#im so so right actually/j

[milolovesbmc]

I've decided all of the blorbos are asexual (projecting)

[moethh]

is this anything

[livelaughfantastic]

[june injects fantastic’s dead(?) body with 2 stimpacks at once]

GHAAAAAHKKK..

[He coughs up blood and spit as his broken body forcefully knits itself back together]

Oh god.

Oh god.

I’m alive? I guess I was always too fantastic to die but

What the

FUCK

was that!?

[localfandom]

ok yuri is starting to just be a prick

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[magpod-confessions]

Its crazy how everyone always tryna draw /stylish/ versions of the characters (according to fandom people which makes it. Questionable in actual style) but always sleep on the one character that is described as being stylish and havin cool hair bc shes black and a woman. How come we got the same or more fanarts of Mike Crew when he like shows up in one episode and then gets immediately knocked dead than Anabelle who appears multiple times is a mysterious presence loomin over the story and plays a huge role on like. The whole closure of the entire podcast. Like im sure everyone hates to hear it and im callin myself out w this too cuz i havent done much fanart of her (to be fair i havent done enough fanart in general bc of chronic artblock) but im calling racism, mysoginy and mysoginoir too bc everyone either ignores her or writtes her as a dominant agressive presence to antagonize in their jmart fics

Anon you are actually so so right holy crap

[t4t-dazai]

sowwy for not arts i have died. badly

[starstruckspocks]

jon?

Something is different, but he cannot be quite sure what, exactly.

Everything is… more linear than it was Before. He still Knows, quite in a way like he did Before, but it is finite, clear, manmade. It does not come from fear, but curiosity. A wide web of knowledge, rattling around in the dark of him, and what even is dark to a thing that cannot perceive it? A lack, perhaps, an unbeing, a noticable absence where there should be merely an ordinary kind of nothing.

He has a voice. And there is something he desperately, desperately needs to say, but there are no words that are his own, and every sentence he speaks he borrows, and they are each one of them painted with fear and confusion and loneliness and huntedness and a watchful eye.

He is also not alone, never alone. There are voices all around him, nice ones, chatting, making tea, fighting, changing, and only some voices stay the same, have been the same since… well, since when? Since when has he been… like this? It gets hard to think like this, sometimes – to assign a point in time to a moment and to file them away together. A collection of information, disorganised, lost, confused, perhaps deliberately so. It feels achingly familiar.

And sometimes, he hears something like himself speak in a different voice, even when he does not talk. And even though the words are borrowed too, taken from throats and fingers to be forgotten, they feel like coming home, simply because they were said in that soft, cruel tone. A familiar melody, slipping through wires and speakers and programmes like it was made for this, but it wasn’t, was it? It might’ve been.

And this brings him comfort, of course it does, except he must be trapped, right? Because why can he not say his own words, when he has so many of them? He is not lonely, but he is alone with the thoughts he cannot voice, the words that have no mouth, the things that cannot be said. It hasn't always been like that, has it?

Something is different Now from how it was Before, at least. He Knows everything, but he knows nothing of truth, and knows nothing at all, but the difference to What Was seems clear, in a clumsy, calculated way. Something is hiding, quite badly, behind a blurred vision that he does not have, behind lines of numbers and letters, running for its life through old wires. He knows it lingers, he knows it is there. He just cannot make it out quite yet.

[milkbreadtoast]

random but i resolved to post abt it every time i find a webtoon that I enjoy... and lately I've been having fun reading this one...

*rubs nose* heh... I do dabble in het from time to time... no but seriously it's a p straightforward lighthearted enemies to lovers romcom, not groundbreaking or anything yet im over here kicking my feet and giggling the main couple is SO cute to me... i luv them... I actually couldnt wait to find out what happens next so ive been slowly reading ahead in the kor whenever i have time and they're sooo cute😭😭 I also like the art style and costume design a lot!! it gives me like. a nostalgic 90s shoujo anime vibe tbh... w the puffy hair and babyfaces...

[dykrophone]

nothing gives me, an aroace lesbian extremely confident that i am NOT attracted to men, more sexuality crises and borderline bi panic than the original broadway cast of hamilton

[quarks-pussy]

So I know we here at Startrekfandom love that "came back wrong but from the pov of the wrong" thing and apply it to many different characters and canon situations and I am far from trying to complain about it (I'm "came out wrong" trope myself so I was always gonna obsess over it) but having recently watched a very important episode (you'll know which one) for the first time I think there's a character who hits both tropes mentioned but llike, intertwined, opposite and subverted, and whom I wanna talk about.

Julian Bashir.

From his parents' pov he's "came out wrong but we got him help and he came back better" while from his own pov it's "came out 'insufficient', was destroyed for it, came back wrong and only later slowly came to terms with his new self tho never the process (justifiably so)" and it's heartbreaking because in a way, he's right! Jules Bashir died! His parents had an intellectually disabled child and decided to eugenics him! Julian is not the person he used to be and while I do love the person he is now, that doesn't bring back who he was! Part of me wishes we could've gotten to see Jules at least once and part of me hopes we never do because my heart would shatter.

This isn't a good comparison but nonetheless one I can't help drawing: it's giving similar vibes to anti-vaxxers. "I'd rather risk having a child who is dead than one who's autistic". Obviously this doesn't map over since Julian is still autistic and the procedure his parents subjected him to specifically targeted his intellectual disability and if any folks with id wanna comment on this I definitely recommend you listen to them over me, but it's a similarity I, as an autistic who has encountered anti-vaxxers again and again, can't help but point out. "Give me a normal child or give them death."

This may have been written about already but there needs to be stories about teenage Julian (after finding out and rediscovering who he was) practicing some good ol' recognition of the self through media. I need to hear about how he would encounter a story about someone who came back wrong (I'm gonna assume there's plenty of "wrong" pov stories floating around by the 24th century) and absolutely weep. I need to see Julian mourning Jules, taking years and years to process his feelings, experiencing guilt about how he, the imposter, didn't deserve to live Jules' life.

Came back wrong from the returned's pov but it wasn't an accident. It was done to you deliberately by the people who claim to love you. And now you are here, piloting the corpse of your predecessor.

Jules Bashir is dead. Long live Julian Bashir.

[jubmato]

a half-assed cquackity for your troubles

ive been totally unable to find any active normalguy dsmp discord servers recently. so ive decided to do it myself. ive gotten about 90% of it set up over the past couple days. just need to finish up a couple cosmetic things. would anypony be interested in that, orrrrrrrr..??

[sieglinde-freud]

actually thinking very hard about gerome/yarne specifically virion!yarne because hes my favorite but also what if when we were kids i was your only friend and confidant in a country where everyone despised your family on account of your traitor father and you were looked down upon due to your taguel lineage and then your parents died and oh fuck so did mine and you were left with nothing but a dead culture and rule over people that hate you but i stayed by your side through it all not only as your knight and guardian but also as your friend and also we were both boys. what if we had to flee our home after it fell to risen and i watched as you succumbed to your anxiety over being the last taguel and sole heir to your house but i was powerless to comfort you in my own grief and then i lose sight of you for years as we travel back into the past and when we finally reunite things are can never be how they were before but i dont need them to be i just need you to be okay now. and we were both boys. my vision do you see it

[jadelemonadee]

ok laplaces angel with seabury let me cook let me cook okay the king is the little “it’s the norm for animals” voice since he’s the main root of most if not all of seabury’s political beliefs or something idk and maybe the main thing is him having this whole realization that perhaps his beliefs don’t exactly perfectly align with his morals and that he was never in the right to begin with??? (with the loyalism thing and him being a pacifist) because yk the whole “oooooh could you take a look at me am i bad am i bad am i bad am i really that bad” right guys right haha right????/)/) please ive been having these thoughts conjuring up in my head for several months but idk how to put it into words and still be coherent 😭😭😭 this is so cringe ok bye don’t even read this (or do……😳😳😳😳)

listen to it pleaaaaase 🥺

[buwheal]

Bro the askers treat spamton so much better on that askblog.

While over here we send him drawings of his joints and tell him "go puppet boy go!"

Honestly I love seeing the difference.

LOLLL they do… and maybe a little bit of that is my fault based on the ones i choose because im really picky with the ones i do answer (being nice to him, in this case) because there are SO many people who are trying to make him feel better, but ultimately they always bring up something or other to remind him of the shit he’s gone or is going through..

..Like,, “so you know how youre always failing and you’re uh… maybe alone with the (physical) things you’re going through? Yeah? Well ive failed too. Sometimes. Hope you feel better after i just reminded you!” Kind of stuff. Obviously im very much exaggerating what people say but YIPPPEESS its like they’re trying to get him to cry or something. I appreciate their efforts and how much the care but damn i dont think that they’re thinking about how that’d sound to him, especially since his immediate thought towards things like that is that its ingenuine.

I think less of Loki’s audience wants to see him suffer. A lot of mine do. LMAO. The difference /is/ funny.

[kyurochurro]

MARTEY WE GOTTA GET BACK (tm) TO THE (C) FUTURE (TM) (C)