularly heartbreaking in that sense when she decides to leave her tent and interact with her people only to almost be killed by Mero:

She had no enemies among her children.

~

“Your Grace.” Arstan knelt. “I am an old man, and shamed. He should never have gotten close enough to seize you. I was lax. I did not know him without his beard and hair.”

“No more than I did.” Dany took a deep breath to stop her shaking. Enemies everywhere.

However, Benioff forgets Dany's very first chapter:

They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in any one place. Her brother would not allow it. The Usurper’s hired knives were close behind them, he insisted, though Dany had never seen one. (AGOT Daenerys I)

I've already written an entire meta on how Dany's PoV is not entirely reliable and this is one of the instances. I imagine her thoughts on the matter changed because of this:

“A letter to Viserys, from Magister Illyrio. Robert Baratheon offers lands and lordships for your death, or your brother’s.”

“My brother?” Her sob was half a laugh. “He does not know yet, does he? The Usurper owes Drogo a lordship.” This time her laugh was half a sob. She hugged herself protectively. “And me, you said. Only me?”

“You and the child,” Ser Jorah said, grim.

“No. He cannot have my son.” She would not weep, she decided. She would not shiver with fear. The Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself ... (AGOT Daenerys VI)

It seems that Dany unconsciously and retroactively changed history in her mind after Robert tried to have her and her child assassinated (something that I forgot to talk about in my meta), which is quite interesting. I guess it's a detail that is easy to miss, so that's forgivable.

What's less excusable is the way that Benioff talks about Dany's mindset.

Benioff: I think in her mind this is just the price you pay for being Daenerys Targaryen, for being the last of the Targaryens, and it's not going to stop her. (x)

It's true that Dany is aware that she is the last of her family:

With Viserys gone, Daenerys was the last, the very last. She was the seed of kings and conquerors, and so too the child inside her. She must not forget. (AGOT Daenerys VI)

However, I look askance at the possible interpretation behind this statement. One could switch "Daenerys" for "Viserys" and it would be just as fitting. It's left ambiguous on its own, but, considering how he overfocuses on how "ambitious" she is or how she wants "more than anything" to "reclaim her birthright" or how "the only threat she poses is her name" until she frees the slaves in Astapor... I have to assume that he wants us to think that show!Dany is both arrogant and entitled for being a Targaryen. All of these mischaracterizations have been exhaustively refuted by @rainhadaenerys​ in this meta.

My comments on Anatomy of a Scene: Daenerys Meets the Unsullied

Weiss: Dany spent the first two seasons of the show leaning on men - her brother, Drogo, Jorah Mormont, Xaro Xhoan Daxos. She came out of season two realizing that the only person that she can completely trust is herself.

Benioff: Dany has her lovable side, but she is also ruthless, and she is also fiercely ambitious. What she wants, more than anything, is to return home and to reclaim her birthright.

Clarke: She needs the manpower to go back and conquer the Iron Throne and to be able to right the wrongs that she sees going on around her.

Minahan: She's been brought to Astapor, where she's reluctantly going to meet with slave traders. Her quest in this is to build an army without taking slaves.

Comments from Charlie Somers (location manager) and Christina Moore (supervising art director) that don't have anything to do with the storyline.

Benioff: The Unsullied were kidnapped as babies from their home countries and brought to Astapor and trained in the ways of the spear and castrated.

Emmanuel: They won't do anything without the command to do so first.

Comment from Tommy Dunne (weapons master) that doesn't have anything to do with the storyline.

Clarke: She's being introduced to the Unsullied by Kraznys, the slave master in control of them.

Emmanuel: Kraznys is being quite insulting to Daenerys. And Missandei very cleverly smoothes out her translation, just her initiative doing that shows her intelligence.

Clarke: Dany sees a lot of herself in her and can kind of see that it's a young girl who's capable of much more than the position she's in. She's his No 1 slave. If you were in the UN, she would be the translator for everyone.

Weiss: Kraznys speaks a version of Valyrian that's been bastardized and mixed with other local languages.

Comment from Majella Hurley (dialect coach) that doesn't have anything to do with the storyline.

Clarke: She's struggling with the moral aspect of the way that these cities are run. And it's something she's been grappling with because they are an army of slaves, which she fundamentally has moral issues with due to the fact that she herself was a slave.

Weiss: The only way she can make the world a better place is to become the biggest slaveowner in the world.

Benioff: She's put into a difficult position, and she's got her advisors whispering in her ears.

Glen: Jorah encourages her to get over her moral scrupules, with taking an army that were duty-bound to follow whatever leader it was, and that could change in an instant.

Benioff: Idealism is wonderful, but it's not gonna happen if you're idealistic, you gotta be a realist. She feels like she has this almost divine mission and nothing is gonna prevent her from achieving it.

Weiss: What she wants to do isn't just conquest for the sake of conquest, but it's really conquest for the sake of making the world a better place, and she's a revolutionary in that sense.

Benioff: For Daenerys to win, ultimately, she's gonna have to be just as ruthless as the others, and maybe even moreso.

My comments about their statements:

Clarke: She definitely understands Dany better than Benioff and maybe even Weiss. My only nitpick is that there's no No 1 slave for Kraznys ... In the books, he repeatedly whips Missandei and has no problem giving her away to Dany as a gift. Even in the show, he still constantly disrespects show!Missandei.

Weiss: I've already said this above and will repeat: Weiss is wrong when he says that "Dany spent the first two seasons of the show leaning on men". Or at least that's certainly not what the Dany of the books (i.e. the character show!Dany's should ideally be based on) does, as my posts here and here showcase how competent a leader she's becoming and how much agency GRRM gives her. His comment about how Dany wants to "become the biggest slaveowner in the world" to make it a better place is also distasteful (though I don't think he meant it as negatively as, say, Finn Jones), so here goes @rainhadaenerys​'s meta disproving the claim that Dany is a slaver. As for "conquest for the sake of making the world a better place", I kind of agree with this, but I've already showed above how it does a disservice to show!Dany's character development to paint it as if she's always been aware of these injustices, because the Dany of the books was not. In hindsight, that change makes me wary because I know they will later try to sell show!Dany as someone who is morally inflexible, which she never was in the books.

Benioff: I've already criticized his claims that Dany is "fiercely ambitious" and wants "more than anything" "to reclaim her birthright" in many moments of this meta. I also condemned his opinion that Dany needs to be a "realist" when I explained how the show overfocused on Jorah's point of view. As for his point that "she's gonna have to be just as ruthless as the others, and maybe even moreso" to win... Considering how they made her choose the more ruthless option in the end only to punish her in the most traumatizing manner for that very choice (which made no sense and was completely OOC, no less) ... Fuck him, seriously. It's clear how the show made it impossible for show!Dany to win based on contradictory standards that only viewed her unfavorably. If she is merciful, she is stupid. If she is ruthless, she is a danger that needs to be stopped to save humanity.

Show!Dany's clothes

This episode adapts events from three chapters (ACOK Daenerys V, ASOS Daenerys I, ASOS Daenerys II). The first is the only one with a detailed description of her clothes:

If the Milk Men thought her such a savage, she would dress the part for them. When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest, and a curved dagger hung from her medallion belt. Jhiqui had braided her hair Dothraki-fashion, and fastened a silver bell to the end of the braid. (ACOK Daenerys V)

In ASOS Daenerys I, Dany is only described using a coverlet to hide her nudity when Jorah comes to talk to her. 

In ASOS Daenerys II, we don't know how Dany dressed when she went to meet with Kraznys, only that her garment had a sleeve.

In the series, we see show!Dany wearing this blue dress:

It's meant to pay homage to the Dothraki, so it's at least spiritually faithful to how Dany looks in the scene on the docks ... Well, more or less. Not only blue isn't a special color for the Dothraki despite what Michele Clapton might say, look at how Barristan reacts to seeing Dany for the first time:

“I regret if we caused you alarm. If truth be told, we were not certain, we expected someone more ... more ...”

“Regal?” Dany laughed. She had no dragon with her, and her raiment was hardly queenly. (ACOK Daenerys V)

This little scene displays both Dany's frugalness and how she doesn't take herself that seriously, for she doesn't mind if her subjects see her looking less than regal. That doesn't come across at all in the show, to the point of some people thinking that show!Dany never allows herself to look anything but perfect, which is certainly not true of the character she is based on.

[douxreviews]

Doctor Who - ‘An Unearthly Child’ Review

(aka 100,000 B.C., The Tribe of Gum, The Stone Age, or The Paleolithic Age)

Two teachers follow a mysterious student into a junkyard, spawning multiple generations of sci-fi geeks.

Season 1, Serial A Starring William Hartnell as the Doctor With William Russell (Ian), Jacqueline Hill (Barbara) and Carole Ann Ford (Susan) Written by Anthony Coburn and C.E. Webber Directed by Waris Hussein Produced by Verity Lambert

Episodes and Broadcast Dates:

An Unearthly Child – 23 Nov 1963

The Cave Of Skulls – 30 Nov 1963

The Forest Of Fear – 7 Dec 1963

The Firemakers – 14 Dec 1963

Plot Summary

At the end of another day at London’s Coal Hill School, history teacher Barbara Wright and science teacher Ian Chesterton compare notes about an enigmatic student, Susan Foreman. Her knowledge of history and science surpasses their own, but is also awkwardly unaware of the ins-and-outs of contemporary life. They trail her to her given address, 76 Totters Lane, only to find a scrapyard wherein sits a rather incongruous Police Box emitting an eerie hum. They encounter Susan’s grandfather, who brusquely shoos them away. But when Susan’s voice is heard from inside, they push past him into the Police Box and find themselves in a vast futuristic chamber, much larger on the inside. The old man is furious at their intrusion. Susan explains that they are exiles from another world and another time, and the Police Box is their ship, the TARDIS. The old man is paranoid and irascible, certain that the teachers will expose their secret, and despite Susan’s panicked pleas he activates the TARDIS, leaving 60’s London behind.

The quartet find themselves in the Stone Age, and are soon abducted by a tribe of primitive humans. There is a power struggle for control of the tribe between Za, son of the late elder, and the outsider Kal, focused on the secret of making fire. When the old man announces he can make fire, they become pawns in the struggle. Along the way, Ian and Barbara introduce the tribe to concepts of mercy and helpfulness, that in ‘their tribe,’ the firemaker is the least powerful person, and that one tyrant is not as strong as a unified collective. This lesson is lost on the old man; when Za pursues them through the forest and is attacked by a wild beast, he is perfectly willing to kill the wounded man to help them escape. Ultimately they make fire for the tribe, Za kills Kal, and the travelers escape to the TARDIS.

It is made clear that Susan’s grandfather, who is known as the Doctor, cannot control the navigational systems of the TARDIS, and may never be able to return Ian and Barbara home. They arrive at their next destination and go out to explore. They do not notice the TARDIS’s radiation meter inching into the danger zone...

Analysis and Notes

-- Episode One’s viewership was quite low – possibly due to news coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination the day before, possibly due to a number of regional power cuts – so the BBC granted a virtually unprecedented re-broadcast immediately prior to Episode Two. More people saw the repeat broadcast than the initial one.

-- Episode One was a re-write and re-shoot of the un-broadcast pilot episode, which was beset by technical difficulties and featured an even harsher characterization of the Doctor.

--Most of the principle guest cast would appear in future serials: Derek Newark (Za) in Inferno, Althea Charleton (Hur) in The Time Meddler, Jeremy Young (Kal) in Mission to the Unknown, and Eileen Way (Old Woman) in The Creature from the Pit.

Okay, all you Smith-heads, Tennant worshipers and Capaldians (all three of you, myself included), listen up. The sci-fi institution you know and love originated over a half century ago, right here. Before the action figures, the magazines, the thousands of fansites, the DVD’s, the convention circuit, the minisodes, and all the flood of BBC Enterprises swag, there was An Unearthly Child. And in some cases, it looks and feels very much like the show you’re watching now; there’s a big blue (well, dark gray) box called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, and it makes the same wheezy noise as it takes off and lands. There’s a mysterious central character called the Doctor and a handful of travelling companions. But there are also enormous differences.

In the current series, the TARDIS can land anywhere it wants to. But initially the central concept of the Classic Era was the TARDIS’s unreliability. This meant that when the Doctor takes off with Barbara and Ian on board at the end of episode one, there’s virtually no chance of getting them home again. In future serials where the Doctor and crew need to get to a specific place, they have to hitch a ride.

The early days of the show were a sharp contrast from the ethos displayed in the upcoming Series Nine catchphrase, “I’m the Doctor. I save people.” In most cases, they landed in a certain place or time, got separated from the TARDIS, and spent the rest of the series more focused on Not Dying and/or Not Changing History than they were about liberating oppressed humanoids or saving Earth from alien invasion. And especially in this opening serial, the only person the Doctor feels obliged to save is himself.

Having never been companions by choice, Barbara and Ian’s primary goal throughout their time on the TARDIS was to get home again. Even when they weren’t so much traveling companions as kidnapping victims, this meant getting back to the TARDIS whenever they were separated from it, and keeping the Doctor – their kidnapper – safe at all times since he was the only person who could operate it. Ultimately they do get home again, but end up using a slightly more reliable Dalek time capsule to do it, and we never quite learn how they explain their two-year absence to the Coal Hill headmaster.

And we have to assume they left no significant others behind. Because if there’s one consistent theme amongst the TARDIS’s early classic era companions, it’s that they have no backstories or families or home life that’s disrupted when they meet the Doctor. They’re orphans, bachelors, and free agents. No room for outside domestic drama on the TARDIS.

As for the actual story:

I can’t help but fall in step with the Received Wisdom that the first episode is classic and the remaining three are comparatively mediocre. That said, the Stone Age episodes are very noteworthy. The initial concept for the series was that science fiction and historical stories would balance each other – thus the need for a history teacher and a science teacher. The historical stories would follow the format established here; the TARDIS crew gets separated from the ship, and after a few cycles of capture-escape-recapture where they encounter historical figures or crucial historical events, manage to escape to the TARDIS without getting killed or dramatically changing history.

And the Doctor couldn’t be further removed from how we come to know him now. Selfish, paranoid, and bad-tempered, over-protective of Susan, a kidnapper, a would-be murderer, a refugee rather than a traveler, he’s a quintessential anti-hero, and if it weren’t for the fact that he was the only one who could pilot the TARDIS, odds are they’d boot him out. It’s his dealing with Barbara and Ian that over time gives him a moral compass, either making him a heroic figure, or re-making him one after whatever as-yet-undetermined incident caused him to flee.

The Stone Age tribe is surprisingly multi-dimensional. They’re not ignorant, just uneducated. The oldest among them are fearful of new technology (i.e. fire). The savage conditions in which they live, where death lurks around every corner, render concepts like tenderness, kindness, and democracy as luxuries. You may just have to grit your teeth as the social liberalism is delivered with a side of colonialism; the well-dressed white bourgeois travelers drop into the jungle like the Galactic Peace Corps to teach the dirty savages how to live better. Also a dash of sexism as the girl – named, appropriately enough, Hur – exists as the prize to be awarded to either Kal or Za.

It’s evident that the BBC wanted this program to succeed. Even though they put the show in the young and relatively inexperienced hands of producer Verity Lambert and director Waris Hussein, possibly so they could be scapegoats for the program’s potential failure, they allowed the pilot episode to be re-tooled and re-filmed, and they re-broadcast Episode One immediately prior to Episode Two.

As this is the very first serial, it’s worthy to note which concepts have stayed etched in granite over a half-century and which have been more malleable (if not rejected entirely):

The Doctor’s Name – Susan only refers to him as “Grandfather.” Ian recalls, before they meet, that Susan’s grandfather is “a Doctor or something.” Since the junkyard’s front door reads I.M. FOREMAN, SCRAP MERCHANT, and Susan’s given surname is Foreman, he calls him “Dr. Foreman” in episode two, to which the old man replies, “Huh? Doctor Who? What is he talking about?” strongly suggesting that “Foreman” was never their name. Does one require a PhD to run a junkyard? Or are they squatters, with Susan adopting the name on the door? If so, whatever happened to I.M. Foreman? He never explicitly instructs Ian or Barbara as to how he wishes to be addressed, and basically adopts the title “The Doctor” by default.

The TARDIS – Susan claims to have made up the name of the TARDIS as an acronym for Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space, as if this TARDIS was the only one in existence. For most of the first season, they refer to the TARDIS simply as “The Ship.” In episode two, the Doctor notes that the external appearance of the ship is supposed to blend in with its surroundings (though the term “Chameleon Circuit” would not be coined for over a decade), suggesting this is the first time it has failed; with rare exceptions, it would never function again. And the most pivotal concept about the TARDIS is that the Doctor cannot navigate it properly. Either he never learned, or he forgot, or the mechanism is faulty; it’s never explicitly stated, but once they leave London 1963, there’s no guarantee they’ll ever get back.

Their Origins – No Time Lords, no Gallifrey, these terms don’t appear for years to come. The details they give in the first episode are sketchy. They’re exiles, wanderers in time, cut off from their own planet. No mention is ever given of Susan’s parents (i.e. the Doctor’s offspring, presumably). They’re hiding on Earth, and have lived incognito for several months; from what and why are never stated.

Been Here Before – Barbara lends Susan a very thick book about the French Revolution, which Susan reads in a split second and remarks, “That’s not how it happened!” Though no mention of a prior visit was ever made later in Season One when they land in Robespierre’s post-revolutionary Paris. The gift of superhuman speed-reading appears again in the New Series’ reboot, Rose.

In Summation

You could be forgiven if you only watch the first episode, but what an episode it is! It’s as noteworthy and epoch-shifting a debut as the Beatles’ Please Please Me eight months earlier (or their follow-up, With The Beatles, issued the day before). Yet despite creator Sydney Newman’s directive of “No Bug Eyed Monsters!”, the program’s watershed moment was yet to come, and British popular culture would never be the same.

Rating: 3 out of 4 epoch-shifting moments in British pop culture.

John Geoffrion balances a career in hospital fundraising with semi-pro theatre gigs, and watches way too much Doctor Who and Britcoms in between. He'll create an author page after he puts up a few more reviews.

[fanfictionlive]

Writing For An Audience

Warning: You may disagree or feel strongly.

I'm not sure I understand the sentiment of a lot of fanfiction writers who post on the internet. "Read my work, but if your opinion isn't positive or aligning with what I want. Stop reading. I only write for me (which is why I post it publically, obviously)."

I've wrote fanfic for I'd say 7 years and sure when I was 13 or 14, I didn't care much for "Hey can you change your writing OP." But now if I submit a chapter and engagement is lower compared to others I ask

Was I timely?

What state is the fandom in?

Was the content relavent?

What do the readers generally prefer?

Do I care or am I just trying to finish it?

What did I put in that they don't like?

Reader engagement matters a lot to me, not because reviews matter, but because I prefer writing for an audience and knowing the trends. In order to write for an audience--I have to be able to keep one.

So, with keeping an audience I do somethings. I've wrote dozens of fanfic I don't put online because I know traffic wise they won't do well, but I liked then and leave them on my hard-drive to refit for another fandom or adapt to the current trope. Or letting a friend demo my ideas and seeing that their prefrences lie in the "ship heavy, kissy kiss" even though as a writer mine don't. So I experiment with what they like and try to add my own flavor in while noting what I can give them that they don't yet know they like.

I'm not expecting every fanfiction writer to keep some level of art-business mentality, but I do wish they wouldn't push the whole "We do it for free and you get what you get!" onto people like me and some of the readers. It discourages criticism from most and instead leads to this "u good", "no, u good" kind of behavior where I'm not sure anyone's genuine anymore. The only genuine check is skimming numbers and noting who's changed and speculating why a reader didn't like this [90% of the time--it's "I like ship x, please stop giving me this Plot Line B"] which is fine to do, but I prefer visible opinions.

I think it's cool to post something and aim for a niche--to experiment and do something never been seen.

But how about we stop trying to get rid of dissenting opinions and instead learn to accept them and move past them (agree to disagree), open up a discussion (hey I see you don't like X, what about it) or change based on it (ah, I see. I'll keep that in mind next fiction/chapter). I'm not asking people to bend over backward to accommodate readers, but instead not raise fire every time someone comments "I don't like your OC, can you stop showing them" or "hey the way the plot is going is bad :-/ due to this".

submitted by /u/WorstLuckButBestLuck [link] [comments] from FanFiction: Where Magical Ponies battle Imperial Titans https://ift.tt/2JgH2Bq

[aworldwithroses]

This Week I Watched: “Black Panther”

After spending weeks in anticipation, I've finally got around to seeing Marvel's Black Panther, an innovative and fresh take on a tiring formula that's being pushed out by Marvel Studios. The film is a juggernaut at 700m at the time of editing this so you've probably already seen this film twice, statistically speaking. For those that haven’t though, or those interested in a review I want to take a look at why you should watch it if you haven't seen it yet.

              UPFRONT FEELINGS AND BIAS DISCLAIMER

As a mild disclaimer to emphasize where I am at emotionally and mentally walking into this movie, I should warn you all that I don't much care for superhero movies. I tend to watch them very passively and I don't really engage with the content beyond superficial thrills. Marvel’s films have a spectacular way of holding up on repeat viewings, but the fatigue in the over saturation of the genre might be a factor of my waning interest. That said, I am not one of those sticklers who can't acknowledge a good movie when I see one, just because it was a blockbuster.

              RYAN COOGLER AND RACHEL MORRISON 

Another point of personal bias but the one that I am most excited to talk about is director Ryan Coogler and his Director of Photography Rachel Morrison A.S.C. For those out of the know, this is Ryan Coogler's third feature and the biggest budgeted film the duo has handled. Ryan became known for his work on Fruitvale Station - also lensed by Morrison - and Creed, which earned Sylvester Stallone his first Oscar victory for his acting as the famous Rocky Balboa. Morrison herself is currently nominated for an Oscar at the time of writing this, for Mudbound - the first female cinematographer to be recognized in this category (which was long overdue, in my opinion).

As someone who is actively trying to make a sustainable living in the industry, there is an unspoken but beautiful thing that happens between a director and the DP. Ryan Coogler's most remarkable trait as a person and as a director is that he routinely hires crews he trusts for any size project. In a podcast, Rachel Morrison has mentioned that she never tackled a movie this size and there are a lot of skills she needed to learn as she went. Many directors tend to get locked in by studios and forced to work with unfamiliar crews to appease the production studios' concerns. Here, in a 200 million dollar film, Ryan Coogler was given an enormous amount of free reign in building his core team and I think it really shows as together, he and Morrison have crafted a visually distinct, wonderfully lensed, and compelling narrative for Marvel Studios and will go down in the upper echelon of catalogue Marvel has put out so far. Kudos to everyone and it's beautiful that Ryan Coogler seems to believe in the idea that a rising tide should lift all ships.

                                        Wakanda Forever!

The story, on top of being directed by him, is also co-written by Coogler. He's no stranger to co-writers but his influence is felt very strongly in many areas of the characterization and dialogue. Many of the scenes feel organic and while the limitations put forth by the fact that Black Panther must function as a cog in a giant narrative machine, he still manages to present many wonderful ideas, themes, and character traits. It's almost concerning to see these characters return in a future film that would be penned by someone else because Ryan Coogler seems to understand everyone so well.

Black Panther himself is a refreshing hero that is actually allowed to make mistakes. Without giving away too much, what makes him unique is not actually just his powers but the fact that he is in power of the most powerful and technologically advanced nation on Planet Earth. Ryan tackles themes of responsibility for people weaker than you in an exciting and inventive way, but also doesn't shy away from more inaccessible and difficult topics which have factored in various degrees of his previous work such as racism, classism, crafting one's own legacy away from the mistakes of parenthood, legacy, the importance of fatherhood and how detrimental that absence can be to a youth, as well as issues of poverty. He handles these themes with incredibly deftness and compassion, and remarkably, even manages to make a statement and represent opposing points of views in a way that feels human and non-condescending.

These themes really pick up after a light-hearted first act with the introduction of Erik Killmonger - a mercenary of mysterious origin with a serious bone to pick with T'Challa. Even when the movie has it's marvel-isms, such as a giant CGI action set piece toward the end, Black Panther once again manages to set itself aside once again by baking the thematic conflict deep into the narrative so even as we consume spectacle, we are interested and invested in the outcome in what is ultimately a battle of ideologies.

Perhaps most audaciously (since these films are about capturing the widest audience possible) Ryan Coogler manages to draw political parallels to all sorts of real issues being hotly debated. Issues such as isolationism, whether powerful nations have a responsibility to accept other countries' refugees, foreign policy, and race-centric ideologies such as Black Lives Matter and the actual Black Panther Movement. Coogler manages to make a statement that seems to emphasize the importance of compromise and compassion over debate and heated argument. It's amazing that in this political climate, Black Panther seems to have different readings depending on who you ask. The alt-right seems to believe that Black Panther is in support of their movement, while left-leaning people seem to think that it's a critique of the failure of right-wing policies. Either side believes that the film represents them against the other, and whether or not it does, it is an absolute testament to the sensitivity and thoughtfulness Ryan Coogler has for his entry into that debate. That is some serious skill as a writer and as a director and it's incredibly impressive that a message that could easily be divisive in lesser hands has become one of the most accessible superhero films.

                                                 Final Thoughts

Ryan really struts his stuff and while he and his relatively inexperienced core crew are faced with the daunting task of an incredibly large scale film in a juggernaut franchise, he manages to stand a cut above the rest in my opinion and remains a director to look out for whether his budget is 2 Hundred Thousand or 2 Hundred Million.

In an age where Superhero movies are a dime a dozen and it's virtually impossible to go to the movies without seeing advertisements for at least 3, Black Panther manages to be a shining gem in a fairly dull market. If you're already pre-disposed to the superhero genre, this will stand as an excellent entry into it. For those of you not into the genre, this film is still really worth your time. The worst it can be is entertaining and the best it could be is a profound meditation on interesting issues presented on a large scale. Even if it doesn't have the time to delve into those issues with depth, it gives it enough due diligence to be thought-provoking and interesting.

[rpadoptionnetwork]

Hey there! We were wondering if you would be interested in giving us a full review (We're okay with public). Also sidebar, I love what you're doing here. This is really a great idea.

DISCLAIMER: this review is only reflective of my own opinions and is intended to provide constructive criticism. there is no obligation to listen to or agree with anything said.

OVERALL:

from the colour scheme to the fonts and graphics, everything feels so– thematically similar and visually pleasing. i’m incredibly impressed with how everything turned out, even if i’m not exactly convinced that i would apply. thank you so much for your hard work and love for this rp, because it clearly shows. that being said, there’s still a few things that i would like to see changed or improved upon, mostly to aid clarification. 

i’ve done my best to give my honest review and opinion on your rp.  i tend to be a bit wordy, so there is also a TLDR at the very bottom of the page. as always, i am here to elaborate on any of my critiques if asked. thanks for coming by! 

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ACCESSIBILITY:

this is not my favorite fansite theme, mostly because it is so commonly used, but you guys have done a really good job of making it your own. the links you’ve chosen to highlight on the main page very helpful and i’m happy that you’ve included so much information about the world you’ve created in the navigation. 

unfortunately, i also feel that most of your writing is incredibly dense. as a newcomer to your universe and the concepts you have presented, it takes more than one read in order to understand what is being presented to me and that’s a bit of a turn-off. 

i see the most problem in pages such as your rules– which, as an ooc page, should be very easy to navigate, but instead is organized in a way that I don’t feel encourages people to actually read your guidelines. this wordiness combined with the placement of your password, leads me to believe that most would just skip to the end and not read what you’ve written. i’ve suggested changes that i would make in the ‘RULES page’ section down below.

as a general structure, accessibility is great. however, for people wanting to discover more about your world, i think there must be a better way to organize the details of your story. 

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PLOT:

I really do think that this is an original and lovely plot idea, but I stayed on this page for a very long time and I’m still not sure I understood the whole concept. Though this plot is not particularly very long, it feels that way. 

The very first sentence does not grab your attention and the first paragraph is a lot of exposition for an audience that is not quite invested yet in your RP. In particular, the first two sentences introduce three completely new concepts and terms to potential applicants, and it feels a bit sprung unto you.

It is just dense and hard to understand.  I’ve done a bit of retooling of the first section that I feel better conveys the idea of your RP.  I am not saying that it is better or that your writing is not Amazing (bc I firmly believe that it is), but I want to give you an option. .

A centuryago, Sector Zero of the American Government began work on PROJECT GENESIS, aclassified experiment that resulted in the creation of supersoldiers.

These supersoldiers,known as Novas, were a subspecies of humanity gifted with extraordinaryabilities. Though they looked and behaved just like any other humans, theirpowers made them more valuable and more dangerous than any human could ever be.And thus, though they had been exploited by their creators for decades, their veryexistence was kept a secret for the public.

It wasonly in 2015 when the world found out about Novakind.

And it wasthen, that the world changed for good.

Within three years, Novakind were forced to registerthemselves or be imprisoned. For the next decade, Novas and Humans would waragainst each other, attempting to find the delicate equilibrium that wouldallow both sides to coexist. When the acts of terrorism from both sides grewmore and more violent, the government was forced to step in, passing the Nova Protection Act of 2026— a piece of legislationthat saw to the imprisonment of all Nova kind under the guise of“protecting” both them and the humans.

Toavoid being forced to live in the walled-off camps and be subject to the crueltythat the Protection Act established, many Novas became fugitives. There, they seek refuge in abandoned neighborhoods, hoping tooutrun the reach of the government until the horrible injustice comes toend. 

In general, I advise that your plot 

relies less on terminology (Sector Zero, Project Genesis, Nova, Novakind, Novum districts,..etc. are all words we have never heard before and thus we need a slow introduction to them. 

tries to be more immediately attention-grabbing rather than expository

++ there’s a few grammatical and spelling errors in your plot and extra information pages and that’s a big turnoff for me. i would read through your plot one more time and proofread. 

I wish the summary and notes section was separated from the rest visually (perhaps with a few line breaks?) rather than indicated under another subheader. It makes more sense to me to have it stand apart from the rest of the plot as it can be and should be read on its own,  rather than as a continuation of the more detailed plot. 

Though the READ MORE section is helpful and should be included in your rp, it does look a little bit out-of-place on this page, especially directly after the summary. I would rather see a READ MORE link that directs to a page with all 5 separate links right after your detailed plot. 

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AESTHETIC/GRAPHICS:.

I have genuinely nothing bad to say about your fonts or your layout. I wish I could write as long a section on how much I appreciate the colour scheme you’ve chosen and how consistent it is as I wrote about your plot. 

You’ve made everything work for you and I’m really impressed. 

I wish I had your eye for colour and your ability to pick pictures. Good job!

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SKELETONS:

I love the diversity in your skeletons and the ideas behind them. The freedom of choice in the faceclaims and the unique connections are really appreciated. 

 However, none of the skeletons really stand out to me. A lot of the skeletons feel like bullet points, rather than like a quick look into their lives. 

I love the graphics associated with each skeleton and think each of the blurbs on the skeletons are perfectly adequate, but none of them really come to life for me. Lupus and Leo are, in my opinion, the best of the batch, but I want more– 

I’m sorry that I can’t really elaborate on what I’m looking for, but, in the future, I hope that you can try for a less expository description and something more imbued with animation and emotion. When skeletons are written livelily, it really does allow potential applicants to connect more with your vision of the character. 

At this point, I wouldn’t change anything, but I hope that you keep this in mind for the future. 

.

THE PAGES:

—– THE ‘RULES’ PAGE

If I would change one thing about your entire RP, it would be the rules. This page is hard to read through. Some of it feels repetitive and, at points, it even directly contradicts itself (no age limit, but also strongly recommended age limit). 

I understand the need for all these rules, and, actually believe that most of them need to be there. However, the presentation could just be a little different. 

For example, IV, V, IX are all the same topic with slight variations and can be summed up into 

OOC Drama and Bullying will not tolerated in this RP. This includes forcing of ‘ships’ or ‘plots’ on other players without consent. If you feel uncomfortable of have any problems with any players, please contact us and we will resolve the issue. If found to be instigating the drama, you will have two warnings before you will be removed from the RP. 

And instead of 

We(as admins) promise to try and accept applications in a timely manner. We willtry to do acceptances every Wednesday and Sunday, however due to life outsideof tumblr things may change. We promise to make announcements regarding anychanges in acceptance dates/times as soon as possible. 

Wedo reserve the right to deny applications, though it is a very rare occurrence.If we do deny an application, it will be for one of three reasons: 1. We feelyou do not understand the skeleton for which you’re applying. 2. Someone elseapplied, and even if your app was spectacular, we felt that the other applicantunderstood the character more, and you chose not to have a secondary optionwhen applying. 3. You failed to use spellcheck or other grammar resources whenwriting your app, to the extreme that it was very hard to read. If you weredenied and would like the reason why, just let us know and we’ll gladly talk itover with you. That being said, even if you’re denied, we would absolutely loveto see you apply again.

I would simply put 

Acceptances are every Wednesday and Thursday. If conflicts arise, we will make an announcement regarding any changes in acceptance dates/times. 

We reserve the right to deny applications. If you were denied and would like the reason why, please feel free to message us. Regardless of the reason why you were rejected, we will be happy to see you reapply. 

As you can see, this is far less wordy and still conveys the same message. 

I also firmly believe you should never have a TLDR on your rules page, because well… the players Should read your rules. 

.

—– THE EXTRA INFORMATION PAGES

There a few spelling and grammatical errors on these pages and it continues to be a little bit hard to understand. 

I would read over these and try to edit them in a way that is more concise.

—– RANDOM COMMENTS

The Dinah Drake name throws me off a little bit, as there is a popular superhero character by that name. It shouldn’t be important, but it just took me out of it. 

I highly suggest that you stylize the title of your RP when it shows up (ie DEFIANCE vs Defiance.) It helps distinguish that this is the name of your RP rather than just a noun. It also looks a lot more dynamic. 

I would avoid using slang and  other colloquialisms when answering asks (ooh, oh, lol..etc.) as usually you are explaining more about your universe and your vision. You want to answer asks clearly and portray your professionalism. Otherwise, I really like the vibes you give off! You seem welcoming and I’m really glad about that.  

.

.

.

TLDR; what i would like to see changed

EDIT your Rules & Plot so that they are less wordy and more engaging (also reread for grammatical errors).

I genuinely found your plot hard to get through because it was a lot of ‘telling’ (rather than showing) and it felt a little bit dry. When introducing so many new concepts to potential applicants, you have to ease them into it and sort of sweeten the waters by using a little  (but not too much) purple prose and description. It gives life and atmosphere to your RP. 

Your rules are just too long and, if I were applying, I would just avoid reading them if possible. I also don’t like the use of a TLDR at the end as it feels unprofessional and implies that one can skip over your rules.

Stylize the word DEFIANCE when you are referring to your RP, so we are aware that it is the title of your RP, rather than just a word.

Really not much else! I like this RP a lot! It is truly beautiful and I wish the best for you. 

as a last note and reminder, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE ANY OF MY SUGGESTIONS AND I WILL NOT CARE if you have not taken any of them. There is no ill-will from me to you. As always, this is not intended to be hate and I genuinely want the best for you guys. I’ve done my very best to make sure my advice is constructive, but please call me out if you find any of this offensive or crude.

Thank you and have a nice day. Good luck!

[cutiecrates]

Cutie Reviews: Kawaii Box Nov 19

Firstly, I wanted to show this new prize I got from Tokyo Catch. I won it back in March or April during their free daily play promotion (which will be resuming in June), and I got it earlier this week! It’s so sweet looking, I just love it~

I also have 2 more prizes coming, and I’m hoping to get more if anything strikes my fancy this upcoming month. I’d also like to do a post dedicated to Tokyo Catch in the future, just to discuss the process, my opinions, etc, for anyone curious. 

Word of the month: Mahou - Magic

Event of the Month: November 3rd is Bunka no Hi (Culture Day).

“Embark on a Fantastical journey to a magical kawaii world!“

Mystery Kawaii Item - Pill Case

Our first item happens to be the random warehouse extra they like to supply us with every now and then, and for this month I’ve received a cute pill/tiny item storage container. I got a pink version of this a long time back (as well as various others), but these come in handy so I don’t exactly mind getting another one. 

These cutesy pill case consists of 2 small pockets and 1 larger on the bottom, and attached to it is a silver ball chain so that you can carry it around with you in something or connected to something.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I admit, it might have been nicer to get something else, but these come in handy. It’s a lot easier to bring these around than a bunch of boxes or bottles, and they look so much cuter!

I like to use these to hold things to reduce pain, like Ibuprofen or some stomach tabs, and then for the third pocket I usually put in a prescription I might be taking at the time. But you could also use it for other small items if you wanted, like erasers, hair pieces or earrings, maybe even a little lotion or product? Maybe.

Magical Bunny Pastel Gift Bag

Next up is a sweet little item you can use as a gift to someone else or keep for yourself. There is a few variations of the bag and in each box we get 1, featuring a lovely pastel color scheme with adorable bunnies.

The bag itself feels like smooth card-stock and has metallic silver woven straps.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

In general I tend to be against getting items like this, ones with the intention of giving to another person. I don’t know why. But I really like this, and the booklet suggests using it to store some items, which I think is a cute idea and I’ll probably end up doing it. 

The bag is very sturdy, I love rubbing my finger against its surface, it feels so nice. While I was writing this, I just got a great idea as to what to put into the bag x3 I have a bunch of pretty gem-like perfumes/body sprays I’ve been wanting to display but wasn’t able to at the time, and because one of my cats has been yanking them off of the shelf lately I think I’ll store them in it~

Glittery Animals & Jewelry Puffy Stickers

To go with a magical themed box, we have some magical looking stickers! They’re ultra-sparkly and adorable, consisting of things like gem hearts, bunnies and fantasy animals, sweets, and cute phrases. Each sticker has gold lining and is very shiny. This exact sheet is called Unicorn Melty Flavor.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

Now, I’ll be honest. As cute as these stickers are they are fairly “flat“ with a slight hint of the 3D puffiness that stickers like these usually have. They are also hard, not squishy or “puffy feeling“ in my opinion. But I think they are very cute and I still really like them. My picture doesn’t do them any justice.

Sparkly Mermaid Hair Clip & Metallic Mermaid Tail Pen

Just in time for summer (unintentionally :P) is this adorable mermaid hair. There are 6 versions of these, each with its own unique colors and design. I really like this one~

If you don’t want to put it in your hair it would also be a really cute decoration for other items. But does anyone else think its a bit strange that its called sparkly when it really isn’t? Other than the little gem on the hair piece.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

The clip is very secure and “heavy duty“, I didn’t notice it have any problems holding the hair I clipped it to and it seems to be really nicely made. I didn’t notice any sort of defects or problems with it. I really like it!

- - - - -

In going with mermaids, we also have this mermaid tail pen! It features a lovely gradient of rainbow colors and has a metallic finish and a lovely textured tube reminiscent of scales. I love rubbing it~

It’s a basic black ink fine tip pen.

♥ ♥ ♥

The pen writes smoothly, no scratchiness or irritation. However, I strongly dislike the fact that we have to set the pen cap aside. I know its not a big issue but as someone with cats and a constantly running fan/chaos surrounding them, its not easy to keep an eye on them very long. Not only that, but I really like putting my caps on the pen; there’s something fulfilling about it. 

As soon as I saw it, I thought about the makeup brush I got from a NMNL box some months back and I was pretty excited. This will be a really cute summer pen!

Meito Pukupukutai Yumekawa Wafer Snack

Our snack item this month is an adorably new Pukupukutai wafer in the flavor of "Berry”. If you’re unfamiliar with my blog or this brand, these wafer are in the shape of fish to resemble the popular Japanese snack Taiyaki, a fish-shaped cookie or biscuit filled with various ingredients, such as red bean paste or chocolate.  

I heard about these prior to getting this box, and because I’m an avid fan of these (and trying new flavors~) I was berry excited! As you can see by the packaging, the fish is magically split so that one side is colored sky blue, the other is light purple, with the airy chocolate inside colored a pretty lavender shade~

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It’s very delicious, with a berry taste that wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet or tart. I can’t exactly pinpoint what berries were used for the flavoring though, it didn’t taste like strawberry or blueberry though; maybe raspberry?

I’d recommend picking one up if you ever get the chance!

Unicorn Heroine Pocket Mirror & Magical Wish Note Bottle

TreeIn Art is back and this time we’re getting a cute mirror themed around a pretty girl and her magical unicorn companion. Pocket mirrors can come in big handy, that comes without saying right?

I also found out that on Blippo.com, they have matching notebooks featuring the designs.

♥ ♥

As much as I love the gorgeous art work and would like to use this...  probably won’t, because to my shock, I unwrapped it (prior to the picture for the first time) to find a large crack against the back of it.

And no, it didn’t crack from me looking at it >3< it was that way, my finger rubbed on it which led to the discovery. I don’t know if it was a result of it being tossed around, if I did it or shipping, this hasn’t happened before and I didn’t know about it until now... so I’m pretty sure its too late to do anything about it.

It’s still usable, but I’d hate to break it even more or cut myself.

- - - - - - -

Luckily our next item came perfectly unharmed; an adorable “wish bottle” that includes two little slips of pastel paper you can write your deepest fantasy, wishes, a secret, or even future goals on, then cork up and wait for them to come true~

Besides this, the bottle is filled with tiny gems (that make the most lovely little jingle when shaken) and held by a cute candy and bow themed sticker with silver detail.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

I’m not sure I’ll ever open this, because it’s just too precious! It’s not really an essential item or anything- but I love cute magical decor things like this, and I definitely will be putting this in a safe spot for display.

For such a small item its also very detailed, which I appreciate.

Fluffy Pastel Octopus Plushie & Magical Anime Girl Wand

Every magical girl needs a cute companion right? So Kawaii Box thought what would be cuter than a fluffy pastel octopus?! Besides its soft body and coloring, it also has a heavy duty silver duo chain piece so that you can choose your preferred method of carrying it around.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

It’s very soft! I love it! There’s nothing wrong with the plush, but while it might not be very visible in the picture, it has very obvious “seam/stitching lines“ covering it, which I’m not a huge fan of.

Also... is it just me, or does it kinda look like a jellyfish? I kept thinking that while I look at it and according to the tag, its actually called that. So... I think I’ll call it Bubbles, the jellypus. Or maybe Octofish?

- - - - - - Along with a partner, every magical girl needs her wand :D its a MUST. At least if you don’t have another transformation tool or weapon of choice. This is available in 3 very Sailor Moon-esque designs:

A light blue and purple crescent moon with a star and winged ornament, accenting in silver.

A pink crowned heart with gold accenting and ribbon ornament. 

Red, white, and blue with gold accent, a star or sun ornament, and winged circular design with a gem

There is also a button you can press, which makes the gem light up in various colors and play a magical sound.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ 

I think any magical girl fan would love to own one of these, and even if you’re not, hasn’t it been at one time a dream to be able to magically transform~?

It’s made from plastic but its very durable and holds up very well, it doesn’t seem like it would fall apart easily.

I think all 3 of them are pretty, I especially wish I got the pink crowned heart (because I love all of these things!) but I might be tempted to purchase the other two. I’d love to make these into a display piece~

♥ Cutie Ranking ♥

Content - 4.5 out of 5. I loved it all, it’s very cute, colorful, fun, and lovely. However, I feel like there is a slight limitation on practicality. By that I mean, a few items are essentially trinkets/decorative.

Theme - 4 out of 5. As much as I loved it, I wish they played up the magical girl element more. I feel like they were more focused on things like unicorns and mermaids.

Total Rank: 8 out of 10 Cuties. I really liked it, but its rare to find a perfect box. With a few changes I would have loved it even more, but I think it would be worth it if you like magical girls/unicorns/mermaids.

♥Cutie Scale ♥

1. Wish Bottle - It has a wonderful magical feel, I love to observe it~

2. Wafer - It was delicious! 

3. Magical Girl Wand - It’s so much fun to play with, the cats are a bit frightened by the sound though, it’s a little loud. 

4. Mermaid Hair Clip - Very pretty and fun to wear. 

5. Stickers - They’re very pretty, I kind of want to use them but then I kind of don’t to avoid ruining it. 

6. Bunny Bag - It’s so sweet looking, I’m really happy to have it~

7. Mermaid Pen - I love its texture a lot, but the cap is a turn off. 

8. Pill Case - I have a bunch of these already, but I like the idea of swapping them whenever the mood strikes. 

9. Pocket Mirror - loved the design, hate the large crack <_<

10. Plush - I don’t know, its adorable but I don’t feel an overwhelmingly close attachment to it yet. 

[stringserver25-blog]

Freelance Friday 036 – Dec 14 2018

We’re getting close to Christmas and I’m prepping content while I’ll be off which means just after Christmas I’ll start the year with a content break. In fact, there will likely be a fairly big content revamp for me coming in the months ahead. To see it starting make sure you tune in to my video next Thursday to see my content planning process.

I Shipped

The biggest problem with most people’s productivity is that they don’t do their review. Monday I tackled what a good review looks like and how to stage it so you don’t get overwhelmed.

If you’ve got habits to build or break then you should read Atomic Habits. I reviewed it on Wednesday and you’ll see it make an appearance on next Monday as one of my books that mattered in 2018. Find all formats of the review here.

I love to Bullet Journal, as evidenced by writing a whole book on Analogue Productivity. You can see how I used my notebook to plan December here.

If you run a store, then you should be looking at streamlining your checkout. I wrote a piece on some of the options you can use to Streamline Your WooCommerce Checkout for Liquid Web.

Friday Five

1. Cal Newport on The Attention Blogs Get

Cal Newport writing on his own site:

As I noted in Deep Work, if you took the contents of the standard Facebook or Instagram feed and published it on a blog, it wouldn’t attract any readers, or comments, or links. But put this content on a Facebook wall and there’s an implicit social contract in place to motivate the people you know to click a like button, or leave a nice comment in the anticipation that you’ll do the same.

He says that blogs are a capitalist attention market because you have to have something worth reading for people to show up. If you don’t provide value, people aren’t just going to click like as your content goes by in their feed. They’re never going to see it.

I think that so many businesses and people have defaulted to the easy attention, which has low value, that social media brings. That leaves content niches available to blog about.

What are niche are you going to fill?

2. Darius Foroux recommends some books

Find the whole post here.

A few of these were added to my list, but I’m going to have to object strongly with Jordan B. Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life as a recommendation. Yes, I agree that the rules themselves are good and I would stand behind many of them. I’ve told my coaching clients many of the same thing.

Peterson’s book though…each chapter has about 4 useful pages and then 20 pages of random philosophical content that never seems connected to the main point of the book. There are some downright objectionable things said in there even. He seems to go from citation of his sources to throwing out blanket statements without a source.

I’ve got one chapter to go, and you should see my full review in 2019, but I can’t see how one chapter will redeem the quality of the book for me.

3. Cheri Baker and 8 Months without Facebook

Cheri says:

Do you know what the best part of being off Facebook is? I thought it would be having more privacy, or feeling less addicted to checking social media, but what I love most is something else entirely. Now that I’m off Facebook, when I’m with my friends, I’m actually with my friends.

This is one of the struggles around my house. My wife is “spending time with me” while looking at Facebook. Usually for some buy and sell item or on the marketplace, but still it always seems like an effort to get her to put that phone down and actually interact with me.

Now, I do have a Facebook account for a single book group but come to think of it, I haven’t actually posted in the group in two months despite doing the reading and attending the meetings. Maybe I should just delete the account finally because I think Facebook is 99% bad and maybe 1% useful.

4. Asian Efficiency on OmniFocus 

Mike writing for AE:

The power of a task management system like OmniFocus is that it allows you to filter your tasks instantly and show you only the things you should be thinking about right now. It frees up your brain to focus on what you’re doing instead of trying to keep track of all the loose ends that are hanging out there.

That’s the only thing your system needs to do. Free you up from wasting brain power remembering things.

I use a Bullet Journal, but I’ve got my daily routines in Things. It’s all about what works for a specific job.

If you’ve been wondering how to use OmniFocus this is a decent starting point.

5. Phones suck the life out of a room

David James Swanson for raptitude:

The no-phones policy illuminated something about smartphone use that’s hard to see when it’s so ubiquitous: our phones drain the life out of a room. They give everyone a push-button way to completely disengage their mind from their surroundings, while their body remains in the room, only minimally aware of itself. Essentially, we all have a risk-free ripcord we can pull at the first pang of boredom or desire for novelty, and of course those pangs occur constantly.

I’d say that devices suck the energy out of a room. I’ve been thinking about this a bunch as I hang out with friends and my kids.

I should not let my attention be going to my device.

Source: https://curtismchale.ca/2018/12/14/freelance-friday-036-dec-14-2018/

[christinesumpmg1]

What These 5 Statistics Can Teach You About E-Commerce Marketing

Sound marketing relies on a foundation of informed decision making. The better we understand the e-commerce marketplace, the better we will be at marketing ourselves in it. That’s why, today, I’ve collected five statistics that say something important about this marketplace, along with my advice based on the facts presented here.

Let’s dive in.

1. Customers Are Twice as Likely to Leave a Review If You Ask

According to the Trustpilot “How Consumers Use Reviews Today” report, only 14 percent of consumers are “very likely” to write an unsolicited review, while 29 percent are “very likely” to write a review if the company invites them to.

The report discovered other related points, such as:

19 percent of consumers are reading reviews before they visit a company website.

Most consumers (about 57 percent) are using search engines to find those reviews.

79 percent of consumers want to see companies respond to negative reviews.

89 percent check reviews at least sometimes when they shop.

47 percent of consumers check online reviews while on a brand’s website, before putting items in their cart. In other words, consumers are checking to see what previous customers think of products while they are actively shopping.

It’s impossible for the modern e-commerce site to neglect views and claim to have a complete marketing strategy. The stats above make it clear that reviews are strongly influencing consumer behavior. The report may even underestimate how strong of an impact it makes to ask customers for a review.

If you’re concerned that asking customers to leave reviews will lead to more negative reviews, you shouldn’t be. In my experience, people are far more likely to leave negative reviews on their own than positive ones.

Just as importantly, no matter what people might say in surveys, scientific research published in the Association for Psychological Science indicates that people favor products with more reviews, regardless of the star rating.

Retailers that display ratings on their sites see conversion rates rise by 270 percent, and people are actually more likely to buy products in the 4.0- to 4.7-star range than products with a perfect five-star score.

In short, ask your customers to leave reviews in your communications, and make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

2. 9 Out of 10 Consumers Prefer Personalized Sites

According to a study conducted by Swirl Networks, 88 percent of consumers say that the more personalized and interconnected their online, mobile, and in-store experiences are, the more likely they are to shop with that retailer. 87 percent of consumers also said they’d be more loyal to a retailer who was capable of accomplishing this.

The same study found that 56 percent of consumers feel Amazon understands their needs on a regular basis. This number dwarfed traditional retailers, where only 25 percent of consumers felt the same way. This has clearly played a part in Amazon’s success.

Any talk of personalization in today’s e-commerce scenario is incomplete without exploring the usefulness of chatbots. Forrester research shows that live chat is expected and effective, with 44 percent of customers agreeing that it’s one of the most important features an online business can offer. It is therefore essential that businesses harness customer data in such a way that marketing and support teams can use it to deliver better, more personalized service.

There are the tools out there to help you accomplish this within your budget and with almost no programming resources. Morph.ai, for example, is a chatbot building platform that suits small businesses and retailers. This software lets you create chatbots that use “conversational marketing.” This means you can have one-on-one conversations with your customers, take orders directly from Facebook Messenger, transact using all payment systems, and provide instant service.

Modern consumers expect live support, sites that understand their preferences, and expect communications from the company to be tailored to their purchase and interaction history, and customer support to be clued in on what is happening so that they can deliver results quickly.

E-commerce sites that ignore this fact will struggle to find success.

3. B2B Shoppers Conduct an Average of 12 Searches, Consumers Visit at Least 3 Sites

According to research by Google, B2B influencers conduct an average of 12 searches before they engage with a specific brand’s website. Search is the number one place these decision makers are performing their research. In fact, 90 percent of B2B shoppers use search specifically to inform their business purchases.

Seventy-one percent of B2B researchers start their research with a generic search, not a branded query. If you want to be exposed to these decision makers sooner rather than later, you should be targeting these more general informational queries.

But if you think this behavior is limited to the B2B sector, you’re mistaken. While reliable data is harder to come by, the average consumer visits three stores before they make a purchase, and 60 percent of them use a search engine to find the products that they want.

The lesson here is one the marketing industry has wholeheartedly embraced: Customer relationship management and marketing automation software play a huge role in setting and managing expectations, and there’s no excuse for modern businesses to avoid using them.

And if you thought a CRM is expensive, you couldn’t be more wrong. HubSpot’s CRM, for instance, is totally free and gives marketers an up-to-the-minute view of the sales funnel, qualifies leads, and automatically tracks customer interactions across multiple channels—on email, social media, or phone calls.

When you’re trying to convert prospects, proper keyword targeting and remarketing tend to have the highest immediate conversion rates. However, relevant information at the right time is the main contributor to sales and separates small-time retailers from the big successes.

4. E-Commerce Shoppers Spend Nearly as Much On Brands as On Marketplaces

According to a study conducted by e-commerce platform BigCommerce, the perception that all of the money is going to Amazon and marketplace sites like it is flat out wrong. In reality, e-commerce shoppers spend almost as much on single brand websites as they do on marketplaces. Shoppers spent an average of $409 on brand websites, compared to $488 at marketplaces.

Many people equate e-commerce with the marketplace model. However, when Amazon is taken out of the equation, it is actually the exception rather than the rule. Amazon accounts for 43 percent of online US retail sales. That means that outside of Amazon, brand websites are making the most money, not marketplaces.

In fact, the same study found that while slightly more money was going to marketplaces than brand websites, the reverse was true in number of consumers. More shoppers had visited a brand website (74 percent) than a marketplace (54 percent).

I’m not trying to argue that marketplace e-commerce sites should abandon their business model. But I am highlighting the value of branding and how strong its impact can be. Obsession with Amazon’s business model can cloud your judgment if you aren’t careful. Offer exclusive products, and find innovative ways to differentiate your brand.

Outside of Amazon, brand websites rake in the most e-commerce dollars, not marketplaces. Click To Tweet 5. Price, Shipping, and Discounts Are Hugely Influential

We online marketers spend a lot of time talking about the importance of identifying a unique selling proposition and competing on differentiators other than price. But it would be a huge mistake to conclude that price is anything less than incredibly important.

The BigCommerce trends report we referenced earlier also found that the top three factors considered “very” or “extremely” influential in deciding where Americans shop were price (87 percent), shipping cost and speed (80 percent), and discount offers (71 percent).

Now, I understand that small retailers struggle to compete with big ones on price. Competing on price alone is a losing strategy for all but one retailer. It offers no lasting branding on its own, either.

But we need to understand how incredibly price-conscious our shoppers are. If you are selling the exact same make and model as another retailer at a higher price, you aren’t going to move a lot of product. In fact, you may need to consider if it’s worth having the product in stock in the first place. Pushing for exclusive items is crucial in order to offer something of value when you cannot compete on price.

Here, you have the most control over shipping costs. Folding the cost of shipping into the price of the product and offering free shipping almost always has a positive impact on conversion rates. While most consumers are at this point savvy enough to know that they are still paying for shipping, the certainty in pricing is a major draw.

http://ift.tt/2F9IhD2

[raynareveur]

Rayna’s Recent Reads February 2017

Welcome, welcome, to another edition of Rayna’s Recent Reads! This one is also late, but hey, it’s only by one two days! I’m getting better. At this rate, I’ll actually be able to get the March edition posted in March.

These are the books I read in February:

Jingo by Terry Pratchett

This was an interesting book, and certainly timely. This is probably the most political of Terry Pratchett’s books that I’ve read, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that. But political or no, this is still a Pratchett book, which means I of course enjoyed it immensely.

And, I mean, come on. A secret agent Vetinari? (Even if he got less screen time than I wanted.) This was me when I first read the description, along with every time he came on.

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

I finished my most anticipated read of 2017 in just two days. And it does live up to the hype. The writing is beautiful, the setting is wonderous and magical, and it has tons of gorgeous illustrations inside as well. Some scenes are chilling (looking at you, chapter 2), some are beautiful and heartwarming, and all of them are wonderful. Caraval reminds me of one of my favorites, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, with the same gorgeous writing and mesmerizing circus setting. But Caraval definitely has a faster-moving plot (not that The Night Circus wasn’t interesting, it just had a slower buildup and a more literary feel) which definitely grabbed my interest immediately and held on to it till the end.

One small quibble: I wasn’t too fond of the ending. Anyone else feel this way? Leave your thoughts down in the comments!

Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

I actually read this book for research purposes, as opposed to pleasure reading. (Not that this wasn’t an interesting read.) I’m writing a dark YA retelling of Pinocchio and Peter Pan with a creepy island and murderous fey that live there. Think Caraval meets A Court of Thorns and Roses, but less magical and more creepy.

Pinocchio was quite short, with chapters only a few pages long, which really helped me speed through this. One thing that really surprised me was how dark this is; I haven’t watched the Disney version, but I'd be surprised if all of it made it into the movie. Within a span of 262 pages, we have:

- Breaking and entering that results in murder

- Pinocchio accidentally burning his feet off while sleeping (he didn’t feel anything, but still, that’s some nightmare fuel right there.)

- Pinocchio almost being burned alive as firewood, ending up having his plea for mercy granted and almost getting his friend burned alive in his place (This is horrible but I’m so using this in my retelling)

- Pinocchio getting attacked, beat up, and hung to a tree

- The Land of Toys/donkey transformation

- Lampwick’s death (this made me unusually sad because I was imagining Thomas Brodie-Sangster as his role in this movie)

And did you know that in the book, Jiminy Cricket (called the talking cricket) is the ghost of the anthropomorphic cricket Pinocchio murdered? I’m going to have a field day with this one.

The morality messages were a bit too on the nose, but then again, this was from a time when that was the norm. All in all, it was an interesting read, and more importantly, gave me tons of story fodder. Keep your eyes peeled for more updates about my project, and be sure to subscribe to either my Tumblr (right here), Twitter, or newsletter to get the news first!

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

I read this for the same reason as I read Pinocchio, and while the level of darkness was about the same, Peter Pan had better writing (in my opinion) and an older, more nostalgic feel. 

Let’s talk about the writing first. If I was to use one word to describe the writing of the two book, Pinocchio would be functional and Peter Pan would be lyrical. What do I mean? Well, the writing of Pinocchio feels to me like merely a vessel for the story. Which, I mean, is what writing at its heart should be. It gets the story across clearly and concisely, while the simple, no-frills writing fades into the background. It’s not bad, but there’s nothing special either. It’s just there, and supposed to fade into the background while the story shines through. There is nothing in that book that I can quote on demand. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, just different than what I’m used to.

Peter Pan, on the other hand, has beautiful writing that shines on its own. It has beautiful phrases that would look great on a poster (and there are plenty out there), and other quotes that people love to quote or embroider or draw or tattoo onto themselves. I read the free Kindle edition, and one of the neat features of Kindle is that it shows you quotes that a lot of people highlighted. There are a ton in Peter Pan, and tons on Goodreads as well. For example:

“All children, except one, grow up.”

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”

“Stars are beautiful, but they may not take part in anything, they must just look on forever.”

"I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.” 

“Just always be waiting for me.” 

These are all beautiful and deep, and worth repeating and pondering for a long time. 

Towards the end of Peter Pan, there’s a sort of haunting, nostalgic sadness hanging about the book. There’s something about growing up, changing your view of the world, and having to let some things go forever. To move on, to forget, to know that you’ve moved beyond certain things, and the only way you can experience them again is through memory, which you are also slowly losing. Like looking at a faded old photograph decades later, being a little scared at how faded it is, and a little sad at how you can’t ever make the colors bright again, no matter how hard you try. But also a little proud that you’ve come this far, and happy that you at least have these little gems of your memories to stay with you, albeit in their wistful, faded state, forever. 

This feeling soaked the last chapter, and that was the only part that made me genuinely sad. Because I hate the thought of losing something, of letting go. 

And that’s what growing up is, really; letting go.

And, I’ll admit, I’m a little bit afraid of that.

I think a lot of people are. That’s why this book speaks so strongly to so many people.

And that’s exactly the feeling I want my book to capture, the nostalgia, the wistfulness, the fear and grief and joy all melted into one confusing mess. And the feeling of faded, shifting memories, which can’t always be trusted. In short, I want it to feel like growing up, and then being yanked straight back into childhood, with your mind stuck somewhere between those two places.

Also, on a less wistful note, does anyone else think Peter’s a delusional psychopath? I present my evidence:

“’There's a pirate asleep in the pampas just beneath us,' Peter told him. 'If you like, we'll go down and kill him.’”

“And when [the Lost Boys] seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out.”’

“The difference between him and the other boys at such a time was that they knew it was make-believe, while to him make-believe and true were exactly the same thing. This sometimes troubled them, as when they had to make-believe that they had had their dinners.If they broke down in their make-believe he rapped them on the knuckles.”

“But you never exactly knew whether there would be a real meal or just a make-believe, it all depended upon Peter's whim.”

“I forget them after I kill them,' he replied carelessly.”

Oh, and I don’t have a quote for this since it’s a whole scene, but let’s not forgot the massacre on the pirate ship. Yes, they were pirates, yes they kidnapped the Darlings and the Lost Boys, no, that shouldn’t justify a killing spree. And he doesn’t even feel a modicum of remorse or empathy afterward.

So in conclusion, Peter Pan is a haunting, beautiful, and slightly sad piece of literature, while Peter Pan is a remorseless, unstable, delusional, kind of abusive, and violent murderer who sees everything--especially killing--as a game and in many instances literally can’t empathize with his victims.

Cross that with an immortal, amoral fairy and you get a whole lot of fun. For me, at least. Not for my characters.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling

This one was actually an unexpected read for me, since, unlike 90% of the book lovers on the internet, I actually am not a huge fan of Harry Potter. (*Gasp!*) Don’t get me wrong, I liked the books and they were an enjoyable read, but as far my all-time favorite books, or childhood defining ones go, Harry Potter isn’t on the list. (In case you’re curious, my all-time favorite is Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and the books that defined by childhood were Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.)

However, when my parents dragged me with them to Sam’s Club, I made a beeline for the books section (mainly ‘cause there was no food, my other great love) and found this gem. I had heard a lot about it, and it seemed interesting enough, so I figured, hey, why not? and picked it up.

I was really surprised at how much I liked it. 

This story, as other reviewers have pointed out, is less magical than the original series, instead more character and relationship driven. There are still spells and magical creatures and trinkets and all sorts of cool stuff, of course, but those don’t take center stage. The characters, especially Albus and Scorpius, do. And I loved them. Especially Scorpius, who is an adorable innocent ray of sunshine that I want to hug. 

^ How I imagine the two main characters.

The Cursed Child also dealt a few surprise kicks in the feels as well. J.K. Rowling really knows how to pull at your heartstrings, and I think a main reason for this is that the stakes and problems are smaller in scope (say, hurt feelings instead of dying) and more emotional. And I genuinely care about the characters, especially Scorpius, the aforementioned innocent ray of sunshine. Basically any time Scorpius was sad, my heart crushed a little bit. 

A lot of people have said that they don’t like the play script writing style, but I feel the complete opposite. I absolutely adored it. I think one of the reasons I loved it so much because it was such a quick! I finished it in a few hours. Which I guess makes sense, since in the play, everything is happening/being spoken in real time, and you can’t exactly keep people in a theatre for twelve hours. (Well, Rowling probably can...she could probably keep people on the Titanic for twelve hours if she did a book signing or talk or something.)

I wasn’t bothered at all by the lack of detailed descriptions, and in fact I think that enhanced the reading experience for me. Something most people don’t know about me is that I have a weird habit of reading the summaries/synopses of a lot of books and movies before I read or watch them. I mean, there are so many great books and movies and I won’t have time to read them all, so it makes sense to maximize my reading time by only reading the books that are interesting enough to be worth reading. For everything else, I get some enjoyment out of the summary and get to find out all the big reveals and see everything resolved, on a fraction of the time it would take to read the whole book. And how does this apply to The Cursed Child, you ask? Well, reading The Cursed Child felt like reading a (really well-written) summary. The plot isn’t bogged down by a ton of writing, the few descriptions (for stage directions and setting) were short, and the whole plot happens in the form of dialogue, which was a breeze to read. It’s like getting all the juicy plot in half the time because you cut out all the unnecessary trimmings, like writing.

(Yes, I’m a writer and I just said that.)

All in all, The Cursed Child is a quick, fun, but also surprisingly emotional and deep read.

Well, that’s the end of the February edition of Rayna’s Recent Reads. Be sure to follow me here or on Twitter to get updates, and check back at the end of this month for the March edition!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think about them? Any other thoughts about books, writing, or anything else? Let me know in the comments!

<3,