#its literally the only book with a decent plot

[boopboopbitch]

I'm down for genderbending Sophie. Hell give us lesbian Eloise. But Michael Sterling?? The entire point of that book is based on his male privilege. Then there is Francesca wanting a child leading her to go back on the marriage mart. Despite her reluctance because she LOVED John. You literally see her torn because she feels like she is cheating on her dead husband. We won't get her and violet bonding over the loss of her beloved husband now because she never loved him in the first place! We wont get her crying because the baby was the last piece of john she had AND the keys to the earldom. We won't get the marriage of convenience that came from Michael becoming the earl because women can't inherit. Despite frannie being far more competent at the job than michael. Which was something that was both acknowledged and celebrated in the books! We wont get frannie reading michael to filth for taking advantage of his male privilege and ditching when shit gets hard.

This was like the one DECENT bridgerton book. The one with fleshed out characters and a form of complexity.

Why destroy this plot when you had ELOISE RIGHT FUCKING THERE.

Her book is terrible and very outdated ALONG WITH BENEDICTS!!!!! Those books needed a makeover NOT THE ONE ABOUT GRIEVING YOUR DEAD HUSBAND AND INFERTITLY.

Not the one discussing important topics women go through AND RESONATE WITH. What the fuck.

This was a misfire.

[olderthannetfic]

I feel like such an asshole for feeling this way but I genuinely do hate tags used to warn people in fiction. Maybe it’s because I read so many books going in blind growing up and things like warnings just didn’t exist but the constant need to prepare people for processing fictional scenarios is so mind numbingly stupid to me I can’t get passed it.

--

Past it.

I dislike long lists of itemized warnings too, but I'm willing to bet that you have never once read a book where you were truly going in blind.

Any book that goes through mainstream publishing has a thousand gatekeepers keeping the form and content within somewhat common parameters. It is then put out by a particular imprint that is for literary fiction or romance or whatever. The cover art is selected to attract a particular audience. The back blurb implies a lot about the tone.

It's true that if you're terrible at reading back blurbs, you might not realize it's an Anyone Can Die book, but the implications will be there. Sometimes, the marketing is really off base, and the art/blurb/etc. are hinting at things the book doesn't deliver, but in general, they do a decent job of conveying the big picture warnings.

In the context of fanfic, in ye olde times, the biggest warning people wanted was for death of either half of their ship. This is right in line with romance novels, where if it does not have a happy ending where the leads are together and not dead it is not a romance novel.

Harlequin and the like are very clear. If you don't want to write that ending, you aren't writing their genre, and you can fuck off with your "Ooh, I write it a different way" nonsense.

--

Fanfic and some of the very recent selfpub are different: When I've done Wattpad research, I've found works where I honestly cannot tell if it's even supposed to be fic. Hell, I can't tell if it's supposed to be fiction. It's so short and incoherent that I have no idea what I'm looking at. Most fic is a little more obvious in what it's trying to do, but it has no gatekeepers forcing it into a basically novel-shaped package. Leads could be killed off half way through the plot even if it makes no sense and doesn't fit the genre. Genres and tones can swing wildly at any point. Structure can be avant-garde or deeply incoherent.

Tags and very literal labels handle the I suck at summaries! R&R! problem.

Packaging art in a way that implies without spoiling takes skill and probably revision. Some fic is packaged this way, with only bare bones tags and a solid summary, but that's never going to be most fic. The volume will also always be far vaster than for professionally published novels where one company can only put out so much per year, and each work is long and more worth marketing time. There's far more to sort through and far less pressure to market well. Clear tags so people can find things are useful.

It really, really was not better in the old days when shit was barely labeled even if some of the modern stuff feels extremely over-warned to me.

(TBH, hand-hold-y over-warning is its own warning for the author writing The Bad Thing in an unsatisfying and wimpy way.)

[sunderedstar]

good books of 2024

according to meeee.

there is no order here, at least one of these was published ages ago, I'm just working my way through my 2024 timeline, godspeed spiderman. 🫡

Metal from Heaven

surprise hit of 2024. top of the charts. stunning, spectacular. gorgeous. Metal from Heaven FUCKS. almost every single main character is an explicit spicy toxic hot mess of a lesbian committing literal highway/train robbery, the bad guy is literally named Industry, leading to such peak sentences as "I am going to kill Industry." the prose is synesthetic in a way that most writers cannot sustain for a full novel but which here culminates in a moment of pure blissful Neon Genesis Evangelion that I will not elaborate on due to spoilers. the author pulls out the FUNNIEST lines, and also the most abrupt and heartbreaking tragedies. we're not here to be subtle, we're here to put the pedal to the metal until the engine explodes. such a damning, whip smart condemnation of industry, capitalism, power. all in the form of Lesbians. also the phrase 'clown orgy' is mentioned. this shit is like gideon the ninth with CRUNCH. NSFW.

but don't take my word for it. take amal el-mohtar's.

Absolution

Absolution is a hard book. requires thought and rigor at all times to absorb what's going on - and also a reread of the entire trilogy beforehand, because there's time travel nuance involved, which makes it next to impossible to sum up the plot coherently on its own without spoiling things. jeff vandermeer described it partially as 'fuck that alligator from the movie' and - valid. the first 60% had me; the later section...swapped gears drastically, which meant it took a while to hit its stride (aka until it reached Area X again). in hindsight I was just not prepared for one of the POVs to be the Freudian, violently stoned, unreliable narrator love-child of Karkat and Dave Strider whose perception/conception of the heart of the Southern Reach is extremely phallic. and then suddenly cannibalism happens. I liked Annihilation and Acceptance better, but damn. it almost feels like this should be the set up to another trilogy. much 2 think about.

Yield Under Great Persuasion

I don't know why I didn't hear anything about this one before it came out! (instead, I only saw posts about rowland's other book released this year, running close to the wind - which sadly did not hit for me at all). Yield Under Great Persuasion is just ridiculous enough to be fantastic. stubborn little gremlin man, big mad about Pumpkingate years after the original inciting incident that set him at odds with his love interest, attempts to pack his little rucksack and run away from all his self-inflicted gay problems, fails, is forced to deal with said personal problems by direct goddess-intervention. you know it's gonna be good when the guys are hate-banging by page 2. a short, delightful mix of (extremely silly and low-stakes) enemies to lovers and hurt/comfort and working out your emotional and communication issues on page style comfort food. self-indulgent in a fanfic way that is rowland's trademark in a taste of gold and iron (which was also fantastic and probably deserves a reread now.) NSFW.

The Spellshop

between this and yield under great persuasion there's an odd cozy fantasy pairing here. a self-isolated shut-in spellbook librarian who lives for her work escapes the fall of her city and sets up shop back in her old hometown on a severely magic-deprived island. there's some internalized trauma being worked through, against a simply charming backdrop of community and solidarity and magic spells. really. I was. charmed. which is a rare reaction on my part.

The Hunter's Gonna Lay Low

the curveball of the list, The Hunter's Gonna Lay Low is a translated (gay) Korean web novel, and it's the perfect intersection of a decent translator meeting an author who knows what they're doing. notorious tumblr user @spockandawe has a write up of the plot and its major themes here, but in essence it hooked me with its hunter/super-hero meets Pacific Rim setting, its themes of gifted kid burnout and unacknowledged trauma with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and the fact that the author clearly plotted out all of this in advance, with minor details from the opening chapter being extremely plot relevant a hundred chapters later. also, the characters are FUN! the relationship compels me. clownery abounds in all the best ways, while the world-ending stakes are also scarily sky high. its translation is currently incomplete as far as I'm aware, which is literally this story's only downside right now, since you can read it online for free - but so much of the main story is up and translated already that it's hard to imagine how much higher the stakes can go, and I'm dying to know if these two make it through and get the happy ending they deserve. a delicious repast.

Apostles of Mercy

I'm gonna rant here. this is the story of a series that got the redemption arc it deserved.

if you don't know, axiom's end is lindsay ellis's blatant Bayverse Transformers female lead alternate history fic. period. she has openly admitted this. you can easily and clearly pick out the Optimus/Megatron/Starscream expies. and that first book was GOOD. it understood the assignment. loved it.

then...truth of the divine happened. book two of the series. was frankly. god awful. it was like twilight's new moon, where the main character's depression saturates and therefore stagnates the entire narrative, in this case to its detriment. it dragged. the entire appeal of first book of the series is the bond between the main character and her new definitely-not-a-Transformer life partner, and book two managed to both sideline that - the entire point!!! the main thing you're reading it for! the alien time! - and introduce the most skeevy and (for me) unpleasant to read human hetero romance of all time. it was so unpleasant I actually forgot how bad it was.

somehow. somehow. palpatine returned. after I spent three years mourning what could have been. book three saved it. Apostles of Mercy addresses the whole damn skeevy toxic mess that was book two and refocuses on what matters - the alien love interest and a LESBIAN love interest. yes. it's true. once again the sapphics won. we now have a book where the main character is reliving lesbian sex memories as an alien-robot-insect-definitely-not-a-Transformer mindmelds with her so I mean. good job team? her love interest also acquires an alien life partner of her own to expand this into potential alien foursome range? the assignment is once again UNDERSTOOD. in terms of the action scenes, to quote myself while reading it, "I can't believe I'm saying this but you needed to channel far more Bayverse" [for book 2], and doing so for book 3 has produced a work of art. I would say skip book 2 entirely and thank me later, but experiencing how bad the series got at its darkest point is part of what made book 3 such an exhilarating high in comparison. possibly that was the goal all along, impossible to appreciate until now. I just need lindsay ellis to get the contract to write the currently-in-publication-limbo books 4 and 5. because the series deserves it. it only just got good again! NSFWish because I can't remember currently how explicit they got all these months later, forgive me.

The Deep Sky

yume kitasei is new to me, but this book hit some interesting notes as a sci fi debut. it too is about gifted kid burnout and imposter syndrome, funnily enough, in a thoughtful take on the standard sci fi concept of 'a bunch of rigorously trained young adults are sent out into deep space as an ark to save a dying humanity' that actually does discuss how fucked up that is as a concept, both for the kids as they grow up under enormous pressure to win a spot on the mission and for all those people being left behind, in what might just end up being an overhyped waste of resources, since civilization sure is still kicking when they leave. the summary on the book is somewhat misleading - asuka, the main character, doesn't fall under suspicion until wayyyy late in the book, and spends the majority of it in a pseudo-detective role that is absolutely sanctioned by those in charge. she's not 'an immediate suspect' like the book blurb insists. go figure. it didn't knock me out of the park like most of the books above, but it was an engaging little read.

The Bees

a weird one from 2014, picked up on a whim - it's literally about bees! fictionalized bees! with personalities and priesthoods and caste politics and everything! I cried about it to be honest. very plotty, somehow all of it neatly taking place within the Lifecycle of A Bee™️, which takes some real craftsmanship to pull off and make compelling as a narrative. since I'm an unrepentant Raksura fan, I was like 'wow...how Raksura coded...' knowing full well that Raksura are dragon bee people, not the other way around. also the Raksura could never be as toxic (complimentary) as these bees are. 😂 it's just good literature your honor.

honorable mentions:

Heavenly Tyrant

has not come out yet. but let's be real. it's on the list in anticipation. it's what she deserves.

The City in Glass

I love nghi vo's work, have read and adored all of the singing hills cycle novellas. it took a month for my library hold on this book to be available. and then I promptly got distracted by metal from heaven and the hunter's gonna lay low 😂 I will read it!!! the first eight pages were good! vitrine's voice is very good! I've just had a very busy end of the year interrupting my everything. (update: I read two more pages and it immediately and promptly popped off. whoops. guess I'm reading that next. whenever I have free time again...)

[newlondohollow]

I FUCKING HATE RINGS OF POWER

On fuckass adaptations (i like the castlevania anime) (heavy ranting below)

This is ASTRONOMICALLY random as it’s barely about Castlevania and more about something i normally don’t post about but I’ve been keeping this topic inside me for far far too long. 

I fucking despise, as much as i am humanly capable to bear pure hatred, Rings of Power. I always see people complaining about the “Netflixvania” adaptations being terrible, and I do agree that they’re not accurate to the games, but heavens gracious those people have NOT seen what an actual bad adaptation is like. Sure, Castlevania got an inaccurate adaptation, but at least the adaptation, considered as its own piece of media, is decent. good even. Not the greatest thing ever written or that I've ever seen but it was, objectively, well written and animated.

Unlike that jackass shit filled abhorrent abominacion by goddamn Amazon DestroyingArtPrime that is Rings of Power. I don’t mean to hate on people who enjoy it, not at all, but to those who do, I am begging you please raise your standards, honey you deserve better than that. So. So. SO MUCH FUCKING BETTER MAN.

Every single thing about that series pisses me off in ways I wasn't even aware I could be pissed off until my parents forced me to watch it with them because “well it’s lord of the rings!!”. I did enjoy spending time with them (though i was literally, physically coerced to do so) but i so fucking wish we had spent it watching something better cuz the whole experience was beyond frustrating. The fact that it no joke is the most expensive series ever made? Are we being for real?? One. Goddamn. Million. of dollars went into creating that fucking insult to not only Tolkien’s poor dead ass, but to cinema and the art of moviemaking itself. Every single scene is so obviously, clearly edited and oversaturated with after effects and I could count on one hand the scenes that were recorded without a greenscreen. The costumes seriously look like Halloween and Carnival props a single mom on a budget would buy to her kids and I’m not even exaggerating I so very mean it it’s true just LOOK AT THEM VRO SOME OF THEM HAVE PRINTS ON THEM PRINTSSSSSS THEYRE SO OBVIOUS AND THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE HEAVILY INSPIRED BY MEDIEVAL CLOTHING DAWG I CAN'T DO THIIIIIIIIIIS. Do you think it ends there? NO IT FUCKING DOESNT IT GETS SO MUCH WORSE. If the visual aspects of it were the only thing bad about it i wouldn't be here dumping a textwall but good god merciful above the writing is genuinely enraging. Like its not just personal pet peeves or small stuff level of frustrating, no it’s ENRAGING. Every character is both incredibly arrogant and rude and fucking stupid, yes even the good guys, EXPECIALLY the good guys, actually. The plot is as compelling as one of Jeff Bezos’ shit stained ass hairs and the dialogue is so dogshit and senseless i dont even know how delusional and self centered you have to be to sit down, write that, hear it being acted out and think “ah yes this is a great script”, that goes for the making of the whole series as well.

I won't sit here and explain why exactly it all sucks as i said cuz there’s plenty of youtube videos that do so (sadly some of them are fucking filled with bigotry i want to shoot myself) and i will instead move on to what pisses me of the most.

Some lunatics are actually, seriously saying that RoP has the same vibes as Peter Jackson’s movies.

Yes the same movies that are considered a cinematic masterpiece and classic, the same movies that won awards over awards over awards, the same movies that inspired every single fantasy movie that came after them. I’m well aware they aren’t accurate to the books either, but again, like Castlevania’s first anime, they are GOOD. They are great in fact, and no one can say otherwise without being objectively wrong. That trilogy’s vibes will never ever be reached or equated again, for the very simple reason that art and passion are fucking withering away in today’s world. The costumes for that set of movies were hand manufactured and weathered by the actors themselves CLIMBING UP MOUNTAINS. The weapons used were REAL. REAL, METAL FORGED WEAPONS. VIGGO MORTENSEN ALMOST GOT AN ACTUAL DAGGER THROUGH HIS FACE BECAUSE THE ORC’S ACTOR MISSED. AND YES HE DID BREAK HIS TOE BECAUSE THE HELM HE KICKED WAS REAL, EVERYTHING THAT COULD BE REAL IN THOSE MOVIES WAS. BOOKS, MAPS, EVERYTHING. ALMOST EVERY SCENE OF LANDSCAPES WAS SHOT IN NEW ZEALAND, A REAL PLACE. 

Tolkien hated the idea of someone adapting his works, yet i am certain that if he would have seen the Peter Jackson movies, knowing that they were made out of sincere passion and love for his works and as a tribute to it and him, he would have appreciated them. He certainly is rolling in his grave because of RoP though. It’s not just bad, it's soulless. Completely hollow. Filled to the brim with sfx and fake props, even the musical score composed by the same composer who made the Lotr trilogy’s score just sounds plain, not because it’s bad but because it so clearly belongs to something better than that. RoP wasn’t made out of passion for Lotr it was made for mere profit. One of the directors fucking made fun of a Silmarillion fan who simply asked a question about the goddamn Fëanorian crest, in public, for everyone to see. Those people aren’t Tolkien fans, they're soulless evil corporate pigs, they’re everything Tolkien, and I personally, despised and despise. 

It genuinely makes me so sad that, as badly recieved as it was, many series and movies AND HELL EVEN BOOKS AND GAMES are eerily like RoP these days, the death of art we’re witnessing is soul crushing and concerning.

[fimbry]

Dragon book recs?

I read Fourth Wing and its sequel and loved that the dragons are actually characters with personality and are important to the plot.

Little did I know this would be so rare in dragon fantasy???

Spoilers for Priory of the Orange Tree and When the Moon Hatched to describe what I do not want.

I read Priory of the Orange Tree because it was supposed to be great fantasy with dragons being super important. It was literally a lesbian romance with dragons as an afterthought. The dragon rider got completely side lined in the last third of the book and her dragon spends 99% of the book incapacitated and unconscious. The lesbian romance was decent it just was not a dragon book. Not really. I think the dragons only existed to give the lesbians something to fight?

I'm reading When the Moon Hatched right now and I don't know if I can even finish. Once again the dragons are just cardboard background effects, but this FMC is so unlikeable I'm having a lot of trouble willing myself through. I know she has trauma making her insufferable, but she is reacting to everything so unrealistically it's like HELLO? 😭 You see a mythical invisible-capable powerful feline beast the size of a house and you keep sassing it instead of idk, fear or anything reasonable. Wtaf. Guess you're just that badass. 😭 Sorry of course you are THE MOST BADASS ever and everyone clapped (and kissed the ground).

What I'm looking for: Romance is fine idc either way, I just want the dragons to be actual characters with personalities and important to the plot. Any books like that?

[dreadintensifies]

the sunbearer trials is everything i wanted in a main character (hes a trans man where him being trans isnt even in the top 5 most interesting things about him, in a story where not only does his being trans play *no* plot relevance at, but hes also a decent ways into his transition and nobody treats him as anything but a guy) and i love it so dearly for that alone

and *then* the author goes and makes teo super likable, funny, with god damn *wings* and gives him a super interesting world to live in and experience, its fantastic and i love the shit out of the sunbearer trials. i only just read it and i regret not reading it earlier

yall go read it. then tell everyone you know to go read it, this book is wonderful. its not perfect, i wont lie, but it is a solid young adult modern fantasy story with interesting, dynamic, diverse, and entertaining characters and a cool, if relatively vague and unexplored, magic system

plus a *ton* of lgbtq+ rep. in this world, the literal creator god is nonbinary, and many other gods are in queer relationships. a character being trans or loving someone of the same gender is hardly even noteworthy, which is a very nice change of pace imo

more stories where the main character just happens to be trans, not a trans main character, please! this story is awesome and im so glad i got to experience it

okay im done rambling now go read it

[pillowbugs]

so uh. that poto au i did just over a week ago.

was playing around with some ships to figure out who would fit the roles of the other characters, and landed on airplaneshipping for christine and raoul. preferably ignore all the plot that would have to happen to lead to this point. (the scene where the phantom shoots fireballs, except in the pokémon universe it's a full on battle against the phantom and his chandelure. for an added bonus, look up the name of the 'song' sung during this part of the musical.)

unmasked ver. (additional design notes under cut)

elesa:

christine's dress in this scene is light blue, which is a colour that is indeed present in elesa's design (her bw2 outfit moreso). elesa not wearing any yellow felt wrong though, which is why the layers underneath are yellow-tinted.

went with her bw1 hair colour because christine was blonde in the original book.

her cloak is mostly based off her bw2 jacket in shape; it's black with a red clasp, which makes it not only similar to the cloak donned by christine in the musical but also retains the same idea of the cloak being a visual representation of the phantom's (who wears mostly black) hold over them. (+ the other colour ingo is most associated with is red.)

however, because of the lighting, said cloak appears yellow on the side closer to skyla - more similar to her canon design, and being close to skyla in a way rids her of the darkness.

she gets to change her hairstyle as a treat.

skyla:

it wasn't common for women to wear waistcoats at the time (1900s), but sapphics in history quite famously fucked with a lot of gender norms.

actually both of these lovebirds are blue now. sets up a colour contrast between the lighter, friendlier blues of the couple and the darkness and reds of the phantom. (blue = friend and red = foe like it's fire emblem)

the way swanna is placed is intentional, to set up a more angelic imagery mirroring the phantom's darker version (more on that in a bit).

both women wear matching white roses in their hair. something something flower symbolism. but skyla does also have feathers in her hair, for obvious reasons.

swoobat because hearts :D

ingo:

was debating on whether to make him actually more deformed in this au, but didn't really feel in the mood to sit down and design it in detail for this piece.

there isn't much i can say about his outfit design given it's literally just mashing his usual uniform together with his butler alt from masters. though upon actually looking up the phantom's outfit, the end result is actually surprisingly close. not surprising given both wear victorian suits and primarily wear black.

my original concept for the au was that he still works with the subway, he just does it from the shadows instead of being a public figure - hence he still wears a train conductor's hat. though since the battle subway isn't a thing (or at least not in the form we know it) he doesn't have its logo.

his cloak is intentionally flared up in this scene, for a few reasons: 1) it looks cool, 2) it resembles gliscor (albeit it isn't present here) and 3) mirrors skyla with a darker angelic imagery - the original musical had the whole "angel of music / death" thing.

i actually went through quite a few variations of his mask before settling on this one, and even then i'm not entirely satisfied with it.

version 1: exactly the same as the one used in most advertising for the musical - decently terrifying, but considering ingo's main 'issue' is his mouth, which this (and the one actually used within the musical) doesn't cover, this would be completely useless aside from probably hiding his identity and especially his resemblance to emmet.

version 2: leaned more into the angle of trying to alter his expression, particularly to be smiling instead - to be more similar to his brother. also suitably unsettling, but this specific style wouldn't work if you looked at him from any angle besides this one though. also, from this angle, because his actual mouth is obscured, i was worried he would actually be mistaken for emmet instead (given generally fandom tends to make emmet the unhinged one - let ingo have some fun too, guys).

version 3, the one i went with: has patterns at the cheeks simulating the edges of a smile (and also has the black-on-white contrast); his actual mouth is hidden but visible through the cloth.

why is there a litwick on the gravestone? good question!

in all honesty, this was part me drawing blorbos into an au and part me conceptualising what the pokémon universe version of POTO would look like.

[kimberlyannharts]

Out of curiosity, what are your favorite issues/eras of the entire Boom PR canon? Is there a point where you feel it stopped being good or as enjoyable? Are there any main characters you feel were done especially right or wrong?

Strictly speaking in terms of the books canon to the 2016 main ongoing -

(putting this under a read more as it got long, oops)

My favorite era was Shattered Grid and its lead-up; so basically the entire Kyle Higgins run of MMPR and Ryan's GGPR up through #12. I also really liked Beyond the Grid and the final two issues of Mighty Morphin. Side series-wise I love Ranger Slayer, Drakkon New Dawn, Power Rangers Universe, and The Coinless is my favorite of the Unlimited books.

Necessary Evil had its flaws but it was still enjoyable (MMPR side at least; the GGPR side was very bad in how they dropped what made GGPR so good in favor of stretching out the modern Omega Rangers' origins for five issues too many), but the Mighty Morphin/Power Rangers split was when things started going downhill, because that was when the books started ramping up this idea of Expanding Lore and Making The Next Big OC at the expense of the show characters' development; something that MMPR Necessary Evil was starting, but it wasn't quite as pronounced as MM/PR was. There were high points of the books after MM/PR (again, Mighty Morphin #21 and 22 are fantastic, and the Omegas are probably at their most tolerable in their side of Charge to 100) but they never fully recovered the consistent quality of Kyle's run.

As for the characters (only looking at the main MMPRs from the show), Tommy was probably the most obvious development and consistently well-written; any flaws in his writing came from how the books were intentionally ignoring any good points he was making to make other characters (the Omegas, M-tt) look better, and we unfortunately never got a deep dive into his backstory or even just his family life. Kim was similarly consistent and VERY well-explored, probably even better than Tommy with how important her parents' divorce was integral to her arcs, and any weirdness with her character came from half-assed M-tt plots that fortunately never really stuck.

Jason and Trini were fine; I'm trying not to let my annoyance with the Omegas and clear author favoritism cloud my judgment, but if you already loved them, you'd probably be happy with how much they ended up getting. Rocky came through with decent development at the very end.

Billy it's hard to say. Obviously he was great and recognizably Billy in the early days and I personally did not like his descent into "the lone genius who's so isolated from the team, doing shady shit that messes everything up." But it's.......unfortunately become a very consistent path for him in the modern franchise; even in the SHOW. So it's hard to call it bad writing when it. is just who Billy is now.

The worst were probably Aisha, Zack, and Adam; Aisha they obviously had no clear vision for because she was practically a different character under every author and Adam was literally nobody. But I think in terms of character writing Zack fared the worst. He went from a leader at heart who steps up when needed, who offers levity through his charisma but the first to get serious when the situation calls for it - to "my role is to be funny" who jokes about a situation being too serious for jokes and his leadership arc and capabilities end up being given Trini (to the point where TRINI is called the leader of the Coinless on occasion when the whole point to the og Coinless arc was that ZACK was.) Not to say he didn't get serious arcs at all after NE, but it's overall such a downgrade when the early days of the comics practically had him as a main character on the same level as Tommy.

[reel-fear]

Bendy And The Power Of Representation

So those graphic novel pages huh? Seems I posted my cover post at just the right time because literally minutes after I was informed the preview pages came out and uh. This is Buddy and Norman!

Oh dear... I'll put the full graphic novel pages down below but I have so much to say on how awful this is it'll need several posts. However, right now I want to mostly talk about representation and briefly touch on why it's so damn important + inform others about the current shit Mike and Meatly are saying about the books n such.

Now note: All the things I'm saying below are based on my personal experience, maybe some people don't care about seeing the representation of their identities in the media they consume. Maybe some will think I'm merely being dramatic and I might be but I'm not lying when I say I personally believe being represented and seen in the media you consume can be one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.

Look I'm not here to argue with people who think that Norman in particular was never meant to be a person of color, I would argue he is very coded but the points I'm making here are not about how Norman particularly had to be black. The point I want to make is the lack of diversity in our cast in general and how Norman's design has heavily dwindled it considering most people [including myself] rightfully assumed he was at least one of three black characters in our cast. Not according to this though and looking at the the rest of the pages our chances of seeing any kind of decent diverse character designs dwindle more.

So firstly... Buddy a character who has been said to experience discrimination for being Jewish, lacks any kind of ethnic features at all. That's... Cool but yeah I think this shows a rather grim future for the character designs as a whole.

Also, Norman... As I mentioned he was largely assumed to be black due to his southern dialect, his voice, and other factors. But nope, he's a generic white guy. With... Gross looking hair tbh...

Sadly this is not the first time the topic of poor representation has come up concerning Bendy either.

[note how he disregarded the other mentioned minorities and specifically cites LGBTQ+ characters]

This sucks as a response but sadly considering Mike's recent behavior it seems to fall in line with the Bendy team's general lack of care towards representing anyone who isn't straight and white.

So how did Mike respond to all of this? Well...

TDLR - "Who cares if the Graphic Novel we're selling to our fans for full price sucks, we now no longer consider the books canon."

This is horrible, I know Mike and Meatly are only really in this for the money, the fact BATIM is in the state that it is proved that, but they really couldn't have been less obvious about it?

So basically when it benefited them, AKA when it meant people would have to buy the books to understand important lore like Boris' identity... [the character you spend all of chapter 4 trying to rescue] They were considered canon... At least the author sure thought so.

Hell even in the tweet Meatly made here he doesn't say the books aren't canon, he just says they're not needed to understand Bendy's world. Now Mike is using that as a shield instead of doing the right thing and saying "You're right, the poc in our fanbase deserve better we'll have it fixed right away!" Like most reasonable people would considering how his studio has literally been accused of bigotry, poor rep, and general lack of diversity before. Why risk making more people avoid this franchise?

Also just... Imagine how insulting it would be to be an author who helps flesh out so much of this world and gives its characters depth like NONE of the games have managed to do, filling in plot holes, creating a timeline for events, etc... Then because they couldn't bother to change the graphic novel for ur story to be better they instead throw out all ur writing and declare it non-canon.

If I were her to put it bluntly I'd feel insulted and horrible. Why make her do all the work of making sure her works align with the timeline and game's canon if they're not part of it?

I can't speak for her obviously but Meatly and Mike know of her account, so speaking out against this could very much risk her being fired or at least not allowed to work on Bendy anymore... So I would take all her tweets on this situation with a grain of salt. She very much is not in a position where she could be honest if she was against this.

So with all that history now, the question I'm sure many are wondering is... Why does this even matter? Who cares how diverse the characters are when it doesn't affect the story?

Well for one thing, if you think like that consider having more empathy for your fellow human beings but also it does affect the story. One of DCTL's themes is about the bigotry of the period it is set in.

Now the Bendy team has managed to make the discussion of this book centering around their bigotry which is ironic in a way I almost find funny... Though this entire thing is just a bit too hurtful and upsetting to find any humor in, at least for me...

But another thing is representation can bring people such joy when it's done with care. It really shouldn't be understated how far it can go to make people feel more comfortable in their own sense of self to have a franchise choose to represent them and their experiences. I know this from personal experience.

Now if you've been following me for a while, you know I'm a big fan of Transformers. I no longer engage with it much due to baggage from the fandom's awful treatment of me, but before I left I remember being able to witness the release of Transformers: Earthspark first few episodes.

These introduced the Maltos the family who meets the Transformers and serve as our protagonists and guess what?

It's a family of Filipinos!

Now look I'm not Filipino, but I am half Mexican and I have a lot of love for that part of me. So seeing the representation of any Spanish culture in this franchise I loved made me so happy! I remember just watching the first episode I was happily telling my partner how fun it was to see people like me and my family in a world I love!!

But it didn't end with the Maltos in fact... There was another character who spoke to me, their name was Nightshade. Their pronouns are They/Them and they spoke about it on the show! Not just mentioning it and moving on but actually sitting down to speak about their experiences...

This clip in particular really turned them into an absolute favorite among fans and well... I'll let you see it for yourself.

This scene... Fills me with a joy I cannot describe. It is the creators of a franchise I love telling me they see people like me and find the stories of people like me important enough to include in this series. There really is nothing like being able to say there are Non-Binary characters in a franchise I have so much love for. I was far from the only one too.

This is amazing, this is wonderful, this clip and character were moving to so so many people and...

This is a joy the Bendy creators have no interest in giving their audience. They don't care how you feel as a queer and/or black person, which... Hurts...

I... Discovered I was trans while in the Bendy community... It was where I learned the word Non-Binary and started using it for myself. To me Bendy will always have that connection... But the devs themselves seem to hate the idea of being forced to actually represent that in their games... And I still haven't really gotten over that pain or betrayal if I'm being honest.

So...

With Norman now being portrayed as white here, we are down to two black characters. Thomas [who Meatly has claimed is white in the past] based on a vague conversation with Sammy in DCTL they could easily ignore... And Jacob.... A book exclusive character which according to Mike means he is non-canon.

If we don't count Thomas' vague talk with Sammy about disrespect as confirmation he's black [which the devs don't seem to think so] then we have one black character in all of Bendy... And he recently got retconned into non-existence. Great.

Look... The Bendy fanbase has always been full of wonderfully diverse designs for the staff and even more diverse people creating them. Bendy's fandom was built with the work of queer people from all kinds of places.

If the Bendy team continues to show how little they care for anyone who isn't straight or white... I wonder who they are counting on to buy this book or in general financially support their franchise?

I know right now, I am furious, I am hurt and I most certainly don't feel like buying a book that's currently just a massive fuck you to the fans and I hope I've expressed why I feel this way in an easy-to-understand way here...

Either way, I will not be forgetting this anytime soon and I hope the fanbase does the same. Maybe just maybe, if there's enough backlash to this series of horrible decisions they'll learn better.

Right now, it's kinda of our only hope for a better future, and if you know any poc who are into Bendy right now... Maybe consider making sure they're feeling okay.

I know from experience how much this sort of thing hurts, to have the creators of a world you love straight up tell you they don't intend to fix the fact no one in their stories represents your identity or life...

What I'm trying to say is...

This is a really low point for Bendy and its fans... Even more for the poc who have to witness such ignorant and careless attitudes from Mike and Meatly towards their feelings.

Please don't forget them when you discuss these tweets or this situation. That's exactly what Mike and Meatly want right now.

For them to be unrepresented and therefore... Unheard.

[lakesbian]

ok Worm Bigotry Breakdown in more detail for @silverflyingpikachu

tl;dr: author is Cishet White Guy From Canada In 2011. he ostensibly thinks he is progressive. this does not change his proclivity for tossing his Cishet White Guy From Canada Biases into the books and then saying even more bigoted things in defense of those writing decisions on forums. wildbow is just some cunt on the forums with bad opinions on wildbow's writing. the book is 1.7 million words long but i believe in my ability 2 categorize this shit with decent accuracy. everyone who has ever said worm's CWs can't be categorized, including wildbow himself, is a lying ass bitch. this will include some vague spoilers, because i can't really go in-depth without a few examples, but i'll stay away from anything too plot-critical.

racism:

- worm is fundamentally a book abt systems of power and the ways in which they suck. some of the critiques worm issues--e.g, its depiction of how school systems enable bullying, inspired by wildbow's own experiences w/ the school systems as a deaf kid--are viscerally accurate and incredibly compelling. but wildbow fundamentally doesn't understand how certain systems of oppression work--e.g policing--and subsequently, his attempts at depicting them occasionally fall flat onto their face and land in racist territory. this gets particularly nasty when combined w/ the White Guy Author propensity for racist stereotypes--for example, his chosen face of police brutality is a black girl portrayed as predatory & animalistic.

- who is also one of the only black people in the book overall, alongside--for example--an addict portrayed as having less interiority & being less deserving of empathy than A Literal Fucking Nazi. also, the main characters have to team up with the nazis "for the greater good" (defeating the mean asian villains) at one point. it is a mercy to the readers when this part of the story ends. - there are two black characters in the main cast. for the first, wildbow just Straight Up Forgot to include the most compelling aspect of their background + characterization in the text (it was provided via WoG instead, which i provide to all wormreaders like a fuckin' DLC patch when they get to where it's relevant) & entirely forgets they exist towards where the end of their character arc should have been. the second is introduced w/ the most misogynoiristic description on the planet but blessedly has a largely compelling and well-written arc as the book goes on. - depiction of china is just like. fox news level sinophobic "it's all a brainwashed indistinguishable evil cult" shit. not relevant for very long relatively speaking but insufferable to read. asian characters are also like. we got Brutal Yet Honorable Asian Man. we got Fiery Asian Girl With Blue Eyes. it fucking blows it's not good

- oh yeah forgot this one someone mentioned in the tags. #it's an insignificant paragraph and nobody talks about it but the part where it goes #“yeah literally EVERY cape in South America is with a cartel and the heroes are barely distinguishable from the villains” #fuck you #not that the others aren't bad the fatphobia gets really gross but nobody mentions this and that one got me so yeah typical Insufferable Awful Imperial Core Author Understanding Of What Other Countries Are Like - i could make this section one million bulletpoints long but the gist is summarized i think--wildbow's varied racist biases leak fucking everywhere, into character design, into narrative assumptions about who's deserving of interiority/empathy or not, into attempts at Saying Anything About Society, into which characters he prioritizes, into who he offers validity via the narrative, etc etc etc.

homophobia: - theres a girl named amy dallon in it and she is the worst lesbophobic stereotype ever known to man. no other Problematic Lesbian™ you can think of has anything on this girl. the worst part is that she genuinely has a decently compelling character concept and arc, which her being awful is integral to, so you might accidentally find her interesting anyway and then she'll move into your brain - wildbow kept accidentally writing characters that scan as massive dykes and then got really mad about f/f ships for the book being popular in the fandom. he responded by making a deranged forum post involving the phrase "pandering is pandering" insisting everyone (but the bisexual "hedonist") is straight and writing a scene into the book where one of the characters literally turns to the camera and tells the readers "not to get the wrong idea" about her hugging her friend. - over the course of 1.7 million words he finds excuses to loudly inform you that all of the relevant female characters are straight and it's sooo shoehorned in you can always tell when he's doing it - basically worm is like if naruto was about homoerotic teenage girls who do violent terrible things, in terms of levels of unintentional homoeroticism, and the author responds to ppl going "lmao gay" about the unintentional homoeroticism with poorly restrained seething rage

fatphobia: - generic brand of fatphobia you'll see in p much all mainstream media where only side/bg characters are fat and it's obliquely used as a descriptor to indicate that someone has negative personality traits or should be viewed as sort of gross

anti-addict shit: - wildbow generally likes writing about how social circumstances--i.e neglect from society, oppression, failure on behalf of systems--causes crime. he generally likes demonstrating the ways in which the villainous main characters are traumatized teenagers failed by society fumbling to keep existing & holding each other up through The Horrors. unfortunately all of this intelligent writing flies out the nearest window when addicts are involved. there is a gang comprised entirely of addicts, all of whom are portrayed as disgusting, violent, dangerous, and of course often racially stereotyped. it is a mercy to the readers when they're no longer relevant to the story. - on a more subtle level, characters are every so often just like. a little more anti-drug than they would realistically be and you can tell it's wildbow's opinions leaking into their characterization. this is largely what the anti-addict writing is kept to after The Addict Villains leave the story iirc.

if youre wondering wellwhy does anyone read this book then. to that i would say that unfortunately despite it all it'sa fucking excellent book. so we all carry on reading the parts that suck and thinking about how they suck and then reading the parts that fuck and going "ouuugh my god" and rolling down 20 flights of stairs about how hard they fuck.

[kaibutsushidousha]

So does Minase joins Meteo of being a writer that picked a figure from regions that aren’t as used as much in TM with the Trung sisters belonging to him?

This one is just a self-answering yes-no question, so I'll instead use it as a platform for the Minase thoughts I've been having since the wombo-combo of the new mats, the anniversary interview, and the Dubai event. It's probably what the anon wanted out of it anyway.

My inner ramblings start from something Nasu said in last year's interview and made a point to reiterate this year.

Ordeal Calls are meant to be each writer's best and most emblematic piece. Their artistic identity taken to its peak. That's something I believe Sakurai accomplished and Minase didn't. That obviously raises one question: what would a real Minase masterpiece look like?

By the Ordeal Call's premise, it would still need to be something that gave the supplementary information we were missing about the Alterego class, but let's ignore that angle and focus only on the goal of expressing Minase's personality in the best way possible.

What works with Minase and what doesn't? Compare his worst and best pieces. Agartha sucks because it focuses on his opinions about women and those are categorically rancid. Yuga Kshetra succeeds because it focuses on his opinions about ableism, which are far more poignant and agreeable. Minase has enough care about the subject to ensure that the plot is a series of arrangements where the characters triumph not despite their so-called flaws but specifically because of them.

So an ideal Minase Ordeal would focus on a different subject that Minase recurrently displays passionate, empathetic, and agreeable opinions about. So what can we find in his roster of character? Minase made Servant versions:

Zenobia, whose historical significance is entirely about resisting Roman colonization, although she failed. Minase portrays as someone who literally wears her failure and tries to conduct herself with dignity regardless to prove the point that the Roman conquerors couldn't truly defeat her Palmyra spirit. I think this one is a bust execution-wise, but it's significant that the idea is there.

Lakshmi Bai, whose historical significance is entirely about resisting English colonization. Minase portrays her as someone who can't help but disdain the innocent English civilian Holmes and acknowledges the irrationality of it, but the entire surrounding cast including Holmes himself assure her that she is entitled to her feeling because colonization is that gruesome and traumatic of a process.

The Trung sisters, whose historical significance comes not exactly from resisting colonization, but from leading an independence war, which is similar enough in spirit.

Columbus, whose historical significance comes from being a colonizer. I don't need to tell you how Minase chose to portray him.

With Fate/ drawing its action cast from history books, it's inevitable that we get a decent amount of characters whose bulk of their offscreen backstory was spent conquering, slaughtering, and assimilating other cultures. Some certified colonizers, like Richard and Takeru, are very self-critical about it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Iskandar, who gets flak from Faker and Ptolemy for his stupid decisions toward the Diadochi, but the journey of conquest and domination gets framed as the fun adventure no one is critical of. Either way, none of other characters not written by Minase get irredeemable treatment that Columbus gets.

The franchise's most prominent colonizer is, of course, Arthur(ia) Pendragon. Both versions are defined by the regret that comes with ultimately failing their kingdom, but their failings are never credited to the notion that violently conquering the British tribes and unifying the isles is an inherently bad thing. That's the image of greater good they fought for, and that part remains unchallenged. The closest Nasu got to criticizing Arthuria for being a colonizer is by showing the Round Table's brutal treatment of the Arabs in the Sixth Singularity. I'm mentioned this specially because this is Percival's first reaction to eating a mixed breakfast buffet in the current Minase-written Dubai event:

Minase's Percival is strongly defined by his respectful interest in foreign cultures and, fittingly enough for a knight who opposed the Lion King, he's maybe the first character to directly criticize Arthuria on her disregard for the traditions she trampled in the unification of Britain. That's a thing I'd appreciate more of and can only imagine Minase daring to touch on.

[lonelyroommp3]

25, 29, 32 for the musical theater ask meme if u want?

25. What catches your attention and makes a musical interesting to you? Is there a subgenre of musicals you especially like? i think for me - funnily enough considering i work on the music side of musical theatre - the thing that draws me in to a musical more than anything else is the quality of the book. or at least, how compelling said book is to me (as we all know from being on the "crashing out over frequently mediocre media" website, a compelling story that gives you irrepressible blorbo thoughts is not always the same as a Good story). there are plenty of musicals that i respect greatly from a craft point of view, where i can look at them and say yeah, i think this is an objectively well done piece of theatre in terms of music, lyrics, staging, performances, etc. but if the underlying story or characters are weak - or just don’t grip me personally - you won't see me returning to it in anything more than a purely academic or professional capacity.

that doesn't tend to endear me to any specific subgenre - the shows i've been completely hyperfixation grade obsessed with have ranged from 80s megamusicals to teen rock shows to stripped down sexy reimaginings of golden age shows - but what all of those shows have in common are they make me care about the characters at the core of them. at the end of the day musical theatre is a vehicle for storytelling and if the story's not there for me i just can't bring myself to care about it no matter how good the other components are

29. What's a musical you used to really like but don't anymore? What made you fall out of love with it? there are so many musicals where i could answer this with the very simple statement "i have adhd and the hyperfixation faded; i still like the musical very much but it no longer occupies 75% of all my conscious thoughts". i'd say the biggest example of a show where something external accelerated my falling out of love with it was dear evan hansen - i still think it's a good musical and i will absolutely still go to bat against people doing stupid dogshit discourse about how it's an evil show that encourages impressionable teenagers to lie and cheat their way to the top or however else we're completely misinterpreting the story this week, but my god i have never seen a horse beat itself to death so violently. it drives me crazy because the musical in itself is, i think, pretty perfectly constructed as a story, and then for some reason they kept coming out with these absolutely dogshit adaptations that added unnecessary plot threads, and other absolutely stupid shit for no reason whatsoever (kill miguel, why the fuck is evan's real first name mark, etc etc etc), just drove me absolutely crazy. and now we've got the uk tour with a TOTALLY UNNECESSARY ENSEMBLE. what ever

(anyway this did also remind me of ANOTHER show i fell out of love with - be more chill. look, this was never going to be one of the all time greatest musicals ever written but in its original - and i'd also say off broadway - incarnations it was a perfectly fun little show, really ideal for its target audience, banging tunes, decent book. and then every time it moved into a new production it seemed to get worse with unnecessary additions and changes that only weakened the overall impact and i just wanted to grab the creative team by the throat and go YOU HAD A PERFECTLY GOOD PRODUCT TO START WITH. STOP TRYING TO FIX SOMETHING THAT ISN'T BROKEN.)

32. Talk about the worst production of a musical you've ever seen. right after i graduated my old undergrad uni did a production of spring awakening. i was absolutely raging about this because it's one of my dream shows to work on and i missed my chance by literally about six months. but nonetheless i went to see it with @oysterish-sympathies. important context is i remember being livid about just about every production decision made (unnecessary ensemble being the first and most egregious offender) but i remember scarcely any of the details because, due to me running late because of public transport issues, robyn took the initiative of pre mixing me possibly the strongest gin and tonic the world has ever seen for me to drink in the theatre and i remember very little of the ensuing night in general. the one thing i DO remember, because it was seared into my consciousness the moment it happened, was the MD - who i already had mental beef with, due to the fact that he had stolen (ie. happened to still be a student at the university for) what i wholeheartedly believed ought to be my job - kept adding in unnecessary and tonally incongruous transition music between scenes. it was when we got to the scene after moritz passes his midterms and the band launched into a jaunty instrumental rendition of the bitch of living that i finally snapped and started laughing silently but deliriously in my seat. i believe i took audio of this show and you can hear me faintly go "what the fuck..." at that moment

[lemonhemlock]

https://www.tumblr.com/lemonhemlock/763163615828361216/adding-to-your-nuanced-discussion-regarding-sara much of the hatred towards sara hess is gross and openly misogynistic. unfortunately, it also muddies the waters for making valid critiques of her writing overall. i’m only familiar with her work on HOTD, and while i think she does basic level serviceable work (ie- mostly the plot makes sense) i find a lot of it extremely lazy. take both HOTD finales for example; we have two scenes of domestic violence (daemyra and helaena/aemond) being used to communicate the pretty elementary idea that these men are bad, wrong, and power hungry for anticipating war in a struggle for succession. now with both characters, you can argue it makes sense; daemon has been orbiting the throne all season, he sees the greens as the threat they are and, understands war is inevitable. he’s frustrated with rhaenyra’s lack of response and lashes out after finding out viserys didn’t trust him enough to communicate aegon’s dream. meanwhile, aemond has just discovered he is at a great disadvantage in this dragon cold war, has already committed severe violence to become regent in the first place, and is also lashing out because he is insecure in his position and fearful of what might happen.

the problem is instead of exploring these (very sensible) feelings for the characters or developing them through actual scenes and dialogue, we have this shorthand where Men = Violent, because they couldn’t possibly explore these emotions for these characters in another way. i can’t remember if it was olivia or phia who spoke about the aemond/alicent/helaena scene as helaena refusing to feed aemond’s violent male ego… girl you are literally at war! idk if this is about his male ego so much as he doesn’t want to fucking die 😭 not to point the finger at the actors, i am just assuming that idea came from somewhere, and it seems most likely to be the writer or director. and daemon isn’t in the wrong for expecting battle- yet instead of having that be a real conflict between him and rhaenyra, we have this moment of abuse that is quickly brushed aside and moved past. it exists only to show us how aggressive daemon is in the simplest, laziest way possible, and then it’s disposed of when it’s no longer needed. you can say the same for “civilians don’t matter”— it’s just lazy writing! they don’t have to, in that the story can function without an in depth look at the smallfolk’s relationship to dragons and the targ dynasty overall, and why bother to do any of that when you can just decide that for this one scene, none of them matter!

this is very long 😮‍💨 i’m sorry for the essay! i find this topic hard to discuss because too often people come in to just call her a cunt because she wrote a medieval man who didn’t articulate feminism perfectly. there are real issues here!! and it’s not all on her, condal obviously approves everything and they are on the same page here. anyway. thanks for reading as always!

Coming back to this ask after some time, sorry for the delay!

I agree very much with your assessment of her doing serviceable, but ultimately lazy writing. Perhaps that under a more competent showrunner, she could have written something decent. But one of her problems is that she is only superficially familiar with the source material - I'm saying this because she gave an evasive answer when asked if she read the books ("a long time ago"). This matters because she clearly doesn't understand the politics of the universe she is writing for (the scheming is nonsensical in HOTD) or the themes (dragging back the "civilians don't matter", but it's very revelatory to how she approaches the scripts). How can you write ASOIAF media, a series that relies heavily on politicking and dismantling tropes, without a grasp on those two things? D&D misunderstanding the themes of the series is famously one of the reasons for its lackluster show ending.

And that's just not going to rectify itself on its own. If she lacks the initiative to analyse the text properly, then someone should direct her as to what exactly to write. I'm sorry, but that's you can't just have it both ways - not do the work and then shrug your shoulders when you end up creating a divergent version that doesn't fit in the plot you're bound to follow.

take both HOTD finales for example; we have two scenes of domestic violence (daemyra and helaena/aemond) being used to communicate the pretty elementary idea that these men are bad, wrong, and power hungry for anticipating war in a struggle for succession. [...] the problem is instead of exploring these (very sensible) feelings for the characters or developing them through actual scenes and dialogue, we have this shorthand where Men = Violent, because they couldn’t possibly explore these emotions for these characters in another way.

Exactly, and the reason it ends up working for Daemon is because he previously got a ton of screen time and we got to know his personality, whereas Aemond gets little next to nothing in Season 2, in addition to his in-built disadvantage of being much younger and, thus, getting introduced later on. Well, surprise surprise, what worked for Daemon will not work for Aemond in that situation, because if you don't invest in Aemond's characterisation, the parallel will fall flat. Aemond and Daemon had very different upbringings and it's very silly to think that what applies to Daemon will automatically apply to Aemond and, therefore, you don't need to bother to dissect Aemond on screen in any meaningful way.

That's just concentrating on the logistics & not even critiquing the very lazy stereotype of men = violent & women = peacemakers.

i can’t remember if it was olivia or phia who spoke about the aemond/alicent/helaena scene as helaena refusing to feed aemond’s violent male ego… girl you are literally at war! idk if this is about his male ego so much as he doesn’t want to fucking die 😭

This. ^^^ I often find that the writers were trying to make some kind of point that, in other circumstances, could have been relevant, but they have a knack for picking the worst situations as illustrative examples. And, after that, they're surprised their simile felt mismatched.

Aemond having a violent male ego and being critiqued for it within the text is absolutely fine, but is it reasonable to do it when he's trying to ensure his family are not getting killed? And have Helaena be that agent of critique, when she herself has just been subjected to horrific loss and trauma at Daemon's hands?

Conveying that the smallfolk live miserable lives that often lead them to forsake their morals and commit horrific acts in desperation (such as becoming assassins for hire) is another valid point to make. But is it really appropriate to beg for clemency from the audience via a widowed dog (the lowest form of sympathy begging, if you ask me) when we are talking about a cruel child-murderer at the end of the day?

In the same vein, high-borns having more resources at their disposal to recover after trauma is very true. But is it appropriate for that comment to come out of the mouth of a mother who only just recently lost her son to horrific violence? Especially after having her grieve so halfheartedly, it's giving less intersectionality and more her not actually giving much of a shit instead. No one in their right minds would go to a rich lady mourning her dead child and start lecturing her on the privilege of grief. Helaena is just not the appropriate vehicle in that moment for that kind of commentary.

Neither are the smallfolk of King's Landing in a position to mourn the dragon Meleys mere days after it butchered so many of their fellow townies. So many times I can sense this disconnect between what a believe, humane response would look like and half-baked attempts at social commentary.

and daemon isn’t in the wrong for expecting battle- yet instead of having that be a real conflict between him and rhaenyra, we have this moment of abuse that is quickly brushed aside and moved past. it exists only to show us how aggressive daemon is in the simplest, laziest way possible, and then it’s disposed of when it’s no longer needed.

Yes, in some ways, Daemon is the writers' opportunity to eat their cake and have it, too. They make a lot of noise about how much of a problematic bad boy he is, but, when it comes down to it, nothing he does has any kind of real consequence. The only consequence he ever faced was Viserys banishing him and that was way back before any kind of time jump (and it got overturned in the end, anyway).* Alys doesn't do anything to him except hold his hand and gently nudge him in the "right" direction. Rhaenyra takes him back with nary a snide comment.

Even back in season 1, he can kill Rhea Royce with no fallout: the Royces don't do anything and Lady Jeyne is still Rhaenyra's lackey with no explanation given. He can spread the rumour of killing Laenor with the intent of sowing fear and decapitate Vaemond in front of the greens. Yet the greens are not worried about him and scrambling to prevent Rhaenyra from seizing the throne. Oh no. Crowning Aegon is just misunderstanding Viserys' dying words. 🤦‍♀️ Daemon can even kill Jaehaerys and still Helaena decides to help him instead of her own brother.

*honestly, that's one of the reasons I think the first 5 episodes of season 1 are the show's strongest. It's like back then you did stuff and it had consequences. Incredible achievement.

you can say the same for “civilians don’t matter”— it’s just lazy writing! they don’t have to, in that the story can function without an in depth look at the smallfolk’s relationship to dragons and the targ dynasty overall, and why bother to do any of that when you can just decide that for this one scene, none of them matter!

You know, I would actually like to take this opportunity to point out that I get this conundrum as a showrunner. You don't really want to make a story about smallfolk suffering, because it would be a massive downer and it would not sell as much or be as popular. Not many people are interested in Les Miserables but with dragons and that's understandable! But there is a way to simultaneously not delve into the intricacies of oppression in your escapist nobility fantasy, but not be downright insulting about it.

They don't need a ton of screen time to set up the basic theme of "it's always the innocents who suffer when you high lords play your game of thrones". They just don't and I'm tired of pretending otherwise. They can very well illustrate the point of smallfolk suffering without resorting to insane suspension of disbelief like King's Landing starving after two weeks of blockade. And, if they can't, then they shouldn't be in the writers' room for productions that have the audacity to submit episodes to prestigious award shows.

[dangermousie]

I checked out The Scandal of Chun Hwa expecting absolutely nothing and you'd think with expectations so low they couldn't be disappointed. WRONG! It was so so so amazingly bad that my mouth was metaphorically (and sometimes literally) hanging open.

(If you have a middle school sense of humor and also never saw boobs before, come right in. The rest stay away.)

It's tastelessly vulgar but that is no sin (You Raise Me Up was incredibly tastelessly vulgar and with a similarly iffy subject matter.) What is a sin is that it's all that is (YRMU is a good comparison actually because under its kooky, heheheh premise, it actually had a genuinely moving story about trauma. Not to mention that YSY can act better than literally everyone in this mess put together.)

This is stupid, so stupid (I felt getting dumber watching this and seeing I watch mini cdramas, that takes some doing), cheap-looking, with terrible acting throughout (the leads are so bad I am wondering if they were tranquilized to keep them on set), and such utterly unlikable protagonists, I cannot even.

I loathe the heroine. LOATHE. I thought it was mildly ugh when she went to spy on some dude braving himself to sleep with a courtesan and even started betting and then the dude turned out to be her brother. I AM SORRY SHE WENT TO WATCH HER BROTHER HAVE SEX (and had zero issue with half the town joining her) THE FUCK THE FUCK and it's viewed as teheheheheh isn't she naughty and cute.

I NEED A BUCKET THE SIZE OF JUPITER TO BARF IN.

This did make me crack up because clearly they've never heard of Goryeo but also - I am sorry, if anyone would want to marry her (adopted) cousin, it's the woman who thought it would be fun to see her brother have sex.

PS The sex scenes are explicit by drama standards (though not by Queen Woo standards) but I am old enough that if I want to watch a sex scene, I can easily do so. Boobs aren't the enticement the makers think they are either. I have no objection to shows, movies or books that have explicit scenes but my problem with kdramas that have them is that they more often than not seem to think that sex scenes and nudity are all the hook you need and so do not bother to come up with a decent story.

Honestly, the only ones I even tolerate is sweet dimwitted prince and his nerd bride. And that ain't enough for me to watch.

Terrible acting, stupid plot, horrible world building, actors who can't act, have no chemistry and visually do nothing for me. This one makes QW seem like Lawrence of Arabia.

PASS

(but boy it was fun to chug haterade and write this.)

[israaverse]

This is probably a result of diminishing expectations but it's wild how Civil War was the last movie to give Bucky a decent look, because every appearance since then seems intent on making him uglier and hideouser— okay wait I just realized I'm kinda exaggerating his look on the Falcon show wasn't bad I'm just letting my hate for that shows writing & the it's exemplification of nearly all the ways Marvel used the Cap brand to push propaganda cloud my perception of the visuals..... but everything else! jail. (can you tell I just discovered what he looks like in the quote "degenerate villain" squad movie?)

NGL they did Steve bad but at least they killed him off. Seeing how they made a decent Cap2 with blatant cliffhanger-setup for a sequel continuing that storyline just to... not continue it & instead cast Bucky as The Bad Guy of the Group because of multiple directors+writers (explicitly admitted in interviews) hate for Bucky... is still wild. They practically dropped his entire character development arc after only hinting at it in an end credit scene. And it's a large part of why Steve's character circled the drain too before getting killed off because the core part of Steve's character arc was dependent on Bucky's story arc actually being continued instead of randomly dropped for multiple back to back crossover events.

Marvel managing to make one decent movie out of CapAm is more of a curse than anything. It'd have been better if expectations never got lifted off the ground and just kept the characters rah rah 🇺🇲 PatriotMonologueBotd all the way through like in the comics, which aren't very good.... at all. If you thought the propaganda is gonna be bad in the upcoming Cap4 movie, the DNC-style patriotism of the Captain America brand becomes is even worse in the comics, and it gets worse to stomach with IRL events making it seem more and more out of touch. Treating the USA flag (and its representatives) as a literary symbol of moral virtue gets more and more ridiculous with each new run of books (like, did you know that a recent run decided to flashback to WW2 just to include a revisionist-fake-history speech about how the Zlonlsts were a large force fighting against the Nazis, whereas IRL the opposite happened). How a single decent adaptation was managed to be pulled out of the source material is still kinda shocking. But now Marvel seems to have remembered that the CapAm brand is meant for their white writers to pull out atrocious political takes via superheroes. Back to tradition!

the fact that writers n directors hate him baffles me bc Winter Soldier is such a good setup but they just let him FLOAT AROUND? A SET PIECE? AN OBJECT OF THE PLOT????? like you MADE HIM THAT WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

im convinced that the US military propaganda contracts completely neutered his MCU character bc if u think about it for more than 5 seconds you start coming to Conclusions (didnt WS point out that the US govt hired a bunch of nazi scientists, framed him as JFK's assassin, etc etc etc.....) and they made the decision to just nuke him as a result. Oooh he was just a bad guyyy all alooong SHUT UPPPP hes morally grey even an antihero for a bit but hes not EVIL he is literally the poster boy of being manipulated into doing atrocities for the interests of a greater power and they just. dropped it. on its ass. esp with the stupid Sabra and Zionism bullshit its like ohhh i see we are gearing up for a media push for fascist nationalistic narratives for a draft or more wars and the presence of moral grayness isnt conducive to that so its just cut. got it.

like the Falcon show was........ so clearly cut to erase that moral grayness it made me ill. so ill i even sought out WS' presence in the comics and like you said its just not cutting it even slightly. they flattened him which SUCKS but also they made him UGLY WHICH IM WAY MADDER ABOUT. IF I CANT HAVE HIS MORAL COMPLEXITY WHY DID YOU UNSEXIFY HIMMM

IT DOESNT EVEN MAKE FINANCIAL SENSE BC I WAS ONLINE WHEN PEOPLE WERE FROTHING AT THE MOUTH OVER HIM SO WHYYYYYYYYY DO THEY HIT HIM WITH THE MOST ATROCIOUS WIGS TO EVER BE SEEN IN AN MCU MOVIE IM ILLLLLL

FIRING SQUAD, ELECTRIC CHAIR, THE GALLOWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MULTIBILLION DOLLAR MOVIE AND THEY ONLY GOT HIM SYNTHETIC IM SO SICK!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOOK AT WHAT THEY TOOK FROM US!!!!!!!!!! SNIPPED LIKE A GODDAMN BARBIE , THE AURA!!!! IM SO MAD

i remember being SO excited when civil war came out bc the kind of political thriller feeling of winter soldier was so enrapturing!!!!! it captured me in a way the other MCU films lacked, so to see him stagnate like he has is just mortifying. especially visually. if they wanted to commit to the whole "hair holds memories"/buzz cut to visually separate himself from what he's done then DO IT!!!! dont linger at the threshold then go back to cash in on his old look but done BADLY. i almost wish he got killed off in civil war or shortly after because hes so clearly become a Plot Device instead of a Character and its so disappointing.

sorry for the super long un-art related post but oh my god this gets me so wound up, Bucky/WS was my first brainrot from back in my forum days (had an RP partner who based their character off him).

[rhaenyra-first-of-her-name]

This is kind of a long rant against HotD and not structured at all so you might want to avoid it if you like TG or Alicent. Or even Daemon, sorry, I don't like him much either.

I was always skeptical of HotD even before it started but I had never expected that it would be so much worse than the source material which is, mind it, a very pro greens, biased, misogynistic spiral by some dead maester.

I don't enjoy F&B as a book and the Dance wasn't remotely my favorite part of it. Like the whole Dance of Dragons reads like a misogynistic spiral sometimes but HotD just took a biased source and dialled it to a 100.

You would think they would try to do the opposite bcoz the source is acknowledged to be biased but nope, they just had to make it worst. The Greens get to be whitewashed, they can literally not commit to any actions (Alicent committed treason by mistake, Aemond murdered a child by mistake, like wtf? Wtf are these fucking uwu passive characters and writing. Fucking commit to treason if you are gonna do it. Who half asses treason? Book Greens would gobble up Show Greens for breakfast. The Lannisters would have a laugh.) The Blacks are villainized and all the Velaryons are sidelined (which is worst with the show changing their race intentionally and then doing this).

Like the Greens have no redeeming qualities, just the narrative framing them as the good guys on their sides and I always hate how the narrative is trying to shove it down my throat. I can't stand it.

Like I don't even like Daemon but the show is stripping all the depth from him. I seriously don't like him but it's like the show can't stand anyone on the TB to have anything good or significant.

They literally showed Aegon to be a rapist onscreen and want me to root for him? Wtf are they smoking? The amount of cognitive dissonance you need to like TG is too high. Ik the show doesn't expect much from its viewers but it's like they expect the viewer to be stupid.

Show Alicent is so passive, they make me prefer the book Alicent and I hate the Evil Stepmother trope. The show acts as if Rhaenyra wasn't supposed to be the Good Mother and Good Stepmother counterpart to Alicent.

And F&B and George isn't subtle about who won the Dance. It's the Blacks. Rhaenyra might have died but her fraction won the war, her sons and descendants sat on the throne. Daenerys is her direct descendant and she brought the dragons back from death (especially given that the Dance was the main reason for their downfall and even the Targaryens' powers thanks to TG).

TG has the same fate as all the usurpers in the series- Maegor, Larys Strong, Robert Baratheon - the end of their line. Alicent 's line all dies before her eyes. The current Higtowers have nothing to do with Alicent and her line, they're not even worthy of remembrance and mention in the main series so far. Margaery is a half Hightower and despite the Tyrells' obvious efforts to make her queen and have one of their own on the throne, no one remotely mentions the only Hightower Queen ever. Imagine how embarrassing is that. You know if Alicent was a decent queen in any right, it would have been mentioned by now, the Tyrells aren't one to not use every advantage they have given that their Bannerman have more royal blood than them, which was again mentioned in the series.

Anyway, Alicent 's line dying and going to oblivion for all purposes is their ultimate defeat. I can't stand the TG stand trying to make it anything else.

And yes Rhaenicent is just queerbaiting and terribly at that. As a queer woman, I don't want them as any sort of a representation. An evil step mother aged down for a pairing where she plots treason and murder for Nyra and her sons? No, God, Daemon is a better option than that and I can't believe they made me say it.

Also, Laena was right there if they wanted to have a sapphic pairing.

When I said I wanted more morally gray female characters, I didn't mean totally irredeemable ones. There is a fine line in what characters, or crimes, you can redeem, starting a civil war out of personal greed and misogyny is not one of them. And yes, TG are all misogyny even if Alicent plays the uwu victim of patriarchy all the time. And funny how she never does anything to help any woman, not even her daughter Helena; does nothing against the man who actually harmed her and actively wants to put her rapist son on the throne instead of the rightful heir but her stans act as they or she is some kind of feminist when Alicent is no woman's friend.

And canonically, which are the books btw, not the badly written fanfictions (I am so sorry, this is an insult to fanfiction tbh) of the producers: GoT and HotD, Nyra had her mother's sigil on her flag, not Aegon the Rapist+Usurper.

(Can't believe the show tried to make some kind of gotcha moment with Alicent in that green dress. Idk why the characters even stood up. They only do that for the ruling monarch, not the consort and Alicent literally did nothing to deserve that kind of reaction. She just wore a green dress so what? Once again, the show is giving TG credit for doing nothing.)

On the last notes:

Cole is an incel.

I can't believe people ship Aemond and Luke. The former is his murderer and a war criminal while Luke was just a child. Leave my baby boi alone.

Otto is a cunt. Idk why Alicent stans don't crucify the man who arranged her marriage (and the bane of her existence) more.

Daemon is somehow better than all the men in TG which is an accomplishment especially since I dislike his character.

Once again, Aegon is a drunkard rapist.

Helena deserves better than her family.

I never liked Jaehaerys I and this is all kinda his fault. For the best king ever, he singlehandedly roped his daughters and all the Targaryen women of all their rights. Rhaena I should really have been the queen.

Viserys I, you tried but you should have done better. Aemma would have been so disappointed.