#i dont even want to tag this book

[cloudysarts]

this is what the book of bill was about right

(og image under the cut)

[superbellsubways]

[mbat]

i literally read the book of bill days ago but its only now kinda hitting me how fucked ford and bills whole thing was though cause ford literally talks about being so unable to sleep (to try to keep bill away), and when sleep inevitably caught up to him, he would wake up to his body abused and things messed with and he just couldnt seem to find an escape (and he literally didnt get to truly escape until 30 years later)

(also keeping people awake for unhealthily long periods of time is another tactic used to mess with and control people because of how it impairs brain function)

listing off the things we see in those few pages in the book of bill:

i mean, punching and scratching at a steel door for hours would be so damaging to your hands and probably hurt like hell for at least 2 days after. then bill says he was hitting fords head against a wall, though its said in a post-it as if its a joke, but he also isnt exactly above doing that, and honestly he says most things like its a joke.

i also dont need to say 'bill really doesnt know how to take no for an answer' because he makes that very clear in literally any interaction we see with him.

bill literally puts a venomous snake near ford while fords asleep, which could have killed him if he wasnt lucky+skilled enough to deal with it.

he nearly gives ford hypothermia, and in the same action actively threatens ford with the idea of making him jump off of a high spot, and like ford says, doesnt do it just so he can send a message to ford about how hes the one in control.

he gets ford in trouble with not only the law, but also with other people that are probably not very happy with him after. he mutilates fords body in several ways, and i dont think i need to go into detail on them because theyre... so ew. and he even exposes part of fords body to the world. like, its just taking his shirt off, but thats still showing off his body in a way that he didnt agree to or want

and then he attempts to (or purposefully fails to) call stan, using fords voice to threaten suicide and tell stan that ford never loved him.

and he punctuates it with a final power move, in a hallucination that he creates, hes messing with stans memories and making him feel like his body was basically about to implode

and like. okay, we all joke about toxic old man yaoi, and its a good joke and toxic old man yaoi is great and its an interesting ship, but holy fuck.

like. to say the absolute least, that had to be so, so deeply violating. its no wonder that when we see ford in the past, when he finally contacts stan, he looks like hes on the verge of shattering into a million pieces. he just went through, and still wasnt yet out of, some deeply abusive shit.

like... everything coming out lately both in this book and what ive heard is on the website, mixed with what we already knew from the show itself... the stans are both so, so fucking tragic dude. their whole lives were thrown away over things that really didnt even need to be the way they were, and then they both get into situations that are pretty damn screwed, and those situations follow them for the rest of their lives. its basically a miracle that things worked out in the end for them.

i dont really have a point, i just had to talk about all that. i read almost all of the book of bill in one sitting, and while i was really enjoying it, i was also getting kind of tired of sitting in one spot only doing this one thing for several hours straight. i still felt a lot of the emotional bits of it of course, but man this part specifically just really didnt hit me until now.

i mean, to say the absolute least, i know what its like to feel violated in a similar way, though not anywhere near to the extent of what he went through at all. someone get that man some therapy got damn

[dvasva]

Tbh? I think the radiant emperor duology deserves more critique than it gets in its tag, so after stewing it over for a couple weeks and also discussing it with my friend, I have decided to do it myself.

So. Spoilers for She Who Became the Sun and He Who Drowned The World ahead.

First off, so nobody accuses me of hating the series, I liked the series. I'd say I'd give the first book a 4.5/5, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I like both books. I truthfully skipped the fisting scene, it triggered some dysphoria that I wasn't comfortable with personally but I don't have problem with it existing in the book, it's good where it is, no changes.

No, my critiques come mostly from the second book, hwdts. Which sucks because I absolutely loved Baoxiang in it, it's a well known fact that my ideal type is pretty, really mean, characters. ('What about Madam Zhang?!!!???!? Shes mean and pretty!!' I hear you ask. Give it a second cause i will get to my beloved madam zhang) So, my critiques are mostly organized as 'The first part I didn't like in Hwdtw that signals the thing that became my biggest issue, the bits in the middle that i did like along with the bits that I felt didn't really work well, and Act 3 which is where my issues really were exacerbated.'

By the end of book one, I had a general annoyance but acceptance that Ma Xiuying was a bit of a weak character, and not weak as in 'dang shes a woman and cant fight' or any other sexist way you may interpret that, but weak as in structurally, she didn't really have as much depth as other characters. I thought she didn't have as much time put into her character as others. And yeah you could have a million character analysis essays over Ma and her place in the story and etc, but for me, her setup for the next book as potentially having conflict with Zhu or her own morals was the most interesting part of Ma. In general I think a lot of people tend to overlook this flaw partly because Ma is a cis lesbian character and the main 'love interest' in a book that is usually marketed to people as sapphic, which yeah there is certainly a sapphic relationship in the book but I think saying it's a major part of the book is really giving the relationship a load bearing wall ot isn't strong enough to carry. The Radiant Emperor Duology is not a romance, first and foremost. To describe it as a wlw romance is gonna leave people who read ot specifically for that reason kinda dissappointed by the end of book 2.

My big critiques didn't start until book two, and a particular scene, though. Ma, at the start of book two, was generally filling the niche of 'nagging wife' to zhu, which yknow, is a fine place to start from. I was a little disappointed there was no further discussion of Ma's disapproval of the morality of Zhu's actions, and in fact the dead child was pretty much entirely forgotten by Ma in favor of being Zhu's wife. Which, yknow, sure.

The Scene I had issue with happened (Spoilers once again) after Zhu finally captures Ouyang and imprisons him at her base of operations. Ma, dressed in her empressly regalia enters his room with the intention of being the bigger person. She walks in, looks at the stripped down and humiliated general who killed her father and famously is also really a women hater, and tells him she forgives him for killing her father. And then she gets upset and cries when the prideful general who hates women gives her a dressing down and taunts her and is like 'I'm glad I killed your father'? She nearly cries because Ouyang was mean to her (notably only cause he was mean to her and didn't gracefully accept her forgiveness, not because he killed ehr father) and runs off to Zhu. And Zhu responds with 'Wow, he's just a weirdo, everyone likes you and everyone in existance immediately knows you're a good person and you change people.' Which, my friend suggested before she finished the book, was a case of Zhu placating Ma and dismissing her feelings which would be an interesting dynamic.

Really my hangups with this scene come from multiple parts.

1. Ma' few character traits including being observant and reading people really well (a thing she's praised for in book 1) and having good social intuition are completely thrown out by her thinking being alone with ouyang and forgiving him would be a good idea and then her being shocked and upset when he spat on her forgiveness. And

2. Zhu's response is never once treated by the text as her dismissing Ma and placating her, and Zhu's statement despite never being shown to be true before and that moment being the first time it's ever mentioned, ends up becoming Chekov's moral purity by the end of the book, where the plot hinges on Ma being able to magically heal a damaged character's mind enough for Zhu to win in the end. Which I will get back to. There's a lot of other stuff happening between here and the end.

So, before I get back to Ma and her role in the story, I'll address some other bits from after this scene. Both problems and things I enjoyed generally.

Madam Zhang and her parallels to Baoxiang and her being the absolute queen of dissociating really was interesting (before act 3). She was a very compelling character who I completely understood and felt positively about. She had a way more interesting relationship with gender imo than Ma did, especially in book 2. I didn't really like that she was overwhelmingly shown having sexual villence done to her, that felt weirdly like a punishment. But, I did like her a whole bunch, and I liked the look we got into her head. She was probably my second, maybe third, favorite character in the whole book until Act 3.

I really, really liked Ouyangs dynamic and relationship with Zhu. The weird sexual tension between them, their weird kinda nonsexual but also kinda very sexual S&M relationship. It was somehow the most sensual, sexual part of a book that featured Madam Zhang having sex with multiple people, and Zhu going down on Ma, and a lot of other mentions of sex or scenes involving sex. Tbh I feel like, in a way, Ma was left to the sidelines for most of the book because Ouyang became the primary 'love' interest for a hot second there and the only reason Ma could get her spot back was Ouyang and Zbu's separation. Also, from what I've seen when people talk about this book, they always kinda try to express Zhu and Ouyang's dynamic as very nonsexual and nonromantic, as platonic mostly. And there is no inherent superiority of romantic over platonic, but I think to insist that it is only platonic, and not a strange swirl of romantic, platonic, sexual, frustration and relief, and a swirl of familiarity and vulnerability all wrapped into one, is doing the dynamic a bit of a disservice. And ther is, imo, very clearly a subtle hint of romantic intent and interest on Ouyang's part before he realizes Zhu has a body he hates.

Which is also another point I didn't like. Ouyang and Zhu's relationship end felt off. The entire bit with the pirates felt off, but especially how Ouyang found out about Zbu's body, and how Zhu reacted. I think Ouyang finding out second hand, from a combination of being suspicious and from Jiang saying it, was a poor way for that to be revealed. I think there was a better way for that to happen that woyld have felt more like a betrayl to zhu than this did. The fact that Zhu and Ouyang were so in tune and could see each other perfectly, but this one thing was a blind spot for both of them because of how unaffected by gender Zhu was compared to how overaffected by gender Ouyang was is a really interesting thing to explore, an interesting disconnect between two character's whose entire basis for their relationship is 'like recognizes like'. I think Zhu seeing it as a betrayl would have been more impactful if she had presented this informatuon to Ouyang herself and been rejected than how it went down. And, I think her not realizing Ouyang would be disgusted that he felt connected and felt a sameness to someone with a body he found grotesque and that he feared would have been more interesting for zhu, who views herself outside of womanhood and didnt really think that other people would not see her outside of womanhood, if she was the one who told ouyang herself.

Also, less importantly, think going into Ouyangs annoyance that zhu kept moving his target further away was a good move but it wasn't expanded on as much for my taste. I also really liked it when (spoiler) Xu Da dies, and that entire part despite some minir bits, was extremely good in that Zhu finally has tasted loss. She had, up until that point, been riding a wave of positivity, she was the underdog who won over and over again despite all the odds and despite her own reckless choices. So I did appreciate that everything went wrong for her at least once. that would have been, imo if other things were changed, a good place to end a book two in a three book series. Which will make sense as to why I mention it im a bit.

I also didn't like how Ma was nonexistant unless the plot was like 'ok we need to remind people that Ma exists.'

And there's of course other stuff but those are the main points of acts 1 and 2 that i wasn't fond of or that i liked.

Act 3 is a wholely different behemoth which can be encapsulated with 'I wish it was longer but also different' (courtesy of the convo my friend and I had).

My friend and I both agreed that we liked this kind of courtly drama game it was playing. My friend doesn't tend to like the structure or writing style of a lot of the chinese wuxia, danmei, or courtly drama translated books i read, so it was nice to know that the genre content isn't the issue for her there.

The biggest problems I had with the ending though was 1. I think Baoxiang and Ma had an interesting dynamic despite it being really rushed and how distasteful I found the entire concept of Ma being such a good wholesome goody good good person that she could change Baoxiang, quiet his demons and fix him in some way. That was annoying in an otherwise interesting dynamic. And 2. I think Madam Zhang's character traits and cleverness and all that were wiped away to make her inexplicably jealous of Ma in a way that I don't think fit her character and just served to fit a trope of jealous empress who hates the favored concubine.

So, here's my major proposed changes.

1. Ma gets sent to Khanbaliq extremely early on. Like, act one maybe after ouyang is captured early. This serves three purposes. A. Ma has something to do and is more present in the story. this could be a good xhance to let her actually feel frustrated or upset at Zhu in some tangible way that needs to be resolved or talked thru eventually. B. she gets more time to build a relationship with Baoxiang, whose entire defeat hinges on him having a strong connection with her. and C. Her absence in the other parts of the book feel less like she's being ignored or forgotten. It makes Zhu's lack of haste more than just a way to annoy Ouyang, and turns it into an interesting moral choice. Should she rush to Khanbaliq to save Ma or trust that Ma will be ok in favor of gaining power? Her lack of haste means Ouyang leaves, depressed, and she loses Xu Da, all while she doesn't even have the assurance that Ma is ok, she is truly at her lowest point with nobody with her. If Ma is in Khanbaliq and that's explored, then Zhu and Ouyang can also explore their dynamic without Ma feeling a bit like she is battling for Zhu's attention.

2. Madam Zhang is suspicious of Ma, or feels actually tangibly threatened by Ma. In act 3, Madam Zhang's anger towards Ma feels really out of place. She got exactly what she wants, she is empress, her emperor isn't interested in removing her from her position and her position isn't threatened by anyone. Baoxiang won't get rid of her, he won't demote her, he has shown zero sign of ever even considering it. So, why is Madam Zhang jealous of Ma? Imo, especially since she very clearly has dissociated into oblivion and has no love or affection for anyone anymore, and no real desire or motivation to secure her position further aside from maybe producing an heir to make sure shes taken care of after Baoxiang dies, there's no reason for her to be inextricably jealous of Ma. It kinda just erases all of Madam Zhang's political savvy and cunning into jealous, petty woman, and that sucks. If she was suspicious of Ma's intention, or Baoxiang genuinely expressed spmething that actively threatened her position, her hatred of Ma would make sense, but instead she hates Ma cause Ma is ugly and spends every night with Baoxiang. She hated rice buckets concubine cause that concubine used a lot of funds and competition genuinely made her position less stable. She needs better motivation for hating Ma.

3. As I mentioned earlier, Zhu needs to be the one to tell Ouyang that she does not have a dick. That's just all around better, it feels more like a betrayl to bare your secrets and be rejected, etc etc.

4. The duology should have been a trilogy, with book 3 starting when Zhu is at her lowest, ouyang is dead, ma is in khanbaliq, Xu Da is dead, a new guy is the emperor. This is where a book three should have started. in a series that has so many important characters, i feel like it needs more space. she's in a 10 gallon tank when really she needs a 30 gallon tank. Lots of it, especially towards the end of book 2, felt rushed and the extra book will absolutely push that back a bit and make it less rushed.

Anyways that's my critique of The Radiant emperor duology. Once Again, I liked the series, its one of my favorites i've read all year. I don't dislike it, and having a critique or opinion about something doesnt mean I didn't like the book or understand the book (because obviously if i understood it i would understand why its flawless). I liked it, there are things I wish were different, that's it.

[incorrect-riordanverse]

im so mad that this is a side blog account and not a main account. i started this blog when i was still relatively new to tumblr and i think i was… like. fourteen years old or something. i never thought i would continue for this long, and i never knew so many people would like the content i put out here (i have over 9k followers which is literally mind-blowing, like wow….).

because this isnt a main account, i cant respond to replies left on my posts, i cant really reply to anyone unless i reblog !! i cant even follow people with this blog, it just comes up as my main blog (which is not pjo-related… rip my failed attempts at organising my fandoms to different blogs). so my avenues of interaction with a lot of you are seriously impeded.

so i just want to say i am so thankful for all of you, i read every single person’s tags who reblog my stuff, i read all of your replies and every time im crying screaming rolling around on the ground in agony over the fact i CANT REPLY!!

i know my posts are super inconsistent these days, im glad so many are still here! i think i may change some of my content eventually (never gonna get rid of the incorrect quote stuff, i’ll just be adding some other things like pjo headcanons or analyses or something), just to spice some stuff up on here.

[calyptramoths]

not to ship-talk on main but i see people who believe bill & ford are somehow equals? or that they Were equals in the past when they were partners? and normally idrc if someone interprets something in canon that i personally disagree with or that disagrees with something else in canon, run wild man. but ive seen some people's takes and they truly believe they are more MORALLY correct in shipping billford over other ships BECAUSE billford is the "moral and legal alternative" and actively get into discourse about it. and its like dude... firstly this is a cartoon get a grip on the reigns of your moral high horse, secondly this is a ship between Bill Cipher and a human being. there is no way it Can't be toxic or in some way morally objectionable LMAO

[gifti3]

What if MC had to go back home for the holidays

im only bringing this up cause ik (some of) the brothers would be like huh??? ur not gonna be here????????

an MC with a decent relationship with their family or even if they just wanna go spend time with their human friends, they would probably wanna head back for a few days you know!

so theyre like....yea sorry but ill help yall decorate tho!!

oooo other possibility... MC: i can bring one (1) of you back with me.

no way that it would end with only one person coming! everyones trying to tag along if they can lol

[killjoy-prince]

After 10+ Long Rests to clear out any event that can override this one and another Duke rescue later, I finally got Wyll's last romance scene

[palladium-poisoned]

tag game: make a poll of your favourite female characters (no limits - as many or as little as you want) and see which your followers like the most!

tagged by @dekarios

tag you're it! @primordialwhale @futureshieldmaiden @queenflorence @seedystreet @thepreciousthing @zheida

and anyone else who feels like it asldkjfgh

[gibbearish]

idk, its just. like. a person comes up to you with their heart cradled in their hands. says it is broken, says it hurts. places it in your hands, asks you to please make it stop and trusts you to fix it. wouldnt you be scared, too? wouldn't you be haunted by visions of you tripping and shattering it beyond repair, of driving the thing thats hurting them even further down so that maybe no one can ever get it out, of someone in their deepest darkest moment trusting you with their life and you fucking it up? how could that ever feel like anything but defusing a bomb? trust is such a valuable thing, a powerful thing, a delicate thing, and the more you have the more you get given and the more careful you have to be with it because what if someday you drop it and break it and it turns out you never should have been given it in the first place. wouldnt you be scared?

[bpdonnie]

im about to be such a stupid hater but as an aromantic person i hate the httyd 3 ending.

[m00nbuggies]

i read cinder.. it's very good... anyways PEONY!!

[cabin10diaries]

i love fucking with canon so much that i have friendgroups that dont make much sense or have any canon material except in that au

luke clarisse beckendorf silena chris & jake

thalia nyssa laurel mitchell pollux castor & zoe

annabeth katie travis holly clovis & drew

jason connor & valentina

nico lou cecil celyn & will

percy piper & leo

hazel reyna frank & lavinia (actually. this one makes sense but adding anyway b/c it's a part of the au so)

bianca kayla julia alice lacy & billie

estelle yan harley georgina & meg

[pasiphile]

>.> Can you say more words about GO2

Oh, I can, but they're not very nice words.

While I had my issues with the first season, the second season is just so... bafflingly bad? Like, so strangely bad. Plotwise it feels like something written by a beginner. Like for some reason they've given a huge budget to some mediocre fanfic. There are just so many instances where they obviously had to get from point A to point B and just made up a quick shortcut without thinking too much about the implications or it, you know, making sense. Some of it is because of the honestly strange decision to let other writers take care of the flashbacks, with the worst contender the WWII flashback (zombies exist now? with no repercussions? so much gratuitous gore? Also the whole sequence with the gun would be so dramatic if, you know, demons actually died instead of being discorporated being nothing but a minor administrative setback). But it's also there in the main plot. Fire extinguishers work against demons for some reason? Aziraphale goes all the way to Scotland and back to learn basically nothing? The whole contrived romantic subplot with Nina and Maggie? The fucking Gabriel/Beelzebub thing? It's all either so heavy handed or just plain lazy. And I'm all for suspension of disbelief but if it's just one thing after another...

To me it feels like the basic plot of the whole second season could've over and done with in half an episode, and they just put in filler after filler to fluff it out into a full season where, in fact, barely anything happens.

And it's so odd! I know John Finnemore's work, he's good at intricate little plot connections! And Neil Gaiman can hardly be called an inexperienced writer either! It just feels like they were too lazy to actually bother writing a plot that works.

Meanwhile characterisation-wise, they've gone further on the path they'd already started in season one and wandered even farther away from what made the book characterisation interesting. In the book, Crowley is the nice one, who's generally polite and friendly and very fond of humans, while Aziraphale is, honestly, a bit of a dick and a recluse who prefers not interacting with humans and is 100% down to kill a child if it means he can keep his comfy lifestyle going. Aziraphale accidentally kills a dove and doesn't care about it. Crowley is the one that revives it. It's that kind of contradiction that makes it so fun, and to see that reversed into Aziraphale being a bleeding heart saving-the-poor-humans and Crowley acting all tough and sarcastic really erases a lot of what makes the pairing so charming.

But the thing that bothers me the most is how much they included the Big Conflict between Heaven and Hell. In the books, both Crowley and Aziraphale are low in the hierarchy. You only catch a glimpse of the big players and only at the end. Plus, they're lazy. It's a plot point that they both have human agents to take care of the work for them and that they don't get involved. They're not remotely interested by the overarching conflict or wanting either side to win. The whole point of the Agreement is that they take over a bit of each other's work for ease and convenience. And they're not particularly involved in humanity's welbeing either, and they definitely don't go around saving individual humans. They're disturbed by it, sure, but they don't think about interfering in any way. They only start taking an active role when their comfy lifestyle is threatened. And that's what I like about the whole thing. It's small, in a way. It's contained. Meanwhile the TV series went full out with Hell and Heaven fighting against each other and Crowley and Aziraphale suddenly becoming major agents in that conflict, catching the interest of demons and angels all the way up. It feels very at odds with the central theme and message of the book.

I did enjoy watching it. About 50% for the little things that did work, and about 50% to point and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

And to spot the Pratchett references, of course. Those were nice.

[just-eyris-things]

Vent post. Because i feel like kicking a hornets' nest.

Honestly im just tired of how people will call someone ignorant/uneducated and will go for the throat for every little thing, while they themselves say shit like pierogis all the time. If you're going to point fingers at others, you yourself should be without fault.

The question is... can you?

[anaklusmosriptide]

Seeing the crit of the pjo show makes me a little glad that I haven't watched it but I do know eventually I want to give it a chance. What mainly worries me is the pacing tbh and some of the important details that Rick claimed "doesn't matter" like them missing the summer solstice deadline. No hate AT ALL to the actors just everything on the technical side is what's causing me and other people to side eye the series