#it's very easy to take a reader/viewer out of a narrative if you make the wrong move

[drdemonprince]

I read Anna Biller's (director, writer, set designer, and basically everything-er of The Love Witch) new novel Bluebeard's Castle. And I really found it to be quite the addictive and enchanting read, though all of the criticisms of the book that you'll see on Goodreads and Amazon are completely legitimate.

The book very much does read like a screenplay -- there are long descriptions of interior design and costumes, sometimes positioned in the middle of a scene in ways that break up the emotional momentum, to a hilarious effect. For example, in one sequence the protagonist is considering a gruesome vision of suicide, and then looks in the mirror to admire her hobble skirt and reflect that she's looking very sexy.

Some of The Love Witch's less charitable viewers didn't understand the way Biller's work sweeps from the grand and romantic to the self-involved and frivolous, but it's clearly intentional, and it works on the page for me just as well as it did on the screen. You just have to have the irreverent, glamorous toxic girl sensibility for it. If you love the way Lana Del Rey mixes the high and low brows, the tragic with the prosaic, you'll lap it up here too.

In some cases, Biller's descriptions do feel like placeholders, or are so generically written that it would make perfect sense in a script (because there is an entire team working on the film that can bring a "sexy" dress or a "lovely" piece of furniture to life), but which falls flat here. Because I know Biller's aesthetic style so well, when she tells me that room is sumptuous or well-appointed, I can picture precisely what she means, and most of the time she is so specific with her descriptions of outfits and accessories that you can easily conjure what she's going for. At some random moments, though, things are underwritten and demand that you as the reader fill in the details she normally provides.

Bluebeard's Castle is the story of a contemporary romance novelist and converted Catholic virgin, Judith, who falls under the seductive spell of an aloof, gruff, emotionally volatile Baron's-son, Gavin, who sweeps her off her feet following a fated encounter at a wedding. After a whirlwind romance and a hasty wedding, Biller's protagonist moves into a remodeled castle with her brooding lover, and the cracks in his shining armor begin to show. The charm of the love interest is something of an informed attribute; you have to believe the narrator that he is handsome and dracula-like (or believe that she believes it) in order to allow the story to move along. Since this is a tragedy rather than a romance novel, I think that buy-in is relatively easy to provide. The sex scenes are largely left to the margins as well; this book isn't meant to titilate but rather pull you into Judith's rich, sad, delusional inner world.

Some of the most positive reviews of Bluebeard's Castle describe this as a novel about how and why women find themselves entrapped within abusive relationships. As someone who has been in abusive relationships, I think this truly is where Biller's writing excels -- and she truly gets what it's like to become romantically and sexually addicted to someone who is bad for you to a degree that is almost embarrassing to see oneself reflected in. She truly gets it -- the way you excuse small violations, blot out any consideration of your own consent, justify unexpected outbursts from your partner and then take steps to prevent them, the way you must romanticize every single tender moment, rewrite the gradual conditioning of your own behavior as yourself becoming a canny, subtle manipulator of the situation, and color in between the lines of a truly unfulfilling existence with grand narratives and self-serving lies.

It's not a pretty portrait -- Bluebeard's Judith has a fanciful, inconsistent mind, constantly swapping between admitting to herself that her husband has mistreated her, and seeking refuge in religion, fantasy, alcohol, sex, and self-negation in order to convince herself that such abuses did not really happen, or don't really matter. She also uses other people -- leaning on her sister and a former romantic interest, the respectful, reliable doctor Tony -- extracting as much attention and support from them as she possibly can when she and Gavin are in a rough patch, then abandoning them entirely the moment he returns to her. I think a reader who hasn't been in an extended abusive relationship will probably find Judith infuriating and unsympathetic. But as someone who has done and been all of these things, I feel incredibly exposed by Biller's narrative, in a bracing way. It's like a shot of cold water to the face.

Many people will justifiably write this book off as melodramatic and arch, but I think it perfectly nails the alluring drama of being wrapped up within a terrible relationship dynamic. When you're being abused and you deeply love your abuser, you are absolutely fascinated by their unpredictable emotions and your own love -- you think constantly about how you might elicit the treatment from them that your heart longs for, you're reading into their every gesture and expression all the time, and you're inventing satisfying explanations for your situation in your head all the time. It's an isolated, deluded life, but it's pleasurably intense too sometimes, and those of us who fall prey to it often have some deeper longing for connection and passion that makes us easier to prey on. Biller really understands that.

If you adored The Love Witch, you'll probably have a lot of patience for this book's flaws and feel appropriately targeted by its strengths. Sad girls, Virgin Suicides fans, BPD baddies, Jane Eyre lovers, grown up former Twilight readers, and all kinds of other pitiful glamorous freaks will enjoy it.

[animehouse-moe]

Just a little heads up regarding the sexual humour in Undead Unluck in the manga it’s gone after a couple of chapters in the beginning. If you were to take a look at the story now and look at the beginning you wouldn’t think it’s the same story. So it’ll probably be a few episodes until it goes away. I felt the same when I first started reading it and now watching the anime I find it cringe because I kinda blocked it out 😭 but it’s still a good story with great characters I like how the studio is adapting it. Hope you enjoy future episodes :) also looking forward to your reviews !!

Well isn't that some good news haha.

It's good to hear that because the narrative structure and world is immediately appealing through these first two episodes. The author is clearly intelligent in how they do things because of how they paired up the two negators in this episode, in my opinion.

Sticking characters together with similar abilities is an easy way to confuse characters and readers/viewers alike, because where one ability ends and the other begins can be a bit of a hazy line, and they use Fuuko to represent that in contrast to Andy. It's also very nice to see them immediately go for a negation that isn't too simple since it gives viewers something to mull over for next week.

Apparently this has turned into a full blown rambling of my thoughts once more, so let me hide the rest because of talking theory haha

On the topic of negators and their abilities, I personally feel like Shen's negation is has something to do with desire or impulse. Their negation can be seen as "simple" when you look at it in just Fuuko's context (or even Andy's as well if you're not really paying attention. While it might sound similar to how Andy describes it as "will", Shen's hint of it being a power that works on "your deep psyche". Will is the representation of something much more shallow. Sort of like the idea of conscious will vs unconscious impulse.

Anyways, an example of where things get jumbled up is Shen is able to cause Fuuko to run in reverse, which is a surprisingly similar feat to how he allows Andy to aim for his weak point so that he can "invert" Andy's actions like Fuuko. But it can't just be the act of reversal, as Andy ends up frozen by Shen when he hesitates about killing him.

If I were to try and explain it in my own words, Shen is negating the instinct of the characters. Fuuko didn't think about running to Andy, she just did it. Andy didn't "think" about not killing Shen, he physically hesitated. That sort of thing.

Anyways, to bring a long story short here, the depth expressed so quickly with Negators shows a lot of potential in how the author is approaching the concept which is great to see. Oh, and also thanks to Shen's dialogue towards the end of the episode, their power works on looking at the individual. You could argue that it's "eye contact", but Andy's fight vs Void shows that mutual eye contact isn't a requirement (though Shen does only close a single eye once during the sequence, so it's shown that you don't need both eyes on the target for it to work).

But I'll got a step further regardless. Immediately, the benign rule of 10 Negators in the Union poses an interesting question. Why only ten? Personally, it sounds like someone, or something is using the Union as puppets to cull and control the negators around the world. You might say, "well that makes sense", but it doesn't. If the Union can wield Negators as a weapon, why would they kill them, and why would they so quickly accept the people that killed Union members as their replacements?

It reeks of an unseen hand controlling negators and their population through the Union, but aside from a group in direct opposition of the Negators, I'm not sure what it would be. I'd have a hard time believing it's a Negator that's at the head of this plot, but it's not like we have any examples of people that are whatever the opposites of a negator would be called.

The thing that confuses me the most though is the seats. Ten seats at a table that resembles a clock (where are the other two?), and I can't help but be reminded of the clock in the first episode's cold open, as well as the visuals that appeared when the clock struck midnight (does removing the last two seats of twelve have something to do with the visuals, or with Andy and Fuuko specifically?). Could a doomsday be in the cards, or is it something to do with a Negator that can control time? Or am I just reading way too far into this?

Only manga readers will know I guess, which makes it even funnier that this is responding to someone who read the manga. I just couldn't help but mull over my thoughts here though so I hope you don't mind.

So yeah, past the very rough and prickly humor here, these first two episodes have a lot going for them in reassuring me that there's a really good story ready to unfold.

[sneezemonster15]

I think the only obvious fact about sns is their apparent love for each other. Im a little confused on their possible homosexuality, but its not as obvious as you say it is. You need to look twice to catch them. I wish you would elaborate on where it is so obvious.

I have written about it several times. You can search SNS tags on my blog. For both Naruto and Sasuke.

You are misstating me a lot. I have always maintained that their sexuality is subtly shown, subtle as compared to the usual shounen tropes. But shown nonetheless. It has been obvious to me because I am quite exposed to LGBTQ+ cinema, I talk about these films often on this blog. So the usual tropes used in gay coming of age drama and love stories are obvious to me. I have never said that it is obvious to everyone. I am always talking about subtleties and layering. I don't know what content of mine you have been reading. Lol.

Look man, even if you weren't exposed to these themes, the story itself is written pretty intuitively and it certainly is written to encourage curiosity in the average audience. Sure, not everything is made crystal clear to the audience deliberately, but it's crazy how blatantly layered it is visually and narratively. Even during my first watch, i would get puzzled or hooked a lot of times and curiosity made me mad. While i could surely recognise the tropes, that it was shounen had sent me for a toss, it was certainly not easy to digest. But then I remembered watching Cardcaptor Sakura and I felt better lol. It was quite a strange experience to see a gay love story in what's practically a kids show meant for boys. I know how genres work. But I waited until the end to go looking for fan discourses, I wanted a watching experience unperturbed by extraneous things. Most of all, Kishi's storytelling hooked me, he is a hell of a writer honestly. He really knows where to strike and what to use to strike with. That brutal brutal beautiful man. Only a truly intuitive, empathetic and sensitive person can write something like that. And talented af to boot.

Anyway, honestly, many sensitive readers or viewers could tell that there was something not quite right with the way the romance was superficially set up in the story. Naruto and Sakura, Sakura and Sasuke, Naruto and Hinata. It was a subliminal response. It takes some time to dismantle it in your head, but you get used to it with time. When reading the manga, I did struggle initially because it was a new medium for me, i settled down soon enough. It was very enjoyable. And it only reinforced everything I knew with the anime even more acutely.

One of my fav fellow Naruto fans, clocked it out at the age 13. A child. Simply curiosity and an advanced sense of comprehension. And a looooot of others could tell in their first watch. That they are gay has been the running narrative since the beginning of this manga, many fans have been making memes and jokes about it, SNS communities and channels have millions of subscribers the world over. And they are not analysis bloggers like me, lol. You really think it's that unclear?

Look I am not taking away from anyone if they cannot get it at first glance. Some can, some cannot. There are several factors. Depends on how sharp your comprehension is or how experienced you are, or how exposed you are to gay tropes and narrative devices. But the good thing is, one can always develop their senses, train them, discipline their eyes and ears and mind, to focus more and pay attention, ask questions. It's how you enjoy media in all its glory.

Naruto inspires so much in people, so many from the queer community relate to Sasuke and Naruto, so many closeted folks see themselves in Naruto and Sasuke, and are comforted by it, inspired even. Representation matters. So much empathy to go around. I am not even the first person to have started talking about it lol, how come you missed all the others? It has been the topic of hot debates for years all over the world man. They have been talking about how obvious it has been from almost the get go. You can't measure everyone with the same lenses. Not everyone would have the same skill sets.

The short of it is, lol, it's obvious if you know what you are looking at. It's a little confusing and you have to look twice if you don't know what you are looking at but are curious nonetheless so you invest and then find out that way. But if you are closed off and unreceptive, you probably won't have the benefit of this lovely story in all its radiance. Or any story.

[ultimateinferno]

One thing I think some manga readers need to chill out on is the compulsive need to point out that Makima is the villain, especially when talking to anime-onlies and those who've fallen for her shit. Like, maybe you were able to catch on from the word go, but not everyone will and the way the narrative treats her, it's certainly intended to be a plot twist.

I also think by just painting her in broadstrokes as evil through and through with no reason to be likeable ultimately detracts from her character and the narrative of CSM. Makima is a manipulator. Making people like her is her whole thing and it works. With only what was shown of her in the anime adaptation, she has a lot going for her. In other stories, she would have been the polite but haughty kuudere love interest.

Within the episodes shown her most in-your-face negative trait is threatening to kill Denji. However, even when it's written out explicitly, she does it in such a manner that makes it easy for those who've already fallen for her shtick to write off. She always separates the action from her, or uses innuendo when talking about it. Like it's a bureaucratic decision made by her bosses, or some advice from the vets, or how she's never the one who would go through with it, but one of her subordinates. She says it in such a tongue and cheek manner that she has the plausible deniability that she's joking even when she isn't. This isn't to mention that every named character has threatened Denji's life from Aki to Power to Kobeni to Himeno. Threatening to kill Denji is just what people do apparently, not to excuse her but to just point out that it's not the most effective litmus on good vs evil in this setting.

Everything she does is laced with formality and delicacy. From genuinely harmless actions to straight up sexually assaulting Denji. What makes this so effective is how little effort or threats it takes to get people to do what she wants.

Which brings me to the big thing about her character: She is very rarely wrong. The entire speech about sexual intimacy having a greater impact when you're close to your partner and know them on a deep, personal level? She's correct about that! Or maybe when she helps Denji after he got drunk on Himeno vomit by giving him the candy, telling him that even if bad things happen, he will experience so much that they'll ultimately become footnotes in his life. Genuine wisdom. There's even her conversation with the Yakuza about how they're so far up their own ass as they rule Japan's underground while self absorbed that they're the "necessary evil," which albeit hypocritical still isn't wrong. Her little convo on the train about preferring to eat alone and hating dealing with her bosses. The movie date where she says that even if you find only one good movie, it makes watching all of the bads one worth it.

She's not never wrong, but the best lies are built on truths. As one of the few characters in the cast who has any semblance of understanding what the fuck is going on and as practically human pure devil, this all comes together to make it her the perfect manipulator. Anime-onlies will fall for it. When I read the manga, I fell for it. Even after I was clocked in on her doing something terrible from a random redditor's comment on fanart.

What makes Makima such a good villain and such a good representation for abusers is that she makes it very easy for many people to like her. Maybe not everyone, but more than enough. Many abusers aren't some shriveled bitter curs that release nonstop toxicity, they'd fool far less people that way. The best ones are those that make people go "How could they be abusive, they're so nice?"

You don't have to like her. It's probably a good thing you don't actually. She's not a good person, and if people are clearly excusing her bullshit even after reading the manga, go ahead and call it out, but also, let new viewers be wrong. Let them be tricked. Maybe it will reveal some things to them about themselves.

[soapofbar]

so I am a little scared to air out my spicy (probably lukewarm) takes without the guise of anonymity to keep people from telling me to unalive myself, but at the same time there are lots of thoughts that roam around in my head and I want to get them out in some fashion, so consider this sort of like, a public journal, of sorts? idk. my posts will probably be very rambly and expect me to hop from media to media as I post about whatever hot vomit is swirling in my mind.

anyway the brainrot currently going through my head right now is about RWBY, and specifically about power-ups in RWBY, and sort of how they relate to the show's action. More specifically, how the show (and fandom) is weirdly averse to them, how it kinda makes development less exciting, and stuff like that.

CRWBY have gone on record multiple times I think stating that none or at least the majority of the main 4 will not gain the power of the maidens, mostly because it is "too predictable". And like, I disagree on that heavily. Yes, if you did them all getting maiden powers in one fell swoop it would be trite and predictable, but like, Yang and Raven having an arc where it ends with Yang getting Raven's maidenhood (that sounds really bad out of context), or same with Weiss and Winter, or Penny and Ruby, etc. I don't think those would've been predictable, or trite or anything. Hell I think even if you did have literally all of them become maidens, you could still make it without being "predictable" because stories aren't really about the destination, but the journey, because the destination is usually obvious.

I think early readers of Dragon Ball Z, reading the Namek Saga in real time, expected somebody to become a Super Saiyan at one point. I think they probably knew that Goku would become a Super Saiyan. I don't think they were able to predict Krillin dying for it, or Frieza surviving the Spirit Bomb, or any of the little details that still make that ascension really fun to watch even years later. I think any arc about any of Team RWBY getting wizard powers could be written in a similar manner, where them getting the power in the end is very obviously likely to the viewer but still interesting to watch.

But fine, you don't want RWBY to become Maidens. Maybe the powers just put the team too out of balance, or their written too vague/powerful to make that member of the team anything other than invincible (you can make this interesting too, by the way, Jotaro in JoJo's Part 4 and 6 comes to mind) and you want to avoid that. Fine.

But why can't any of Team RWBY's semblances evolve?

Ever since the concept was introduced in V7, I kinda expected at least one of the girls to get a semblance power-up, but instead the idea has mostly been used for plot convenience, such as Ren's Character Development Locator and Neo's sudden power boost in V9. And it's kind of baffling to me because V7 also has the RWBY vs. Ace-Ops fight, which to me and several others I've seen at least was very narratively unsatisfying because RWBY's victory is very flimsily justified with stuff like "Then you trained us" "they lost their cool because Clover isn't here to restrain them" "marrow just ain't feelin it chief", all of which feel very easy to rebuke especially if you've got a more critical eye to the show.

But imagine instead like, Weiss, who should've been going through an arc the entirety of V7 but didn't, undergoes a semblance evolution while dealing with all her SDC and family trauma stuff. Imagine if Blake, while fighting against racism and classism in Atlas, or coming to terms with defending herself against Adam, evolves her semblance in some way. And then, because these were deeply personal developments that never happened in training, they pull them out in the fight against the Ace-Ops and they're completely caught off guard. It would make their victory in that fight feel like the consequences of narrative development "These characters have learned an important lesson and are able to defeat an otherwise superior set of foes due to abilities that evolved and subsequently surprised them because of that lesson."

And look, the obvious response here is "you're getting angry/sad/disappointed simply because thing didn't happen the way you wanted it to" and yeah if you're intellectually dishonest you can apply that to just about any criticism anyone ever makes about anything, so to highlight why I personally find it a problem

a) It makes the fights themselves less interesting since characters powers appear static and the powers themselves aren't versatile enough or aren't used creatively enough to make fight scenes interesting beyond raw spectacle (which wears off quickly if not done masterfully) and the writing behind the fight (which has never been of the best quality). The example here is most of the fights in V8, which I feel lacked in both the majority of the time.

b) it makes it feel as though the girls aren't really being narratively rewarded for making realizations/learning lessons beyond the immediate situation. That while yes, this development might help them out in the now it has no real lasting impacts. The example to use here is Yang, who goes a bunch of development in V4/V5 about dealing with trauma from getting her arm cut off, and needing to be more cool and collected in and out of battle. She has these beats and then the only fight I think she really shows off that development is the bandits in V5. Despite "coming back stronger", she doesn't feel it. And of course, outside of fights, she doesn't really show that at all, as it feels like she's the first one to lose her shit the majority of the time in recent volumes.

c) RWBY is, or at least started as, an action show. The original four trailers for each character, which are all collectively the most viewed piece of media for the show, are entirely about fighting, with minimal dialogue. I think for a show like this, which has that kind of heritage and is only occasionally good at writing subtlety, using fights as a way to showcase character development would be a really smart thing to do. It's only worked for every shounen manga ever produced, and I think RWBY taking tropes from a traditionally male-dominated industry and inserting them into a show about 4 women would do wonders, especially considering how much inspiration RWBY takes from anime already.

d) despite rising stakes and our main big bad finally taking an active role in the plot, the level of spectacle, as well as the abilities of our main characters, feels stagnant or even lesser than it was before. This is probably the most personal feeling of all and I imagine many will disagree. It's also not one I can really point to any example and articulate on.

the final word I'll leave off on is that I'm not gonna go into V9 because a) Penny and the way she was treated in V8 really made me uninterested in watching it and b) I've heard about the suicide tea and I will agree that having Ruby come out of the suicide dimension with a power-up would be uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[fictionfromafar]

The Bleeding by Johana Gustawsson

The Bleeding

By Johana Gustawsson

Translated by David Warriner

Orenda Books

Publication Date: 15 September 2022

#RandomTTours

To state that Johana Gustawsson’s new novel The Bleeding was highly awaited would be a real understatement. Not only is this her first English language publication since Blood Song in 2019 and the intriguing beginning of a brand-new series; it is also the tantalising first time English language readers will read a novel that is partly set in her native France. The author has long been billed as the Queen of French Noir due to earlier titles including her cowrite with Laëtitia Milot “On Se Retrouvera” (We Will Meet Again) later adapted for television for an audience of over 7 million viewers. However, the largely Swedish setting of her Roy & Castells series and the surname she has taken from her Swedish husband, Johana Gustawsson has often seen her slotted under the Nordic Noir bracket. So, with The Bleeding it could be said that the Queen is making a bold move to reclaim her crown. I can assure you she does so with both aplomb and panache.

There is an interesting trade off with this novel. The French title translates as Hold Your Hand While It All Burns. This has been switched to the snapper title of The Bleeding (it has long been seen that anglophone readers prefer shorter names, see Jussi Adler Olsen for another example), by contrast the brilliantly bright red cover of this book which hints at sorcery is so eye catching and with so much depth. Believe me the story inside is just as memorable.

Johana Gustawsson excels at writing intelligently plotted parallel storylines with really insightful historical narratives. Readers of Blood Song would not fail to be moved by her revealing accounts of the often-forgotten crimes against women during the Spanish Civil War. With The Bleeding she takes that further still, setting the story in three separate periods of time while also examining the challenges that women have faced within each era.

There is no settling into The Bleeding as we enter the most contemporary story, set in Lac Clarence Québec, Canada in 2002. Police detective Maxine Grant has been called out to a wealthy home where an elderly lady is outside screaming. Grant is shocked when she seems this woman whom she recognises as her childhood primary school teacher, Mrs Caron. Gustawsson’s imagery compels us to visualise this encounter from Grant’s perspective as she sees a senior citizen she had admired standing in the road without shoes in the snow, her face and upper body covered in blood. It is such a powerful and ominous way to begin the novel. Grant then enters the house in trepidation as to what she might find. When the lady’s husband, a retired professor is found with multiple stab wounds there is no doubt about the cause of death and his executioner. For Grant, who has just returned from maternity leave, the perplexing question is what could drive a seemingly sedate lady to kill her life partner?

The story then switches briefly to post war Québec where we encounter a girl in her young teens called Lina. She is going through a difficult upbringing, her mother been widowed during the war and due working long hours in an asylum, has little time for her. Lina is a lonely girl who struggles to build friendships at school. Life does seem to improve when she makes acquaintance with one of the residents at her mother’s work whose viewpoints and insights begin to fascinate her.

Maxine Grant’s investigation gets even more baffling when she and her colleagues find some macabre discoveries in the Caron house while her former school teacher seems too traumatised to offer any explanations. It is not an easy time for Grant whose husband passed away shortly before their baby was born, while her teenage daughter seems unwilling to help at home.

The France that featured The Bleeding is very far removed from the Marseille of Gustawsson’s upbringing, instead the setting is Paris in 1899, during an exciting time of peace and optimism known as the Belle Époque. Lucienne has moved to the city from Québec for marriage into a wealthy family and she and her husband Henri have raised two young daughters. Despite the secure comforts of her rather lavish lifestyle, Lucienne feels the Parisians are cold, in particular her mother in law who has fixed expectations of her marital duties. Tragically the mansion they live in burns down apparently claiming both daughters. Lucienne is not convinced her children have perished. Feeling detached from the religious ceremonies to mark their passing, she encounters Violette, a spiritualist, who will open a new world to her.

Three women with three different destinies each told in first person narrative. The pleasure is discovering what unites and links them together. The author digs deep into her characters psychology, the atmospheres they grow up in, the expectations to live with and the God they must believe in. The Bleeding is not simply a psychological thriller, a police procedural, a historical fiction; it is all of them while also an exploration of felinity. Morality features too, while they may be victims of their times, there are no angels in this story. Great credit must go to Johana Gustawsson and by extension to her translator David Warriner as the feel and use of language from each era also feels very authentic. There is also a tipping of the hat in places to other authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo and a far more modern one!

While her previous novel Blood Song demonstrated Gustawsson’s craft in creating a multiple dimensional, multiple time lined and gripping story which shines both a light on unsavoury practices and a microscope at historical atrocities; through The Bleeding she digs even deeper to formulate a webbed sequence of events encompassing three time periods which envelopes in mystique a thoroughly absorbing story which gradually and suspensefully unravels. These narratives comprise of a contemporary investigation into an apparent domestic murder that following some macabre discoveries proves to be so much more, an expedition into spiritual behaviours by a bereaved mother in Paris at the turn of the 20th Century and the gradual exploration of dark practices in Post-War Québec. The common theme being these are all women who have been trapped by the societal and cultural limitations of the times they have endured. Reading The Bleeding, I can assure you that there are plenty of surprises in store and you will want to read more of these characters. A couple of late revelations were provided at face value and this is perhaps the outlet that Gustawsson will use to take the series forward – which I do believe will prove an even greater challenge. Be sure to get onboard now!

Many thanks to Orenda Books for the advance copy of The Bleeding and to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inclusion on the blog tour. Please check out the other reviews of this book on the book tour. Also look out for a change to win a copy of this book on Twitter.

Preorder The Bleeding:

[ingrossmarket]

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[thesmokingguns]

Picnic in the Park

Pairing: Axl Rose x Reader

Word Count: 2128

Fluff

Request Summary: “Axl rose meets a girl threw slash who is his childhood friend whos also an amazing painter and just is infatuated with how pretty she is and he just follows her around like a puppy.Tan skin brown hair that goes to lower back brown eyes, wears alot of cute sun dresses and is very kind”

A/N: I am catching up on requests. So if you have requested anything in the past week or so thag oiece should be coming out soon. Thanks everyone for reading

Tag list: @ayablackwood @agroupiewhore @thenobodies-inc @littlemisscare-all

Your mind was a mixture of light and dark, complimentary colors, and images burned into your mind that you wanted to paint later. If there wasn’t a brush in your hand you were taking notes with a pencil, sketching the world around it through eyes that only you saw it from. You captured everyday life like the older woman with the mesh bag she had filled with fruit or the man with his red beard, a few weeks unkept, napping in the alley to get a break from the heat. You took these people, characters of the world and had them live forever on the canvas you painted on.

Art was your passion. You loved walking around Hollywood with a set of watercolors or a notebook to sketch in and take in the lives of others. There was some sort of poetic feeling of taking a stranger from the street and importilizing them as a character in your art. You created a narrative for them that they may not be living. It was cathartic and you’d spend hours of your day people watching until you finally found the right subject.

Sketching out a bump on someone's nose that might have come from a childhood accident or from their Freshman year of college when they drunkenly fell down the front steps of the dorm, you created their unknown life story as you placed each line of their face into place. If you didn’t infuse their story into the piece it was just some colorful person without any meaning. But you wanted to give the viewer of your art a full piece. They should be able to look at your picture and understand the life that the subject lived; your art created that life.

It was crazy to think that a few years before you were in school thinking about becoming an English teacher.It was a chance meeting at a grocery store when you ran into your old friend Saul’s mother. When you had been kids the pair of you had been so close and secretly your mothers had both had fingers crossed for a wedding that never happened. The pair of you split apart the summer after senior year to set out of a life you each wanted. His mother had invited you over for dinner, which she also invited her son to, thrusting the pair of you back into each other's lives.

Oddly enough, it was like time hadn’t passed between you. The easiness of your friendship coming back without even trying and soon the pair of you were hanging out on almost a daily basis. With your schedule up helped manage his house, buying groceries, doing some cleaning, and running a few errands he never remembered. In return you had a few rooms to yourself. Slash had wanted to make sure you had time for your art as well as a space for it.

Dressing in a white floral pattern sundress you grabbed your bag that contained your art supplies. You wanted to get to the park early and set up a blanket you could spend the day sketching and painting on. You planned to soak up the sun in your skin and use the good lighting to get some new work to sell for the craft fair this weekend. As you turned to grab the picnic foods you had made the night before you saw Axl sitting at the counter. His green eyes looked up, smiling when he saw you.

“Hey, Y/N. Slash just left. I’m going to leave in a minute. I was just finishing up some lyrics.” he was always over and you thought that he was lonely in his role as lead singer. Even though Axl put on this tough guy imagine and had a reputation it was like he needed to work for that because he thought that was what rock stars were supposed to do. Whenever he was around you he seemed lost, always making extra conversation or taking the time to go walk to the coffee cafe with you and wait in line, even if he didn't want anything.

“I’m heading out for a day in the park.” you told him, moving the wax paper covered sandwiches into a small wicker basket, along with some fruit and cheese, some water, and a bottle of wine. You could feel his eyes on you, “I’m over packing and have more than enough if you want to come with me?” you let your eyes flutter up from packing the basket to look at him. “I’ll leave you alone to write because I’m just going to spend the time working on some new portraits.” It was important to you that you set up expectations. There was no need for him to feel like he was going there to entertain you or vice versa.

“I’d love to go. You don’t mind?” he asked as you finished packing up the wicker basket. You shook your head no, letting him pick up the food you had just packaged and leading you outside, “What park did you want to go to? I can drive us there.” you told him what you were thinking, getting comfortable in the convertible.

When you had moved in with Slash you had forged fast friendships with his bandmates. Even though you weren’t at every show and didn't always go backstage you had gotten close to them in different ways. On Wednesday nights you hosted a dinner party where you made them all come by so you had an excuse to cook for them. When someone had a ripped piece of clothing at a show you’d quietly take out your sewing kit, stitching patches in jeans and repairing favorite band shirts. You liked being around them all because of how animated everyone was; they were so easy to draw. You had a whole sketchbook of black and white images from the band. Your favorite subjects were Slash and Axl, mainly because they were the two you were around the most and had the most flexibility when it came to moods.

Axl had grown close to you, drawn into the caring nature you had. It was hard for him to understand that someone would do things for him without expecting anything in return. The first time that you had been out drinking with them and insisted Axl came home with you so you knew he was safe he had thought was a come on. When you helped him drink water and gave him aspirin before tucking him into bed he was shocked. Even more shocking was waking up to find his clothes washed and folded on the guest room chair and you carrying in a breakfast tray of freshly made foods. That’s just how you showed you cared about your friends. Being the mother of the group and taking care of them helped you feel like you were contributing as a friend.

Spreading out the blanket under the Weeping Willow tree. You motioned for Axl to sit as you toed off your sandals and moved to sit down. Digging through your bag you set out your sketch pad and pencils. You could see Axl out of the corner of your eye. He didn’t seem to know what to do. You pulled him down to the blanket, settling him so he could rest his back against the tree. You pulled off his shoes and socks and handed him his notebook as you went about unpacking your picnic so he could pick at food if he wanted to.

With him settled in the shade you laid down, belly first in the sun. Picking up your pencil you scanned the park until you found an older man feeding the pigeons. Your eyes followed his movements for a few minutes before you started your sketch. The feeling of the warm sun on the back of your thighs as you twirled the pencil in your hand, capturing all the features of the man.

As you drew you could feel Axl’s eyes on you. At first it was just light glances every few minutes and then it turned to heavy long looks where his eyes were watching you. Ignoring the way his stares made you blush, chalking up the pinkness in your cheeks as just sun exposure.

A hand slid over your calf, over the back of your thighs before going over your dress and laying on the flat of your back. You turned your face upward looking at Axl watching you. His eyes flickering from your art up to your face. There was a pause, curiosity and interest in what he was going to do next. Your heart is beating in your chest even though your body is frozen, wondering what he was up to.

“Do you want to take a break and eat? You’ve been working for a couple hours.” Looking past him you saw the sun had changed position in the sky and time had gotten away from you. Sitting up you handed out sandwiches, positioning yourself comfortably besides him in the shade of the tree.

Axl had been following you for most of the spring and now into summer. He's around all the time and often comes along for days like this. But you liked having him around. You thought that he needed the quiet comfortable silence between the pair of you; so much of his life was filled with noise.

“Y/N, do you like this?” He asked, peeling off the crust to his sandwich. The action seemed to be more of a need to keep his hands busy instead of a dislike for the bed.

“Do I like this? Picnics in the park?” You didn’t know exactly what he meant. Axl sometimes seemed to talk in riddles not wanting to fully play all of his cards.

“Being with me.” He didn’t look up to meet your eyes at this, almost embarrassed to be talking about it. You weren’t like Axl. There was no need to talk in riddles or have him guessing how you felt.

“Of course I like having you around, Axl. It’s nice to be able to spend time with someone I like.” He looked up, almost surprised that someone would like to be around him. “I’ve had a crush on you for a few months and it’s nice to get to know you more and find more reasons to like you.” You didn’t feel nervous telling him this. It actually felt like a relief to get it off your chest.

He put down his sandwich, wiping crumbs off on his shirt and looking at his hands to make sure that they were clean. Before you could figure out what he was going to do he had a hand in your hair, tugging you closer to him in a soft kiss. For months you had been thinking about what it would be like to kiss him on one of your lazy afternoons together and now it was happening.

Instead of letting him pull away and think about what he had just done you slid onto his lap, letting your hands wrap around him. His free hand was on your back holding you close as the pair of you made out like teenagers under the shade of the willow tree.

Finally, the pair of you pulled away, swollen plush lips and wild curious eyes watching each other. This new change between the pair of you sparkling like wonder between the pair of you. Axl was playing with a piece of your hair, wrapping the brown lock around his finger like he had been wanting to do for months.

“Does this mean we can finally start dating?” You asked, watching the way he smirked at this question. “Because I don’t know how many more times you can just casually show up without Slash catching on. And I don’t know how many more picnics I can plan without touching you.” You admitted, his lips were on your chin and up your jaw.

“Mhhh, I’ve been waiting for this for so long and now I can have you all to myself.” His voice whispered huskily to you kissing your earlobe. He pulled away to look at you again. “You have to tell Slash.” He said, making you laugh as you rolled your eyes. If that’s what it would take to have Axl you didn’t mind telling your best friend about the relationship.

“You take care of me and I’ll take care of everything else, babe.” You promised, meaning it. This was everything that you had wanted for months and now you were getting it. The man that you had started falling for was yours. It had only taken months worth of picnics to get him.

[brawltogethernow]

So, I don't think I've ever asked you this... what IS the whole point of the Spider-Sense? It really seems like something that only exists for writers to ignore or work around when they want to inject Legit Tension into a story.

I’ve thought about this power so much, but never with an eye to defend its right to exist, so I needed to think about this. The results could be more concise.

Ironically, given the question, I have to say its main purpose is to ramp up tension. But it’s also a highly variable multitool that a skilled creative team can use for...pretty much anything. It does everything the writer wants it to, while for its wielder always falls just short of doing enough.

I went looking through my photos for a really generic, classic-looking example to use as an image to head this topic, but then I ran into the time Peter absolutely did not reimburse this man for his stolen McDonald’s, so have that instead.

A Scare Chord, But You Can Draw It

That one post that says the spider-sense is just super-anxiety isn’t, like, wrong. It’s a very anxious, dramatic storytelling tool originally designed for a very anxious, dramatic protagonist. I find it speaks to the overall tone of the franchise that some characters are functionally psychics, but with a psychic ability that only points out problems.

Spidey sense pinging? There’s danger, be stressed! Broken? Now the lead won’t even KNOW when there’s a problem, scary! Single character is immune to it? That’s an invisible knife in the dark oh my god what the fuck what the fU--

Like its counterpart in garden variety anxiety, the only time the spider-sense reduces tension is in the middle of a crisis. But in the wish fulfillmenty way that you want in an adventure story to justify exaggerated action sequences, the same way enhanced strength or durability does. Also like those, it would theoretically make someone much safer to have it, but it exists in the story to let your character navigate into and weather more dangerous situations.

For its basic role in a story, a danger sense is a snappy way to rile up both the reader and the protagonist that doesn’t offer much information beyond that it’s time to sit smart because shit is about to go down.

Spidey comic canon is all over the board in quality and genre, and it started needing to subvert its formulas before the creators got a handle on what those formulas even were, and basically no one has read anything approaching most of it at this point, so for consistent examples of a really bare bones use of this power in storytelling, I’d point to the property that’s done the best job yet of boiling down the mechanics of Spider-Man to their absolute most basic essentials for adaptation to a compelling monster of the week TV series.

Or as you probably know it, Danny Phantom. DON’T BOO, I’M RIGHT.

DP is Spider-Man with about 2/3 of the serial numbers filed off and no death (ironically), and Danny’s ghost sense is the most proof in the formula example of what the spidey sense is for: It’s a big sign held up for the viewer that says, “Something is wrong! Pay attention!” Effectively a visual scare chord. It’s about That Drama. And it works, which won it a consistent place in the show’s formula. We’re talking several times an episode here.

So why does it work?

It’s a little counterintuitive, but it’s strong storytelling to tell your audience that something bad is going to happen before it does. A vague, punchy spoiler transforms the ignorant calm before a conflict into a tense moment of anticipation. ...And it makes sure people don’t fail to absorb the beginning of said conflict because they weren’t prepared to shift gears when the scene did. Shock is a valuable tool, too, but treating it like a staple is how you burn out your audience instead of keeping them engaged. Not to go after an easy target, but you need to know how to manage your audience’s alarm if you don’t want to end up like Game of Thrones.

The limits of the spider-sense also keep you on your toes when handled by a smart writer. It tells Peter (everyone’s is a little different, so I’m going to cite the og) about threats to his person, but it doesn’t elaborate with any details when it’s not already obvious why, what kind, and from what. And it doesn’t warn him about anything else-- Which is a pretty critical gap when you zoom out and look at his hero career’s successes and failures and conclude that it’s definitely why he’s lived as long as he has acting the way he does, but was useless as he failed to save a string of people he’d have much rather had live on than him.

(Any long-running superhero mythos has these incidents, but with Peter they’re important to the core themes.)

And since this power is by plot for plot (or because it’s roughly agreed it only really blares about threats that check at least two boxes of being major, immediate, or physical), it always kicks in enough to register when the danger is bearing down...when it’s too late to actually do anything about it if “anything” is a more complex action than “dodge”.

Really? Not until the elevator doors started to open?

That Distinctive, Crunchy Spider Flavor

The spider-sense and its little pen squiggles go hand in hand with wallcrawling (and its unique and instantly identifiable associated body language) to make the Spider-Person powerset enduringly iconic and elevate characters with it from being generic mid-level super-bricks. Visually, but also in how it shapes the story.

I said it can share a narrative role with super strength. But when you end a fight and go home, super strength continues to make your character feel powerful, probably safer than they’d be otherwise, maybe dangerous.

The spider-sense just keeps blaring, “Something’s wrong! Something’s wrong! God, why aren’t you doing something about this!?”

Pretty morose thing to live with, for a safety net! Kind of a double edged sword you have there! Could be constantly being hyperattuned to problems would prime you for a negative outlook on life. Kind of seems like a power that would make it impossible for a moral person to take a day off, leading them into a beleaguered and resentful yet dutiful attitude about the whole superhero gig! Might build up to some of the core traits of this mythos, maybe! Might lead to a lot of fifteen minute retirement stories, or something. Might even be a built in ‘great responsibility’ alarm that gets you a main character who as a rule is not going to stop fighting until he physically cannot fight anymore.

Certainly not apropos of anything, just throwing this short lived barely-a-joke tagline up for fun.

One of my personal favorite things about stories with superpowers is keeping in mind how they cause the people who have them to act in unusual ways outside of fights, so when you tell me that these people have an entire extra sense that tells them when the gas in their house is leaking through a barely useful hot/cold warning system that never turns off, I’m like, eyes emojis, popcorn out, notebook open, listening intently, spectacles on, the whole deal.

It also contributes to Peter Parker’s personality in a way I really enjoy: It allows him to act like an irrational maniac. When you know exactly when a situation becomes dangerous and how much, normal levels of caution go out the window and absolutely nothing you do makes sense from an exterior standpoint anymore. That’s the good shit. I would like to see more exploration of how the non-Parker characters experiencing the world in this incredibly altered way bounce in response.

It’s also one of many tools in this franchise hauling the reader into relating more closely with the main character. The backbone of classic Spidey is probably being in on secrets only Peter and the reader know which completely reframe how one views the situation on the page. It’s just a big irony mine for the whole first decade. A convenient way to inform the reader and the lead that something is bad news that’s not perceivable to any other characters is youth-with-a-big-exciting-secret catnip.

Another point for tension, there, in that being aware of danger is not synonymous with being able to act on it. If there’s no visible reason for you to be acting strange, well...you’re just going to have to sit tight and sweat, aren’t you? Some gratuitous head wiggles never hurt when setting up that type of conflict.

Have I mentioned that they look cool? Simultaneously punchy and distinctive, with a respectable amount of leeway for artists to get creative with and still coming up with something easily recognizable? And pretty easy to intuit the meaning of even without the long-winded explanations common in the days when people wrote comics with the intent that someone could come in cold on any random issue and follow along okay, I think, although the mechanic has been deeply ingrained in popular culture for so long that I can’t really say for sure.

It was also useful back in the day when no artists drew the eyes on the Spider-Man mask as emoting and were conveying the lead’s expressions entirely through body language and panel composition. If you wiggle enough squiggles, you don’t need eyebrows.

Take This Handwave and Never Ask Me a Logistical Question Again

This ability patches plot holes faster than people can pick them open AND it can act as an excuse to get any plot rolling you can think of if paired with one meddling protagonist who doesn’t know how to mind their own business. Buy it now for only $19.99 (in four installments; that’s four installments of $19.99).

Why can a teenager win a six on one fight against other superhumans? Well, the spider-sense is the ultimate edge in combat, duh.

Why can Peter websling? Why doesn’t everyone websling? Well, the spider-sense is keeping him from eating flagpole when he violently flings himself across New York in a way neither man nor spider was ever meant to move.

How are we supposed to get him involved with the plot this week???? Well, that crate FELT dangerous, so he’s going to investigate it. Oh, dip, it was full of guns and radioactive snakes! Probably shouldn’t have opened that!

Yeah, okay, but why isn’t it fixing everything, then? Isn’t it supposed to be why Peter has never accidentally unmasked in front of somebody? ('Nother entry for this section, take a shot.) That’s crazy sensitive! How does he still have any problems!? Is everything bad that’s ever happened to characters with this powerset bad writing!? --Listen, I think as people with uncanny senses that can tell us whether we are in danger with accuracy that varies from incredible to approximate (I am talking about the five senses that most people have), we should all know better than to underestimate our ability to tune them out or interpret them wrong and fuck ourselves up anyway. I honestly find this part completely realistic.

*SLAPS ROOF OF SPIDER-SENSE* YOU CAN FIT SO MANY STORIES IN THIS THING

The spider-sense is a clean branch into...whatever. There is the exact right balance of structure and wishy-washiness to build off of. A sample selection of whatevers that have been built:

It’s sci-fi and spy gadgets when Peter builds technology that can interface with it.

It’s quasi-mystical when Kaine and Annie-May get stronger versions of it that give them literal psychic visions, or when you want to get mythological and start talking about all the spider-characters being part of a grand web of fate.

Kaine loses his and it becomes symbolic of a future newly unbound by constraints, entangled thematically with the improved physical health he picked up at the same time -- a loss presented as a gain.

Peter loses his and almost dies 782 times in one afternoon because that didn’t make the people he provoked when he had it stop trying to kill him, and also because he isn’t about to start “””taking the subway’’””’ “‘’“”to work”””’’” like some kind of loser who doesn’t get a heads up when he’s about to hit a pigeon at 50mph.

Peter’s starts tuning into his wife’s anxiety and it’s a tool in a relationship study.

It starts pinging whenever Peter’s near his boss who’s secretly been replaced by a shapeshifter and he IGNORES IT because his boss is enough of an asshole that that doesn’t strike him as weird; now it’s a comedy/irony tool.

Into the Spider-Verse made it this beautiful poetic thing connecting all the spider-heroes in the multiverse and stacked up a story on it about instant connection, loss, and incredibly unlikely strangers becoming a found family. It was also aesthetic as FUCK. Remember the scene where Miles just hears barely intelligible whispering that’s all lines people say later in the film and then his own voice very clearly says “look out” and then the room explodes?? Fuck!!!!

Venom becomes immune to it after hitchhiking to Earth in Peter’s bone juice and it makes him a unique threat while telling a more-homoerotic-than-I-assume-was-originally-intended story about violation and how close relationships can be dangerous when they go sour.

It doesn’t work on people you trust for maximum soap opera energy. Love the innate tragedy of this feature coming up.

IN CONCLUSION I don’t have much patience for writers who don’t take advantage of it, never mind feel they need to write around it.

[dirkjakeweekly]

DIRKJAKE FIC RECS

This is a rebloggeable version of our sidebar page reproduced in full, for those who prefer to save things on their own blogs for later!

INTRO

This page is not intended to be an encyclopedia, but rather a non-exhaustive list of a few Dirkjake Fanfics (and Fancomics) for those that may be interested in the ship, but a little too tired of trawling through AO3 search! Some of these contain NSFW or suggestive content, viewer discretion is advised.

[ FIC RECS (last updated Jan 2021, click readmore for full list) ]

It’s only a canvas sky

Their guardians dead at the hands of the Condesce, growing up in the shadow of her slow takeover of the Skaian Federation, Dirk Strider and Jake English have spent their whole lives alone up until shortly before their twelfth birthdays.

Or: Dirk fixes a transmitter, makes a friend, builds a robot, and tries to communicate affection over distance to the barest possible minimum.

Read here!

GOD’S BRAND NEW FATE SELECTOR (Fancomics)

In ONE PARTICULAR TIMELINE, detached from many similar ones, an aspiring divorcee stands by his baby’s cradle and attempts to hatch an escape plan with some aid from the ghost of his long-deceased boyfriend. He’s not exactly helpful.

SOMEWHERE ELSE ENTIRELY, Dirk Strider is overcame by the nagging feeling his splinters may be getting a little out of hand and far too into his head, when he gets a booty call.

One timeline is Epilogues-Compliant, another Epilogues-Divergent. 

Read here!

We’re All Friends & Family Here (And Frankly, We’re Sick Of Your Shit)

It’s been about a year since the big Fast Forward, and sure, things on Earth C aren’t perfect for everyone. But they’re fine. Really. It’s fine. Everything is super fuckin’ swell, and that’s that.

It’s not like one night is going to change anything.

Read here!

Perpetuity

“Call it a car crash waiting to happen, you’ll just call it your downfall”

Dirk is a romantic, just not a particularly optimistic one.

(Written pre-epilogues release, post-game, fix-it)

Read here!

Tailspinning Into the Epilogues with Dirk and Jake (complete series)

Read here!

Stark Nonfiction (Part of the Tailspinning series)

Jake tries his hand at a gentler epilogue.

Read here!

Between the Lines (Part of the Tailspinning series)

“It’s just… I can’t remember the last time I felt so at peace, I guess. It was such a lovely jaunt with Jade, and instead of being all torn up about coming home, I feel even better, now. It’s actually been a real while and a half since I felt… bad, you know? Like actually bad.”

You don’t have much in the way of emotional permanence about that sort of thing. Surely it was months ago, when you were staring gloomily at the bottoms of bottles like the world’s most up-his-own-ass useless overdramatic dilettante. Did it even really happen, if it all, in hindsight, just seems like a dumb pantomime of misery to get attention? A successful dumb pantomime of misery to get attention, mind you, you definitely got it, and a boyfriend to boot. Was it ever really as atrocious and apocalyptic and unsurvivable as it seemed?

Read here!

A Palate Cleanser (Part of the Tailspinning series)

ROXY: hay everybody its jakes turn! ROXY: hes got a few words hed like to say about our dear departed buddy

The eulogy we missed on Candy’s page 15.

Read here!

Eschewal

“you hope he’s a benevolent god”

Read here!

Grublr. (Fancomic)

In the consort kingdom, atop of the large, humongous mansion where the god of Hope lives, there is an apartment complex.

Read here!

The Hitchhikers Guide to Your Ex-Boyfriend (Fancomic)

Jake English waking up sore and alone on a cold floor is not a strange occurrence for him as of late. The ethereal beam of light and sluggishly churning floor is new, but he’s woken up in stranger places.

If circumstances were better he’d probably have something shocked and relevant to say about this strange landscape he’s found himself in, but circumstances are in fact legendarily shit right now.

(A comic/fic where Jake English gets rights)

Read here!

The Four Kings, the God Thief, and the Black Diamond Pirates

Dirk and Vriska have it good. They raid ships, pillage merchant vessels, constantly poison each other, possess a lucrative pact with the Wind King, sing a lot of dope fuckin’ sea shanties, and captain a loveable crew of pirate scum. They’re ready to kick back, take it easy, and become the vile and revered scourge of the diamond trading line.

Then they find someone in the water.

Read here!

Sea shanties for Thots (Four Kings continuation)

Jake English has never done anything wrong, ever, in his life, if you don’t count literally all that stuff from the first installment of oxfordRoulette’s diegetic-musical-cum-found-family-pirate-AU. Luckily, that was in the last story, and he is completely better now in all respects. None of that nonsense is a thing anymore and it will not be relevant at all! Surrounded by friends and allies, with a very cool piratey boyfriend and a hold full of treasure from his recently decimated country, he’s got everything a fellow could want.

What will he do?

Befriend an octopus god. Learn to fish. Kick back. Take it easy. Kiss his boyfriend a lot. Open a jewelry company? Pursue immortality. Confront his past. Embrace his future. Maybe save the world. One thing’s for sure: there will be a lot of songs involved.

Read here!

Two idiots at Homoville, N69, TX

In a moment of desperation, Dirk goes on r/relationships. Things get oversharey real quick. He types as follows:

“I [23M] cannot understand my [24M?] roommate. He is the most bizarre man to ever set foot on earth and I’m afraid I’m losing him.”

or, and They Were Roommates.

Read here!

Drive it home with one headlight

Some mistakes are so fucking big that they divert the path of your life entirely, sending you somewhere you were never meant to go. Some mistakes are so seismic and so obvious that when you look back on your life all you can see is the beacon where you made them. Some mistakes leave you so far off course you don’t even recognize who you are or why you’re still here.

You don’t usually get a chance to make amends.

Read here!

A Tallied List of Various Occasions in Which Jake English Encountered the Elusive Smile Belonging to One Dirk Strider

Jake English, explorer extraordinaire, tracks down the most unique treasure of all: a nerd in pointy sunglasses.

Read here!

BONES OF BLACK MARROW

Dirk summons a demon for the exclusive purpose of ‘cathartic boning.’ He gets what he wants.

NOTE: This fic is ergodic (think House of Leaves), which means it cannot be downloaded for offline perusal on your kindle/pdf reader. Also has CYOA elements, so clicking “Entire Work” will make the fic impossible to read.

Read here!

fire fly

A wedding. An anxiety attack. A daring tryst.

Read here!

DIRK TOPS (Fancomic)

Ever think about how Dirk Strider got full narrative awareness of the fanfics where he’s the big scary hunk in charge and went “I can do that” when he wasn’t, in fact, able to do that? i do. i think about that.

Read here!

MLM stands for Moron loving Moron (Fancomic)

aren’t you TIRED of longing? don’t you just want to go APESHIT while dating your best bro? i mean, you’ve earned it, right? (Collection of oneshot comics. marked as complete, updates whenever)

Read here!

fist is a four letter word

Jake’s face quirks. “App?“ 

“Yeah, app. Like, application. You know your phone can do other things right? Like, apps.”

“You sure do keep using that word! I’m not quite sure I understand what you mean.”

“You know, apps.” You try to think of how to explain apps. You suddenly can’t think of what apps are.

What’s the name of an app.

Literally just name any app.

He’s staring at you.

Oh my god.

Read here!

Witching Hour

There’s something almost magical about that time between too late at night and too early in the morning. It’s the perfect time to meet a stranger and go on an adventure.

Read here!

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Please please do write the post about wwx not being dumb/oblivious. Those posts were just funny at first but somehow it's now become accepted fact. Meanwhile whether cql or mdzs wwx is a very competent, savvy protagonist who's actually pretty observant! It's getting pretty tiring to see him reduced to genki oblivous magical girl (not that I don't like those, it's just wwx is not one).

Hey anon! 

I do plan on writing a more elaborate meta post exploring what arguments there are in the novel to support my wwx is not dumb/oblivious agenda.

But for now I just want to address one factor I think plays a big part in shaping the fandom’s perception of wwx as oblivious/dumb, regardless of how wwx was actually written in the novel. That is, the creative liberties taken by (or forced onto) the cql production team, which have had in my opinion two consequences: 1) cql does not manage to establish how quick-witted and savvy wwx is, which is compounded by the fact that it chose to play the troublemaker persona straight  2) the fact that wwx and lwj’s relationship is entirely subtext actually ends up making wwx look oblivious (at least to people applying a queer reading/bl-danmei reading to their interactions--people who are obvious to or choose to ignore the subtext certainly wouldn’t come to the same conclusions). 

So, the first issue. In the novel, wwx’s intelligence is more of a focal point in the narrative because it is a crucial part of the dramatic irony/tragedy of his death: as a result it cannot help being more important to the themes of the novel. After all, he is ultimately hunted down because of and killed by his inventions. The man created an entirely new field of cultivation! In cql, this is somewhat lost due to the fact that he does not invent modao nor does he create the yin hufu, and his death is more of a suicide than a sacrifice (i am still not over the fact that he throws the yin hufu at the crowd to let them wage war over it? that’s the complete thematic opposite of his death in the novel...). 

The novel, as well, is better at establishing that wwx’s antics are generally not because he’s just being a troublemaker, but that they are a way in which he garners information, gets people to act the way he needs them to or misdirect them. For instance, in cql, when lwj destroys wwx’s (well, nhs’s) spring book in the library, wwx looks genuinely pained and affronted--in the novel, it is clearly shown that, when wwx realized lwj intended to bring the spring book to lqr, he intentionally made him angry so that he would destroy the evidence himself. the point of the prank was also to not only get a reaction out of lwj, but also (reading btw the lines) wwx’s way of trying to leave a lasting impression on lwj now that his punishment was over. Differently put, while wwx can do directionless pranks,  more often than not, they have an underlying meaning/goal instead of just being for Attention(TM) in general. In contrast, the web series is full of missed opportunities in terms of characterisation, and is so from the very beginning (I find extremely disappointing how they decided to adapt the mo mansion and dafan mountain arcs because of how important they are to establishing wwx’s character for the readers/viewers. Through these arcs, we get acquainted with the way he thinks and deduces information, and how he uses people’s perceptions of him and others to his advantage. If you can only read English, @pumpkinpaix‘s translation of the first few chapters might help get a better sense of the nuances). 

I’m not saying that wwx is portrayed as dumb in cql: but that his characterization is a lot more fuzzy and inconsistent, and that his intelligence is utilized mostly when wwx goes into his detective mode. As a result, I do feel like it undermines how analytical wwx is in all aspects of his life, making it easy to see him as, you know, someone who’s, like, half-smart, half-super-dumb. 

As for issue #2, part of it boils down to the fact that most of the obstacles to wangxian’s relationship had to be erased due to censorship. There no longer is homophobia/internalized homophobia to motivate moments of denial or internal conflict; there is no longer the phoenix mountain kiss to explain lwj’s reluctance to respond to wwx’s flirting after his rebirth (as I explored in one of my other meta post); there is no longer lwj’s failed confession and lwj’s mistaken belief that wwx knows of his feelings, etc. These vectors of tension help contextualise and explain why it takes so long for wwx to realize lwj’s feelings towards him (but let’s not forget that he does: after jinlintai, he starts to realize that lwj treats him especially well, which becomes a certainty after the second siege). the cql production team had no choice but to take these elements away. 

that being said, by adding new or by changing moments to support the subtext and to please (bl-danmei) fans, the show actually takes away even more vectors of tension/misunderstanding between wwx and lwj, and makes wwx’s crush seem even more obvious and straight-forward. Take for instance the mo mansion arc. In the novel, wwx sees the Lan disciples’ white robes and has this moment of reflection that he recognizes the robes, and sees danger in the fact that the Lan sect is involved, thinking he should leave but knowing he can’t until he resolves the curse. in cql, we get a slow-pan flash-back of wwx’s first encounter with lwj, leaving him clearly emotional. The novel sets up the association as: white robes -> Lan Sect (subtext, Lan Zhan) -> orthodox/sticklers to rules/people i’ve met in my previous life who disapproved of modao -> danger! In cql, we have instead: whites robes -> Lan Zhan -> emotional reaction/I miss him. That fact is further driven home when wwx starts playing wuji on a blade of grass, ending with a soulfully whispered “lan zhan”. In terms of subtext, it sure lays it on thick: wwx does look like he has a big crush on lwj! But that destroys a big source of tension between them at the beginning: when wwx is summoned into mxy’s body, he thinks lwj hates him and disapproves of his methods and wants to bring him to gusu to punish him. That’s why he wants to run away at first, why he doesn’t disclose his identity to him and why it takes him a moment to understand lwj’s intentions. cql does not do a great job of setting that up. And the changes they make to the events of wwx’s first life, including changes to the timeline through which we are introduced to what happened in the past, makes it even more difficult to see how wwx could have misunderstood lwj’s intentions or his own feelings (again, in a queer or danmei-bl reading of the subtext). They go on a mission together! Spend a lot of time working together toward a similar goal!Lwj calls him his zhiji (”soulmate” as is often translated)! Lwj literally tries to save him from dying! The last thing wwx would remember when he wakes up in mxy’s body would be lwj holding onto his hand and screaming his name when he let go! Again, it does great for the subtext--but it makes it really difficult to understand why wwx would misunderstand lwj’s intentions and feelings, and it makes his own feelings toward lwj seem quite obvious. 

Overall, the changes in the themes, genre, events, narrative timeline, characterisation and much more in adapting mdzs into cql have been an important influence explaining why the fandom has this vision of wwx as dumb/oblivious. It reminds me of the way some people on tumblr like to talk about Mr. Darcy as “shy” and “awkward” based on the movie pride and prejudice 2005, which totally misses the point of Mr Darcy and his character as portrayed by Jane Austen--but, if people have only or mainly engaged with this specific adaptation, it is not necessarily surprising that they hold this frankly misguided interpretation due to the choices made by the film production team. 

In contrast, in the novel, we are shown a lot to help us understand why wwx comes to the wrong conclusions or might not understand his own feelings and reactions. But that’s for all for another post!

[davidfarland]

In Hollywood, it’s said that for a major motion picture, you should never set two scenes in the same spot. Visually, it’s boring—so much so that viewers become visually fatigued. So you almost never see a movie like “My Dinner with Andre,” where nearly the entire film takes place in a single setting. If two scenes are filmed in the same room, they are often done so at different times of the day or night, or they are redecorated, or are filled with new characters..

With stories, we have a similar problem. I call it audio fatigue. It’s easy to fall into routines where we overuse words, or repeat words, or create characters who all sound the same. 

It’s especially hard for authors to deal with this because the whole novel really does all come from one person’s imagination. 

So let’s examine a few ways to avoid creating audio fatigue.

Vary your word choices. Many times, you’ll find that you must use the same words over and over. For example, if two men are trying to fix a radiator on a truck, you will probably need to say “radiator” several times. 

But there are certain words people frequently overuse. I often find writers who don’t seem to have an alternative for look. Their characters never glance, peer, gaze, or stare. Even worse, the author almost always uses look instead of appearance so that the author says things like, “He looked through the scope of the rifle and saw Sarah. She looked good in her long blue coat. She was looking into her purse for her keys.”

The reason that words get overused is obvious. Your brain starts searching for a word to describe a noun or action and it comes up with the first variant in its files. You might have 900,000 neural connections to look at, and only 50,000 connections to peer. So your character ends up “looking” instead of ogling. 

These words seem invisible to the author, and there are hundreds of them: was, were, walked, moved, turned, thought, said, that, just, really, asked, and so on. 

One author friend made a list of dozens of words he overused, then, when he finished a story, he’d search for each one and see if he could write it out. I don’t think it was a coincidence that he began getting nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards within a matter of weeks.

Some words seem invisible to the author but don’t have a place in most manuscripts. For example, modifiers like just and then can almost always be cut to good effect. In the sentence “The lightning flashed, then the thunder rumbled,” we can take out then.

In fact, one word that gets overused is the. In the sentence above, we can take out all uses of the. “Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled.”

I often see writers who seem to have a limited vocabulary. They use adjectives that every four-year-old knows. So ,they will describe something like, “a little man sat in the old rocker.” It almost sounds as if the author is trying to avoid surprising the reader with his word choice.

Because of this, we need to search for ways to invigorate our descriptions through careful word choice.

Entire sentence structures can become boring if used too often. For example, earlier today I read a manuscript where nearly every sentence of dialog ended with some variation of “said XXX.” There were no bits of dialog where the tone was described first, or places where the dialog was broken into small chunks so that the reader knew who was speaking before a paragraph finished. Instead, the dialog tags all felt tacked on. Even the “said XXX” was not varied with “XXX said.” So we had the formula Dialog+Said+Character Name over and over.

Many authors use short sentence structures repeatedly. They might say, “The day was gray and rainy. There was water running in the gutters.” The author is stuck in a Subject+Verb+Object pattern, often with a weak verb. Wouldn’t it be better to combine some images and strengthen the verbs? “Gray rain spattered the pavement, glistening, water burbling through gutters.”

One trap that authors often fall into is using the gerund form of verbs: To Be+Gerund. “John was wading through the swamp. Crocodiles were sunning themselves on the bank and looking at him hungrily.” You see the problem: the author gets lots of weak, unnecessary verbs followed by a verb that ends with -ing.

Worst though is the problem of character voices. Most novels have a consistent narrator, the author, who tells a whole story. Rarely does that narrator try to change tone in a novel, and that lends a sense of consistency to a work, but it can lead to a kind of audio fatigue for the reader to have the same narrator droning on for four hundred pages.

Fortunately, when different characters talk, we get a break from that monotone—unless the writer is so careless that the speakers all sound the same.

As early as Chaucer, I’ve seen comments from authors on the virtue of trying to make character voices sound differently. Tolkien believed that one key to putting a reader into a dream state was to relate your tale in a framework where multiple narrators are speaking in different voices. 

I think he was on to something. Indeed, some scholars have criticized him for writing in very different tones and styles in various parts of Lord of the Rings, but it’s obvious that he very consciously altered his narrative tone based upon the area that his characters were visiting. (He was trying to resonate with different cultures.) I could go deeper into that, but it would take too long. (See my comments on Resonance in the book Writing Wonder.)

I sometimes think that we might write better if we learn to listen. Many authors like to read their work aloud as part of the editing process. For years, I’ve recommended that you read and write each character’s dialog (and any scenes told from their viewpoints) separately, so that you can catch the tone of their voices and not stray.

I might add, that I think that the same should be done with the narration and description, if it comes from the author’s point of view.

The whole point of these editing techniques is to fix a problem that hasn’t even had a name yet, at least that I’m aware of. I’ll call it audio fatigue. We want to keep our audio captivating, so we can hold our readers rapt. 

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Today in Strongly Worded Opinions (That You Didn't Ask For), I'm going to assert that there are too objective ways to measure whether or not a relationship is strong in story terms – by which I mean, unrelated to whether or not readers/viewers personally like the dynamic or the chemistry of the actors (in such cases as there are actors involved).

So for the sake of clarity, be ye advised: this isn't about shipping, fuck it, ship whatever you want idc.  Shipping a strong relationship isn't inherently better than shipping a weak one – heck, you could just as easily argue that it's the lazier, less creative route.  Also, I don't care?  I don't care, it's just fandom.  Follow your arrow.  This is about ways to discuss whether or not a relationship introduced into a text succeeds or fails as an element of the story – or really as I'm going to prefer calling it, if a given relationship forms a strong or weak story element.

For this I'm presuming that you're creating a relationship between a protagonist and a secondary character introduced as a piece of the protagonist's overall story – protagonist/protagonist relationships aren't really a different situation, but they do have more moving parts, so for simplicity's sake, let's   stick with a Main Character (we'll call that M) and a Significant Other (S for short).  Also, these relationships by no means have to be romantic; any relationship can be measured as weak or strong in story terms.

Also, I'm going to say everything here as though it were factually true, even though it's just my opinion, which is correct, but if you disagree then it's only my opinion, but I am correct.  Ready?  Okay!

Strong relationships have story functions; in reality nothing means anything and people just like each other because they do, but fuck reality, it's a huge narrative mess.  And my basic premise here is that the story function of a strong relationship falls under one (or more, if you wanna get real fancy) of these three categories:

The relationship can unlock under-explored elements of M's story or character through mirroring or intimacy (often shows up as “friends to lovers”).  There is backstory that hasn't been unearthed yet, or some reaction or experience in M's life that could advance the story, and S can serve as a means to get at it.  Maybe M and S share a similar trauma or life story; maybe S is the first person M feels able to open up to about something profound and relevant.  Maybe part of M's story is a conflict between how they seem to others and how they see themselves or their own potential; maybe S is the person who sees them the way they see themselves...or sees M as the person they're afraid they'll never be.  The story goal being met here is giving M a boost toward successful completion of their story arc, so even though there could be conflict, S is fundamentally pulling on the same side as M in the major story conflicts, in such a way that by the end, the reader should feel like M's success is at least in part because of what they gain from their relationship with S.

The relationship can function as a piece of the story's overall conflict, or as a secondary subplot conflict (often shows up as “enemies to lovers”). Traditional romance novel plotting effectively slots the love interest into the role of “antagonist,” because the romance's conflict is generally driven by people not getting what they want from each other until certain win conditions are met.  In this kind of relationship, M and S might be actual-facts competitors, or be divided by ideological concerns, or they might be forced into proximity by the plot but clash on some personality level.  The arc of this relationship is typically going to be about the M softening up as the relationship develops – if M starts out ruthlessly single-minded, maybe realizing that they're running roughshod over S in the process is part of their character breakthrough; if the story is about M realizing that they've underestimated the complexity of the world around them, maybe coming to recognize S as an equal is how that gets concretized for the reader.  Basically this is a story where S presents a problem that M has to solve, and the more central to the narrative solving that problem is, the stronger the relationship is.

The relationship can serve to divide M's goals (often shows up as “love versus duty”).  This is a story where M has to accomplish two separate things in order to fulfill their arc, but those two things aren't easily integrated. One of M's goals might be fulfilling a vow, or filial duty, or seeking revenge, and the other goal is some form of protecting or obtaining S.  If the story puts M in a position of having to choose, then the relationship is inherently strong; it's providing narrative drive, whether or not S is especially well-developed as an individual character.  This one can be tricky, because a very weak relationship can serve a superficially similar purpose, by demonstrating M's devotion to duty or obsessive pursuit of whatever when M rebuffs S to keep them out of harm's way or to avoid distraction or whatever. The difference is that in those superficial cases, the audience is meant to recognize that aw, that's sad, M has really had to Make Sacrifices – but there's really no dramatic tension involved; we know all along that M is going to Make Sacrifices in purusit of the real goal.  When this is done seriously with a strong relationship, the audience is meant to feel divided as well; Romeo and Juliet just doesn't work as a story unless the audience likes Juliet and Mercutio, unless they fully identify with the dilemma that Romeo is in when he has to either avenge Mercutio's death or spare Tybalt for Juliet's sake and the sake of their future together. That's a big fucking story moment, and it only works because the audience buys both relationships – Romeo's with Mercutio and with Juliet – as narratively strong, to the point where Romeo's choice is not a forgone conclusion.  This one is much easier to get wrong, I think, than the other two are!

What I'm saying here is that a strong relationship isn't really determined by how personally compatible two characters seem to be; a lot of movies that fridge a character's wife, for example, rely on actors convincingly portraying, in a brief window of time, two compatible people who care for each other – I'm thinking of, like, Richard Kimble and his wife in The Fugitive, who I think do sell the idea of a loving and happy marriage, but the relationship itself is a weak one.  The story only really needs the bare fact of it – “Kimble had a wife that he loved and then this happened” – to kick off the actual story; the relationship between Kimble and Gerard is a stronger one narratively, because much of the emotional tension of the movie, what makes it more effective than just a series of chase scenes, is the way their mutual respect evolves as they compete against each other, and the story question of “Kimble really needs an ally, is this the right person for him to trust?”  It's such a strong relationship that it comes as a huge relief of tension when he does make that gesture of trust and it turns out to be the right choice.  The audience is happy that Kimble will be exonerated, but the audience is equally happy that the conflict between these two charcters is over – we didn't like them being at odds because we didn't want either of them to lose!  Now, would these two people ever be close friends, let alone come to love each other?  No? Yes? Who cares?  Kimble loves his wife more, but has a stronger relationship in this story with Gerard. From a writing perspective, it's trivially easy to introduce an S and say “M loves this person,” but it means relatively little.  It's harder to introduce an S and say “some part of this story now hinges on how M navigates knowing this person,” but that's kind of what has to happen in order to create a payoff that's worth the effort.  A strong relationship provides skeletal structure for the story; it can't be stitched on at the margins.

This is an even tougher sell in something like a television series, where the introduction of S may come in well after the story is underway and the bulk of M's characterization is already in place.  That's why introducing a late-season love interest is a notoriously dodgy proposition!  To demonstrate weak vs strong relationship in action, I'm going to take an example of what I think was a failed attempt and pitch some ways to doctor it up into a strong relationship: Sam Winchester and Eileen Leahy.

This is objectively a weak relationship.  She doesn't materially affect the metaplot of the series, or drive any major choices, or reveal anything about Sam's character.  She's just, you know, generally nice and attractive and Sam likes her, which is a fine start, but then the writers just leave her idling in the garage forever.  But it didn't have to be that way! Say we wanted to make it a Type 1 relationship: super easy, barely an inconvenience!  Eileen is very like Sam, actually, in that she lost her parents as an infant and then had the entire rest of her life shaped by the trauma and the pursuit of revenge.  That's amazing.  How many other people, even hunters, share that specific experience with Sam Winchester?  Sam was physically changed by drinking demon blood in infancy; Eileen was physically changed by being deafened by the banshee or whatever it was in infancy.  Even just allowing them to talk about that would have made the relationship stronger.  Sam is affected by the fact that there is no Before Time for him; even now that they've long since had their revenge on ol' Yellow Eyes himself, he grapples with the fact that he's forever robbed of any memories of innocence or safety or a life that wasn't lived in the shadow of this killing.  Eileen also has had her life's quest for revenge fulfilled, and also has to reckon with the fact that it doesn't actually give her access to the innocence that was stolen from her.  Maybe she struggles with that.  Maybe Sam can open up to her because she knows what it's like to look back on your child self and feel that however strong you've made yourself, you're never strong enough to protect that child.

What if you want to write something spicier than Sam and Eileen talking about their sad feelings?  Okay, let's take a Type 2 story.  Eileen has been a lone hunter with a disability all her life; it's fair to guess that even if she can't match Sam's physical strength, the fact that she's survived at all means that she's pretty indomitable.  Maybe she's had to be ruthless, even brutal in her hunting style; maybe she has a shoot-first-ask-questions-never approach to hunting that she credits with her very survival, but that Sam finds excessively rash and bloody.  Maybe they fight about it.  Have her kill some ambiguous, maybe-not-dangerous monstery types, a werewolf or something, and Sam's like, hey, we really can't just-- and Eileen is like, look, I hunt how I hunt, come with me or don't.  I mean, this is a retread in some ways of early season conflicts about who to kill and when, but everything in the latter seasons is a retread anyway, so whatever, and it provides something interesting to have Sam deal with this whiplash of how there seem to be two Eileens, the smiley, jocular sweetheart who eats pancakes with him and the one who kills like she's swatting flies.  What if he wants one but not the other?  It doesn't really work that way, does it?  Is this something he can dismiss as a foible, or is this a dealbreaker? The dude is almost forty, if he distances himself from Eileen, how many more hunters does he think he has a chance to meet and marry?  If she won't even listen to his concerns seriously, is it really a good relationship anyway, or will Sam's needs always end up taking a backseat to Eileen's?

A Type 3 fix could just come down quite plainly to, what if Eileen is ready to retire?  She's had her revenge.  She's lived her life on the hunt.  Maybe she's done, and maybe she wants Sam to be done with her.  Doing this in season 15 would circle Sam back to his season 1 story conflicts in a nice way, I think – why does Sam do this at all, if it's not for revenge any longer?  Does he feel personally responsible for every dead person he could've saved but didn't – is that a reasonable boundary, or lack thereof, to set?  Is a compromise possible – could he continue to coordinate hunts while also getting out of the field and starting a family, or is that still putting his family in the shadow of too much violence and danger to tolerate?  What's Dean going to say?  He's pitched a fit in the past when Sam said he wanted out, but he's mellowed with age, hasn't he?  Maybe he'll get it now?  But maybe Sam also feels guilty and fearful, because he knows Dean will hunt without him, so now he's in more danger because of Sam's choices, if Sam makes this choice.  It's a little heteronormative, as story conflicts go, but it's thematically appropriate to Supernatural, and the fact that Eileen isn't speaking out of timidity but out of the same weariness that Sam has so often felt about the whole endless cycle makes it feel a little less “the little lady won't let me go on adventures anymore.”  This might not be my pick of the three, but the point is that it makes for a strong conflict, a legitimate divided loyalty for Sam to wrestle with, and one that doesn't have a clear right answer.

Anyway, hopefully that helps illustrate what I mean when I say that the narrative strength of a relationship doesn't have anything to do with how likeable an S character is – Eileen is very likeable! But that doesn't substitute for building her into the fabric of the story in some way.  My expectation is that a serious protagonist relationship should bend the story arc in a way that requires response, and if it doesn't, I don't take that relationship particularly seriously.  Canon can declare a relationship real by fiat, but it can't automatically declare a relationship meaningful without, you know, making meaning of it.

Oh, and there's not anything really wrong with weak relationships – most M's are going to have several in the story.  My point is just that the difference between a weak relationship and a strong one isn't really a matter of taste or preference, but has a functional meaning that can be tested and measured, and if there's argument to be had about it, the argument can take place on evidentiary grounds.  Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[stereostevie]

"The United States vs. Billie Holiday" is so misguided that it's hard to know where to start griping about it. It wallows in cruelty, misery, and degradation without providing insight into the historical personages who are so thoughtfully depicted by its cast. In the title role, singer Andra Day inhabits Holiday with such intensity that she partially redeems the movie. But there's a major caveat: you'll likely spend the whole running time wishing Day had been given a vehicle with more to say about Holiday than this one, the gist of which can be summed up as, "That poor junkie sure could sing."

Directed by Lee Daniels and written by Suzan Lori-Parks, "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" is a film about a brilliant artist and drug addict that seems less interested in the art than in the pornographically exact details of the addiction (and the self-damage that often comes with it, such as alcoholism, self-destructive/abusive relationships, and sexually compulsive behavior). If you called the movie up on Hulu, its debut streaming platform, hoping to watch facsimiles of Holiday and her bandmates, lovers, and hangers-on tying off and shooting up, often with closeups of needles going into arms (and in one case, blood spurting from an injection hole), you won't be disappointed. This is also your movie if you want to watch men beating each other up over women, men beating women up over men, Black people selling out and exploiting other Black people for clout or money, and an array of cardboard cutout white authority figures tormenting the Black characters.

The poker-faced Caucasoid sadists in the film (led by Garrett Hedlund's Harry J. Anslinger, the first chief of the U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Narcotics, an outspoken racist who believed jazz was jungle music and a corrupting influence on whites) don't so much incarnate the ugliness of white supremacy in mid-20th century America as give viewers heels that they can boo. Anslinger even makes a point of showing up in person at key points in the narrative of torment that he has authored for Holiday, as punishment for daring to continue singing her anti-lynching ballad "Strange Fruit" after being warned not to. Holiday lost her cabaret license in a drug bust, and was targeted again in a subsequent bust that biographers agree was based on planted narcotics.

This film's version of Anslinger might as well be Elmer Fudd chasing a wascally wabbit. The cartoonish depiction of Anslinger (drawn from the film's source material, Johann Hari's Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs) is reminiscent of the otherwise excellent historical drama "The Hurricane," which made it seem as if Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a champion boxer railroaded on a phony murder charge, was victimized not by appendages of an American government that had been around for centuries, but by a lone, bad white cop who hated him for being Black.

This is, of course, a familiar and regrettable tendency in Hollywood biopics dealing with race and inequity—a dramatic shortcut. It's easy to make viewers despise the sort of melodramatic movie villain who would twirl a mustache if he had one, and hard to make them care about systemic and institutionalized racism, or the unequal enforcement of drug laws that disproportionately hurt entertainers of color, and still do. (The drug habits of white stars like Judy Garland were treated more sympathetically by law enforcement.)

Even more unfortunate is the decision to divide screen time between Holiday and a Black junior FBI agent named Jimmy Fletcher (Trevante Rhodes), who is based on a real man who regretted his role in Holiday's persecution but didn't have the kind of longstanding love affair with Holiday depicted in this movie. A condensed excerpt from Hari's book says Fletcher set up one of Holiday's busts (though apparently not one that sent her to prison, as depicted in Daniels' movie). He was seen dancing with her at a club a while later, and many years after that was sent a signed copy of Holiday's autobiography with a note from the singer that read, in part, "Most federal agents are nice people. They’ve got a dirty job to do and they have to do it. Some of the nicer ones have feelings enough to hate themselves sometime for what they have to do." But Daniels and Parks go several extra miles beyond that, showing Fletcher not just falling in love with the singer but tanking testimony to make amends for that early bust, then becoming a constant, nurturing presence in her life, up to and including her dying days in a hospital following her final overdose (along the way, Fletcher also becomes a junkie, like nearly everyone else in Holiday's orbit).

What's questionable here isn't the lack of veracity (if infidelity to history were a deal-breaker for audiences, Shakespeare wouldn't have lasted five minutes) but the message it conveys. What we come away with here is the story of a race traitor who expresses his guilt about setting up one of the century's greatest singers by entering into a redemptive affair with her, and becoming so adored and trusted that he learns her bleakest secrets. Two of these—witnessing acts of racist violence and getting turned out by her own mother in the brothel where she was raised—are dramatized in a tour-de-force, single-take, Grand Guignol tracking shot that turns Holiday's trauma into a theme park ride. It's as if the Haunted Mansion at Disney World had been replaced with a tour of Richard Pryor's childhood.

And what, the reader may rightly ask, does any of this have to do with "Strange Fruit"? It's hard to say. The film is so poorly structured and ineptly edited that I often wasn't sure what I was looking at, when it was taking place, or what the filmmakers wanted me to take away, other than that Holiday had a wretched early life; that her adulthood was an equally miserable slog, filled with self-medicating that made things worse; and that despite it all, she was a crackerjack song interpreter who left some classic recordings behind. Natasha Lyonne shows up as Tallulah Bankhead, Holiday's maybe-lover, and disappears instantly. Years bleed into other years. Much dope is shot.

Holiday's indefatigable spirit gets buried under misery porn that's a bit much even by Daniels' standards. At least "Precious" was audacious. You could tell Daniels was going for a semi-satirical, Todd Solondz-like vibe, where you were supposed to ask, "Is this meant to be funny, and am I a bad person for laughing?" There's no such tonal cheekiness here. The film is solemn as can be, hammering nails into Billie Holiday's ankles and wrists and raising her up on the cross at the end. Daniels frames Holiday in a tight closeup and watches her sing as she stares into the middle distance through glazed eyes. He crosscuts between Holiday singing onstage and getting shtupped backstage by a smooth criminal. He stares at her defeated, puffy face as she lies in a hospital bed with a catheter snaking from her hospital gown, talking to her pals about how her liver has failed. There seems to be no dramatic objective to scenes like these other than to remind us yet again, "Billie Holiday was a junkie, drugs are bad."

Over the course of two hours that feel like three, "All of Me" loops in and out of the soundtrack in varied arrangements, including a rumbling funereal version that may very well show up in a trailer advertising an R-rated, dark-and-gritty reboot of, hell, who knows which early 20th century cartoon property. Maybe Betty Boop. The film itself seems strung out, and not in an interesting way. It needed an intervention.

[guardianreadersofthegalaxy]

My July ‘20 - June ‘21 film ranking:

1.       His House (AKA ‘Walls… I Scream’) – A Sudanese couple seek refuge in the UK, but are unable to escape the horror they left behind. It’s a tried and tested horror formula: a strained family unit try to come to terms with shared trauma against the backdrop of a serious social issue. But it’s really well executed. The understated tone left me unprepared for the brazenly nightmarish imagery.

2.       Sound Of Metal (AKA ‘Deaf Becomes Him’) – A punk drummer and recovering addict deals with a sudden and severe loss of hearing. I wish I’d gotten to see more of Riz Ahmed drumming with his shirt off but maybe that’s point? The sudden silence hits Ruben and the viewer like a tonne of bricks with ‘point of hearing’ sound design ensuring you empathise. Olivia Cooke is great too and the desperate romance between addicts really appealed to the angsty teen in me, until it resolves in an appropriately mature way.

3.       The Dig (AKA ‘Ralph Fiennes A Boat’) – On the eve of World War II, a wealthy widow hires excavator Basil Brown to dig up an Anglo Saxon burial mound. The stakes are low but it’s just nice to spend time in the countryside with these characters. I normally like shaky-cam and creative sound mixing but both are overused enough to be a bit distracting. Where director Simon Stone really shines is with his handling of the cast, who give some great naturalistic performances, particularly Ralph Fiennes who seems to be channelling Toby Jones.

4.       Nomadland (AKA ‘Van Clan Thank You Ma’am) – After losing her home, unemployed widow Fern takes to the road to join the American nomads. Why are non-actors so good at acting? This is pretty light on characterisation, to the extent that it wasn’t until halfway through that I started to get a grasp of Fern’s personality, but it makes up for that by immersing you in the nomad culture, as well as showing you tonnes of lovely nature porn. Paid for by the tourism board of Nevada.

5.       Mank (AKA ‘So What If It’s Not Citizen Kane?’) – Alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz draws on his experiences of 1930s Hollywood while writing the screenplay for ‘Citizen Kane’. I was more interested than emotionally invested. The old timey aesthetic felt like a gimmick, and though it was cool to hear Nine Inch Nails playing jazz tunes, the black & white gave me a headache. The real highlight was the late Jack Fincher’s screenplay, with tonnes of snappy and insightful dialogue.

6.       A Quiet Place Pt. 2 (AKA ‘Now With Talking!’) Pursued by monsters with powerful hearing, the Abbot family struggle to survive after the apocalypse. Remind me to always see horror in the cinema from now on. The big screen and sound system, and your inability to pause for a pee break, make all the difference. Though I prefer the first ‘Quiet Place’, this was a scarier watch, by virtue of me seeing it in the theatre. ‘Pt 2’ mostly lives up to the original, but lacks the emotional punch of its ending, and suffers from being split into two plots that don’t overlap.

7.       In The Heights (AKA ‘I Am Not Throwing Away My Shop’) – An adaptation of the Tony award winning show about Washington Heights’ Latin American community. It’s not easy adapting a stage musical for the screen, particularly a good one. And while I’ll still credit Lin Manuel Miranda’s source material for any and all gooseflesh I got, director John M. Chu did a pretty respectable job, with some nice creative flourishes. A lot of changes were made, many to the film’s detriment, but some provided new opportunities for characterisation.

8.       Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (AKA ‘I Miss Theatres’) – A 1920s Chicago blues band embark on a tumultuous recording session. This has all the strengths and weaknesses of a play. The spectacles of cinema are done away with in order to spotlight the many duologues and monologues in a way that feels unnatural for a film. But the source material is excellent and the cast definitely do it justice.

9.       Tenet (AKA ‘Taco Cat’) – A mercenary known only as ‘The Protagonist’ gets caught up with time travel, a Russian oligarch and the threat of Armageddon. This is way too long and the endless, inaudible exposition gets dull very quickly but the inventive and heart-racing action sequences more or less make up for that. The male actors all play their roles with charisma while Elizabeth Debicki is left to do the emotional heavy lifting.

10.   Saint Maud (AKA ‘I’m Walking On Thumb Tacks Oh-oh’) – A hospice nurse and recent Christian convert believes she must save the soul of her terminally ill patient. I never say this, but Saint Maud should have been longer. The first seventy minutes go for slow building tension but that leaves the last half hour with not enough time to bring things to a head. The creepy atmosphere is carried by the music and visuals more than the understated performance of the two leads.

11.   Luca (AKA ‘Started Out As A Fish, How Did I End Up Like This?) – Young sea monster Luca ventures onto dry land to see the world with his friend Alberto. It’s a much breezier story than Pixar’s ‘heavy hitters’ but there’s nothing wrong with that. The underwater animation was so beautiful I was disappointed when things moved to dry land but fortunately the seaside setting was just as evocative. Plot-wise, it’s pretty standard coming-of-age fare, with any pubescent ‘awakenings’ relegated to subtext.

12.   Soul (AKA ‘Jazz’) – A New York school band teacher struggles to escape the ‘Great Before’ in time to play a gig with his hero. This is absolute treacle to the eyes and ears as you’d expect from Pixar, and the narrative theme, of living for the sake of it rather than obsessing over your goals, is insightful and well delivered. The problem is that the story did too good a job of getting me invested in Joe’s hopes and dreams for me to be on board with his final epiphany. Perhaps it’s a lesson I still need to learn, and when I have, maybe I’ll appreciate ‘Soul’ more.

13.   News Of The World (AKA ‘Not Enough News’) – A travelling news reader takes a dangerous journey through post-civil war Texas to return a young girl to her relatives. This is one of the most unremarkable films I’ve ever seen. The plot is fine but predictable and its execution is forgettably competent across the board, with few distinguishing features. It adequately killed two hours of a lockdown evening, but then so would a screen of white noise.

14.   I’m Thinking Of Ending Things (AKA ‘The Arty-Farty Film For Clever Cloggses’) – A young woman goes to visit her new boyfriend’s parents as she contemplates ‘ending things’. This would have made a great short film in that it seems very deep and, for the 50 mins before I stopped watching, doesn’t really have a plot. Problem is it’s 135 mins long and I can’t take that much unbroken weirdness. Directing, acting and writing choices are all so offputtingly deliberate that watching it felt like listening to a band where every member is soloing at the same time.

15.   Uncorked (AKA ‘Billy Sommeliot’) – A young man from Memphis dreams of leaving his parents’ barbeque restaurant to become a sommelier. This is just kinda follows the formula of ‘young working class guy wants to do something his parents don’t approve of’. It’s competently made but not very imaginative and wastes the opportunity for some great food porn.

[mermaidsirennikita]

I'm noticing a disturbing trend of shows adapting a rape scene from the book they are based on (twp, poldark, bridgerton) even though the rape is not the actual conflict and could so easily be cut out, and then making the scene so muddled in a effort to make it more palpable to viewers (or a "feminist statement" wtf emma frost!?) that there is question whether or not there even was rape by some people.

Right!  The thing is that to me you either commit to the rape all the way and explore the issue better than the book did, or you just don’t do the rape.  If the ultimate plot goal is to like.... make you root for a character that is a rapist, just cut the rape.  Bridgerton had the MOST reason to cut the rape because it was truly a romance novel adaptation, and the end goal is the Happily Ever After, which is hard to feel as good about when that scene happened.  I would also say it’s still kinda bizarre that TWP kept its scene when like...  Lol....  That was a real person that show made out to be a rapist when if anything, he was probably one of the English monarchs less likely to have been sexually violent due to his lack of mistresses and generally uneventful marriage.  Like, by all means H7 could’ve been a rapist, but there’s just.... zero evidence that he was.

The thing is that it’s hard enough for people to recognize what is and isn’t rape in media, unfortunately, because of how media has treated rape historically.  People associate the heroic rapist with romance novels especially, but it’s hardly confined to it.  The idea of the heroic rapist on TV is like... not new.  I grew up on daytime soap operas (and I stand the fuck by them) and I can think of two extremely popular heroic rapists off the top of my head.  On General Hospital, Luke Spencer raped Laura on the dance floor of a club, very clearly--and she later fell in love with and married him, forming the most famous soap supercouple of all time.  On One Life to Live, Todd Manning raped Marty Seabrooke and was very much treated as a horrid rapist, only to be redeemed, be involved in one of the show’s biggest romances (with a different character, but still), and to later AGAIN RAPE MARTY DECADES LATER BUT THIS TIME BY DECEPTION BECAUSE SHE HAD AMNESIA AND WAS RECUPERATING IN HIS HOUSE AND THEY FELL “IN LOVE”.  People knew these characters were rapists; the narrative acknowledged them as rapists; and yet the narrative also said “here are your bad boy heroes, love them”.  And I mean look--I started watching One Life to Live waaaay after Marty plot as a kid, and I loved Todd.  Because the narrative wanted me to love him; he was a fucking wackjob who kept the plot going.  Like, terrible person by real life standards, sure, but he had his toxic romances that I loved, he would take a bullet for his kids, he stirred the shit in everyone’s lives... and by the time I found out he was a rapist, I was like well what the fuck do I do now, NOT engage with his storylines?  THEY ARE ALL THE STORYLINES.  (Also for clarity lol, I was like 12.). The show loved him.  I imagine a lot of GH viewers experienced the same thing with Luke back in the day.

Many non-book readers who don’t have any idea that there was a more explicit rape scene in Bridgerton honestly seem very muddled by it.  Like “what was that” not “that was a rape”.  Which I’m hesitant to critique them on, because I think they’ve largely been conditioned by media and also were basically deceived by Bridgerton itself.  And with Bridgerton it is again especially unfortunate, because hypocrites on the internet who are lowkey mad that they didn’t get another snow white period drama are looking for reasons to hate that show.  They don’t really give a fuck about the rape, probably--but they can make it look like they do.

To me, it’s just easier to .... not do a rape scene.  Just have Simon come inside Daphne by accident and have the truth arise through that.  Have H7 simply not rape Elizabeth of York and have her hate him for all the valid reasons she’d have to hate him otherwise.  Have Ross and Elizabeth on Poldark.... have consensual sex without any kind of rapey elements that was so easy to do.  

And I’ll add lol--Outlander may not have had Jamie rape Claire, but they did have Jamie spank her VERY hard without her consent in a manner that was sexualized.  And like.  They didn’t have to do that.  Just... don’t do it.