#lower-stakes story out into the world first.

[mrbingley]

i am white knuckle resisting the urge to ask if anyone wants a sneak peek at my unfinished existential horror interactive/online fiction story b/c i want constant validation but i am forbidding myself from asking this b/c i know it’ll delay me finishing the story b/c the possible compliments would sustain me for days.

[mariacallous]

The Ocean Sciences Building at the University of Washington in Seattle is a brightly modern, four-story structure, with large glass windows reflecting the bay across the street.

On the afternoon of July 7, 2016, it was being slowly locked down.

Red lights began flashing at the entrances as students and faculty filed out under overcast skies. Eventually, just a handful of people remained inside, preparing to unleash one of the most destructive forces in the natural world: the crushing weight of about 2½ miles of ocean water.

In the building’s high-pressure testing facility, a black, pill-shaped capsule hung from a hoist on the ceiling. About 3 feet long, it was a scale model of a submersible called Cyclops 2, developed by a local startup called OceanGate. The company’s CEO, Stockton Rush, had cofounded the company in 2009 as a sort of submarine charter service, anticipating a growing need for commercial and research trips to the ocean floor. At first, Rush acquired older, steel-hulled subs for expeditions, but in 2013 OceanGate had begun designing what the company called “a revolutionary new manned submersible.” Among the sub’s innovations were its lightweight hull, which was built from carbon fiber and could accommodate more passengers than the spherical cabins traditionally used in deep-sea diving. By 2016, Rush’s dream was to take paying customers down to the most famous shipwreck of them all: the Titanic, 3,800 meters below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Engineers carefully lowered the Cyclops 2 model into the testing tank nose-first, like a bomb being loaded into a silo, and then screwed on the tank’s 3,600-pound lid. Then they began pumping in water, increasing the pressure to mimic a submersible’s dive. If you’re hanging out at sea level, the weight of the atmosphere above you exerts 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi). The deeper you go, the stronger that pressure; at the Titanic’s depth, the pressure is about 6,500 psi. Soon, the pressure gauge on UW’s test tank read 1,000 psi, and it kept ticking up—2,000 psi, 5,000 psi. At about the 73-minute mark, as the pressure in the tank reached 6,500 psi, there was a sudden roar and the tank shuddered violently.

“I felt it in my body,” an OceanGate employee wrote in an email later that night. “The building rocked, and my ears rang for a long time.”

“Scared the shit out of everyone,” he added.

The model had imploded thousands of meters short of the safety margin OceanGate had designed for.

In the high-stakes, high-cost world of crewed submersibles, most engineering teams would have gone back to the drawing board, or at least ordered more models to test. Rush’s company didn’t do either of those things. Instead, within months, OceanGate began building a full-scale Cyclops 2 based on the imploded model. This submersible design, later renamed Titan, eventually made it down to the Titanic in 2021. It even returned to the site for expeditions the next two years. But nearly one year ago, on June 18, 2023, Titan dove to the infamous wreck and imploded, instantly killing all five people onboard, including Rush himself.

The disaster captivated and horrified the world. Deep-sea experts criticized OceanGate’s choices, from Titan’s carbon-fiber construction to Rush’s public disdain for industry regulations, which he believed stifled innovation. Organizations that had worked with OceanGate, including the University of Washington as well as the Boeing Company, released statements denying that they contributed to Titan.

A trove of tens of thousands of internal OceanGate emails, documents, and photographs provided exclusively to WIRED by anonymous sources sheds new light on Titan’s development, from its initial design and manufacture through its first deep-sea operations. The documents, validated by interviews with two third-party suppliers and several former OceanGate employees with intimate knowledge of Titan, reveal never-before-reported details about the design and testing of the submersible. They show that Boeing and the University of Washington were both involved in the early stages of OceanGate’s carbon-fiber sub project, although their work did not make it into the final Titan design. The trove also reveals a company culture in which employees who questioned their bosses’ high-speed approach and decisions were dismissed as overly cautious or even fired. (The former employees who spoke to WIRED have asked not to be named for fear of being sued by the families of those who died aboard the vessel.) Most of all, the documents show how Rush, blinkered by his own ambition to be the Elon Musk of the deep seas, repeatedly overstated OceanGate’s progress and, on at least one occasion, outright lied about significant problems with Titan’s hull, which has not been previously reported.

A representative for OceanGate, which ceased all operations last summer, declined to comment on WIRED’s findings.

[cy-cyborg]

Disability Tropes: The Miracle Cure

The miracle cure is a trope with a pretty negative reputation in disability circles, especially online. It describes a scenario in which, a disabled character, through either magic, advanced technology, divine intervention or some combination of the three, has their disability cured throughout the course of the story. Sometimes this is literally, as in the disability is completely and entirely cured with no strings attached. Other times, it looks like giving an amputee character a prosthetic so advanced that it's basically the same as "the real thing" and that they never take off or have any issue with, or giving the character with a spinal injury an implant that bypasses the physical spine's break, or connects to an exoskeleton that allows them to walk again. Sometimes, it can even look like giving a character some kind of magic item or power that negates the effects of the disability, like what I talked about in my post about "the super-crip" trope. Either way though, the effect is the same: The disability is functionally cured and is no longer an "issue" the author or character has to worry about.

But why would this be a bad thing? In a world with magic or super-advanced tech, if you can cure a character's disability, why wouldn't you?

[ID: a screenshot of Roy mustang from Full metal alchemist Brotherhood, a white man with short black hair in a hospital gown. In the corner of the screen is the hand of another person holding a small red gemstone. /End ID]

Well there's a few reasons. First, lets talk about the purely writing related ones. If you've been around the writing or even media critique communities for a bit, you've likely heard people voicing their frustrations with tropes like "The fake-out death" where a character is either implied to have died, but comes back later, or is explicitly shown to be dead and then resurrected. Often when this happens in media, it leaves the audience feeling cheated and like a character's actions and choices don't really matter if even the worst mistakes and consequences can be undone. In the case of the latter situation, where they die and are brought back, it can make the stakes of the whole story feel a lot lower, since even something like death is shown to be reversible, so the audience doesn't really have to worry about anything bad happening to their favourite character, and once you've used this trope one time, people will constantly wonder why you wouldn't use it every time it comes up.

The same is true for "fixing" a character's disability. It sets a precedent that even things as big and life-changing as disability aren't permanent in this setting. We don't have to worry about anything major happening to the characters, there's no risks associated with their actions if it can all be undone, and it will lower the stakes of the story for your audience. Personally, I also feel like it's often used as a cop-out. Like writers wanted to include a major injury the leads to something big like disability for shock value, but weren't sure how to actually deal with it afterwards, so they just made it go away. Even in cases where the character start the story with a disability and are cured, this can still cause issues with your story's stakes, because again, once we've seen you do it once, we know its possible, so we won't feel the need to worry about anything being permanent.

Ok, so that's the purely writing related reasons, but what if that situation doesn't apply to the story you're writing? What if they're "fixed" right at the end, or the way they're cured is really rare, so it can't be used multiple times?

I'm glad you asked, because no, this is far from the only reason to avoid the trope! In my opinion, the more important reason to avoid it is because of how the a lot of the disabled community feels about the miracle cure trope, and the ideas about disability it can perpetuate if you're not very, very careful.

You might have noticed that throughout this post, I've put words like "cured" and "fixed" in quotes, and that's because not every disabled person wants a cure or feels like their ideal to strive for is able-bodied and neurotypical. For many of us, we have come to see our disabilities as part of us, as part of our identities and our sense of self, the same way I, as a queer person might see my queerness as a part of my identity. This is an especially common view among people who were born with their disability or who had them from a young age, since this is all they've ever really known, or who's disability impacts the way they think, perceive and process the world around them, how they communicate with people or in communities who have a long history of forced conformity and erasure such as the autism and deaf communities. Many disabilities have such massive impacts on our lives that we literally wouldn't be who we are today if they were taken away. So often though, when non-disabled people write disabled characters, they assume we'd all take a "cure" in a heart-beat. They assumed we all desire to be just like them again, and this simply isn't the case. Some people absolutely would, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not as universal as media representation makes it out to be.

Another reason it's so heavily disliked is because this trope is often used in conjunction with other ableist and harmful tropes or it's used in ways that perpetuate misinformation about living with a disability and it can have ableist implications, even if that's not what the author necessarily intended.

If the miracle cure is used right at the end of the story for example, as a way to give characters a happy ending it can imply that the only way for a disabled character to be happy in the long run, is for them to be "fixed", especially if they were miserable all the way up until that point. If it's used earlier in the story as a way to get said character back into the action, it can also be read as the author thinking that disabled people can't be of use to the plot, and so the only way to keep them around is to "fix" them.

Of course, there's also the fact that some authors and writers will also play up how bad being disabled is in order to show why a cure is justified, playing into the "sad disabled person" trope in the process, which is pretty much what it says on the tin. Don't get me wrong, this isn't to say that being disabled is all easy-breezy, there are never any hard days and you should never show your character struggling, not at all, the "sad disabled person" trope has it's place (even if I personally am not a fan on it), but when both the "sad disabled person" trope and the miracle cure trope are used together, it's not a great look.

This is especially bad when the very thing that cures the disability, or perhaps the quest the heroes need to go on to get it, is shown to be harmful to others or the disabled person themselves. Portraying living with a disability as something so bad that it justifies hurting others, putting others at risk, loosing yourself or killing yourself in order to achieve this cure perpetuates the already harmful idea that disability is a fate worse than death, and anything is justified to avoid it.

I've also noticed the reasons the authors and writers give for wanting to cure their characters are very frequently based on stereotypes, a lack of research in to the actual limits of a person's disability and a lack of understanding. One story I recall reading years ago made sure to tell you how miserable it's main character, a former cyclist, was because he'd been in a car accident where he'd lost his arm, and now couldn't ride bikes anymore, seemingly unaware of the fact arm amputees can, in fact, ride bikes. There are several whole sports centred around it, and even entire companies dedicated to making prosthetic hands specifically for riding bikes. but no, the only way for this to resolve and for him to be happy was to give him his arm back as a magical Christmas miracle! It would be one thing if the story had acknowledged that he'd tried cycling again but just had difficulties with it, or something was stopping him from being able to do it like not being able to wear the required prosthetic or something, but it really did seem as though the author was entirely unaware it was even possible, which is an issue when it's the whole point of your story existing. This happens a lot more often than you'd think, and it's very clear when an author hasn't even bothered to google search if their character would be able to do something before deciding the only solution is to take the disability away.

There's also the frustration that comes from being part of an underrepresented minority, finally seeing a character like you on screen or in a book, only for that representation to be taken away. Disabled people make up roughly 16% of the population (though many estimate these numbers are actually much higher), but only about 2.8% of American TV shows and 4.1% of Australian TV shows feature explicitly disabled characters. In 2019, around 2.3% of films featured disabled characters in a speaking roll, and while it's slowly getting better as time goes on, progress on that front is very slow, which is why its so frustrating when we do see characters like ourselves and so much of their stories focus on wishing to be, trying to become or actually being "cured".

An finally, there's the fact this is just a really common trope. Even if we ignore the issues it can cause with your story's tone and stakes, the harm it can do to the community when not handled with care, the negative perceptions it can perpetuate and everything else. It's just a plain-old overdone trope. It shows up so often that I, and a lot of disabled people, are just getting tired of seeing it. Despite everything I've said, there are valid reasons for people to not want to be disabled, and just like how I made sure to emphasise that not everyone wants a cure, it's important to recognise that not everyone would refuse it either. So long as it's not done in a way that implies it's universal, in theory, depicting someone who would want and accept a cure is totally fine. The issue is though that this trope is so common and so overdone that it's starting to feel like it's all we ever see, especially in genres like sci-fi and fantasy (and also Christmas movies for some reason).

[ID: A Gif of a white man in a top hat nodding his head with the caption "Merry Christmas" down the bottom. /end ID]

Personally, because it's so common, I find even the few examples of the trope used well frustrating, and I honestly feel that it's at the point where it should be avoided entirely where possible.

Ok but Cy, you mentioned there are ways to use this trope well, what are they?

So, like I said, I'm of the opinion that this trope is better off not being in your work at all, but if, for whatever reason, you can't avoid it, or it's use is really that important to the story you want to tell, there are less harmful ways to implement it.

Don't have your only disabled character take the cure

If you really must cure your disabled character's disability, don't make them the only disabled person in the story. Show us another character who, when offered the same cure, chooses not to take it. This at least helps push back a little against the assumption of "of course everyone would want this" that these kinds of stories often imply and doesn't contribute (as much) to disability erasure in the media.

Don't make it a total cure

In real life, there are cures for some disabilities, but they rarely leave no trace. For example, an amputee's limb can sometimes be reattached if it was severed and they received medical treatment fast enough, but it usually results in at least a little nerve damage and difficulties with muscle strength, blood flow or co-ordination in that limb. Often times, these "cures" will fix one issue, but create another. You might not be an amputee anymore, but you're still disabled, just in a different way. You can reflect this in your fictional cures to avoid it feeling like you just wanted to avoid doing the work to write good disabled representation.

Do something interesting with it

I got a comment on my old tumblr or possibly Tik Tok account ages ago talking about their planned use for the miracle cure trope, where their character accepts the cure at the cost of the things that made her life enjoyable post-disability. Prior to accepting the cure, she had found other ways to be independent to some extent and her community and friends helped her bridge the gaps, but they were all taken from her when she was "cured" forcing her into isolation. Kind of like a "be careful what you wish for" sort of thing. The story was meant to be a critique on how society ignores alternative ways of getting the same result and how conforming to other people's ideas of "normal" isn't always what you need to bring you happiness. This was a genuinely interesting way to use the trope I think, and it's a perfect example of taking this trope and twisting it to make an interesting point. If you must use a trope like this, at least use it to say something other than "disability makes me sad so I don't want to think about it too much". Alternatively, on a less serious note, I'm also not entirely opposed to the miracle cure being used for comedy if it fits the tone. The Orville has some issues with it's use of the Miracle Cure trope, but I'd be lying if I said Isaac amputating Gordan's leg as a prank, knowing it could be reversed in a few hours did get a chuckle out of me.

If your villain's motivation is finding a cure for themselves, don't use it as justification for hurting people

Disabled villains need a post all their own honestly, but when a villain's motivation for doing all the terrible things they do is so they don't have to be disabled anymore, it's especially frustrating. Doubly so if the writer's are implying that they're justified in their actions, or at least that their actions are understandable because "who would want to live like that?" Honestly, as a general rule of thumb, avoid making your villains disabled if you aren't disabled yourself (especially if they're your only disabled character), but if they are disabled, don't use the disability as a justification for them hurting people while finding a cure.

So are there any examples currently out there to look at where the trope is used, if not well, at least tolerably?

Yeah, I'd say so, but they're few and far between. Two examples come to mind for me though.

The Dragon Prince:

[ID: A Gif of Ava the Wolf from the Dragon Prince, a light brown, fluffy wolf who is missing her front right leg. /End ID]

The Dragon Prince on Netflix uses the miracle cure twice, but I still really enjoyed the show (at least I did, up until my Netflix subscription ran out, so I've only seen up to season 4). The first time the trope is used in the series, it's actually a fake-out. Two of the main characters, while looking for someone to help them heal the dragon egg they're carrying, encounter a young girl named Ellis and her pet wolf Ava. The two explain their egg is not looking good and they need to find someone to help it, but no one they've found had the knowledge or ability to do anything to help. Ellis says she knows a healer who can help them, and tells them that this healer even restored Ava's amputated leg when she was a pup. When we actually reach this "miracle healer" however, she is revealed to be simply an illusionist. She explains that Ava is still missing her leg, she simply made it look as though she had restored it because Ellis's parents were planning to throw the puppy out, believing it would not survive with its disability and would only be a drain on supplies. This was not actually true and Ava adapted to her amputation very well, she simply needed more time, and hiding her disability and making her appear abled gave her the time she needed to fully recover and adjust. When they return to the healer with the main characters, she removes the illusion and explains why she did it, emphasising that the real problem was never with Ava, but with how people made assumptions about her.

While I do feel it was drawn out a bit too long, I do appreciate the use of the trope as the set up to an overall positive twist. Disability does come with down-sides, it's part of the deal and it would have been nice to see a bit more of that, but for disabilities like amputation in particular, the worst of our problems often come from a lack of adequate support and people's pre-conceived ideas about us, and it was nice to see this reflected, even if it is a little overly simplified.

The second time this trope comes up in the series is when one of the antagonists, Soren, is injured during a fight with a dragon, becoming paralysed from the neck down. His sister, Claudia is absolutely beside herself, believing it was her fault this even happened in the first place, but Soren actually takes his new disability very, very well, explaining that he understands there are things he can't do now, but that there's a lot of things he can still try, that his previous job as a soldier just didn't allow time for. It's possible this reaction was him being in denial but it came across to me as genuine acceptance. He is adamant that he doesn't want a cure right from the beginning because he knows that a cure would come at a cost that he doesn't want his sister to pay, and that he is content and happy with this new direction his life will be going in. Claudia, however, is not content. It had been shown that she was already using dark magic, but this event is what starts her down the path of using it in earnest, disregarding the harm it will cause to those around her. She ignores Soren's wishes, kills several animals in order to fuel the healing spell that will "fix" him, and Soren is pretty clearly shown to be horrified by her actions. What I like about this use of the miracle cure trope is that it touches on something I've seen happen a lot to disabled people in real-life, but that rarely shows up in media - the fact that just because we accept ourselves, our disabilities and our new limits, doesn't mean our friends and family will, unfortunately. In my own life, my mum and dad were always accepting of my disability when I was younger, but as I got older and my support needs changed, my body took longer to heal and I stopped being able to do a lot of things I could when I was little, they had a very hard time coming to terms with it and accepting it. I'm not alone in this either, a lot of disabled people end up cutting contact with friends and family members who refuse to accept the reality of our situations and insist "if we just try harder maybe we won't be so disabled" or "Maybe you will get better if you just do [xyz]". Unfortunately however, some disable people's wishes are ignored completely, like Soren's were. You see this a lot in autistic children who's parents are so desperate to find a cure that they hurt their kids through toxic and dangerous "treatments" or by putting them through abusive therapies that do more harm than good. Claudia has good intentions, but her complete disregard for Soren's decision still harm them both in the long run, leading to the deterioration of their relationship and causing her to spiral down a very dark path.

Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

[ID: A Gif of Ed from full metal alchemist, a white boy with blond hair, staring angrily at a jar of milk on the table. His brother Al, a sentiant suit of armour, is in the background looking directly at the camera. The caption, spoken by Ed, says "So we meet again you little bastard" /end ID.]

The show does begin with Ed and Al looking for a way to cure their disabilities (which they gave themselves when trying to resurrect their mother as children went horribly wrong). However, when the boys discover that the object needed to do that - a philosopher's stone, can only by made through absolutely abhorrent and despicable means, and using one, likewise, comes at the cost of potentially hundreds or thousands of people's souls, they immediately stop, and shift their focus on finding the stones that had already been made so it can't fall into the wrong hands, and preventing the creation of new ones. The core theme of the show is that everything has a cost, and sometimes the cost is simply too great.

However, right at the end of the show, several characters are healed in a variety of ways. Ed gives up his ability to do alchemy to get his brother's body back, as well as his arm so he can save his friends in the final battle, but neither of the boys come away from this completely "healed". Al's body has not been used since he was a child, and so it is shown he has experienced severe muscular atrophy that will take a long time and a lot of work to recover from, acknowledging that he has a pretty tough road ahead of him. When we see him in the epilogue, he is still on crutches despite this being several months after getting his body back. Likewise Ed is not fully healed, and is still missing one of his legs even if he got his arm back.

The more... interesting use of the trope, however, is in the form of Colonel Mustang who was blinded in the final season. Mustang is shown to take to his blindness pretty well given the circumstances, finding a variety of ways to continue doing his job and reaching his goals. When other characters offer to let him use the philosopher's stone to heal himself however, he takes it, acknowledging that this is a horrible thing to do and that Ed and Al would be extremely disappointed in him if they ever found out. He uses it both to cure his own disability, and to cure another character who was injured earlier in the show. While I'll admit, I did not like this ending, I can at least appreciate that the show made sure to emphasis that a) Mustang was doing fine without the cure, and b) that this was not morally justified. The show spent a very long time drilling into the viewer how morally reprehensible using the stone was, and it didn't try to make an exception for Mustang - you weren't supposed to like that he did that.

When I talk about these tropes, I do try to give them a fair chance and discuss the ways it can potentially work, but I really do want to reiterate that this particular trope really is best avoided. There are ways to make it work, but they will still leave a bad taste in many of your viewer's or reader's mouths and you have to be exceptionally careful with your wording and framing, not just in the scenes where this trope is used, but in the lead up. If you really must use it, I highly recommend getting a few disability sensitivity readers and/or consultants (yes, even if you are disabled yourself) to help you avoid some of the often overlooked pitfalls.

[elkian]

In Stars And Time (and its predecessor Start Again to a degree) did something really impressive in a video game: making a non-combatant child character not only likeable, but critical to the fabric of the story. Notably, the Kid is not a primary story character. They represent the common folk of the endangered fantasy land; someone whose home and family was taken by the Big Bad, leaving them stranded.

In the core party, we have the Housemaiden, blessed, immune to the worst status effect, bearing a unique elemental type, etc. It's actually very amusing that she is blatantly The Main Character of this story, because she isn't the POV character.

With her we have the Fighter, a good-hearted tank who worked as a Defender in the homeland of the first three; the Researcher, a foreigner traveling the land, who's book-smart and has a wide array of spells, the wizard type.

And then we have the POV character, Siffrin, a classic Improbably Good-Natured Wandering Rogue archetype. You know, the classic shifty thief-type and troublemaker who nonetheless aids the party without thought of reward and isn't actually a criminal despite the vibes? That kind of rogue.

The Kid isn't a playable character. They can contribute to combat, but it's randomized. The most you can do is equip them with gear and skills that affect the frequency of their input, and ask them to feed the party heals (and possibly feed the final boss a bomb).

What the Kid is, what they represent, is in many ways the emotional core of the party (as the party knows it; Siffrin might develop different ideas, but, notably, still cares deeply for the Kid's wellbeing).

The Kid provides snacks, which is partly about their heals-carrying role, but it has a broader application. Between each level in the main dungeon, there's a snack break with three options. As you play the game, looping over and over, choosing different snacks can be the most you can break out at times. Snacktime also creates a narrative and gameplay break, a time to chat with the party one-on-one.

The Kid is the moral support and backbone of the party; it's possible to tell this story without them, but it would, frankly speaking, be a less emotional, less interesting story, with lower stakes. The Kid is at risk when you fight; the adults team up and agree to protect them no matter the cost, and this is not a throwaway line. This has consequences. This creates texture.

Late in the game, Siffrin develops the option to do Party Member Personal Quests, and despite being a noncombatant, the Kid is one of them. All of these Quests are meaningful and important in their way, but the things we learn in the Kid's Quest are extremely important to understanding Siffrin. The other Quests have personal elements that Siffrin relates to, but this one is about him in a very specific way, that could not be fully replicated by mirroring the events referenced onto one of the adults. This Quest pans out the way it does because the Kid is a kid.

It's hard for me to put into exact words, especially when I don't want to spoil things, but there's even more specific details that make them important to the narrative progression, again, without being an "important" person in the context of the game world. By being important to Siffrin and the rest of the party, by having their narrative wound in with the others, the Kid is as integral to the story as any other character.

Kid characters like this in video games aren't often well-respected, and that tends to be for good reason - they tend to represent ludonarrative dissonance, be annoying, or be the product of overcompensation and have their importance rubbed into the player's face. Many of them could be extracted from the narrative without having a significant effect on the outcome, or would destroy the narrative because they're the focus character, borderline Morality Pets for protagonists. The Kid in ISAT and SA fascinates me, because I came to care about them in a very natural manner, not just because their personality and interactions are endearing, but because the way they and the other party members relate to each other has a tangible impact on the story and emotional core of the game.

[maximumqueer]

In lieu of the second season of OPLA starting production, I want to talk about my mixed feelings on the first season of it.

Because I got into the anime and manga through the live action. So I will always like it at least a little bit for introducing me to honestly my favorite piece of media ever. But now that I'm caught up with the anime and manga, and know the characters and story better, I find myself having more criticisms of it.

The overall narrative is rushed in a way that leads to important character moments being glossed over. Syrup Village in OPLA is a good example. Usopp does a lot less in the live action, most of his big emotional beats cut for what I can only assume were time constraints. Reducing Gin's role to a one time appearance, and the Don Krieg Pirates to a cameo also feels like a product of the limited runtime, and cheapens Sanji's reasoning joining the crew, as we never get that moment where Luffy witnesses him feeding a starving man, and decides then that Sanji will be is cook. Replacing it instead with Luffy seeing him fight and tasting his food. Which in my opinion kinda misses the point of why Luffy wanted him to join. And that was because of Sanji's kindness, which is not nearly as present in the live action.

OPLA also removes a lot of side characters from the islands the main cast visit, making the world feel smaller, and the stakes lower. Like, the reason I personally cared so much about Luffy and Co. helping out places like Orange Town, Syrup village, Cocoyashi Village, is the people that live there who we get to know (in the anime and manga). I feel far more invested actually knowing the names of several of the people and the village, and knowing that their lives will be better after the big bad is taken down. It's not just a fight for the sake of having a fight, but a fight to help out a group of people who need it.

These characters also end up trying to free themselves from the big bad. Them playing an active roll, and not just being used as hostages (like they were in the live action) is just so quintessential to One Piece in my opinion. Having characters native to the island already willing to stand up to the force controlling them, and Luffy's involvement being to aid them, and not just swoop in a save a group of passive bystanders who were simply waiting for a hero to save them, is subversive for shonen (hell just fantasy in general) and having the live action remove that just feels wrong, as characters having freedom and agency is a big overarching theme in One Piece that has been there since day one.

Then there is the characterization. Zoro is probably the most egregious change. Zoro (bur especially pre-ts Zoro) was far goofier than his live action counterpart. And I do think that that level of goofiness is essential to him as a character. Like, I cannot picture OPLA Zoro attempting to cut off his feet, fail, and then decide to strike a cool pose while he is slowly turning into a wax statue. I cannot picture that version of the character beefing with a bird while lost, when said bird is LITERALLY a compass. OPLA Zoro just feels like your stereotypical stoic cool guy, when he is very much not. He is a bit of a loser (affectionate) and to see him be treated like he isn't feels off. Nami and Sanji are closer to their anime/manga counterparts, but are still different.

OPLA Sanji is not pathetic enough. To use an analogy, OLPA Sanji would take off his coat to place it over a puddle so a pretty woman didn't have to get her shoes and feet wet. Anime/manga Sanji would hurl his body onto the ground, and have the woman use his back to prevent getting her shoes and feet wet. They said this change was to dial down the more pervy parts of his character, which is fair. But that aspect of his character only really starts up in a bad way in Thriller Bark. The part of the series that adapted was when Sanji was pretty much only presented as a hopeless romantic who worships the ground all women walk on and would do anything a woman asked of him.

Nami is similar to Zoro, in that she is just to serious. They both lack the whimsy their anime/manga counterparts have. And she just feels a bit more one dimensional in the live action because of it.

As for Luffy. Him referring to himself as a "good pirate" just feels all sorts of wrong. He has never shied away from that label, and never has had any issue with being lumped in with "bad" pirates in the anime/manga. He never was angry about being framed for crimes, but I get the feeling that OPLA Luffy would be more likely to be angry about that, because he is a "good" pirate. This Luffy doesn't feel like he would go on a rant about not wanting to be viewed as a hero. They also made him nicer overall, and this sounds like a weird thing to complain about, but Luffy not holding his tongue and just telling people how he feels about them, positive or negative, is what makes him as a character work. Is what separates him from a typical run of the mill shonen protag. Him being a kind, but not nice and overall blunt in conversation is pretty integral to his character, and I can't help but feel that the writers and directors of the live action were afraid of keeping this character trait because it could make him unlikeable. (despite that fact that he as been #1 in literally every One Piece popularity poll)

And obviously this is not a critique on the actors, I think they did a phenomenal job portraying their respective characters. This is more about how the writers/directors/producers decided to adapt and change the characters.

I kind of suspected that when I watched the anime (a more one to one adaptation of the manga) as well as read the manga (the source material) that I would end up having more issues with the live action. I do still like it for what it is, and I'm planning on watching the second season when it comes out, I just wanted to share how my opinion on it changed after reading/watching and catching up with the anime and manga.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Something has been bugging me since the end of the Playful land event: How does the world not notice that these people are never seen again after going to this park. Even if its stated that only the positive magicam posts are the only things that leave the park, surely those guest's families/friends/employers/neighbors that didn't attend the park wouldn't eventually notice their absence. Moreover, how does no one still on land notice that the moving park leaves whilst everyone is still on it, and it never comes back to drop them off.

Makes me wonder if Twst has some sort of United Nations that would be alerted of this and set a worldwide lock down, so when the park needs to connect to a mainland again the country's military can apprehended them.

One of the biiig question marks of both Glorious Masquerade and Stage in Playful Land are all of the potential repercussions of Rollo/Fellow's schemes coming into fruition. The stakes of these two events are notably much higher than your typical TWST event, and that opens their stories up to further scrutiny. I'll talk about GloMasq first, then Playful Land, since I feel the former is also relevant to the points the asker mentioned.

This is going to be kind of a long post, so I'll slap everything below a cut! ^^

I don't know how frequently this is brought up, but I've heard some say it's unrealistic how Rollo was able to find the seeds for a supposedly wiped out plant and cultivate a ton in secret for his master plan. Now, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief in this instance because:

Spite can make a person do insane things (and what is Rollo is not spiteful as heck)

Rollo has lore which paints him as a diligent person who has a talent for gardening, so it feels in line for his character; he also seems to have an interest in history and is extremely neurotic so I could buy that he obsessively researched until he came across records or some trail to the flowers

The Bell of Salvation's ringing twice in a row is what triggers the flowers to bloom, and this has not happened prior to GloMasq because Rollo is the one who is consistently tending to the bell + the bell normally has a preset schedule; anyone that passes by the flowers would do so when they are inactive, and they are such an old phenomenon to begin with that no one in modern day would really recognize it or the danger the flowers pose

The narrative of GloMasq never calls attention to HOW Rollo was able to get the seeds, so it's not something that comes to mind unless you as the fan speculate about it; this doesn't come across as a plot hole, but it would be one if the narrative had pointed it out because then it would practically be obligated to fill the details in

The other major logical fallacy of GloMasq is that Rollo's machinations would have inevitably led to chaos once the flowers reached the rest of Twisted Wonderland, as some sections of society are reliant on magic. Now, I disagree with the notion that mages could band together and fight back against the flowers; we've seen from how the NRC students handle it that this would be a pretty useless effort since only the super powerful (which are few and far between) would be able to muster up enough magic to overpower the flowers. The majority of people are non-mages though, so the argument could be made that these people could help the mages by weeding or something similar. The question is, could this truly outpace the growth and attack of the flowers, especially when the average mage has far lower magical reserves than the average NRC student??? Remember how long it took the NRC kids (who are mostly healthy, youthful, and strong) to weed just the flowers in the waterways? My money's on the crimson flowers just overrunning the entire world long before they can be plucked out.

I actually think most societies would still be intact and able to operate without magic, seeing as 90% of the human population (which is implied to be the predominant race) are non-mages. Only very select industries and professions require magic to operate, and these are overrepresented to us (the players) since we are seeing the perspectives of mainly students who attend an elite magic school. These magical sectors, as well as societies which run primarily on everyday magic use (like Briar Valley) are the ones that would be the most in danger. This most likely explains why Malleus in particular was so panicked about Rollo's plans: if fully realized, his people would be in peril. This is not outright stated, but can be inferred. The main story also retroactively affirms Malleus's fears of being powerless. He was always told by his grandmother that the Draconias have great power so they can defend their people's smiles. What happens if that magic is stripped away? Then he is no longer able to protect his people nor his loved ones. In this way, GloMasq works well as both a standalone event as well as supplements TWST' grander story. It does not challenge what we already know but does support it.

Altogether, most details in GloMasq make sense and the event doesn't go out of its way to create more questions than answers. This... isn't the case for Playful Land. In fact, I would say that Playful Land does the opposite (in trying to explain plot holes, it creates a LOT more questions) and tries to hand wave everything away with one thing: money.

Firstly, Playful Land is kidnapping and trafficking innocent people (even if the park is said to be a more recent phenomena). Would their friends and family not notice they went missing and report this to the local authorities? My guess is yes, it's just not elaborated on in the event itself since the perspective through which the story is told is limited (Yuu doesn't know this world that well + the NRC kids, who are the people Yuu gets a lot of the lore from, are mostly privileged and don't need to worry about crimes of this magnitude). I believe the "people go missing, why aren't the police doing anything about it" can maybe allude to real world crimes that occur but aren't reported or resolved, which is very scary to think about. I don't know if this was the intention of the devs, but the comparison is certainly there and can be made. Or maybe it’s just that law enforcement hasn’t caught up yet?

It’s also odd to me that so many people were able to be taken by this huge, very showy moving park. I think that Fellow lures people out under the cover of night (which was the case with the NRC students, I will assume this is the case for the other victims too), but???? Even so, there are night owls and cities that don’t sleep. You mean to imply there were zero witnesses whatsoever??? Even though Playful Land is so big and bright, especially at night… Maybe this part plays into the idea that crimes may be reported but aren’t necessarily resolved…? That’s the only way I can rationalize it in my head.

Where the bulk of the issues start to come in is in alllllll the surrounding details. For example, a lot of the NRC students Fellow is kidnapping are connected to wealthy and influential families. How the heck are Fellow and his benefactors going to keep Vil’s fans, the Kingscholars, the Shrouds, the Asims, the hypothetical Leech mob family, and maybe even Maleficia herself and Malleus, from coming after their asses???? AND FELLOW SPECIFICALLY FUCKED UP BY ENCOURAGING THEM TO “INVITE THEIR FRIENDS” FROM SCHOOL… because guess who will be spilling the beans to the headmaster about students going missing the day after inviting everyone to go to this supposedly “free” amusement park?? All the students Fellow told them to blab to just so he could catch more of them 😭 Then from there it would definitely escalate and governments might get involved since Leona is a prince and Kalim has royal relatives. I could see Playful Land having to go on the run (as in, have supplies delivered to them rather then docking for them, knowing that police or military would be there to arrest them at ports). But they can’t do that forever, especially since not being able to dock effectively prevents them from picking up new prey.

With the combined powers of the NRC victims’ families, they would surely be able to challenge the people behind Playful Land, no?? Unless you mean to tell me these mysterious people somehow have more power than literal royalty AND the Asims combined??? And we’ve never heard of them until just now??? Okay, you’re starting to lose me here because this is adding on top of the lore we already have but in a way that comes off as difficult to believe since the amount of wealth and power some of the NRC kids have is already ridiculous.

Playful Land is also supposedly constructed by very powerful mages which makes me wonder why they got together to create such a thing???? Did they literally all get bribed with enough money to agree to this project? Were they deceived about the true nature of it?? Are the other 4 of the top 5 strongest mages involved in any way??? How was this not publicized that it was a project that very strong mages were working on given how few mages there actually are and how much Playful Land is talked about in online rumors??

Speaking of online rumors, that’s another thing. How are the people behind Playful Land able to monitor any and all talk about their park to this degree?? This is the internet we’re talking about here, surely stuff will fall through the cracks or come to light eventually. Someone would leak insider info, someone would say something.

The easy explanation given for everything is that there are very rich and very powerful people running these operations. They would be able to silence people who speak out against them or bribe the corrupt into complying or looking the other way. Maybe that’s just a sad truth I don’t want to acknowledge (because this stuff for sure happens irl 😞) but that all sounds WAY too convenient for fiction (where the devs have total control over the circumstances) especially when we’re given so little lore for who these benefactors actually are.

There’s still way too many questions and even turning on suspension of disbelief couldn’t stop those questions from arising in my head. At best, I think we could give the devs the benefit of the doubt and say this was intentional to keep up the idea of a “shadowy” underbelly to Twisted Wonderland society. Even so, that doesn’t account for every little thing and the event’s attempts to explain it all only makes more things to explain.

I tried to explain my perspective as best I can here! However, I admit that there may be bias in my judgment because I’ve made it no secret that GloMasq is my favorite TWST story event. Please let me know if you have any other issues with GloMasq’s narrative or if you have explanations for the issues I pointed out for Playful Land; I would love to hear your takes too ^^

[formosusiniquis]

when you're fifteen

Even as he hands over the platter of chocolate chip miracles he makes, Steve sighs. It's a full bodied affair that makes Eddie nervous on instinct. "We need to talk about Mike."

It is and isn't a surprise.

Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson; Steve Harrington & Mike Wheeler WC: 4044 | Rated T | Tags/Themes: Good Babysitter Steve, Period Atypical Depictions of DnD, HoH!Steve, Disabled!Eddie Ao3

Eddie prided himself on his ability to manage a table. A forever DM, four years into a lifetime sentence, he can keep a story on track and, more importantly, keep tempers in check for hours at a time. 

He kept track of a thousand little details across notebooks, binders, and just trapped in his own brain. He knew everything about his NPCs, the world, his player’s characters, and the things that drove his players nuts. He had plans, backup plans, and vague ideas of shit he could do if things went completely and totally off the rails despite all of those plans. That was one of the things he held fast on his tongue the first time he failed senior year. Of course he didn’t pass. He’d taken on the mantle of Dungeon Master. He had to put together a story that took into account: Jeff’s high stakes backstory with the missing mother and bounty on his head, Gareth’s need to flirt with anything age appropriate that had a pulse, and Joey’s tactical mind when it comes to battle. Wasn’t it enough that he was going to class, he had to do shit at home about it too?

He didn’t like saying it. He liked to bitch about it a lot, actually. Eddie wasn’t really sure what he’d do with himself if he wasn’t The DM. It was like a core part of his identity.

It made the current situation he was in more world rocking than he really wanted to deal with.

He liked to think, if he couldn’t feel the remaining muscles in his side screaming in agony because he was sitting wrong -- or for too long or both -- and if his lower back wasn’t seizing and spasming for the same or maybe a brand new reason it had decided to come up with today, that he’d be able to manage this table just as well as he always had. Eight really wasn’t that different from three.

Except that combat is impossible to manage, each round took forever and that’s when everyone was paying attention. Except that there hasn’t been a satisfying story moment for Jeffrey the Jovial or Dustin’s Sir Rathington in the last four sessions. Except that Erica has been scribbling something in her notebook that probably wasn’t campaign notes since she hadn’t called him on the plot hole he caught session planning a month ago and hasn’t been able to fix -- and is more likely to have something to do with the way he noticed her looking at Uhura and Chapel when she was watching Star Trek reruns with Steve.

Except that Mike has been screaming at Dustin and Lucas for the better part of five minutes and Eddie really isn’t sure how to fix it.

“The plan is stupid. Did you even spend more than ten seconds thinking about it or did you decide that Will could just roll another character and we could save the resources.”

“Will could roll another character. It's not the first time he's rolled another character.” Lucas points out for what might be the third time, Eddie’s lost count.

“This whole thing is about resources, Mike.” Dustin snaps, “We’ll all be rolling new characters if we go into this stupid fucking fight while Gareth has no spell slots, Lucas is down to three arrows, Joey’s already used his second wind, and half the party is below half health.”

“It doesn’t matter, if we don’t go into the fight now Will is going to turn into some bloodsucking vampire spawn.”

Eddie knows this is the point that he should grab the reins again. He should prompt one of them to make a decision, or better yet, take the decision away from them entirely. But there’s a numbness in his thigh that has somehow spread to his mouth; it’s different from the pain the rest of his body is in, not really better or worse, and just as distracting. 

The rest of the table is quiet, boredom and annoyance plain on their faces. But they’ve also stopped looking to him to fix the problem. That’s the worst thing the Upside Down took from him, he thinks, even as his body is radiating pain from places he used to be able to forget he had.

“Or maybe it’s a trap,” Lucas points out. And it should be, but Lucas is a far better tactician than Eddie who already knows he won’t want to deal with the work it would take to do that well. “Y’know since you made all your weak spots pretty clear to Lord Ellias.”

“Or,” Dustin drawls out with a Harrington’s level of bitch and ire, “we could trust Eddie to turn this into a fucking story moment.”

“You guys are both so full of shit, just-” Mike has his nose curled and lip snarled, Eddie can feel the breeze of the blade swinging down to deliver the death blow to this campaign and adventuring party.

“Alright time to take a break.” Steve claps his hands, an angel come from on high to save Eddie. “Get up, get a snack, move your feet. Give my dining room some time to air out before it smells like nerd forever.”

Mike turns the full weight of his aggression on to Steve, who hopefully has a damage immunity or advantage on saves at the very least otherwise this is looking like a short talk, “We can't just take a break. Do you not get what the stakes are here? We've got to save-”

“Save someone who will still be in danger in twenty minutes.” Steve steamrolls over Mike’s argument with an unaffected ease. Eddie can feel the mood of the table lift just a bit, now that they’re about to be rescued.

“You just don't get it.”

“I get that it's pretend.” In a pre-Vencapocalypse world that would have been enough to get Eddie fighting on Little Wheeler’s side, but much as DnD is still his life. Fuck, it is all just pretend. “Go take a lap.”

“Ugh why do we even come over here. We could do this at my house without washed up jocks interrupting us.” Mike says but he gets up. Storming off to god knows where in the monstrosity of Steve’s house. Will, quiet as he always seems to get when he’s the center of one of these drag outs, trails off after Mike with an eye roll at the other two sophomores and an apologetic shrug for Steve.

And Eddie has his table again. Quiet and still, waiting for him to say something. Like there’s even anything to say when his very own Deus Ex Machina is leaving the room without so much as a backward glance at the poor schmucks he’s saved. “Well,” he says with a clap of his hands, “My blood sugar is dropping, so I’m going to shove as many of those cookies I smelled earlier into my mouth as I can in twenty minutes.” Because as much as they weren’t looking to him before, they need the DM to break the spell of the table. That’s how the whole thing goes.

And they scatter once it breaks. Eddie’s original Hellfire boys stay at the table, their ease at the Harrington house has been hardwon and the argument has rekindled something nerdy and skittish in them. Erica has headed off to the corner of the house Steve has let her claim as her own, nose still buried in her notebook. He doesn’t know where Lucas and Dustin are, but wherever they’ve gone they aren’t around to watch him struggle to pull himself out of his throne with his cane. He should just give in and let Steve raise the seat, half the problem is that it sits too low -- but knowing that and being willing to admit it at any point other than when he’s in PT levels of misery from pulling himself up are very different things.

Steve has his back to the door again, by the time Eddie makes his way to the kitchen. He has a bizarre semi-awareness of his surroundings that can be hard to predict. Sometimes it’s freaky how Steve can call out Dustin or Erica from a different room with an almost parental ‘eyes in the back of his head’ sixth sense. Other times his own soulmate can get the drop on him, managing to get her arms wrapped around his middle before he even realizes they’re in the same room.

It’s better to slam his cane against the floor a couple times. To let Steve feel the vibrations through the floorboards with his sock feet, that way nobody has to get hurt or feel guilty for doing the hurting.

Getting to see Steve’s grin bloom across his face as he flips that famous hair and catches sight of Eddie isn’t so bad either.

Next to Steve, it’s safe to prop his cane against the counter. He can rest his hips against the sure, solid surface and relax in the presence of his boyfriend while the blood returns to his limbs and a new kind of discomfort settles in. A hand, warm and sudsy finds the back of his neck. A strong thumb digging into a knot that had been there since at least last week with an erotic precision.

“You’ve got to stop letting them keep you in that chair for so long.”

"If we take breaks we'll just be here longer."

He shrugs, pulling his other hand from the dish water to pull Eddie into a gentle hold. "So be here longer."

"You'd get sick of the fighting. I'd get sick of the fighting." Actually it was probably better not to remind Steve of that. "You know I really did want one of those famous Stevie Henderson cookies."

Even as he hands over the platter of chocolate chip miracles he makes, Steve sighs. It's a full bodied affair that makes Eddie nervous on instinct. "We need to talk about Mike."

It is and isn't a surprise. "I know the yelling is a lot, Sweetheart, I'm sorry. You don't have a migraine, do you? I can talk to him and make him chill out a bit." That last part is absolutely a lie; he doesn't think he could get Mike under control right now if he had a stun gun and half a pound of Argyle’s primo Cali weed.

Not that it matters Steve has on his scrunchy faced 'you're wrong about something,' look, Eddie just needs to give him the minute it'll take to get his thoughts together. "You know I love you right?"

“In this dimension and any others,” Eddie supplies.

Steve smiles, feather soft, and runs a soothing hand through Eddie's hair the way he always does right before he says something atrociously bitchy. "I turn my hearing aids off the second you all start playing. If I had to listen to your game three different times, three different ways I'd drive my car into a portal."

He keeps going the way he does when he's afraid he's been too mean and wants to try to soften his edges for general consumption, like Eddie hadn't fallen in love with him the first time he called Dusin a butthead. "This way you and Dust can still use me as a sounding board for your plots and theories and I don't have to listen to my favorite nerds try to remember if 5+7 is 11 or 12."

“So what’s?”

“I’m worried about him!” Steve insists. Eddie might pride himself on his ability to handle a table, but he knows Steve is proud of his way with the kids. His relationship with each of them is rich and distinct, the way he handles each of them unique.

But it’s Mike.

Something must cross his face. He can only call it something, because he’s honestly not sure what emotion he’s feeling other than headache and how many cookies can I eat before they start tasting like nausea. But something else must have been there that causes Steve to cross his arms and glare.

“Yeah, of course, you’re worried about him. We are worried about him. Why are we worried about him, other than worried about what an asshole he’s been lately?”

That was not the right thing to say either, Eddie’s really rolling straight ones today. Steve��s glare shutters even further closed, and seriously it’s Mike. The same kid who called Steve a washed up jock not ten minutes ago. Who takes every single offered opportunity, and even some that he makes himself, to bitch and glare at Hawkins own #1 babysitter and monster hunter. 

“He’s a teenager with more trauma than a ‘Nam vet. But even if he weren’t he’s not an asshole for being barely fifteen and not knowing when to shut the hell up. Do you remember the kind of shit you were saying back then?”

Big brother Steve has successfully landed a critical hit. Eddie does remember the kind of shit he used to say. Just like he knows Steve remembers the kind of shit he used to say. And they both remember the shit that they used to say to one another. How Eddie called Steve a braindead future Reganite who wouldn’t know good taste if it spit in his mouth. How Steve had called Eddie a tryhard that was so desperate to be different because that was the only way he could hide having nothing to offer.

“So we’re worried?”

“I just don’t want him to say something he can’t walk back because he forgot the thing he’s getting upset over is pretend.” He runs a finger down Eddie’s splayed hands. A tickling sensation he can feel down the path it traces from the back of his palm and down his middle finger and, in a phantom mirror, down his spine. “I know you get into your characters, or whatever, I’m sure this is bringing up a lot of memories but he’s going to regret lashing out if it means he pushes away Dustin or Lucas or one of the other guys.”

“I notice you left out Will.”

“Yeah well, Will is more likely to get hurt by something he says when lashing out while they aren’t playing exposure therapy the game. I mean seriously, you had to kidnap him? That’s where your, ‘Stevie, baby, what should I do with them this week? They decided to do something stupid,’ bitching and moaning landed you?”

Eddie doesn’t even really have time to let himself feel the fluttery, squishy feeling he wants to feel -- cause Steve does actually listen when they’ve got their feet tangled on the sofa together, each working on their own things -- before it’s getting smacked by down by the paladin of his heart. “No, no, that isn’t where I landed. I had a perfectly acceptable diplomacy mission prepared, with a back up fight that they were supposed to run away from. What do you want me to do, Sunshine? I gotta give the game some stakes. It’s not exactly fun for Will if he knows he’s indestructible.”

Maybe, he thinks, he should just stop talking today. Just cancel the rest of the session entirely. Will gets carried off by the vampire spawn, half dead and unsaveable, the party on its last legs, unable to agree on a course of action; and actually that’s where we’re gonna end things come back next week and hope Steve even lets us in the house after the screaming we’ve all done. Why? Because he can feel every joint in his body and every one of them is in pain. Because there’s been the dull throb of a low grade headache beating an even pulse in his temples since he woke up this morning. But mostly because every time he opens his stupid fucking mouth to talk Steve stops touching him, and that sucks absolute balls.

“I maybe had an idea,” Steve says. His voice dips and slides while he keeps his hands small, quiet, and close to his chest. Something Robin told him, and he’s now noticing, means Steve has thought about this idea a lot, long enough that he’s convinced himself it’s bad. Eddie’s noticed that even when these ideas aren’t phrased well, they’re never bad.

“I know it’s like rule number one: don’t split the party,” Steve can’t help but roll his eyes when he says it, an instinctive bit of brotherly mockery of Dustin, he would guess. “But what if you split the group a bit. Mike can go after Will, I’m sure Erica would be down to kill some vampires. She loves a chance to test drive her new feats and shit. Then Jeff and Dustin and whoever else can finish up that thing? With the missing girlfriend or whatever? And once that’s done they reunite to do whatever’s next on the list, save the kingdom.”

Eddie sits with that for a bit.

Impulsive is still his middle name, but sometime between being eaten alive by other dimensional hell creatures and getting a thousand and six tiny, itchy stitches removed he’s started giving things second and even third thoughts. Though in this case the second thoughts are less ‘is this a good idea’ and more ‘will Steve bend me over that solid oak dining table and critique my DM notes while he rails me.’

As his stomach swoops, his lower body twinges in a much less enjoyable way. Letting him know that now he’d been standing too long, or leaning against the counter the wrong way, or maybe something else entirely that made his legs tired of doing one of the few things they were made to do. 

Figures he finally lands a hot boyfriend and he's got chronic pain keeping him from getting his dick wet.

“If you’ve already got another idea-”

“No,” he rushes to assure Steve, who needs to stay confident in his own ideas for all kinds of reasons but right now mostly so he’ll be willing to play into this new fantasy of Eddie’s once his body is willing to cooperate with the standing and the bending it’s going to require. “No, it’s a fantastic idea. I’m plotting as we speak.” 

And that isn’t a total lie. Forever DM, he can think about all the fun ways the love of his life and reason he’s still living could degrade his current campaign -- An oath of vengeance paladin questing to save a lost love, isn’t that a little played out. Oh wow, rat swarms in a dungeon, they’re never gonna see that coming -- and figure out how to trick the group into thinking splitting the party was their own idea.

“How long,” he asks his resident child expert, “do you think it would take Will to roll up a new character?”

The smile that tips the corners of Steve’s face is the best part of his day. “Will always has an extra character rolled up with the rest of his stuff in his folder."

Things are slotting together in his head now, and as Steve's hands come around to do something magical in a spot on his back that probably has a name but mostly makes his legs feel like they should really belong to a baby deer.

“So Will…”

“Can convince Mike, and get a chance to try out the new thingy he built. He’s been waiting to talk to you about it.”

Eddie’s getting excited now, hands shaking in the good way. He doesn’t even care that his knee locks as he tries to bounce on his toes, just lets his hands get out the excited energy. “And the band can go do the story side plot shit I’ve been putting off…” 

“With Dustin,” Steve reminds, “cause he’ll want to go wherever there’s the best chance to stir up shit. You already know Erica is going to go where there’s a chance to prove she’s the best at fighting, Lucas too. Not the fighting thing. He’ll go to round out the group, and so his mom doesn’t have to worry about keeping track of one more thing on the family calendar.”

“You’re a genius, Sweetheart.” He snags Steve by the collar, ignoring his bitching that the two fingered pinch he’s got it in is going to stretch it out, and pulls him close. Pressing a kiss on the corner of his perfect boyfriend’s pleased little smile. “I gotta go talk to Will about this character.”

“Send Mike down when you do?”

He’s surprised when he gets no argument, barely gets acknowledgement, when he finds Will and Mike in the guest bathroom and separates them. Mike slips from the room with nothing but a backward glance at Will, who smiles supportively. Once he clears the room, it takes next to zero prompting to get Will to talk about his backup character. The ‘thingy’ he'd been working on a tricked out ranger build that's going to annihilate. 

There's something fresh, brightening, about Will's enthusiasm for the character that infects Eddie too. It gets him excited, for the first time since everyone arrived, to sit down around their over crowded table and play the hour of set up it's going to take to get the party ready to be split. 

And Will doesn't duck his head anymore when Eddie pushes at him and his DnD expertise, he just pushes back. Together they work out a couple tweaks that will make the build fit better in the party, flesh out a backstory that they can integrate even if it doesn't end up going anywhere, and it doesn't really feel like time passes at all. Until Sinclair is sticking his head through the door, surprise artfully hidden at who he finds, as he asks if they're ready to go.

Mike is conspicuously absent from the table when Eddie makes his way to it, and that won't do at all. He's not an asshole, he's just 15. Something like shame crawls up the back of his throat as Steve's reminder sounds in his head. He remembers 15 and the things he said but more than that, as he looks around the table, he remembers being the last to arrive at a hangout of people you're already worried hate you only to find them having a good time without you. 

Eddie has always prided himself on his ability to run a good session. "Stevie, gimme back our paladin, do I need to bring in a hostage negotiator."

A cookie held in one hand while the other smooths down the ruffled fringe of his bangs, Mike re-enters the dining room. The back of his Hellfire shirt is bunched and, if that weren't sign enough he'd been on the receiving end of a perfect Harrington hug, he looks settled. A smile tugging at his face that Eddie hadn't realized how much he missed, he looks boyish and happy and if Eddie didn't before he understands Steve's mission to keep these kids kids by whatever means necessary.

"Alright, now where were we?” He says once Mike is back in his seat beside Will, “Ah yes, you all watch in horror as the vampire spawn, hastened, dash away from you all with the unconscious, but still alive, body of Sir William the Wizened." Before anyone can restart the shouting, and he knows there will be shouting now that they’ve all had a chance to look over their notes and their character sheets, he barrels on. “From the hill behind you comes a shot. An arrow flies, thwip thwip. It slices between you all, before sinking into the back of one of the spawn at the back of the pack. He stumbles to the ground and the rest of the pack leave him to die.”

“We can interrogate him!” 

“Worry about who’s behind us, dude.”

He doesn’t let Mike or Dustin derail him, Eddie continues, “As you turn the hill behind you is nothing but mist. You all know the range of an elven bow, but whoever fired it is nowhere to be seen. You wait, breath held, as a figure all in black slowly approaches. You get the feeling you see him now only because he wants to be seen.

“Will, describe your new character for us!”

[leebrontide]

Ok so I said I would do a post on “reasons you’re not writing” from the POV of a writer/therapist who works with anxious, depressed, and neurodivergent clients. If you dig that, read on.

But firstly, a disclaimer. This list is far from comprehensive. Don’t yell at me if your experience isn’t represented. This is a tumblr post. Have realistic expectations.

Also, sometimes the reason you’re not writing is that your other obligations are just taking all of your energy and focus. Fixing that is well beyond the scope of this.

That said, here’s a bunch of barriers I see people run into all the time.

1) You’re afraid of failing, and subconsciously feel like it’s safer not to try.

This is a tricky one, because it's probably messing up many areas of your life, which in turn means you're going to frequently feel stressed out in general, which speaks to the point above.

This is around about where the general internet will tend to offer you an array of affirmations to use to sooth yourself. And that's fine. If those work for you, then use them! BUT, if the affirmations aren't working, then friend you have a bigger project on your hands.

You need to get comfortable with failing, particularly at creative projects. I know that can feel scary and vulnerable, but you won't take risks if you can't fail, which is going to hem in your creativity so hard that your motivation will starve. This is why people talk about writing a garbage draft. Not because they want to make garbage, but because they need the option of making garbage in order to take risks. That may or may not work for you, but either way, you really might wanna look at how to lower your stakes.

2) You’re not sure what you’re trying to communicate.

You can make things happen in the story, but you feel like you’re wandering around aimlessly. You don't find you're making decisions with conviction. It might be hard to really fall in love with any of your writing decisions.

For this one, I suggest stepping back and figuring out what the core of your enthusiasm for a story consists of. That CAN be a message or philosophy. It can also be a feeling or a vibe or a dynamic. That gives you a structure that you can build your decisions around, that you can be enthusiastic about.

3) You switched hyperfocus. And maybe your new hyperfocus is a lot of fun, but you feel sadness thinking about the WIP you left behind.

This one has a similar need to the one before, with an added layer of nuance, because you're probably already struggling with identifying what does interest you. This can make people feel really hopeless and helpless.

I have three totally different suggestions for this one. The first is to just be patient with yourself. Sometimes it's good for your brain to just indulge, and let your brain mine for dopamine where it can. Like, lean in. Spa day for your brain, as long as it's feeling good.

Secondly, see if you can find creative ways to weave your hyperfocus into your writing. Is there a dynamic in your favorite show that can inspire your writing, even if it's an original work? Do you want to take a moment to think about how transportation works in the history of your world? Can you consider your MCs relationship to old movies?

It doesn't always work, but sometimes instead of trying to switch things over, you can build a bridge, that gives depth and texture to your work.

Finally- consider embracing short fiction! Do some writing inspired directly by the hyperfocus du joir while it's around.

4) You feel like nothing you say will be interesting to anyone else.

We understand this is a self-esteem issue, right? You're gonna have to develop the trust that your experiences are not so utterly unrelatable to everyone else that your perspective has no value.

Friend, you are a human, with human experiences, writing for other humans. Trust me, you can do this.

It can help to think about your actual convictions. What do you know? What have you experienced? What matters to you? Funnily enough, the cure for feeling like nothing in you is worth expressing is to pour more of yourself into your writing.

5) You’re collapsed. It’s hard to feel enthusiasm and energy for things.

You're not gonna like this, but for this one I encourage you to put your keyboard or notebook down and stop trying to write right now. I know that when you're feeling better the writing feels good, and you're trying to feel better because everyone is telling you to feel better.

But it's not working, is it? If it was, you wouldn't be reading this.

For many people, writing requires them to be able to feel investment and excitement, because those feelings help steer them towards what's going to work and be exciting for the reader.

Your best bet is to focus your energy on finding gentle little activities that aren't so hard to focus on. Ideally, ones that get you moving just a little bit. You'll have a better time writing when you're less collapsed.

Shaming yourself and getting hopeless and anxious because you can't do this really difficult task right now will make you more collapsed, not less, which will be the opposite of helpful.

And yes, these are depression symptoms. Consider reaching out for supports and assessment around that if you can.

6) You can’t figure out the next step.

Thank God for the internet, this one is a lot more actionable than it used to be.

The first thing to do here is step back and ask yourself "where am I getting lost?" If you have someone to talk this through with, even better.

Then you hop on to your favorite search engine and type in "Stuck on my outline 2nd act" or "can't get started editing" or whatever. People LOVE giving writing advice. There's plenty around. Read some advice! Try things out!

Now here is the critical point- when and if that advice fails, stop and figure out why it failed. For example, I have a short term memory disorder. Most writing process advice is for people who do not have short term memory impairments. So a lot of the advice just plain didn't work for me.

By figuring out that my subpar memory was in the way of my writing process, I was able to put together processes that work for my specific brain and my specific process. You can read about that in more depth here and here.

Frankenstien yourself a process out of stolen bits of other people's processes, with an understanding of your own personalized needs as the lightning that brings it all to life. If you have even traits of ADHD or autism or other forms of neurodiversity (no diagnosis needed) you might also google "ADHD editing hacks".

Finally, and maybe most importantly, chuck anything that you can't adapt right into the trash. I don't care how great the writer who gave the advice is. That's what works for their life and their brain. You have neither. Writing advice is only as useful as it is adaptable.

7) You think of yourself as someone who doesn’t finish things, possibly with history to back that up.

Oh, I feel this one. This was me so hard. For so long.

Make room for the idea that you can and will change over time. Getting shit done is largely a matter of developing a bunch of skills. You've already developed so many different skills in your life that you might not even recognize some of them as skills. But I promise you that you have.

But you see #6? Go read that one again. If you're not finishing things, it's because there's something missing in your routine and process that you haven't developed skills around yet.

I'm not gonna tell you it's easy, but you can find and isolate the barriers and figure out ways around them.

8) You have too many projects and feel frozen when you try to pick one to work on.

Ask yourself if this is a real problem. It may be! Maybe you dream of making a living off of your writing! That requires a level of consistency.

But it also might just be that you've had it drilling into your head that not finishing things is some kind of personal failing.

Write out all your WIPs and story seeds.

See if some of them can be mushed into one. Some AMAZING stories come from people combining story ideas that seem separate into a single story. That's fun.

See if some of them are not for finishing. What's that post going around? Some stories are for finishing, and some are just for "getting the wiggles out"? That's solid advice.

Maybe some stories are just for daydreaming on the bus. Maybe some stories are actually only 1/3rd of a story, and you want to leave it to grow in the ground before you try to do anything with it. That's incredibly valid and common!

If you actually look at the stories that you have that are for finishing, right now, you may find a much more manageable number. And if you only have like 2 or 3 things you're working on, you can just let them take turns as the passion for each project takes you.

Keep a file somewhere of these undeveloped ideas. I have a scrivner file that has each idea it's own little sub-document so I can add thoughts to them for years as they percolate.

9) You get lost in preparation and don’t make it to the page.

A couple different things can be happening here. One thing that may be happening is that you're just a writer who needs a lot of research and prep time before you write. I'm like that. I will prewrite intensively for a year before I write a single sentence. That sounds ridiculous to a lot of people but it works with how my brain works and then when I do start writing I can easily and happily churn out a consistent 2-4k words per hour. If it works it works! Don't let anyone shame you!

The other option is that you feel like you're going to get something wrong/fail/get in trouble if you get anything "wrong". You feel safer doing research, so that's where you stay.

Only you can figure out which it is. Introspect. Then you know whether to focus on managing anxiety or just keep preppin.

10) You want to write, but when you sit down to write suddenly it’s two hours later and you’ve written like 5 words but curated 3 new playlists, read some fanfiction, and argued with some strangers on the internet.

Brains are rough, aren't they.

There are two schools of thought here. Both work, but not for all the same people.

Option 1 is to clear distractions. Download one of those apps that keeps you off the internet. Put your phone someplace that you need a ladder to reach, so you have to very actively decide to go get it. Noise cancelling headphones. Comfy clothes. Protein rich snacks and a beverage within easy reach. Pee ahead of time. Make a routine out of it to train your brain into associating this with focus.

Option 2 is to figure out the optimal level of distraction. When I write nonfiction I almost always have mindless home renovation shows on at the same time. Because nonficiton writing isn't quite stimulating enough to hold my attention. So my attention wanders and I end up doing something that WILL hold my attention. When I write fiction, I need music OR to be outdoors where I can look at trees or clouds or people on the sidewalk. I can't watch any kind of TV.

Think of your attention like a pie chart. Different writing tasks may take up different percentages of that pie. If you're awesome at focus maybe you can just put 90% of your focus on writing, and the other 10% is just making sure you don't forget to eat or something. But if you can't reliably conjure up more than 70% for one thing, then fill the rest of the pie with things you can easily pick up and put down. I only look up at the home decorating shows when my passive audio scanning suggests it's something I want to look up at.

These are both good approaches. Ignore anyone who demonizes either. That only means they've found the version that works for them.

You have your brain. Build a process for your brain.

I hope this helps. I have a free monthly newsletter if you like hearing my rants. It is...not consistently about writing advice or mental health. One time I wrote about how genetically modified goats are related to French colonized Madagascar in the 1800s as well as the modern US military. One time I broke down modern challenges to medical privacy practice policies. This is all to do with what I write but in an idiosyncratic way.

Cause I gotta write about what I care about.

[yubnubforhire]

I’ve seen a lot of people decry criticism of the rwrb movie as simply either homophobic or anti-cringe, with the statement ‘let queer people have our cringe rom-coms’ a common defense. This idea is flawed for many reasons, not least of which being that this movie is like… barely queer. Sure it’s about a queer couple, but that’s about where it stops.

First off there’s the blatant bi erasure, with no discussion of Nora’s sexuality, no June/Nora/Pez, the word bisexual only being used once or twice in the whole movie, etc. Second off is the complete lack of queer education or community: where is Alex learning about the gay lib movement and feeling like he understands something new, deep within himself? Where is Henry talking about his role amongst the erased queer figures of the past? Where are the crowds supporting both of them, in the US and the UK? (the scene at buckingham where you don’t even see the crowd felt so cheap) Where was Amy’s role as queer elder and protector? Where was Luna, and Alex’s realization as to why he looked up to him so much and why his betrayal hurt so bad? Where was Alex realizing he and Liam had actually ‘had a thing’ when they were younger, and reconnecting with him as someone who can fully be himself? Where was all the support when they got outed? Where the fuck was Catherine? Where were Bea and Catherine fighting for them during the confrontation at buckingham? Movie!firstprince feel so isolated and without community, which is just SO not the world CMQ created in the book.

More broadly, the movie just felt so shallow. I completely understand the need for adaptation and translation to a new medium, but so many of the things they changed either lower the stakes or remove them entirely. Bea is a non-character, with no depth or backstory. Nora only exists to tell Alex to fuck Henry. Pez gets all of one line in the entire movie. June does not exist, which should completely change things because Alex does not act like the only/eldest child of the POTUS. We never really see the emails and a lot of them are adapted to onscreen dialogue, so what exactly was leaked? Why are they called the Waterloo letters? No one watching the movie alone will know. Who leaked them? I figure the movie implies it was Miguel, but then why have Richards be a character at all? CMQ was making a point with the Richards/Luna story, and the movie having a new side character as the “villain” is just… so disappointing. We don’t see any of the scenes of Henry acknowledging how fucked up the monarchy is (other than a few throwaway jokes), the comparison to the Empire, any of the Bea storyline, or him trying to avoid military service and renounce his royal inheritance, so the one line towards the end when movie!Henry has an outburst about the monarchy being antiquated is just completely unearned and comes out of nowhere.

They kept the line where Oscar tells Alex that ‘sometimes you just have to jump and hope it’s not a cliff’ but it’s now completely devoid of the context— that line is about Oscar telling Alex he doesn’t regret getting together with Ellen, no matter how it ended. It doesn’t work the same if Oscar and Ellen are still happily married! (Justice for Leo also tbh)

In the confrontation at Buckingham, the king (don’t get me started on the things they changed to avoid comparisons to queen liz) still suggests to Henry that they should claim the leaks are deepfakes and deny it, but Alex already gave the live televised speech in the movie timeline! It’s out already! The entire scene with the king honestly just does not work if Alex has already made the speech. Also side note, there’s absolutely no way in turbohell that Alex would make that speech without talking to Henry first.

There’s so much more I could talk about, from more script shenanigans to the Pip of it all, but this is honestly already way too long. All I want to say now is that it’s obviously everyone’s prerogative to like a movie or not, and nothing anyone else says should change the way you personally feel about a piece of art. That does not mean, however, that any criticism of said art is incorrect or unwarranted. You can like something and still acknowledge its flaws. And no, cringiness is not this movie’s main flaw.

[redgoldsparks]

March Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

I post my reviews throughout the month on Storygraph and Goodreads, and do roundups here and on patreon. Reviews below the cut.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 4 by Ryoko Kui

I'm reading these books so fast I can barely remember which parts of the plot happened in which volume but know that I am still having a great time!

Delicious in Dungeon vol 5 by Ryoko Kui

Oh, this story has taken a darker turn, and also just introduced a whole bunch more characters. Will I be able to keep track of them all? I hope so!

Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb, read by Anne Flosnik 

Unfortunately, this is definitely the weakest Robin Hobb book I've read so far. I was expecting to like it less than the glorious, 5-star previous trilogy, but I actually think I'm going to skip the rest of the Rain Wild Chronicles and read summaries online to get to the next Fitz books. This book follows five main POV characters. This works fairly well for the first half, when the characters are all in different physical locations. However once all of the characters meet up, we start getting the same scene from multiple different POVs, which feels extremely repetitive. Also, almost EVERY SCENE includes a flashback, often a lengthy flashback, sometimes to something that happened only the previous day and could have been told as present-moment action. This writing choice baffled me. It's something I can't remember struggling with in any of Hobb's previous books, but by the end it was driving me up a wall. The book also moved very slowly; the stakes feel lower, and the character far less emotionally true than in the two Fitz trilogies. Disappointing, but I will keep moving forward towards the next part of the series I want to read.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 6 by Ryoko Kui

Damn, a lot of characters get murdered in this volume! Good thing almost everyone who dies in the dungeon can be revived. Also, very excited to finally meet the cat ninja I've been seeing fan art of since before I even started the series :3

Delicious in Dungeon vol 7 by Ryoko Kui

I am still completely caught up in this series. I love the glimpse of Senshi's past revealed in this volume, and the lore of the dungeon that is still being revealed. There was a line in here about how the dungeon leaves you alone if you don't ask much of it, but that if you have strong desires it throws even more obstacles into your way. Our heroes have such big goals right now, but they're marching ahead regardless!

School Trip by Jerry Craft 

A satisfying new installment in the New Kid series from funny, talented, charming Jerry Craft! I appreciated how this volume started to complicate some of the students who had been left a bit one-dimensional in previous books. Several people stood up to and called out a bully; new friendships were built; and Jordan Banks left Paris even more inspired than ever to follow his dreams of becoming an artist. This series has a lot of jokes, but also a lot of heart!

A Frog in Fall (and Later On) by Linnea Sterte 

Minor frog is less than a year old, and is dismayed when winter begins to steal all of the light and warmth from his world. Instead of bunking down safely with his mentor to wait for spring, he sets out on a journey with two vagabond toads passing by on a quest to make it all the way to the tropics. They tramp through the Japanese countryside, encountering tree spirits, new friends, dangers, and views the likes of which minor frog had never even imagined. This is a gorgeous book; every page worth pouring over, an economy of line and detail building a beautiful and mysterious world of talking animals and miniature packaged foods. Made me want to draw.

Dark Rise by CS Pacat read by Christian Coulson 

In 1820s London, orphaned Will tries to earn enough as a dockworker to survive- and evade the killers pursuing him. Violet dresses in her half-brother's clothes and sneaks onto a ship in the Thames to watch a man be branded with his master's mark. Katherine excitedly anticipates her engagement to one of London's richest and most mysterious lords; his gallantry nearly makes up for the fact that he's twice her age. And in the bowels of one of that lord's ships, James tortures a man for information. All of these characters are 16 or 17 years old, but all of them are tangled in an ancient conflict between the Light and the Dark which stretches back into an age of magic before history. This is CS Pacat's YA fantasy debut, and it contains a lot of tropes very familiar to both YA and high fantasy- there are shades of both Tolkien and Rowling in this. Its fast-paced and action-packed, but especially in the first third of the story, the characters all felt fairly thin. None of them have quirks, hobbies, career hopes, relationships outside of immediate family, school, or work; or much more than a brief sketch of past. It took until the mid-way point for what I consider Pacat's major strengths as a writer to emerge: intense, homoerotic interpersonal sparring between characters operating under major power imbalances. Every scene in which the seductive, manipulative, powerful evil gay faced off against the good boy chosen one crackled with energy. Unfortunately, there were only four of these scenes in the whole book. It ends on a cliff-hanger, because of course it does, with a tempting set up for book two; but that doesn't entirely excuse the fact that the first 50% felt like set up. I will definitely keep reading, but long-time Pacat fans should take note that this is toned down version of what I expected based on Captive Prince.

Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls (re-read before event)

What an accomplishment! I savored every page of Feeding Ghosts, absolutely floored by the labor and courage that went into the writing of this book. The inking is gorgeous, the history is clear, digestible, and devastating. This book threads the line between honesty and compassion in a way that I appreciate so much in any memoir, but especially one dealing with family. Hulls lays out the story of three generations of women starting with her grandmother, Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist who faced intense persecution during the rise of Communism in China, who penned a popular and scandalous memoir and then suffered a mental breakdown. This left her only daughter, Rose, a student at an elite boarding school with no parental figures and no other family to lean on. Eventually Rose earned a scholarship to an American university and in the end moved her mother into her California home. Sun Yi haunted that home during the author's own childhood. The unexamined trauma and codependency of Sun Yi and Rose drove the author to the extreme edges of the Earth, seeking freedom from their ghosts. But in the end, she stopped running from her family history and turned, instead, to face it. Shelve this book with Maus, Fun Home, Persepolis and The Best We Could Do. Re-read it for a second time and got even more out of it on a second pass.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 8 by Ryoko Kui

Laios and company realize that their encounter with changling mushroom rings had more consequences than they'd realized- its the body swap episode! This visual humor is contrasted against increasing dangers from both above and below, as nastier monsters and political machinations begin to close in on our heroic adventuring party. I'm now over halfway through this series and almost feel like I should start reading it more slowly to savor it, but I'll probably just keep devouring it instead.

Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang and Leuyen Pham

High school senior Val grew up knowing her family was unlucky in love; for generations, relationships in her family have ended in heartbreak. Her childhood love of Valentines Day ends with a shocking family revelation and what feels like the beginning of a curse. Then her Vietnamese grandmother sweeps her off to a Lunar New Year celebration in downtown Oakland and a pair of cute lion dancer boys catch her eye. Could one of them break the spell on her heart? This story offers a classic and satisfying rom-com, with Val torn between an outgoing, rich, but flaky boy and a broody, shy, loyal one. The story takes several kdrama style twists and includes ghosts, saints, red envelopes, confessions, fights, reunions, tears, and kisses. For a comic, its wordy; the pages are dense with small panels and thick with dialogue, but also illustrated with such warm, humor, and realism. I really liked that the story included as much of Val's relationship with her family and best friend as romance. And the lion dancing scenes practically leap off the page with color and energy!

Witch Hat Atelier vol 10 by Kamome Shirahama

This series remains as visually stunning as ever but I'm struggling with how every single book expands the cast. There are so many characters now that I don't care about that much, and have trouble remembering from volume to volume. I wish the story line would stick more closely to Coco, her classmates, and their main mentors!

Delicious in Dungeon vol 9 by Ryoko Kui

Oh the stories are all converging! The savior at the bottom of the dungeon is probably a demon! Ituzumi saves the day! I am still having a great time reading this series.

A Dowry of Blood by ST Gibson read by Abby Craden 

A short, very queer, very poly retelling of Dracula focusing on his coven of enthralled lovers. I liked the way the book breezed through history, as the dysfunctional little family moved from one major European city to the next, with snatched moments of glittering joy interwoven with violence and plague. The story is fairly simple, and has a happier ending than I expected, or honestly think the characters deserved.

City of Dragons by Robin Hobb

I DNFed the previous book in this series and just read a summary online before skipping ahead to this one. I think that was a very good choice for me. This third one was more engaging and a bit more action packed, with some cool discoveries about the city of Kelsingra and the nature of Elderlings. But the Rain Wild Chronicles as a whole do not stand up to the quality of the Farseer books. There are so many POV characters that a few of them get only two or three scenes in this whole book. I don't feel that I deeply know any of these characters; while at the same time watching Hobb pair them off at an extraordinary rate- in the last book five sets of characters got together and in this book an additional two couples are developing feelings for each other. Between this and a kidnapping, a birth, a murder, and a lot of blackmail, this series feels like a soap opera.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 10 by Ryoko Kui

Almost two TPKs in this volume, yikes!

Delicious in Dungeon vol 11 by Ryoko Kui

You know shit's getting serious when the character who has been the series main villain up until now is partially devoured by a different, worse villain. Exciting changes coming to this dungeon under it's new lord and master!

Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle

When Becca gets invited to sit with the popular girl clique at her new high school, she's thrilled. But the friendship turns bloody and complicated when she learns that her new friends are actually werewolves who need to kill and feed on a human once a month. If she joins them, Becca will gain superhuman strength and a pack; she'll never have to fear a male predator again, because she will be a predator herself. I loved the queer rep and the twist on werewolf lore; I wish it had been a little longer and more developed. Give me multi-page transformations sequences!

Delicious in Dungeon vol 12 by Ryoko Kui

I love seeing all these plot lines come together! Building towards a wild climax.

Delicious in Dungeon vol 13 by Ryoko Kui

I went out and *bought* vol 13 of this series because my library didn't have it yet, that's how hooked I am. And now I have to wait until JULY for the final volume! (But also, thank goodness I didn't get into this series any sooner or I'd have a much longer wait).

[md-confessions]

Murder Drones could have been a lot better if Doll was never introduced into the plot or straight up didn't exist.

Before you light up the torches, I will remind you that I love Doll to death. I'm the guy who made an entire map of posts on the character + a handful of analyses about a lot of her different aspects; this isn't a hot idea that I made up right now, it's something I've been thinking about for a long time, and unfortunately I must finally admit it publicly.

Much like episode 7 completely recontextualised Tessa up to this point, it did the same thing with Doll, but in a negative way, her rushed demise didn't just destroy all of the future potential that she had, no, it did way worse than that: it ruined every single one of her previous scenes, as now all of them fell pointless since she was just a plot device for V and Cyn's development and not a character in her own right.

Now, while all of this is arguably completely true and factual, you might still say, why do you want to eliminate her? She still was a pretty awesome character with a large chunk of the fanbase fawning over her and could still come back for a better exploration of her character and potential.

And to that, I'll have to ask you to look at the bigger picture: Murder Drones, as it is right now, it's kind of an unfortunate mess.

Liam Vickers rushed everything, and I mean EVERYTHING in order for us to reach the part of the plot that he wanted to show, when he could have just simply narrated a simpler, smaller story with less emphasis on the lore and more on the characters. He should have known when to let go of some stuff for the betterment of the series, instead he's just trying to tell everything while rushing to the finish line and without flashing out any particular aspect of it.

While in my mind I would have just gone for a simpler, lower stakes story, I won't deny the fact that this is clearly not what Liam Vickers would have done; so, if an end of the world narrative is what he was trying to tell, he should have disregarded the high school setting even MORE than what he ended up doing.

I would have had Uzi, V and N get kidnapped by an alien/solver thing so that they would be forced into space by the ending of episode 3, and used episode 2 and the first half of episode 3 to flesh out Thad and Khan, so that we could feel the impact of the protagonist being forced out of her home. Then, the rest of whatever Liam has planned for season 2 would have happened.

If it weren't for Doll, I wouldn't be as obsessed with Murder Drones as I am right now; for me at least, she was the selling ticket for the series, but it's clear that Liam had to eliminate some aspects of his show to tell the narrative that he wanted to, and if that aspect wasn't the lore, then it had to be the characters, and Doll plus maybe her family depending on what Yeva is going to do if she were to come back are at the top of the chopping block list. Lizzie is important for V's development, Thad was already obliterated out of relevance but I'm curious on what he's going to do in ep 8, J shouldn't have returned if she was going to be irrelevant again but I still think that she wasn't wasted as long as she's still alive.

Liam could have just simply created another plot device to force V to develop and the raptor scene to happen, so even from that storytelling aspect, Doll was completely and utterly worthless to begin with.

op added:

[fennelrabbit]

Now that people have had time to watch and think about the miniseries, can we agree that Fionna and Cake was really bad, or at least disappointing?

I'm very happy to hear some different opinions if anyone wants to try and change my mind, but now I've had some time to digest what I watched, I can still say my bad feelings on the episodes are exactly the same.

I haven't been able to mention Fionna and Cake's characterisation much, so I'll try and make a bulleted list (read more)

° Cake didn't grow or have to change at all during the miniseries. She was selfish and never had to face any consequences for her choices. Her relationship with Fionna is not wholesome and friendly like Jake is to Finn, but more parasitic. Fionna does things for Cake, and in return Cake doesn't abandon her. Cake still helps Fionna in fights and doesn't want her to get hurt, however Cake doesn't really appreciate Fionna and all that she does for her.

It's particularly bad that Cake isn't very bothered by the fact that the trade-in for a magical world is Simon's sanity, which is another moment of selfishness. This scene is never addressed later, which unintentionally implies that if someone isn't benefitting Cake, she doesn't want to care about them anymore.

° Fionna was also poorly handled. Although the show tries to say that it won't treat Fionna in a sexist way by swapping her skirt for shorts, a large part of Fionna's story still revolves around romance and her relationships with men (platonic or romantic). In fact, there's a pretty substantial lack of female characters (barring Fionna) that have any stage presence or do anything meaningful in the story. The episode with apocalypse PB and Marcy was a refreshing addition, with an interesting conflict between the two women, but it's a shame that they couldn't be included in the larger conflict, as characters can jump across the universe and the story would've really benefitted from their inclusion.

Fionna's character started pretty strongly, introducing her boredom and apathy towards her life (that being a capitalist nightmare of endless job hunting just to pay for rent), but didn't do enough to develop this plotline. It's true that having Fionna stay in Ooo wouldn't push her to grow as a person - Fionna needs to find a way to find happiness in the life that she's given.

However, much like Simon was sent back to his shitty life and basically ordered by the narrative to 'get over it' and 'stop being sad', nothing changes in Fionna's original world. Fionna is sent back to the same old world, with the same old problems, and nothing is really resolved. No solutions are presented to Fionna inside of FionnaWorld, even though her situation is very difficult and not something that can just be fixed with 'life's not so bad'. Fionna should've found a way to experience the thrill of adventure in her world, in a way that wouldn't endanger everyone around her.

° Bringing the farmworld characters to FionnaWorld in the end was a total cop-out, and should've resulted in damaging the multiverse. They did not need to be there.

° Fionna and Cake causing things to glitch around them (damaging the multiverse???) was never resolved or followed up on after Act 1. It's like the story forgot that plot point, which really lowered the stakes.

° Scarab was a weak villain. Though his first episode had a strong introduction, he was very undeveloped, and came across as more of a comedic pest than an actual threat. The final fight between Fionna and Scarab were laughably boring, and I never felt like the characters were in danger at all. One of the weakest finales the show's ever done.

° Rip to Betty, folks. You'd think we'd finally get some backstory on her character beyond being "Simon's gf/love interest", but no. We know she has a mum, I guess? And that she's impulsive. Betty has officially been fridged by the narrative THREE TIMES, and will now forever remain as Simon's dead/absent girlfriend. This is very sad, and not to mention, very anti feminist. We will never know who Betty is outside of Simon.

(She doesn't even get to have a real conversation with Simon as Golbetty. She has a couple of sentences, and then gets on the stupid bus. Betty literally has no voice in the story).

°The dialogue was very weak. I don't have much to say here really, the dialogue was just very basic and badly paced. Subtext doesn't exist in this story. At some point, one of Finn's children literally blurts out that their dead mum made their soup. Very subtle exposition, guys.

° I don't like how Fionna and Cake treated Simon at all. The entire time they were both self centered and very annoying, and their relationship with Simon wasn't developed that much. When Simon described Fionna and Cake as his "friends", it wasn't believable in the slightest. They have no chemistry or real connection as a group.

Well, that's all I could remember for now.

Anyway, feel happy to share your thoughts Adventure Time fans, I'd be happy to hear it!

[criticalpraisefilm]

Deadpool and Wolverine - first impressions

Previous Deadpool movies worked because the jokes are funny and constantly coming, but they make jokes to serve the story and theme. The movie is about something and the jokes are a bridge to the theme while keeping the audience entertained. This movie is about nothing.

Wade Wilson, Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is trying to live a normal life when he is told by Mr Paradox (Matthew Macfayden) that his timeline is in danger. Believing that it can only be saved with the assistance of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Deadpool finds a version of him from another universe and sets off to save his world, opposed by the opportunistic Cassandra Nova (Emma Corrin).

I don't want to call this a bad movie. I was quite entertained while watching it. A lot of the jokes land quite well, and there's a lot of jokes. The action is quite well shot (save for one particular fight scene - sadly probably the most pivotal fight scene in the movie, the one that is trying to have the most thematic relevance is subject to some of the most egregious camera shaking I have ever seen in an action movie) and most of the actions kept me entertained. The performances are generally good: Reynolds is witty and excitable as ever; Jackman brings equal parts pathos and furious violence to his character; Macfayden is as slimy as his character demands; Corrin is clearly having a lot of fun playing a villain; and everyone else I didn't name because their appearance is meant to be a surprise is good.

But then comes the reverse side - the story is extremely meandering. Most scenes, while entertaining and having plenty of jokes and fun, don't seem to serve the story. It's strange to say that, since those scenes do advance the plot or the characters - it's the plot itself that's the problem, because one third into the movie the story finds itself veering off into what feels like it should be a side quest to get the story back to the main thrust, but suddenly this is the main thrust. The villain of the second act, the subplot that lets the characters and theme develop while we lower the stakes a little, ends up being the final villain, getting resolution and then getting pulled back into the plot because the movie forgot that it needed a climax. There's taking the main problem and recontextualising it to raise the stakes, but when the stakes were already high enough for the characters to be invested, raising them and making it bigger just serves to made the story less focused.

And that's really the name of the problem here. The story is unfocused. Deadpool's emotional journey...isn't. He has a problem, but that problem is solved by way of saving the world as a matter of course. Wolverine has more of an emotional journey, but even that doesn't feel satisfying because there's no real resolution to it: he refuses to lay out his emotional state and problems, finally explains it to a side character with the main character nowhere to be found, and the next time we see him he's reached the end of his character arc and decided to care again. A deeper level of this emotional problem is brought up in the next scene, but after that scene is over it's not really referenced again. This wouldn't matter, he's not the singular main character, but Deadpool has the same problem. He is very early on presented with a choice that ties into his somewhat contrived personal conflict, immediately makes the more noble and "right" choice, and it's never a problem again. If the emotional core of the story is solved within the first half hour, why is the rest of the movie here?

Not all of the jokes land, of course. There are a lot of cameos from characters and actors from previous Marvel projects, mostly from before the big Marvel Cinematic Universe. I get the impression that the movie is trying to mock the MCU for the tendency to introduce a shiny character from the comics and wait for the audience to applaud them, but satire requires clarity of purpose. If your way of mocking this tendency is do the same thing, except these characters are from movies or franchises that didn't expand into the biggest media franchise in the world, that's not mockery, that's just doing the same thing and expecting the audience to find it funny because you told them to. And considering how many actual barbs the movie throws at the MCU (one or two of which are even funny) the fact that the main form of comedy directed at it is so flat and uninspired is disappointing and deeply unfunny. It's nice to see some of these characters here again. But why are they here? What do they contribute? If their contribution is nothing more than showing up and being there for the audience to recognise, you're not making fun of the MCU, you're just doing the same thing you're trying to mock.

In theory it's a fun crossover adventure of two entertaining and interesting characters, and maybe that's enough. Like I said, I was entertained, and I don't regret watching the movie. But I cannot tell you what it was trying to do or say or contribute to cinema or the world other than "wouldn't this be funny". And that's okay for an entertaining movie. But it could have done more. And it's kind of a shame that it didn't.

[racefortheironthrone]

As I guess the majority here I started to follow you for your aSoIaF content but your many recent posts about The Locked Tomb are making me wonder, should I start a new fantasy series? Care to give a couple good reasons to decide oneself into it? Thank you for your content :)

I'll start with a pitch for the Locked Tomb series. It is one of the few fantasy series that I've ever wanted to re-read and write about as much as I do with ASOIAF, because the writing has this fantastic onion-skin quality where you keep finding new layers every time you re-read the books.

Indeed, I would recommend not just reading it, but I think you kind of have to re-read it - because you learn stuff by the end of the first book that completely recontextualizes everything and makes you see things very differently the second time you read it, and then the second book does the same thing both to itself and to the first book, and so on for the third book and the interstitial short stories.

That, together with some really audacious moves in terms of narration and prose styles, speaks to one of my favorite things about the series: the sheer ambition of the author. Tamsyn Muir does not rest on her laurels, but is constantly trying to top herself with each new installment. It's a very impressive juggling act, and so far she hasn't dropped a single club.

But that's not all! I've been trying to branch out recently and read some new fantasy novels and I have enjoyed some of them quite a bit.

Christopher Buehlman who mostly does fantasy-themed horror novels has a new, more straightforward fantasy novel titled The Blacktongue Thief which is supposed to be the first in a new series. It's a low fantasy story about a rogue who's deeply in debt to the thieves' guild and who agrees to shadow a lady knight errant engaged in a dangerous quest in order to clear his debt, and I really liked the subtle world-building and the snarky narrator, and the magic system is quite innovative. The prequel, The Daughters' War, is coming out this June.

I was a bit unsure about Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes series, which is very much inspired by the coffee shop AU trope and very popular on booktok and the like. However, I decided to give it a try on a recent flight, and I found myself rather charmed by the story of an experienced adventurer who's sick and tired of the itinerant life and is starting to have lower back problems, so she decides to retire and open a coffee shop. As advertised, it's a very low stakes narrative about someone trying to change their life and build something of value to the community, rather than just raid for gold and glory.

[litnerdwrites]

what do you think the story (kotw's first trilogy) loses about it and what it gains from if it were set in a more modern time?

SPOILERS FOR THE KOTW TRILOGY

Hm, so this is tough. Ultimately, the demon princes don't seem to have the power to go to the living realm, where people like us live. Even in the first book, the Palermo was just the shifting isles, not the actual living realm. It's all in the underworld.

In the first book, the witch hunters were hyped up to be such a big threat but we never get anything from them. Maybe in Pride's book, we'll hear more, since it would have to take him back to Palermo, where Claudia is. But as of now, they're inconsequential. I feel like the modern equivalent of them would be police, but they wouldn't impact the story much. Especially given that even if they found her to be a witch, they wouldn't care. Many people practice witchcraft or other similar things now and they aren't really imprisoned for it or anything.

Maybe the police would keep a closer eye on her though, as a suspect in the murder for a while, which would be interesting. It could add a fun fake dating trope where she tells the police that Wrath is her lover and they're having a secret rendezvous every night, which is why she's sneaking around, to make herself less suspicious.

Maybe moments where the viperidae or other monsters appear in the human world would be higher stakes, since security cameras would supposedly exist, and Emilia would be found out faster.

The point about Emilia's clothes in the underworld being scandalous by human standards would be a non-issue unless she had a personal aversion to it, which seems unlikely, since she likes them enough later on.

That said, since the second and most of the third book take place in the Underworld, I think the differences would be in the vibe, mostly.

I think the aesthetics and vibe of Palermo compliment the Underworld in a way that they wouldn't if it was a modern setting. Generally speaking, the technological advancements seem to be similar in both places, so if the setting was modern, it would mean that the demons would have access to modern technology too. I think that might also throw off the witchy vibe that the series has, which I really like. While a modern setting adds it's own stakes, I think they'd be just a bit lower, namely in the first book, than the stakes in the trilogy now.

[obsidiancreates]

A Lot To Chew

(Different Vampire AU than the last one, this one is Comedic. I just love Vampire AUs.)

Burton Guster doesn't see his best friend in the world until ten years after graduation. He gets postcards with no return address, from all over the world, but no sight nor sound otherwise.

Until he wakes up one night in 2006 to the sight of his formerly MIA best friend leaning over him with glowing red eyes, a gift-wrapped but obviously identifiable pineapple in his hand, and a wild grin with two sharp fangs visible in the moonlight from the window.

Gus's scream is so loud and shrill it actually sends Shawn to the ground, hands clamped over his ears and an equally shrill scream coming out of him.

Gus leaps out of bed and grabs his bible and a cross, backing into a corner and holding both out! Shawn gets up, rubbing his ears and sending Gus a glare.

"Not cool, dude. Is that any way to greet your best friend after a decade?"

"You better be in some crazy costume, Shawn!" Gus keeps the cross aloft in front of him.

"Well, if you'd let me explain before you stake me-"

"Oh my god."

"Listen, I know this seems bad but good news, I can totally live off stuff like rare steaks. ... Bad news, I can't shapeshift or anything like that. Medium news, I can totally help you move your couch with like, one hand if you need me to."

"Are you actually Shawn?"

"Gus. What kind of question is that? Obviously even if I wasn't I'd say yes."

"Ha! You can't be Shawn, you're too honest."

"Are you saying I'm less honest than a demon? What proof do you need from me to put down the cross, man?"

"... When'd we meet?"

"Uh, basically birth, and then when we were five we officially declared ourselves the best friends in the entire world."

"... Alright. Okay. Why'd you get kicked out of church?"

"First of all, I did not get kicked out- Father Wesley politely suggested we stop attending."

Gus lowers the cross slightly. "That's the same thing, Shawn."

"No, because I think getting kicked out of a church would mean lightning strikes me and I get blown out as a pile of ashes."

The cross goes all the way down, but he keeps a grip on it. "Oh my god. You're really you."

"Duh!"

"And you're a vampire."

"For about five years now, yes."

"What? You don't look twenty-three."

"Yeah, well, apparently an animal blood diet means I'm still aging. I mean, I'm aging well, no doubts about it- and even the supernatural had very little to improve on with my hair."

"How did this even happen?"

"Kind of a long story, buddy. And a little gruesome. Do you still throw up at stressful situations?"

"Shawn."

"That's a yes. I'll tell you another time, but, I came here for a reason."

"To drink my blood?" He raises the cross again. "Condemn me to share your eternal damnation because your love for me has been twisted by your monstrous transformation."

"Dude. That's way too dramatic and absurd, nothing like that. I'm here because we're going to become private investigators together!"

"What?!"

"Yeah! I need you to go out and do stuff during the day, obviously, but-"

"I'm dreaming. I have to be dreaming."

"I know, right? Dream come true. Anyway, the thing is the cops brought me in for questioning tonight because I called in a tip and when they wouldn't stop insisting my Nighttime Lifestyle pointed to me being a criminal I ended up telling them I was psychic and the spirits demand I only work at night-"

"You lied to the cops?!"

"Gus, I'm a vampire. What was I supposed to do?"

"I don't know, maybe hypnotize them to let you go?!"

"... Huh. ... That would've been a great plan, actually. Whoops."