#its tragic in its banality

[mihai-florescu]

"Why did they make little john a murderer" she's a cat. Youre never gonna guess what cats do

[deadpanwalking]

Pale Fire poem is bad, right?

No, not exactly. The actual poetry is still enjoyable because John Shade's narrative voice is compelling, and the elegance of the poem's structure sets it apart from doggerel verse. It resembles Nabokov's own English language poetry, but the difference is that “Pale Fire” is (by design) inextricable from the context of the novel, Pale Fire. When you try to analyse it on its own, it becomes somewhat banal, an elevated iteration of Footprints in the Sand: a man reflects on his life and searches for meaning in the wake of a tragic loss, suspecting his dead daughter is trying to communicate with him, but ultimately concludes that even if the dead do speak to us from beyond, it would not be through visions and hauntings, but in ways that surpass human imagination by orders of magnitude.

John Shade is a fine poet—but Nabokov is a brilliant novelist, so both Shade and his poem became moving parts in a clockwork universe. Would you think twice about his poor Aunt Maude if you hadn't deciphered his verse about her aphasia and linked it to the transcription (pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant lant tal told.¹) from Hazel's “failed” seance that Kinbote dismissively included in his footnotes?

¹ The bolding is mine, to show the three repetitions of “atalanta” (both forward and backward) that correspond with Pale Fire's motif of threes —Shade wrote the poem in three weeks, Kinbote wants you to read the commentary thrice for every time you read the poem, the Zemblan fairy tale that mentions three hundred camels and three fountains, etc.

The transcription itself is from the third night of Hazel's séance. It's a message from Maude's ghost, who remains afflicted by aphasia. Brian Boyd describes it more succinctly than I can:

But as we reread we can now see instead a message to Hazel to tell her "father (pada: pa, da, padre) he is not to go across the lane to old Goldsworth's, as an atalanta butterfly dances by, after he finishes 'Pale Fire' (tale feur), at the invitation of someone from a foreign land who has told and even ranted his tall tale to him.

So the ghost is not only real, but is—coming back to the clockwork universe metaphor—also unwittingly moved by the same metaphysical harmonic oscillator as the rest of the characters, a small part of a mechanism so complex that the paranormal is merely another component. You can't derive any of that from the verse, but when you reread it within the context of the book, you see all the intricate ways that this force operates within the poem—that's when it becomes good.

[chloe-caulfield94]

I don't understand that section of the LiS fanbase, at all

I'll never understand folks who sacrifice Chloe and also gush over how cute she is with Max or how cool of a character she is. Okay, don't murder her then. Is there something I'm missing? Her life or death is up to you. If you decide to kill her, then she obviously is not that important to you. Certainly not your "number one priority".

Go bask in your glory of an everyday hero who'd be willing to kill their own friend for "the greater good" instead of crying crocodile tears over Chloe's coffin.

An especially egregious example of such mentality is fetishizing Chloe as a "tragic" character, a member of the 27 Club with an 8 year head start. Dude, you're the one turning her life story into a tragedy. You're the one killing her. You're the one depriving her of a happy ending, of a fresh start. I don't understand the morbid interest in Chloe's story viewed through that lens.

The story of a troubled kid who everyone gave up on, including her family, her friends and even herself, who died a stupid death that could've been prevented had she had at least one person standing in her corner (but as it turned out, there was nobody willing to stick by her) is not interesting or captivating. It's simply revolting. And to tell you the truth, quite unoriginal in its inhumanity and banal in its cruelty. Look out the window and you'll see hundreds of stories like that. Is this the sort of tale you wish to write with your choices?

At least I can understand Chloe Price haters. They sacrifice Chloe, because they are lusting to murder the person they are seething with hatred towards. They sacrifice Chloe, because they are deriving sick pleasure from handing down the death penalty for the unforgivable crime of being a troubled teen. That mindset is condemnable, but I can at least understand it, even though I would never think or feel that way, not about Chloe, not about anyone else.

But I cannot comprehend the mindset of celebrating the character that you judged unworthy of survival, less important than others, whose life you chose to spend as a resource. We get it, you performed the incredibly complex analysis of "one is less than multiple", you proved you possess "the strongest of wills to make the hardest of choices".

You decided that there were others "who should live way more" than Chloe and you swung the headman's axe. I salute both your strength to usurp for yourself the right to judge who is more worthy of life and your courage to immediately kill to enforce your swift and wise judgement. I personally, being a coward, faced with a choice to sacrifice a human life to stop a tornado would refuse to do so and let the events unfold, as I feel I am in no position to ever judge who should live and who should die. I guess that's just my weakness and liberal, tree-hugging concern for human dignity speaking.

But could you please stop smiling over the coffin of your victim? Could you please stop recollecting all the moments of joy and friendship that you selfishly decided to take back, that you erased, that you prevented from ever hapening? Could you please stop celebrating the friend that you used for five days to make yourself feel better about your past mistakes and to go through a coming-of-age adventure, who you then discarded like a toy you got bored with, making sure that she never experienced any of the things you did?

Go have fun with all the people you saved instead of performatively mourning the person whose life you deemed so insignificant you chose to willingly cause her death.

In her darkest moment she said she didn't deserve Max's love and friendship, that she didn't even deserve to live. And instead of proving her wrong, uplifiting her, giving a chance to begin again somewhere the past would hold no dominion over her, you chose to prove her right. Denying her a chance at life, you pushed her back into the quagmire of the past, to drown.

Sadistic fate set her up as the Price to be paid. And in your blind obedience to evil destiny, you chose to pay with her life. Whether that made you feel bad or sad was irrelevant to her as she died alone, abandoned and afraid, in a pool of her own blood.

On a related note, don't you think Bay Max keeping Chloe's belongings is deeply disturbing? The belongings of a girl who saw Max for the last time five years ago? I'm fairly certain that if you asked the Monday, pre-parking lot Chloe (so the one who is murdered) if she wished for her personal belongings to pass to Max in case of her death, she would respond with an emphatic "no". I wonder, would Bay Max lie to Joyce, telling her that she got to reconnect with Chloe before her murder (she didn't, since she erased all the time she had spent with Chloe). This only goes to show that Bay Max is totally out of character - basically a creepy body snatcher.

[helluvacriticalrewrite]

World building, Characters, and Plot. Oh My.

Everyone has a bit of a different approach to these things, however my plan of attack tends to focus on what the story is going to be. Before someone even starts drafting the ideas of what is going to happen beat by beat, we should know where the focus is going to be and commit to that. In serialized fiction, there is always the possibility of that to change, but that change should be organic and natural. When things change, the characters or their story, it can't be a sudden turn. It needs to be logical to the direction we are already going in, and it needs to happen when the time is appropriate.

You don't turn around and sail towards England when you are already heading to Hawaii. Additionally, if you were heading to Hawaii and decided to continue to England, you need to account for the extra time and work it'll take to get there.

Is the show about an underdog group of assassins carving out their business in Hell while growing closer as a found-family? Or is the story about starcrossed lovers of a prince and an assassin who are brought together by happenstance? Or is it about this one guy who is deeply complex with a tragic past and a warped sense of identity reaching self-actualization as his views of himself and his world are challenged?

The story itself could be all of these things, but only one can be the centripetal force. To balance multiple plot threads, the main story needs to be very firmly established like the black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Then like the solar systems in the arms, they can ride the gravitational force, while structures and stories that exist are independent and yet intrinsically reliant upon that center plot. Without a central focus everything would scatter and fall apart when put under even the slightest force, including its own trajectory.

My personal preference leans hard into character-driven stories, but in a particular way. The show is called Helluva Boss, so Blitz is obviously the gravitational center.

There's a reason why I bring up the concept of a galaxy, like the main story needs to be the most dense. Black holes are gravitational sinks in the fabric of the universe, they are infinitely dense. On the outskirts are the solar systems. Every solar system has its own gravitational pull in the form of a sun, and around those are the planets.

When people say "world building" they aren't joking. There are many ways to build a world, but this is mine. Each step of this concept is a character to me.

The best way to visualize is to simply make it visual, so here ya go.

There are people who have a scenario premise and build from there, and that is never a wrong move. However, what makes the story isn't the premise, but the characters. This is why I focus more on character stratification, dynamics and arcs rather than just a scenario. The primary ring is for characters who directly affect the plot. Secondary characters influence the plot but work more directly to affect the characters, and tertiary characters influence the characters but work more as world building qualities.

I personally don't like trying to write out a Character's personality in any way. In my opinion, it results in characters feeling less nuanced and rigid, it lacks substance and just becomes a banal laundry list of descriptors that doesn't leave room for circumstance. Instead of trying to define a Character's personality, I focus instead on their history. Personality is a mixture of nature and nurture, so by focusing on the Character's past and upbringing, we can define the parental structures they grew up under and how that influenced the decisions and events of their life. It also says far more about their own image of themselves than any list could. By building a personality out of a story, it automatically fills the character with nuance, motivation and depth.

The plot dictates the angle of the characters, dictates the needs of the world building which then dictates the progression of the plot and it keeps going around.

In considering the plot, especially for a rewrite, it is best to isolate the primary characters of import. There absolutely are ways to have a large cast. Arcane is an excellent example of a series with a massive character-driven story and cast that balances all branches of the narrative through appropriate supporting characters and extensive world building. if the world feels lived in, the story has more room to spread out. The larger the cast, the more room needed.

In the case of Helluva Boss, this is a disaster situation. Granted not inherently, but in terms of a serialized fiction, yes it's a bit of a mess. There are too many minor characters who have nothing to do with the plot aside from showing up once or twice for the sake of conflict. So like a bonsai, this needs to be trimmed down a bit to the major players. There is always room for someone to come in later in the story, but in serialized fiction, they require that dedicated time to establish them in the story.

For the plot, I'm focusing on Blitz as a character and how he grows and changes to be the focus. Going back to the galaxy analogy, this means he has to be the most fleshed out and well defined character at the very start before anything else. The densest part of the narrative.

The primary characters are those characters that could feasibly have their own chapters and not break the bank so to speak. Their stories are both separate from, but integral to the goings on of the plot. The thing is, all these characters should be able to hold a story of their own, but the main plot may not always benefit from that style of writing. Primary characters have more leeway because things that happen separately to them, while being outside of the main plot, are more likely to influence how they interact with said plot.

There is also this idea that anything directly connected to the primary circle will have more influence than the items that have a secondary or third connection.

Moxxie and Loona carry more weight as characters, despite being secondary, than Stella and Octavia. Moxxie and Loona will be more involved with the primary story of Blitz, but Stella and Octavia stay mostly relegated to interacting in Stolas' chapters. They don't have much influence, except through Stolas. However, Stolas, Barbie and Fizz have their own stories that tie into the plot, whereas side stories of Moxxie and Loona would be more about character exploration.

And here are all the story concepts based on plot lines I have considered right now. There are more and it is left open to move things around and reorganize, but it's already complex from the start and tins out as we get further from the center. Now that doesn't mean the characters necessarily get less screen time or characterization. It just means they have less pressure to tie back to the primary story.

[metvmorqhoses]

Nononono waitttt what do you mean about Good Omens season 2?? Why didn't you like it?

I personally thought it was better than season 1 - better paced. There wasn't a single boring moment. And sure, the plot maybe had fewer stakes, but seeing as this was a bridge season between season 1 (the of Good Omens book) and hopefully season 3 (the book that never came out, “668” or something like that), I thought it was good. Warm & fuzzy.

I need to know your opinion now

As abashed as I am to have to respond to such enthusiasm with, well... the very opposite of enthusiasm, please at least know that I consider the truth the best thing I have to offer in general and in regard to that unfortunate (yet somehow still-untouchable?) mess the second season of Good Omens has proven itself to be in particular, so accept it as some sort of well-intended even if perhaps unwanted gift.

This is probably the most unpopular opinion one can have on Tumblr right now, so I'll go straight to the point: Gaiman managed to ruin Good Omens (perhaps he isn't able to write it by himself, perhaps he got carried away with fan service, who knows), once one of the most delightful, witty, engaging, profound books/shows existent, changing its register and raison d'être in order to turn it into, per great popular request, the same lame simple plotless cheesy cookie-cutter gay romance without rime and reason apparently every single piece of media is deforming itself into lately.

The dramatic loss of... artistic quality this show suffered is appalling and even more appalling is the fact I seem to be one of the very few on this green earth to have even noticed? Did I perhaps read too much in the show before? I don't think so, it was indeed a masterpiece. I saw many die-hard fans of the series beyond puzzled at this last season too, straining themselves to try and make sense of it with wild theories, justifying them with the simple fact that Neil Gaiman is a genius and surely this hot mess must mean something, right? I wasn't aware the world was mostly populated by hysterically besotted people hailing Neil Gaiman's alleged greatness from dawn til dusk without contextualized merit, and the discovery didn't particularly excite me, to be quite honest. I think a healthy amount of fairness in the critique of any artist should always be the norm, but I digress.

I'll try to keep it as brief and matter-of-factly as possible, especially since some time has passed and the fumes of my rage aren't as scorching or as precise as they used to be lol

In a word, this season was subpar. Not only did it lack that original witty, ineffable meaningfulness, that intrinsic and very human sense of wonder and protectiveness towards life and its profound sense the original show brimmed with, but even from the most basic literary point of view, it literally lacked a plot worthy of this name, a story, characters that felt complex and real instead of caricatures who tried and reenact themselves, and in general what should have been, quite simply, good writing.

More than Good Omens' long-awaited season 2, this felt more like a high-budget filler fanfiction created by someone who didn't know what they were doing with story and characters most of the time, but who sure as hell wanted to please the audience to disastrous lengths.

The very first thing that irked me beyond belief, and it literally started from minute one, was the immediate, more or less subtle, change in acting from both Michael and David. Michael stressed it way more, with, in my opinion, quite tragic results, thing that from the start immediately allowed me to guess where they were going with their (already established as extremely complex) relationship, entirely turning the vibe from sophisticated allegory of Divine Comedy kind of love (love for your enemy, love for your friend, love in all its form and in its entirety) to banal romantic comedy-level gay drama, downgrading what Crowley and Aziraphale shared (the subtle abysses of it!) into the most boring and obvious of soap operas, obviously forcing them to act out of character in order to compensate (was any flash-back meaningful to their character or the story? Was there a writing reason behind any of them beyond writing for the sake of filling screen-time?).

Some relationships deserve to be left alone, alone in their subtlety and ambiguousness or you'll inevitably ruin them. Not everyone must kiss on screen, no matter how much the audience screams and throws up for it. This little woke drama completely ruined and eclipsed everything else those two characters were for each other, turning them from cosmic and devastatingly loyal best friends to petty and dumb lovers that need two plot devices (the messy pointless and quite frankly offensive representation-wise lesbians from across the street they literally met five minutes prior) to tell them they actually have feeling for each other and should share them. After literal millennia of this relationship, relationship that has its own inner workings and reasons, we needed the plot-lesbians to subvert the order of things and spur Crowley into action, obviously obtaining disastrous and lame results? Are we witnessing the interaction of immortal beings or five-year-olds? The only way I can genuinely make sense of this dumbness is considering those two female "characters" (that feel anything but real people) no more than that, characters, golems, put there by Metatron via the power of the Book of Life (again, so many Chekhov's guns with no use whatsoever in this season) in order to separate Az and Crowley using the only thing that could succeed in doing it - an ill placed declaration of love.

But even this doesn't match the true être of what Good Omens originally was nor comes full circle with the ineffable mystery season 1 ended with. It genuinely feels like Gaiman changed the whole rhyme and reason of the story, vibes, meaning, register, just to meet the modern needs of a category that is sadly phagocytizes everything else in both life and fiction. And I find it a true pity - and a bore.

And even leaving aside this personal boredom of mine at a non-existent plot that consisted in 1) a big mystery that promised cosmic repercussions (season 1 ended with the after-nonapocalyptic world that was slightly changed just because two enemies had loved each other and life too much not to oppose god's plan - fact that was probably god's plan all along), mystery that was actually no mystery at all (two random, from the original story's perspective, previous minor characters in literally ten supernatural minutes fell in love and run away together) and that meant virtually nothing in the grand scheme of things, but serving as a plot device so that the other two minor new characters could intrude into the protagonists' relationship so they could finally have the excuse to jump literary genre and kiss & queer tragedy the story away 2) an endless series of symbols, facts, episodes and characters that constantly seemed to hint at something but that in reality resulted in nothing story-wise (also, the change of heart in God's personality, first the witty and almighty trickster for the greater good, now the divine bully??), even leaving all this aside, I'm mostly disappointed the quality of the writing plummeted so inesorabily one of my comfort show turned into the symbol of an artistic era I'm utterly distraught to have to witness - the era of crowd-pleasers and un-imagination.

As for this being a filler season, writing in such an unresolved way (basic and predictable plot, colourless characters, cliché romance, hours of happenings that don't mean a thing in the current story) is unacceptable and a failure, even if you are a famous writer. You cannot waste hours of the audience's time going nowhere shielded by the sole future promise of sense. Writing doesn't work that way, and I'm sincerely appalled to see people noticing it and deciding to excuse it with a "surely next season everything will look genius!". It doesn't work this way. The faults were too many, they can't possibly be all resolved next season. This product wasn't great, even if your faves kissed and your little fanfictions came true.

The sad thing is, Good Omens used to be a work of art, not the next consumeristic piece of fiction to satisfy woke needs.

[shakespearenews]

The word “Shakespearean” gets thrown around a lot when it comes to Succession. At the most obvious level, this comes from the echoes of King Lear that suffuse the show’s very premise: a power struggle between the heirs of wealthy, waning patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox). There is no good-hearted Cordelia here, though – just Gonerils and Regans, with flashes of Iago and Macbeth thrown into the mix for good measure. Yet it is not just these villains who the children embody; they are tragic and complicated, and capable of contradiction.

---

But Succession was Shakespearean in more specific ways. Armstrong has described it as a tragedy: it was only in the finale that this descriptor took on its full, haunting resonance. All three of the main Roy siblings, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv, are quite literally tragic figures; the ending had the perfect tragic ring of inevitability – all the while reframing everything that led up to it. Succession’s language, too, evokes the Bard in its use and choices of metaphor. How many other shows could have a character utter a phrase like, “Maybe the poison drips through”, and it not sound madly overwrought? If it shoots for grandeur in some of its language, then Succession proves just as adept at evoking the playful side of Shakespeare: the constant wordplay, the ingenious rhyming. It’s a linguistic dexterity that most TV shows would never even attempt to capture, let alone nail this hard.

---

It is also a testament to Succession’s greatness that it was able to drown out the more superficial readings of its material, to render irrelevant the kind of banal social media mewings about being #TeamKendell or #ShivHive. The question of “who wins” is ultimately reductive. Yes, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) emerged as the ostensible victor but also, who cares? The point of Macbeth is not that Macduff becomes king at the last. This is the story of a failure, and the poignancy lies in the hows and whys.

[blankd]

I find tumblr's revision of the archetypal evil of demons and "inversion" of it slightly frustrating.

There are some posts I fundamentally disagree with, not for any religious reason, merely "narrative structure".

Examples of this kind of post are "You hear of the fallen angel but never the risen demon" followed by the comments and tags bonding over shared Christian Trauma, which, my condolences to those who have experienced it, but is entirely separate from my point.

Angels are frequently cast as Supernatural Turbo Cops/Fascists oppressing minorities ~*for not conforming*~ and Demons are reduced to helpless gay babies who are misunderstood straightedge dweebs (because they have to be #relatable and #relatable cannot be flawed in any serious way, it harshes the vibes maaaan).

The "subversion" is so common that it feels like the standard. And more annoyingly, there is no intellectual challenge to it. It's watered down to the point that "Demons face oppression just because they look different :(" which spills over to clumsy race allegories that I could personally do with less of.

"But it's boring to play it straight!", I pantomime the strawman to shout, but I point out that this is tumblr, the website that chronically funnels most of its pairings into specific personalities- sieving everything through the same fandom hole. Regurgitating memes AND superimposing the characters on iconic art for optimized fandom consumption.

I would personally enjoy the earnest attempt of exploring how infinite forgiveness meets with infinite cruelty. How do you materially triumph over it? Can it even be done? Or a serious scrutiny of how a force of good could do evil, etc. without falling back on having the teams swap jerseys. Theology is a field, bring out your thesis, not cowardly AU-fanfics built off Paradise Lost.

Tumblr posts won't have this, they probably aren't interested in interrogating it. And I don't expect them to.

But I can still be bored of the ideas.

In these scenarios, it usually boils down to how God is an abusive father, Lucifer/Satan is a righteously defiant teenager, infinitely powerless and a victim, defanged of status and stripped of accountability for action. Or otherwise lionized as a rebel who should be pitied for failure in his Glorious Revolution rebellion. Because what he stood for was not anything as insidious as supremacy, but progressive equality.

Hell is tragic not because it presents what a world void of divinity and virtue looks like, but because Satan was a post-minor commie or something.

The truly maddening part is that even when I attempt to glaze over how eye-rolling this style of "subversive" writing is, I still cannot capture the exact banality of it, my fingers and brain refuse, so I won't try.

However I will point out the quirk that redemption is never courted as an idea in these revision-subversions, it is viewed as a compromise, a submission, a surrender. (Or outright decried as a forgone impossibility, so why try.)

And this vexes me as it perpetuates the idea that when a child tantrums, a parent tolerates.

It further insists that this relationship can never be more complex, nor will its dynamics ever shift.

Despite the natural demand for equality once a child becomes an adult, there is a specific group of people who quietly never want this. They may not even be aware of it. But on some level there is a realization that once they lose the excuse of being a child, they will have to make compromises, and sometimes the difficult reflection that maybe they were wrong. And that maybe they were wrong enough to face a consequence.

But that would be a compromise, an admission, a surrender.

---

Messy Preemptive Responses thing:

"I want to write about my religious trauma" with all due respect, do an autobiography, it is not worth risking burying it under metaphor

"I'm processing my trauma" with all due respect, seek therapy off of tumblr

"Demon hot, Angel hot, wartime fucking" genius work, carry on brave soldier

[1997thebracket]

Round 2B

Tamagotchi: Hold up, I gotta feed my Tamagotchi. Tamagotchis were the leading name in digital pets that came to us in 1997, and rapidly gained immense popularity among kids and young adults. Invented by Bandai, Tamagotchis are perfectly pocket-sized egg-shaped toys with a simple LCD screen where players raise and care for a virtual critter. Users are responsible for feeding, playing with, and nurturing their Tamagotchi, ensuring it stays healthy and happy; the pet evolves through various life stages, and neglect or mistreatment can lead to its tragic demise. The charm of Tamagotchis lies in their portability and the borderline alarming emotional attachment users develop with their byte-size babies. They were the start of a cultural phenomenon in 90s and early 2000s toys, sparking a trend of virtual pet-raising games.

Daria: You’re standing on my neck. Daria is an animated television series that aired from 1997 to 2002; a spin-off of the popular series Beavis and Butt-Head, Daria helped codify the image of the American disaffected youth. Daria Morgendorffer, a highly intelligent but deeply cynical and acerbic teenage girl, navigates the banality of high school and suburban family values alongside her best friend, her sister, and her classmates. Her deadpan humor made Daria an iconic character in 90s pop culture, resonating with audiences for her dry social commentary. The series takes a tongue-in-cheek look at societal conformity and the absurdities of the mundane, utilizing the music and styles of the era to great effect, making the show endlessly nostalgic but never cloying or forced. Daria represents the unimpressed but privately vulnerable tone of 90s youth in a way few other pieces of media can. Now, up next on Sick Sad World…

[warwickroyals]

THE JAMES STATUE AT COLLINGWOOD AND THE ART CRITICS THAT HATE IT

When the public finally realizes that HRH James, Prince of Danforth was an elaborate alter ego for James Warwick, they will be free. Everything about this man was manufactured, yet we have art critics praising him for being "warm and open".

Yes, Louis collects toy soldiers. Yes, it's public knowledge and people make fun of him for it.

“SOULLESSNESS MISTAKEN FOR SIMPLICITY”

Astoundingly the royal family has managed to present James at his most insipid. In their attempt to cast him as a solemn every-man, they have stripped him of all the human characteristics he was actually known and respected for. Balanced haphazardly at the edge of a cliff with a face of mopey disgust, the statue looks ready to confiscate his sons’ Xbox, or perhaps fling himself into the ocean in a vain attempt to be reunited with his real, human self.

"BLAND & LIFELESS"

Considering the mawkish hysteria surrounding the would-have-been king’s untimely death, I half-expected a shrine; the great Prince James reborn in a spectacle of artistic grandeur. Instead, my disappointment is characterized by something far more banal. This James stands not regal but stiff, wearing an expression I can only describe as depressed.

Astoundingly the royal family has managed to present James at his most insipid. In their attempt to cast him as a solemn every-man, they have stripped him of all the human characteristics he was actually known and respected for. Balanced haphazardly at the edge of a cliff with a face of mopey disgust, the statue looks ready to confiscate his sons’ Xbox, or perhaps fling himself into the ocean in a vain attempt to be reunited with his real, human self.

"ARE WE SURE LOUIS HAD NO HAND IN THIS MESS?"

The statue was allegedly commissioned by the late prince’s wife to mark the 10th anniversary of his death, but this hyper-realistic snooze fest seems to be more in line with the tastes of an octogenarian monarch who collects military figurines for fun. If this is how the royal family chooses to remember their husband, son, or father that’s their prerogative, but for the rest of us this isn’t something worth remembering.

"TRAGIC."

Maybe the greatest sin of the statue isn’t that it’s boring or uninspired, it’s not even that it doesn’t capture the essence of its subject. This sculpture’s fatal flaw is its remoteness, its inability to be interacted with or understood. It was James’s warmth and openness that endeared him to so many, and sadly it’s missing from this work of art. Instead what’s left to fill the void is a lonely man with a worry-etched face, staring out listlessly at something no one else can see. With the depths of the Atlantic ahead and a gloomy private estate behind, he is where no member of the public can ever hope to reach him again. Part of me wonders if this was Princess Tatiana’s intention all along.

[waeirfaahl]

Early version of Aku

In final show we got the supernatural creature with incredibly interesting biology and pretty tragic shades in backstory (I recommend to read my analyze of Aku for whole picture). How we found out, Aku’s backstory and nature in 1 season differs from what we finally saw in “Birth of Evil” dilogy. In 1 season various characters called Aku a wizard, even Aku called himself a wizard instead of demon. Talking about creating the story, Tartakovsky referred to Aku exactly as wizard, not demon or whatever. That means, originally Aku supposed to be a sorcerer, i.e. human, apparently corrupted with black magic. And looking at his early designs... that’s not surprising. Although having the ability of shapeshifter, he looks like a human in kimono and helmet. And here he is named after Loki, so there’s various anagrams of this name (Ilok, Ikol, Kilo, Kloi, Koli etc). I don’t know, how this early version would work in the show. At least, if we discuss about character design.

This one is the closest to the final animalistic design, and he’s pretty creepy. Some eeriness in this old man in black cloak and spiky helmet. And he reminds me a bit Grunwald the ice sorcerer from anime “Hors the sun prince” (1968).

In final 1 season 1 episode there’s still some easter eggs of this early design:

And if inside the classic seasons, since they had no finale yet, the  otherworldly demonic creature with an animalistic appearance, born from a particle of cosmic dark matter, looked intriguing, epic, tragic in its own way and with great potential for cool unconventional character development... then, with the existence of 5 season and its very banal plot and primitive ending, a reasonable question arises — what’s a point to make Aku a descendant of an ancient cosmic being, i.e. to make him a demonic being, if it is not revealed in any way and does not come up in any way and does not affect the character and the story? If they had left him a sorcerer from the time of 1 season or from earlier versions, nothing would have changed at all.

[intervoids]

silly as it is, as bad as my whiskers are, it surpised me how much of a girl i saw when i was reaching over

maybe its just the tits and the shawl, but i felt my face, even though i honestly hate the angle

but for mere glimpses i see her, just naturally, not like when i pose, i see her living and candid

i see her more and more

its incredible

sometimes i can stare straight at her, and she cant escape, she moves and changes angles but she never goes away

that is like staring into the sun

i would know, ive loved doing that since childhood

but this is like staring into the sun but i dont feel any pain and i dont see worse after, i see so much better, like not literally, its like my outlook is better, everything is better

and i can only sometimes do that, but at this point in my life, thats okay, its not, but i can bear it

i could bare anything for that girl in the mirror who stays there, she looks like her, and i can bear this brutal hardship and this desolate heartbreak

i know, i know, i really not only know, but i believe in what i learned so long ago on tumblr and reddit and in books at the faggy cafe

i know that she's going to be real enough to stay real, she'll be a regular sight

i could paint my first real glimpse of her from memory if i live to be 100 and get beated in the head every day, tragically reducing the odds of success (gotta avoid too much head trauma)

but i will one day see her every day, i almost do now, but only bc im unemployed and i know what she likes and can easily draw her out by indulging her favorite things (which i like, too)

but one day i will live in synch with her, possibly until death, a committment im overjoyed to make and keep and work towards, and one day she will be there, in banal glimpses, and serving

i cant kill myself, i decided these past few weeks

i dont think it would align with my personal code of ethics and morals i learned from Innate Human Intuitive Knowledge (as a child my mind wandered so crazy hard you would not believe how far and how byzantine) and also from observing nature and finding peace within myself

i dont think itd be just, or fair, for her to have had less time than him, so i cant morally kill myself until im at least 52 or 54, having given the girl as much time to live as the boything, were gonna hash it out to that, and not litigate this any further, okay?

i got no patience to be nonbinary for like a decade for no reason, although now that im picturing it, like, honestly, cunt, so potentially 78, but i am not interested in seeing what irritating problems plague my brutalized body in that stage of decline

i am not built to survive, but also my family has a weird habit of living to like 100+ so this might all be cope, or some kind of bargain-bin suicidality

well, hope i remember this in therapy, which i never can. happy to have told a few of you, this is ironclad logic though, 52 is honestly the perfect age to kill myself

[ravenkings]

For one thing, the older, restrictive model of literacy as an elite prerogative proved to be tenacious, even as, in early modern Europe, reading spread among the bourgeoisie, and then further down the social ladder. Nowadays parents and other concerned adults worry that young people don’t read or love reading enough. Their counterparts in the 18th and 19th centuries were apt to fret that the young loved reading too much. As a middle class gained strength in Europe, claiming leisure as one of its defining features, books were among the goods most closely identified with that leisure, especially for women.

The novel, more than any other genre, catered to this market. Like every other development in modern popular culture, it provoked a measure of social unease. Novels, at best a source of harmless amusement and mild moral instruction, were at worst — from the pens of the wrong writers, or in the hands of the wrong readers — both invitations to vice and a vice unto themselves. The novelists of the period didn’t hesitate to capitalize on this anxiety. In Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey,” Catherine Morland’s enthusiasm for Gothic fiction leads to social embarrassment and philosophical confusion, as she disastrously (if comically) conflates her reading with reality. For Emma Bovary, the confusion between the fantasies offered by popular romances and the banality of provincial life takes on a tragic dimension. Her reading propels her down a path to ruin.

The danger wasn’t restricted to women. Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” was blamed for an epidemic of romantic suicides among impressionable male readers. Victorian America, perpetually worried that its footloose young men were on the road to perdition, classified novel-reading along with drinking and gambling among the causes of dissipation and debility.

–A.O. Scott, “Everyone Likes Reading. Why Are We So Afraid of It?” The New York Times, June 21, 2023

[autisticcassandracain]

Not to be a Tara stan on main but like…I feel like survivor of abuse who’s made a lot of questionable (at best) choices but still gets to live and recover from all the things people have done to her without ever having to be easy to get along with or palatable is… significantly more subversive? Not that being subversive on its own is inherently good but like. The version of her that gets to live and have a complex relationship with gender and sexuality is… really important to me? And I feel like there’s so much more potential there than “what if good girl… was BAD girl” or even “what if bad girl was SAD and DIED TRAGICALLY for good boy’s character development”

Look, I agree with you, but, and I'm truly not trying to be insensitive here, that is not the conversation I'm having right now. Anon specifically argued that the trope Tara was intended to subvert - ie the 'good girl' trope - should fundamentally never be subverted because doing so is innately harmful, at least as far as I understand it. This isn't really about Tara, as she is written. This is about writing, storytelling, and narrative as a whole, and I simply cannot agree with the idea that you inherently cannot subvert the good girl trope (or superheroes as a whole, as they also seem to be arguing, considering the constant comparisons to superhero subversions with no bearing on the good girl archetype).

I am not arguing that the only problem with Tara's character is that she does a bad job at subverting that trope. I am also not arguing that having a character tragically refuse to move on from their trauma is the best or most satisfying way to write abuse. I am also not arguing that 'what if the good girl was bad' is even a particularly interesting concept, because it really isn't. Literally all I'm arguing right now is that I don't think it's fair to say that subverting the 'good girl' trope is innately harmful or doomed to failure, and should never be written. I believe there are very few writing ideas that are inherently off limits, and something as banal as this one certainly isn't one of them.

For the record: when we talk about writing abuse, rather than trope subversion, I agree that having a character recover is more subversive than having them, you know, not do that. Abuse is often butchered in media in various ways, and one of the ways in which this is done is presenting the trauma of it as something inescapable, something that makes one doomed. Actually having a character work through it an achieve a happy ending (especially if said happy ending doesn't come with the caveat of having to forgive your abuser first) is more subversive than having them spiral into doom and despair.

When talking about Tara specifically, I not only think that having her work through her trauma and come out the other side happier and better for it is not just 'more subversive' than she was in canon, but in fact, I do not believe that the way Tara is written in canon subverted much of anything. That is the point I was making in my original post. Tara fundamentally failed at subverting the 'good girl' trope because of the unfortunate introduction of victim blaming and pedophilia apologism to her character. Keeping Tara as a bad person, in canon or in fanon, is almost guaranteed to play into this victim blaming and apologism, because her entire character, her entire trope subversion, is built on it. In trying to subvert the 'good girl' trope, Wolfman and Perez simply stumbled into a different one: the lolita, the nymphette who corrupts steadfast grown men. And this archetype is inherently harmful, and should never be used un-subverted. So I'd argue that reframing Tara's character as the victim she was never intended to be is, in and of itself, already subversive, and moreover, that giving her a happy ending is better than making her a tragedy, because of the nature of the trope you are subverting.

(I hope any of that paragraph makes sense bc I'm rapidly running out of braincells)

But again, the conversation I was having was not about how to write abuse. The conversation I was having was about whether or not the core idea behind Tara's character - which, once again, was a very simple 'what if the good girl was bad' - is fundamentally harmful and should inherently be off limits for writers, which I really, really don't think! There were a million ways Wolfman and Perez could've decided to handle that trope subversion, and they chose to do the one where they made the teenager a 'slut', which is what fundamentally kneecapped them. Not the idea of subverting that trope to begin with. It's ultimately irrelevant to this specific conversation whether Tara would be a more interesting character as a maladjusted abuse victim who extracts herself from her abuse, or as a simple 'good girl' trope subversion. I agree that Tara the abuse victim with a recovery arc is more interesting. But it doesn't matter, because this conversation is about what Wolfman and Perez were attempting to write, which was very, very clearly not that.

That said, “what if bad girl was SAD and DIED TRAGICALLY for good boy’s character development” is not the arc I used as an example a few posts back, and if it was intended to reference that, I feel like it's a deliberate misconstruction of what I was talking about, and I do not appreciate it. A genuine tragedy is not the same as killing off a character for manpain or fridging. I agree that a maladjusted abuse victim getting a happy ending is far more subversive than not having them get a happy ending, as the latter currently oversaturates media, but completely dismissing unhappy endings and tragedies as inherently shallow is unfair, in my opinion. You can compare this to the following example: a gay couple getting a happy ending is more subversive than them dying, but that a gay couple's death doesn't have to be a shallow usage of the 'bury your gays' trope. And there's reasons why someone may prefer to write or read the tragic variant. It's not terribly relevant to the conversation at hand, but I knew it would bug me if I didn't say that, so, here you go.

All this to say, TL;DR I agree with you that for a character like Tara, an abuse victim who doesn't act the picture-perfect well-adjusted or sad abuse survivor getting a happy ending is far more subversive than any 'good girl' trope subversion, or a tragedy. But that was fundamentally not the conversation I was having; I was arguing about whether the 'good girl' trope subversion was the fundamental issue in Wolfman and Perez's writing, whether the 'good girl' trope subversion can be written well in the first place, which I believe it absolutely can be.

Also, this is super not intended to be aimed at ravens-wings the asker, but just to nip things in the bud: I am uninterested in having in-depth discussions about how to write abuse on this blog. There are a lot of nuances about it, and by god, is fandom bad at those. If you have specific questions about how I, personally, believe specific issues of abuse should be written in fiction, you are free to ask them, but I really really really really REALLY don't want to have a fucking repeat of my BNHA fandom experience, which consisted of me repeatedly arguing with a bunch of anons (and randos in the replies of my posts) about whether demonizing abuse victims while redeeming the abuser is bad (it is). #JusticeForTara and if even one of you fuckers comes into my inbox talking about Deathstroke I'm dropkicking you from orbit and blocking you.

[minimalist-daydream]

on roe vs. wade // knitting needles

(I wrote this after Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to the Supreme Court. TW that this has some graphic descriptions of abortion.) 

I’m knitting a sweater for my boyfriend. I’m slow at knitting, so it’s taking me months, even though I’m using the simplest pattern possible. I chip away at it in the evenings when I’m watching TV or listening to podcasts. Slowly a skein of dark green yarn is transformed, through a series of simple loops, into a warm, wearable object. I think about how in Puritan times, housekeeping and so-called women’s work were progenitors of witchcraft as we know it – how turning milk into butter or a sheep’s fleece into clothing were their own type of alchemy, viewed with suspicion by men.

Knit one row, purl the next. Stockinette stitch, which gives you the classic “sweater” appearance. The “right” side is smooth and flat, composed of neat rows of interlocking “V”s. The “wrong” side is bumpy and knobbly, though somehow cozy and inviting in its own way. The right side is more satisfying to look at, but I’m fonder of the wrong side, the side you wear closest to your skin.

I think about how women used to use knitting needles to perform abortions. Fitting, really, that they took symbols of domesticity and used them to reject motherhood. I can’t stop thinking about it when I’m knitting, when I’m watching the blunt tips of my needles weave in and out of yarn, how it would feel to push them up inside me. The thought is enough to make me nauseous, dizzy. In medical school, I inserted speculums and swabbed cervixes for infections and cancer; I know how soft and vulnerable that tissue is, like a ripe peach. You could plunge a knitting needle in without much resistance. I get cramps on my period, not debilitating, but enough of a dull ache that it makes me cranky and preoccupied. I try to imagine having the will to induce a much deeper and sharper pain than that. My needles click against each other and I wonder how much blood would come out if I were to lie down, spread my legs, and slide one inside me.

I should be used to blood at this point. I’ve seen litres of it by now, hanging in transfusion bags, soaking through bandages, pumping or oozing from various wounds. I’m a surgery resident, which is much less glamorous than it sounds, and I get frustrated by people who try to portray us as heroes. I’ve noticed that writers, with their writerly eye, tend to focus on the most banal features of a hospital, as if these details somehow have meaning in themselves. There’s always mention of an IV dripping, fluorescent lights flickering, a TV playing silently in a waiting room. It’s as though the implied presence of death lends an aura of significance to everything around it. But when you work in a hospital, and illness and death is part of your daily routine, the TV is just a TV.

There is nothing glamorous about death. In books and movies about back-alley abortions, women are portrayed as martyrs, as tragic heroines. Female pain is made into a spectacle; authors and directors focus with lascivious attention on the beading sweat, the grimacing mouth, the back arched in agony. Even in our death throes we cannot escape the male gaze. Male suffering is unnatural and unacceptable, but female suffering is expected, even celebrated. In reality, it’s as brief and inconsequential as flipping a page. There is nothing noble about suffering or dying in pregnancy or childbirth. There is simply a woman, a human being with hopes and thoughts and dreams, who is here one moment, gone the next. 

Insert the tip of one needle inside a loop of yarn; wrap another loop on top and slide it from one needle to the other. I dream of violence. I dream of driving by anti-abortion protesters and hurling chicken blood in their faces. I dream of burning down the houses of the wealthy and powerful, who purr with catlike satisfaction as they sentence women, poor women, to suffering and death. I dream of riots, of broken glass and burned-out cars, while I fly a flag with a pair of crossed knitting needles. In the meantime, I pass loops of yarn from one needle to another, and my knitting grows.

[asightsodivine]

oyasumi punpun and welcome to the nhk are so good because they are stories of mediocre cowards who cannot conform to the stress and banality of modern life. they are so true to life and relatable in the worst ways because they expose the inequality of life, that much of the world is just full of schmucks, underdogs with no way out and no means nor will to do anything about it. nhk has a much more optimistic conclusion, accepting the horror of life and overcoming them through purpose and love. even with its happy ending, Satou's prospect of fighting the "NHK", or the modern world, is gone. any hope of making a meaningful change is over. punpun is much more dreary and tragic though. I would say more realistic too: through all that happened he's back stuck in an empty, destructive life because he hasn't the courage to end it or change it. both are very real portrayals of the torture of modern life and how hollow it makes us feel, and concludes with how there's nothing much to be done about it

[theweebwithgoldenhands]

Beautiful tragedy in the 1930's China (ノへ￣、)

KILLER AND HEALER (Tragedy/Romance/Action) 2021 - 37 episodes

Chinese BL

Rate : 10/10

If this is the first time you've heard of this magnificent tragedy set in early 20th century China, ravaged by the scourge of opium introduced by the British in the wake of the Opium Wars, then take these few minutes to read this review and be convinced to watch it. The two protagonists both want the good of the people of the city of Jingcheng, but each achieves their goal in different ways. Everything seems to oppose them at first sight, yet they will soon find themselves working together to foil a terrible political plot to bring down the city in the hands of the country's biggest opium trafficker.

Jiang Yuelou, a policeman, and Chen Yuzhi, a renowned doctor in the city, meet in a rather brutal way, one ending up behind bars for being suspected of collusion with the traffickers by the other. From there, everything goes wrong! The doctor's younger sister suddenly disappears while he is in prison, and the police fail to catch the head of the opium ring in Jingcheng. After a trip to Hong Kong, the two young men become allies, and then friends, and realise that the ring is much bigger than they thought. Deciding to put a definitive end to this evil that is ravaging so many lives, they plunge into the heart of the problem, putting their lives on the line to discover the one behind it all, San Ye.

Between betrayals and unacknowledged feelings, the plot, rather banal at first, quickly develops, creating a complexity that makes you want to go all the way to the end to find out the final word. Filled with action, murder, and manipulation of all kinds, you will quickly find yourself thrown from crime scenes to hostage situations, from chases to plot twists. The numerous characters of the series, their diversity, and their always very well-worked-out stories make this series a little marvel whose condensed emotions are appreciated. If the tendency is rather tragic, the relationships between each of them bring a great sweetness and a particular touch of sensitivity to this weighty story.

One of the strong points of this drama is the evolution of its characters. Each episode plunges us a little more into their psychology, past, and apprehensions. As endearing as enjoyable, it quickly becomes difficult to face the numerous deaths that precipitate a little more the tragic end of this drama. A dramatic plunge into a completely exotic universe thanks to the perfectly realised immersion in China at the beginning of the last century gives this picture a little bit extra to make it a collector's item worth seeing. Excellent acting, breathtaking scenery, everything is done in Killer and Healer to leave you with an unforgettable memory of this series!