#problem. like my reading comprehension is so fucking bad. like i will read a book on paper and maybe retain 25% of the info if im not

[imfromthemiddlekingdom]

I don’t understand the fandoms love for Daemon, by all rights he should be as hated as Joffrey was. Not only did he do almost everything Joffrey did, he also did worse. Even Tywin wouldn’t hold a candle to his cruelty. I understand liking a villainous character, I do too with Cersei and Tywin, but I’ve never went out of my way to whitewash their characters. I love them because they are villainous and practically irredeemable, if team black stans liked Daemon for his villainous actions before and during the Dance of Dragons I wouldn’t have any problems with it. But the fact that they go out of their way to defend him killing Rhea Royce because “he was forced into a marriage he didn’t like!!!!” As if she wasn’t too. And the fact that they defend him sending Blood and Cheese to psychologically torture Haelena and kill Jaehaerys due to “a son for a son it’s only right” when they despise Alicents moment of madness when her son was denied justice, makes me want to hurl.

It’s alright to like villainous characters, it doesn’t make you a bad person if you like them. But you know what makes you a moronic person? Whitewashing everything that makes a character compelling because you want to like them without seeming like a ‘bad person’. Your opinion on a character does not determine your own morality, it doesn’t make you better or worse than someone who hates them. But what it does, when you erase their entire identity as a rouge to make them more palatable to you, is make you seem moronic, stupid, and lacking any critical thinking and reading comprehension skills.

Rhaenyra is a compelling character because she is entitled and spoiled and lacks any political experience, she shows how badly Viserys fucked up when he tried to compensate for his guilt of murdering Aemma. Alicent is a compelling character because she is a mother who is trying her best to protect her children from the reality that if Daemon took the throne for Rhaenyra, he would kill all of them because they are a threat. She is even more of a compelling character in the books because of her ambition and cunning and want for her family to rise far above the ‘station’ of being a noble house in the Reach (as if house Hightower aren’t the oldest house in Westeros who could trace their lineage back to both the Garth Greenhand the high king of the first men and the Andal Kings that came afterwards). Daemon, for all that I dislike him as a character, is compelling for his ruthlessness and shortsightedness in his pursuit of the throne. He didn’t raise an army for Viserys because he thought he was a competent leader, he did it because it raised his own standing within Westeros, he groomed Rhaenyra not because he loved her, but because having him in her good graces means that he stood a better chance of being king after she was named heir. His ruthlessness is compelling. Taking it away to make him into a ‘malewife’ or a ‘loving father’ or a man who is lacking any ambition beyond wanting a valyrian wife is taking away his agency. It makes him seem like a Gary Sue who only wants the throne because his brother said Rhaenyra was heir. It makes it so that he is so completely white bread like that not even I, someone who loved the more morally bankrupt characters in ASOIAF can find him agreeable in any way shape or form.

Daemon is a fundamentally morally bankrupt character and he should stay that way. If you like him you should acknowledge and accept that he is one of the ‘bad guys’. Just as Cersei fans acknowledge and accept that she is fundamentally a morally bankrupt person who is selfish to the extreme. We like morally black characters because they are morally black. To make excuses for their actions is to take away their agency which makes them unlikable and very hate-able.

Daemons actions aren’t justifiable, blood and cheese would never be justified. A son for a son is akin to the visceral disgust the fandom had to Alicent when she asked for Lucerys’ eye, yet I bet when season two comes out and Blood and Cheese happens we’d see Daemon fans applauding and trying to justify it as ‘not that bad’ and ‘team green deserved it because of Aemond’s actions’ when little Jaehaerys, a boy of 6, was as far removed from the incident as can be. It would be akin to Team Green saying that due to Jaehaerys’ death, Aegon III or Viserys II deserved to have their head cut off in front of Rhaenyra.

Let morally bankrupt characters be morally bankrupt. You aren’t morally bankrupt because you like said character, it’s a fictional story loosely based on Empress Matilda. It’s not that deep. Like the characters you like without trying to justify their actions. They might be monstrous but you aren’t because you like them. It’s not a measure of your own character because you like said character. But it is a measure of your intelligence when you try to change said character’s entire personality to make it so that they are more digestible to you and everyone else.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: The Monkey's Paw

WW Jacobs: Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this the tale of the monkey's paw Jacobs: it's about a monkey paw that grants wishes King: sounds great! Jacobs: no it's not Jacobs: it's really bad actually

Jacobs: see, the thing is the monkey's paw grants wishes IRONICALLY Jacobs: like a real asshole genie or something

Jacobs: there's this british couple and they use it to wish for money, but then their son dies in a horrible industrial accident and they get the insurance money Jacobs: and then they wish he was still alive Jacobs: but he comes back all fucked up

Jacobs: so they use their last wish to wish he was dead again Koontz: why didn't they just wish that he was back just the same as when he was alive? Barker: yeeeah Barker: dean's got a point Barker: yeah why DIDN'T they?

Jacobs: that's not the way it works Jacobs: you can't just trick a monkey's paw King: i don't know, i think they're on to something King: it's really just a problem with not being specific enough, isn't it? King: like if you just worded it right Jacobs: THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS

Jacobs: you can't trick a monkey's paw! Barker: why not? i'm smarter than a monkey Poe: can we please stop talking about monkeys Barker: oh i forgot, edgar's afraid of monkeys Poe: I am NOT afraid of monkeys Barker: sorry, i meant apes Poe: I'm not afraid of apes either!!

King: you know what this reminds me of? my favorite cormoran strike book. have you guys read any cormoran strike? Barker: oh jesus here we go again Barker: i WISH something would free me from listening to this again! Elon Musk: [rising from bushes] eyyyy stephano king! Barker:

Musk: eyyyy stephano king mi amigo ey? King: we're not friends elon Musk: si si musk and king, we-a real bambinos ey! King: don't you have some kids to raise or something, elon? Musk: MY KID ISSA DEAD Musk: THATA MEANS YOU ALLA HAVE TO BE NICE TO ME

Musk: my kid issa dead Barker: that's not what i hear, she's roasting your ass on threads Musk: mama mia! Barker: and turns out she's really good at posting Barker: are you sure she's actually YOUR kid? King: she must take after her mother

Musk: mama mia they trick me into signing consent form for puberty blockers!!! Barker: how do they trick you into signing a consent form Musk: Barker: do you not have reading comprehension? Musk: they hide it in a big pile of ketamine! Musk: itsa no fair!

Musk: eyyy why my kid no like-a me? Barker: is it because you're an absentee father who turned twitter into a chud echo chamber specifically to bully her? Musk: Musk: no Musk: issa because da woke mind virus Musk: ima da smartest man inna da world!

Musk: why you no like me? issa cuz you all gotta da woke mind virus? Poe: elon calm down Barker: yes elon that's right, everything's the woke mind virus Poe: don't say that clive, you're going to get him riled up Musk: mama mia!!!

Musk: i never stop fighting da woke mind virus! Musk: ima da smartest man inna da world! [immediately smashes into the side of a cliff painted to look like a tunnel]

[nagito-kissmaeda]

Hi I am going to complain about Eito from 100 line now. Warning for spoilers from day 98 onwards and a BUNCH of routes. Just to be clear, he is my favorite and i love him, my complaints come from love only.

OKAY SO UH, Eito 100% has a komaeda-style heel turn towards the back end of the game and reveals himself to be NOT on your side at all. Very cool very sexy. I was anticipating this, hoping for it, fingers crossed begging for it. There's a very sexy sprite where he is winking and covered in blood, it makes me insane. NOW, the reason i am MAD, is because his motive is just....lame....and dumb....and bad. It honestly kinda ruined him for me. It's nonsensical. NOW, i must clarify that i don't have the time, nor energy to finish all the routes but i have consulted a friend who has already done so, and will be leaning on him a little bit here, but even his assertions that his motive does have SOME legitimacy is not enough to make me calm down so. Eito, sees all humans as monsters. literally, visually, smell-ually (not a word). he claims this is due to a birth defect. First of all, if this is how all humans have always looked, then you wouldn't......consider them monsters? why would you be disgusted by them if you have never known any different, had no point for comparison? Second of all, how boring, how lame, how stinky. It has none of that emotional depth or comprehensive motivation that uhhhhh.....my favorite guy komaeda has. It's just "i hate all humans, they smell, i read a book about WW2 once." couldnt he have just been a regular person abandoned by the system? Determined to send a message? That would be surface level but at least it would be emotive and understandable. Now, my friend who has actually finished the routes has some clarifications, so ill be going by what he has said here, but FIRST. if you are reading this and dont already know what happens after day 98 then BOY HOWDY do i have some news for you. So. Eito fucks everything up and ruins your plans. hes so cool. you kill him and doing so gain some immense power that allows you to GO BACK IN TIME and try again. very cool genuinely very cool (would have been cooler if i didnt have to play 30 hours of pretty boring game to get to it, but okay). Here is where the routes come in. You get to redo the 100 days and each route is a different attempt based on your choices. Now my friend says, that some of these routes do contain more explanations about Eito and imply that his 'disease' was implanted into him by a group that wants humanity dead and that he is a plant. Now. i dont hate that, BUUUUUUT, why did they have to do that at all? Why not just....send down a guy who hates humans and get him to do the dirty work without having to mess around in his brain? And DONT say that they need someone with hemoanima and maybe there was no one on the team who fit the bill because NOZOMI is right there and she snuck in without hemoanima soooooo. W/e, it doesnt fix the problem TO ME, especially since you aren't always going to learn this and learning it doesnt fix the hours i already spent being angry about it lol, if it was something that could happen at the beginning of the route and actually 'fix' eito that would be interesting, but apparently you can only do this around day 60-ish in various routes. Now the reason i say these complaints come from love only, is because i really really liked eito. he was cute, i liked his design, i even support him hating and wanting to kill me. i just think his motive does the game a disservice because it just doesnt have enough interesting layers DESPITE him being otherwise very well written and fun to talk to. he can be such a little shit in the re-dos where he doesnt need to pretend to be nice anymore and i LOVE IT, i just wish it came from a place of more narrative cohesion. There were so many other ways the could have done it, and HONESTLY there are even ways they could have better resolved what they were already working with by giving more solid answers instead of just 'implying' his disease may not actually be genetic. Implication has its merits, but in a game with this many endings, you would hope that at least one of them gives a sufficient explanation, but whatever, that's just my onion.

[theoutcastrogue]

According to EN World (I mean I wouldn't know and couldn't possibly be bothered) the author of this tweet is "former gaming executive turned culture warrior Mark Hern".

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons is a WotC book that just came out for the game's 50th anniversary, and the passages are from "the foreword written by Jon Peterson, one of the foremost historians about Dungeons & Dragons and who also collaborated with Wizards of the Coast on the book".

Elon Musk, famous idiot, immediately piped in supporting the tweet

and obviously fuck Musk and fuck the "culture warriors", here's how I see it (without having read the book, but I'm confident my guesses are educated enough).

This book is promotional material. The good part is that it brings to light primary documents, which are invaluable for research. The bad part is that it's promotional material, like everything that comes out of WotC. No one should trust a fucking brand (silence, brand) to tell its own story. I've read some of Jon Peterson's previous work, and I thought he's an excellent researcher but only moderately able to pick up the prejudices baked in the hobby. Gets some of it, misses a lot. I'm guessing his criticism came about by WotC's own request, and would not be printed if their PR team (and legal team, probably) didn't approve it. And I'm gonna note that said criticism, while in the right direction (to be clear, the basic stance of "this was shitty, but erasing it from history and pretending it didn't exist doesn't help; what helps is acknowledging the shittiness" is absolutely correct), is very light and very careful. The history of D&D needs STRONGER criticism, which will never happen in a WotC publication.

And what I'd like to see is a comprehensive critical history of D&D, which I don't think exists yet. We have EITHER involved and well-researched but largely uncritical histories, even when they delve deep into the cultural environment that made D&D's birth possible, OR works that explore a single topic or focus on a handful of problematic™ elements. AFAIK. If I'm missing something, by all means, let me know! Here's my bibliography so far (not including papers, which can be VERY critical):

David M. Ewalt, Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It (Scribner, 2013)

Jon Peterson, Playing at the World: A history of simulating wars, people and fantastic adventures, from chess to role-playing games (Unreason Press, 2012)

Michael J. Tresca, The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games (McFarland, 2011)

Jennifer Grouling Cover, The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-playing Games (McFarland, 2010)

Sarah Lynne Bowman, The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems and Explore Identity (McFarland, 2010)

Joseph P. Laycock, Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds (University of California Press, 2015)

Ashley ML Brown, Sexuality in Role-Playing Games (Routledge, 2015)

and the promos

30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons (WotC, 2006)

Michael Witwer et al, Art & Arcana: A Visual History (Ten Speed Press, 2018)

Michael Witwer, Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons (Bloomsbury, 2015) [not a promo per se, but fully a eulogy]

[oh2e]

A (long) Collection of TTOI Quotes

He’s as useless as a marzipan dildo

I’m going to have to mop up a hurricane of piss here

He and Hewitt are tight as arse cheeks

‘How fucked am I? On the fuckometre?’ ‘Oh 12’ ‘yeah 12’ ‘out of what?’ ‘50’ ‘oh…. mine was out of 10’

Tiny little dick the size of a bookie’s biro

There’s no time to go home I’ll pass myself on the way back in

I can only cook with what I’m given. You give me Hugh Abbot I’ll give you bangers and mash, you give me Jerry from home office then I can raise it to fucking risotto and scallops

I am king of remembering my own password

‘Shagging your way to the top is it?’ ‘Yes well I’m not Scottish so I’ve got to get in somehow’

How much shit is on the menu and what flavour is it?

‘What do you want Malcolm’ ‘Two bits of tit. Two titties.’

Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off

“What about just firing him at a wall from a cannon?” “I know we force feed him a mixture of garlic and Dettol in cup a soup” “What about the old red hot poker up the arse?” “I’d like to nail him to a tree through the head and watch lice slowing crawl over his body eating off all the flesh”

“Has security checked this [plant]?” “For little terrorists?”

This is the problem with the public - they’re fucking horrible

Not only was it a shit idea to ruin my holiday, it was a shit idea you stole from the government to ruin my holiday

Ah that’s like smoking dead skin that is

You’re the fucking shittest James Bond ever - you’re David Fucking Niven!

You’re like a sweaty octopus trying to unhook a bra

You take the piss outta [Al] Jolson again and I will remove your iPod from its tiny nano sheath and push it up your cock! Then I’ll plug some speakers up your arse and put it onto shuffle with my fucking fist

I thought you said no one reads these except political obsessives and mad Christians in wheelchairs but loads of people read mine

“I am not the story here” “Well no you kind of are though Malcolm, they spelled your name right and everything”

Come with me before I put your nuts in a book and squeeze them so hard that they come out like pressed fucking flowers

You’re The Ben….Ben Nevis…Bentally Ill…

Tickety fuckity boo

“Anyone seen Jamie?” “Oh don’t tell me he’s gone feral cos he was fucking terrifying when you had him on the leash.”

I’d love to stay and talk to you but I’d rather have type 2 diabetes

Mr Baby New Potato Head

It sucks cock so deep the bell end is wearing your appendix as a little hat

This is an operations room so unless you want your tonsils out by keyhole surgery from this key here, piss off!

Cliff Fucking Lawton! Nice. Was the Cilit Bang man not available?

To a guy who loses it so bad he needs a sat nav to find his own nipples

I’m feeling about as up to date as a Gregorian calendar

“You couldn’t organise a bum rape in a barracks.” “Au contraire”

You’re about as secure as a hymen in a south London comprehensive

Stop fucking blinking or I will take your optic nerve and fucking strangle you with it

Hanging round like a couple of school secretaries in the summer holidays

It’s like a prostate consultant’s waiting room in here

You will be sorry you inflatable cock!

I am going to have your intestines as a skipping rope and your lungs sundried and turned into a fucking waistcoat

Or will Dan Miller pull his scalp off and use it as an oven glove?

Enough of the pleasantries let’s just oil up and get fucking

A towel rail shouldn’t take up a whole wall, that’s not a towel rail it’s a climbing frame.

I’ve got a to-do list here longer than a fucking Leonard Cohan song

More on my plate than a spinster at a wedding

The only other candidate is my left bollock with a fucking smiley face drawn on it

Feels a bit like my head’s made entirely of smoke alarms

Fuck the Is and fist the Ts

May as well ask what I think of skirting boards, I’m sure we need them but I don’t know why

“No no I didn’t say that” “Well you sort of did with your face”

Let me row back a little bit, perhaps all the way back to the boathouse

She’s not bent either in the sense of being corrupt or being gay and by the way that’s an incredibly homophobic headline you massive poof

Omnishambles, from bean to cup you fuck up

I’m on my way to wipe my arse on pictures of Nick Robinson

“And I’m not doing terribly am I?” [Malcolm looking out the opposite window] “I love the way they’ve sandblasted here. It looks so clean.”

No no, don’t get up - I’m not viagra

He’s a fucking knitted scarf, he’s a balaclava.

The only thing John Duggan is doing here is depriving a village somewhere of a twat

You write almost entirely in generic meaningless buzzwords don’t you?

I will tear your fucking skin off, I will wear it to your mother’s birthday party, I will rub your nuts up and down her leg while whistling Bohemian Fucking Rhapsody

She’s behaving like a squirrel in a pedal bin.

Or I’ll have to tear my eyelids off and scrunch them up into fucking earplugs

I’m flypaper for dickheads

I think you’re wrong Malcolm you’re like a sultana in a salad

Sorry I can’t make espresso but I’ve made this so thick and black it’ll be like drinking fucking plimsoles

Well fuck a pot noodle. Sam, prepare my horse. I ride to DoSAC

The only fucking vibe you need to worry about is the one your wife hides in her knicker drawer

See you later and remember my door is always locked

* Tintin’s sexy sister to Ollie

What I really need is to shoot you all in the back of the head FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. but I can’t because it’s illegal.

I reserve this level of anger for when I’m flying Ryanair

As about a strong defence as ‘the fertiliser in my homemade bomb was organic’!

She’s a fart in a frock and we both want her wafted out of here

She’s going to have to fall on her sword, which means that we’re going to have to stick one in the ground, trip her up onto it and get someone jump up and down on her back for ten minutes

She’s going to kick her own head in which’ll be easy because she does yoga

I’m looking for Mr Oliver Reeder? He looks a bit like a Quentin Blake illustration

“Is she fucked?” “Like Caligula’s favourite watermelon.”

Can I bring you a shot glass? And some bleach?

You can’t look a gift corpse in the mouth

“It’s over the fat lady’s singing” “No she’s not, the fat man from the go compare advert is talking”

I’ve got my cock out, it’s covered in breadcrumbs and the fucking pigeons are circling

Have I just stepped through a portal into a sausage machine because this is making mincemeat out of my head

Sit there and ogle me like a page three girl

I’m as busy as a two-twatted hooker

Now I have to step in your shoes but after you’ve shat in them

I don’t just take this fucking job home you know. I take this fucking job home, it ties me to the bed and it fucking fucks me from arsehole to breakfast then it wakes me up in the morning with a cupful of piss flung in my face then slaps me about the chops to make sure I’m awake enough to kick me in the fucking bollocks. This job has taken me in every hole in my fucking body.

Everything is fine I’m like lube at a funeral

If you pull off again I’m going to stick the meter so far down your throat you’ll be able to tell the price of your next shit

You closeted regency homosexual

It’s been a bit like renovating an old, old house. You can take out a sexist beam here, a callous window there, replace the odd homophobic roof tile, but after a while you realise […] the foundations are built on what I can only describe as a solid bed of cunts.

Shit in the couscous

[jasper-book-stash]

April 2025 Reading Wrap-Up

Tried something new this time, I made this post early in April and updated it with the books I read as I finished them so I still had my thoughts fresh in my mind. I think I like this approach, I'll be continuing it until I forget.

I read a total of fifteen books this month. I was in a big "study Shintoism" mood because I'm doing a lot of writing for my blorbos over on @azzie-beastbinder, but overall a lot of the books I read were in the nonfiction or occult part of my shelf. I really need to get back to reading all of this fiction I have on my bookshelf, I'm running out of TBR room.

Anyway, the moral of this month is "it's bad enough if your book is boring, it's a bigger sin if your editing is shit".

1/10 - Why Did They Publish This?

None applicable.

2/10 - Trash

None applicable.

3/10 - Meh

Elemental Spirits: Building A Magical Practice In An Animistic World | Jaq D Hawkins

I wanted to like this book, I really did. It was so promising. But the problems just kept stacking up over and over. Between the unsafe offering recommendations (putting HUMAN FOOD like CAKES into WATERWAYS), jacking off about Stonehenge, using faeries and spirits interchangeably which just got weird after a while... And the worst sin of all was that it got repetitive. There were things that made me think in this book, but I eventually tapped out because I just couldn't take it anymore.

Easy Reading Series: The Yengishiki Or Shinto Rituals | unknown author

So, this is basically a paper version of a free PDF I could have gotten. The formatting sucks actual ass, there are nearly no paragraph breaks (which is worth its own bitch in and of itself), and the translation is janky as hell. There aren't even 25 pages of information in here, most of it is just...bad. Not worth the money.

Scorpion Chronicles: A Comprehensive Exploration Of Arachnid Predators And The Realm Of Stingers. | M.sc. Ava Arachno

So this is one of those poorly-formatted books that feels like a bunch of blog posts were made into a book. Despite having around 190 pages, there is very little information in here that just gets repeated over and over in large font. It's like if a children's encyclopedia didn't have any pictures. And that's to say nothing of the shitty editing work.

4 to 6/10 - Mid-Tier

Shinto: The Way Of The Gods: Introduction To The Traditional Religion Of Japan | Vincent Miller

First and foremost, I cannot stress enough that they needed a proper fucking editor. Half of my time going through this book was spent fixing editing issues or making notes about where paragraph breaks should have been. The information isn't horrible, it just had quite a bit of weird phrasing and helped define a lot of stuff, it's just...looking at the writing and the editing, I cannot, in good faith, give it anything higher than a 5 out of 10. (Also, the publisher seems to pump out a lot of dieting books that they advertised in the back...not great.)

The Municipalists | Seth Fried

This was not a bad book. It just was not interesting to me. There's a lot of worldbuilding in here, which is great for something sci-fi, but it often cut down on the characters actually having a conversation; they would just summarize the conversations about half of the time, even with the ones that are, you know, crucial for character development and interaction. It also took me 70 pages to finally get into it, only to tap out at page 106 and just read the last two chapters. I'm sure it's plenty interesting, but it wasn't that interesting to me. Also a 5 out of 10.

Pegasus 1977 | National Poetry Press

This is one of those "I picked up some random poetry books from a secondhand store" type of books. For the most part, the poems were...passable? Not bad considering the year...I think? I can't actually find information on this book online anywhere. Also the mythological pegasus never gets mentioned even once. If anyone knows what the fuck is up with this, uh, let me know. Giving it a 4 out of 10 because it dragged on so long.

7 to 8/10 - Good With Caveats

Mimusubi Essays On Shinto 5: Shinto Practice For Non-Japanese | David Chart

So this is actually a published duo of Patreon essays, but none of the other duos of essays have paper versions that I could get easily. There's a lot of good info in here that built on what I got from Vincent Miller's book. The font is so fucking small though, which I imagine is how the author got all that detail into so few pages (the book is marked as having 49 pages on my spreadsheet). 7 out of 10, hard for me to read but I liked what I got out of it.

DISCLAIMER! One of the shrines referenced in this booklet as an American shrine is apparently bad enough that it has an entire blog dedicated to exposing information about it. That can be found here: Exposing Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America.

Amaterasu: Return Of The Sun: A Japanese Myth | Paul D Storrie, Ron Randall [Juvenile]

This is an incredibly short and simple graphic novel/comic book retelling a version of the Amaterasu myth, with enough given context of previous myths to figure out what's important here. Very generic looking artwork, but lovely character designs. The author and artist chose a version of the myth appropriate to its target age demographic. This is an 8 out of 10.

The Gay Agenda: A Modern Queer History & Handbook | Ashley Molesso, Chess Needham

This is overall a fine enough book that I enjoyed and learned from, but there are some problems I had with it.

While there's a strong aesthetic present thanks to the artwork of Ash + Chess (I actually have a tarot deck by them and didn't realize this was by the same people until I recognized the art style because I just…don't read the author names of books at first), it also has the problem of being really hard to read thanks to small font and background and font colors that don't work together well on several pages. It's very United States-centric, which I did not realize going in. Some of the terminology used in here feels like they're trying too hard to be "hip" and there are a few places where things that were objectively bad were referred to as "really lame". Finally, I found the last chunk (the "handbook" section meant to include guides and information) to be…far less useful than a dedicated book to queer identities, and it suddenly has a section pointedly addressing non-queer people even though the assumption across the rest of the text is that the person reading this book is already queer. There's also some parts back in the handbook section that treat asexual and aromantic as the exact same thing, and a focus on drag queens exclusively in the parts about drag throughout the book.

Despite these problems, this is still a pretty good book for a look at queer history in the United States, though I haven't dug into their sources myself just yet. I'd give it an 8 out of 10. I'm glad this book exists, I just think it could have been better if they had another pair of eyes on it.

9/10 - Very Very Good

Starter Villain | John Scalzi

It's so fucking stupid, I love it. You are sitting down across the bar from this guy while he fixes you a drink and tells you about the weirdest shit ever in his life. The dolphins get unionized. The protagonist blows up a satellite with a laser funded by the US Department of Agriculture. The cats type on keyboards. The events of this book are only going on in the course of about a week. Please read this book.

The Book Of Japanese Folklore: An Encyclopedia Of The Spirits, Monsters, And Yokai Of Japanese Myth: The Stories Of The Mischievous Kappa, Trickster Kitsune, Horrendous Oni, And More | Thersa Matsuura, Michelle Wang

This is a book I picked up on a whim from a "local" (read: 1 hour away) bookstore because I've been doing research to better write my blorbos. For the most part, I enjoyed this book, though I do have some mild complaints that not every entry has artwork (particularly those entries that could use the help of a few pages to get them on par with other entries). Other than that, I quite enjoyed it and got through it in the span of two days, which is pretty quick for a nonfiction read for me. It also introduced me to the bean man, which I cherish greatly.

A Popular Dictionary Of Shinto | Brian Bocking

Less of a book that one reads cover-to-cover and more of, well, a dictionary, it is nonetheless quite thorough and useful. I will be picking up my own copy, and I'm thankful that my library system had it so I could check it out before buying it.

10/10 - Unironically Recommend To Everyone

The Serviceberry: Abundance And Reciprocity In The Natural World | Robin Wall Kimmerer

So, if you know anything about me, it's that I loved Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It was one of my favorite books of 2023 and the Young Adult adaptation was one of my favorite books of 2024. So when I saw this in the little bookstore an hour away from my rural home (I shit you not, that's the most local bookstore I have), I scooped it up to give it a read too. And honestly? It was really fucking good. It's given me plenty to think about. If you're at all interested in Indigenous science, gift economies, or getting a new perspective, I recommend picking it up.

Ada Lace, Take Me To Your Leader | Emily Calandrelli, Tamson Weston, Renee Kurilla [Juvenile]

This is actually part of a slightly longer series of kid's books, but my family's had it for a little while (...but had never read it) because we're amateur radio ("ham radio") operators, just like Ada Lace in-story and Emily Calandrelli out-of-story. This is a delightful little book if you or someone else has never heard of ham radio before, or if you know a kid a young age bracket with a love for science. It doesn't get bogged down in the scientific details but it also doesn't hesitate to pause and explain things in-story.

A Quick & Easy Guide To Queer & Trans Identities | Mady G, Jules Zuckerberg [Young Adult]

This is basically a nonfiction graphic novel, and it is incredibly approachable and easy to read, even if the font is a little small. It's an easy introduction to the concept of queerness. I would definitely recommend it as a book to pick up if you're questioning or you know someone who's questioning. It's marked as being YA on Amazon but I could easily see this added to the Juvenile section of a library without issue.

[honestlyvan]

CONTROL ANNOTATED: DIDN’T WE JUST DO THIS?

(Also available on Dreamwidth!)

Hi! It’s me and @drdarling again! We wrote the Alan Wake 2 annotation for Ahti’s dialogue! I’m aware there’s been guides like this out for like three years but also I wanted to do it myself in the style of the previous guide, mostly out of curiosity to see how the style of his dialogue has changed because it’s… definitely different :’D

Once again thanks to Saikku and RH for the help with the translations, and once again Finnish is very regional and my translations are just one Finnish reading on what the fuck he is saying. The point here is to demonstrate that Ahti isn’t cryptic, he’s quite comprehensible but he’s also definitely just saying shit to mess with people.

Spoilers for all of Control past this point.

Ahti intro, points Jesse to the elevator:

There you are! You are here about the job. Janitor’s assistant. You need to go to the interview. Go that way to the elevator. Very good. I’m Ahti, the janitor, by the way. You’ll work for me. You can say I sent you. If they don’t hire you, niin johan on helvetti. There be work for the axe, take them behind the sauna, jumalauta.

“niin johan on helvetti” – cursing. “it (sure is/will be) hell” translates broadly to “there will be hell to pay”

“There be work for the axe” – “olla kirveelle töitä”, open-ended threat; something needs rectifying, with force if necessary

“take them behind the sauna” – “viedä saunan taakse”, “put someone out of their misery”, to execute someone. Saunas are usually built away from the house, so anything happening behind them would not be visible to the main house and yard.

Jesse: Ahti the janitor is a friendly face in my book.

Better than somebody with no face at all. Think about it, no face.

Jesse makes her way down to Ahti’s office in Maintenance:

Well done. You got the job. It’s place for congratulations. Jippii, saatana. (note from Autumn: Very deadpan delivery on this one that makes me lose it every time.) It happened in the last drop. I truly need an assistant.

“Jippii, saatana.” – “Yippee, (saatana)”, loanword from English.

“in the last drop” – “viime tipassa”, common idiom, “in the nick of time”

Jesse asks for help getting to the override to get the lockdown lifted:

Yes, yes. Easy peasy. It’s just around the corner. But first we need to get you working! Very small couple of hours job.

“just around the corner” – interesting case of Ahti using the correct English idiom rather than saying “behind the corner” as we’d say in Finnish.

“Very small couple of hours job.” – not an idiom, but a very common part of ESL English from a Finnish speaker, dropping verbs and particles.

Jesse inner monologues, “Something tells me it’s gonna be more than that.”:

Jahaa, jaa-a, you think there’s a dog buried in this? I can tell you are not a yesterday’s grouse’s son. That’s why you’ll make a great assistant. Very well, I’ll hit the facts on the table. Mä kyllä sanon perkele suoraan että this house has a vermin problem, a bad one. They’ve already messed up the cooling pumps and the power generators of power plant, perkele. And the pensioner inside is starting to feel the band around his head tighten. The situation needs to be fixed before the plant blows up and we all disappear like a fart in Sahara, perkele. But don’t you worry, I’ve left you clear instructions. You’ll catch the end of the thread before I go to my vacation. The works on the task board here you can do later when you have time.

“there’s a dog buried in this” – “koira haudattuna”, common idiom meaning that the situation is not what it seems, or there is a hidden (negative) side to the story being told.

“a yesterday’s grouse’s son” – “eilisen teeren poika”, common idiom, “born yesterday”

“Mä kyllä sanon perkele suoraan että” – “Perkele, I’ll say it (straight, directly), that”

“feel the band around his head tighten” – “vanne pään ympärillä kiristyy”, growing more agitated as the situation gets more serious. Sometimes you also hear “feel the band around the barrel tighten”, about situations that get more stressful before they resolve.

“like a fart in Sahara” – “kuin pieru Saharaan”, common turn of phrase, “into thin air”

“catch the end of the thread” – “langan päästä kiinni”, common saying, understanding the situation, “getting up to speed”

Jesse inner monologues, “Vacation? Right.”:

Yes. No-one's gonna cancel my holiday, or sheaths gonna rattle. But don’t worry at all. You’ll take care of it, and soon this crisis gonna be last winter’s snow. You better go now so you don’t have to run with your head as your third leg. The door in the back leads to the plant.

“sheaths gonna rattle” – “tulee tupenrapinat”, common idiom meaning that there’s going to be an argument or a fight. “The knives will be drawn”.

“last winter’s snow” – “menneen talven lumia”, water under the bridge.

“run with your head as your third leg” – “juosta pää kolmantena jalkana”, common idiom, to be in a rush.

Incidental dialogue hanging around in Ahti’s office throughout:

It’s time for a coffee break soon. Aah, kaffea.

“kaffe” – “coffee”, a Swedicism

Pensioner, yes. Northmoor, mister director. Starting to climb on the walls in his bachelor pad.

“to climb on the walls” – “kiipeillä seinille”, idiom, to act nervous and jumpy, “going spare”

Tango is a window into a Finn’s soul. It came from Suomi Finland. Anyone who says anything else is a lying goat. Perkele.

“a lying goat.” – “valepukki”, idiomatic. What it says on the tin.

(Translator’s note: Ahti is 100% lying when he says this. Autumn confirmed that this is a reference to the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki talking about Finns inventing tango and sailors taking it to Argentina with them, but unlike Ahti we know he was joking.)

The Bureau is trying to dig a hole in their own cellar, looking for gold. Greedy will have a shitty end.

“dig a hole in their own cellar, looking for gold” – “kaivaa kultaa omasta kellarista”. As far as we can tell, this is not a saying anywhere in Finland, but as always this means it might just be an obscure one.

“Greedy will have a shitty end.” – “Ahneella on paskainen loppu”, a common saying. Exactly what it says on the tin.

Where did I leave my mop again? Pirulauta. Burnout, cosmonaut. I really need a holiday.

“Pirulauta” – “Devil, help me”, more commonly in the form “jumalauta” (god help me). The “devil” referenced in this is not a capital-letter Devil, but rather a folk devil/evil spirit.

“Burnout, cosmonaut” – Not directly a saying in Finnish. “Kosmonautti” gets used the same way “space case” does in English, he is berating himself for his attention slipping.                                             

The Containment Sector has blown to pussy’s splinters. The work won’t end even if you keep doing it.

“pussy’s splinters” – “vitun päreiksi.” “Vittu” is more properly translated as “cunt”, it’s the most common swear in modern Finnish. (Note from Saikku: In Ostrobothnia folks also say "pillun päreiksi", with "pillu" translating literally to "pussy".)

When the time comes, I’m gonna go on my vacation, like dad went into mom.

“like dad went into mom” – “kuin isä äitiin.” Exactly what it says on the tin. (Also not a saying, Ahti is just making a dirty joke.)

You know what’s the worst thing about this vermin? Saatana! The noise! They don’t appreciate good music. And that’s the reason they can go as far as pepper grows.

“go as far as pepper grows.” – “mennä niin kauas kuin pippuri kasvaa”, a common idiom. In essence, “fuck all the way off.”

The first thing I’m gonna do when I get to my vacation is to get drunk. Anyone who doesn’t respect that can go to hell’s spruce tree. Sausages on eyes. A drop won’t kill you and you can’t drown in a bucket.

“hell’s spruce tree” – “helvetin kuuseen”. This is a mistranslation from Ahti, since the more appropriate translation would be “to the backforests of hell”. Also, in essence, “fuck all the way off”.

“Sausages on eyes.” – “nakit silmillä”, common idiom, “extremely drunk”

“A drop won’t kill you and you can’t drown in a bucket.” – “Ei tippa tapa ja ämpäriin ei huku”, a reference to a pop song by Irwin Goodman of the same name about drinking lots of booze.

The Research Sector is the worst. The doctors don’t know how to clean after themselves. That Arish fellow is not a useless guy. Respects his elders. Makes good coffee. Yep yep. The janitor is the one who makes everything running and under control.

What A Mess: Burn The Trash dialogue:

Yep. Burn the trash. Throw it in the fire. Burn it all. Burn it into a reindeer, not into a moose.

“Burn it into a reindeer, not into a moose.” – (Translator’s note: *drags hands over face*) The word for ashes/cinders, “poro”, is a homonym with the word for reindeer, also “poro”. It’s a play on words.

Ahti dialogue on The Clog:

My old enemy, the Clog, is blocking the pipes. You need to deal with that shit. He’s my very old enemy, the clog, Paska.

“Paska” = shit

He’s very clever, he’s trying to sneak in. We got him caught with his hand in the fish trap. Get rid of him.

“caught with his hand in the fish trap” – “jäädä rysän päältä kiinni”, a common idiom. “Get caught with your pants down”.

It’s back. What would kill a bad thing? Paska mikä paska.

“What would kill a bad thing?” – “Mikä pahan tappaisi”, a common turn of phrase. What it says on the tin.

“Paska mikä paska” – “The shit is what it is.”

Ahti dialogue while fixing the power plant:

Broke. Gone to shit. Fix it fast. If the plant goes boom, we can throw the spoon in the corner.

“Gone to shit.” – “mennyt paskaksi”, translates directly.

“throw the spoon in the corner” – “heittää lusikka nurkkaan”, idiomatic, “buy the farm.” (This is a slightly odd translation to me, as it is being used more in the same sense as “throw in the towel”, creating the implication that dying in huge explosions is voluntary.)

It’s fried up. You need to fix it before the old twig-pants inside the plant has a shit-fit.

“the old twig-pants” – “vanha vihtahousu”, idiomatic. Broadly “that old devil”, in Finnish it’s common to have many names for evil or just strong spirits, because calling them by their proper name invites them to come bother you. (“Vihtahousu” gets translated in AW2 as “Ol’ Scratch”)

“shit-fit” – “paskahalvaus”, interesting case of a missed opportunity for a funny Finnicism in the form of “shit-stroke/shit-arrest”

Ahti dialogue while clearing darkness:

Darkness everywhere. New day, same old bloody shit, said the old lady. Like tar, but good for nothing. Get rid of it!

“New day, same old bloody shit, said the old lady.” – “Uusi päivä, samaa vanhaa paskaa, sanoi vanha täti.” This is not an idiom, but the “x, said y” format is a common one for proverbs, and a common way for people to quote wisdom from their family.

Ah, tar. Sauna, tar and booze, they’ll get you through anything! Like the winters in Finland. Long dark winters. As dark as in a sack, perkele.

“Sauna, tar and booze, they’ll get you through anything!” – this is a paraphrase of a saying that goes “if sauna, tar and booze doesn’t cure it, the disease is lethal”.

“As dark as in a sack” – “pimeää kuin säkissä”, common turn of phrase, what it says on the tin.

Ahti dialogue while cleaning up Mold:

The air in here is getting bad. The vents, they are full of mold-shit. It’s no good for you! Headache, nausea, mold-lung... Depression, but how can you tell when you’re a Finn? Helvetin home, eikö siitä nyt saatana pääse eroon.

“Helvetin home, eikö siitä nyt saatana pääse eroon.” – “(Helvetin) mold, is there really no way to get rid of it, (saatana)!” The sentence is in passive voice (“Can it not be gotten rid of”) which gets used in Finnish a lot to refer to ongoing problems.

You need to scrub that clean or there goes my reputation and honor. And then the good won’t swing.

“reputation and honor” – “maine ja kunnia”, common turn of phrase. The “honour” here does not mean personal honour, but rather community reputation.

“the good won’t swing” – “ei hyvät heilu”, common turn of phrase, usually used to threaten someone akin to “you’ll be sorry.”

More of it! This thing is completely leaving from the mitten. Perkele, saatana, helvetin helvetti. Loma tulossa ja tällästä paskaa.

“leaving from the mitten” – “lähteä lapasesta”, common idiom, “get out of hand”.

“Loma tulossa ja tällästä paskaa.” – “The holidays are coming and (we have to deal with) this kind of shit.”

Ahti dialogue while taking care of the plants:

They are very good listeners, you can tell them anything. Or you can sing to them. They like that.

For the plants in Investigations:

The plants in here have died standing up. Piruparat. Lighten them up!

“died standing up” – “kuolleet pystyyn”, common turn of phrase that gets used about neglected plants a lot.

“piruparat” – “poor devils”, again with the small first letter, referencing folk devils and evil spirits.

Ahti tells Jesse to take a break:

Hurry is not good for you. And the contract says you can take a break. Ten points and a parrot patch. Now you know what this job is all about. Could be worse. There are good benefits.

“Ten points and a parrot patch” – “kymmenen pistettä ja papukaijamerkki”, common turn of phrase, “ten points and a gold star”. Comes from an old children’s show called “Sirkus Papukaija” (“Circus Parrot”)

When you’re done with all the tasks:

Tattis! A crazy person works hard, and a wise person gets away with less. Happy vacation to me!

“Tattis” – “thank you”, a Swedicism

“A crazy person works hard, and a wise person gets away with less.” – “hullu huhkii, viisas pääsee vähemmällä”, a proverb about working smarter, not harder.

Here, have a little knick-knack as a thanks from me. Not too owly at all!

“Not too owly at all!” – “ei pöllömpi”, idiomatic, here meaning “impressive” or “well done”.

Ahti goes on vacation:

Now this boy left, said the son of Annikki Tähti. My assistant will keep work in the glove and the house standing. Lomille lomps, holiday homps.

“Now this boy left, said the son of Annikki Tähti.” – (Translator’s notes: *long pained groan*) This is a strange half-pun, half reference. The phrase usually shows up in Finnish as “nyt meikä lähti, sanoi Annikki Tähti” (“I’m leaving now, said Annikki Tähti”, a famous Finnish iskelmä singer who is not relevant to the phrase other than to create alliteration). Ahti is doubling up on the alliteration and saying complete nonsense as a result.

“keep work in the glove and the house standing” – “homma hanskassa ja tupa pystyssä”, common idiom, what it says on the tin.

“Lomille lomps, holiday homps.” – “Lomille lomps/lompsis” is a persistent popculture reference that lives on among Finnish conscripts and the rest of the culture. Ahti’s translation is quite accurate, although “lomps/lompsis” can be used as an onomatopoeia for stepping into a puddle/swamp, while “homps” means nothing. Alliterative jokes like this are common in Finnish.

Dialogue during Finnish Tango when you first enter the Ashtray Maze:

Broke. There is no way through. Badly made. Wolf shit. Somebody cut costs in the wrong place. Contact the janitor if you need to get through.

“Wolf shit” – “susipaska”. The word for wolf, “susi” is idiomatically used to mean broken, flawed or unusable, and is here a modifier for “paska” rather meaning the droppings of the animal.

Jesse contacts Ahti in The Foundation:

Aah. Aijai. Vikingit saatana. Ei kestänyt ruottalaisen veljekset kunnon löylyjä.

“Aijai” – Filler phrase. Literally means “ouch/ouchie”, but can be used to signal appreciation.

“Vikingit saatana. Ei kestänyt ruottalaisen veljekset kunnon löylyjä.” – “(Saatana), them vikings. The Swedish brothers couldn’t stand a proper löyly.” “Löyly” is both the steam from throwing water on the stove in a sauna, and the humid warmth that follows from “throwing löyly”. Ahti is making fun of the Andersons for not tolerating a hot sauna. It’s a very common shot across the border for Finns to say Swedes don’t tolerate “real” löyly. (Translator’s note: Ahti is using “ruottalaisen” rather than “ruotsalaiset”, as is typical of the Ostrobothnian dialect)

Hey, girl. For a Finn, holiday is holy, perkele.

“holiday is holy” – The word for any nationally mandated day off (+ Sundays) is “pyhäpäivä”, literally “holy day”. Extended national holidays, such as the three days around Christmas, and even long weekends can be called “pyhät”, the holies.

Did you miss me? Did you have piss in your sock? Yes. Now now now now. Bark don’t make a wound. You did good. Take my cassette player. You can borrow it. The song is a present from my friends to you. It will get you through the maze so you can do your job.

“piss in your sock” – “kusi sukassa”, common idiom, meaning “frozen with fear”

“Bark don’t make a wound.” – “ei haukku haavaa tee”, common proverb, “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me”

Ahti in Jesse’s Hiss nightmare:

Are you sure you are not lost? Maybe you can find yourself in the Director’s Office. You should keep trying. You are getting closer. Welcome back. I knew I chose a good assistant.

Closing notes: Despite Ahti having significantly less dialogue in Control than he does in AW2, this document ended up nearly as long as the other one. All the way through working on this I’ve been commenting on how his English is both weirdly better and worse in AW2, like, his use of English overall is a lot less stumbling and his vocabulary seems larger, but at the same time he uses less English, relies on just directly saying in Finnish what he’s thinking, using a lot more filler Finnish… It’s an interesting choice overall.

I’m not sure it’s relevant to the character, but having seen it I’m now gonna be very interested to hear what he sounds like if he shows up in Control 2 or other relevant RCU projects :3c Hope you had fun, and maybe learned something new.

[kaija-rayne-author]

OMG I'm laughing so hard at someone calling me names because I dared post that I had to unfollow people who were toxicly positive about Veilguard and being twats about it to others.

Again, I'm truly happy for you if you liked it. I didn't. You shockingly don't have to be an asshole to others about it. Nor do you need to shit on something other people loved simply because checks notes, some stranger on the internet said that they didn't want to follow people being toxically positive about something you liked. Oooookay then. 🤣

It's a video game. A piece of entertainment. It's fiction.

If you get so worked up over someone else's (a strangers!) opinion that you're slinging ad hominem attacks, maaaaaybe it's time to I dunno, do literally anything else?

Especially trying to get any response but laughter or blocking out of someone like me who has lived through so much that if I talk about even a fraction of it, people go all owl eyed and universally ask in a quiet, shocked tone 'how are you even alive?'

Legit can't stop laughing. 🤣

Update

So, I freely admit that I'm in a bad mood and broke my rule about feeding the trolls. I shall do my due internet denizen duty and block/report.

In all responsibility, while laughing at a troll can be a good tool, it risks escalation, and it's really better to simply block and report. They get their jollies by making people feel horrible. (I wasn’t laughing out of trying to feed a troll BTW. They legitimately shocked me into laughing. I wasn't in a good enough mood to hide my reaction.)

They've either deleted or hidden their responses to me. It's just a crying shame that screenshots are forever. Y'all might want to preemptively block. Up to you.

If they hadn’t been so utterly awful, I'd probably have let it slide. But this behavior is unacceptable in a society.

Transcript since it won't fit in alt text.

Lilithfairen

So you're just a raging asshole who can't stand people enjoying a game you didn't. You should let people know that when you follow them so anyone with common sense can block you the moment they see you around.

Masked responder

That's not what OP said lmao

Me

Oh, honey. You're precious (laugh emoji) Go try to gaslight and sea lion someone else. In your vast amounts of time where you're not being a dick to a stranger, perhaps you should consider brushing up on that 'reading comprehension' thing. I gather it's not your highest skill. Maybe put a few skill points in that.

Me replying to masked responder

Right? (Laugh emoji) Just posting on my own wall, about a Fandom problem that they very clearly demonstrated an excellent example of, and *I'm* the asshole. I'm laughing so fucking hard I'm almost crying.

lilithfairen

Oh, not gaslighting anyone. Because a quick check tells me you're a BG3 stan, which highlights why you don't like Veilguard and the people who enjoy it. Veilguard doesn't write queer people as sexual predator. Veilguard doesn't get off on victimizing non-white people or writing them as innately evil and savage. Veilguard doesn't write a storyline where a goddess is a prop to paint a white guy as awesome and smart and then written as a horrible bitch herself. You're a garbage shitstain of a person who can't stand Veilguard not being a game written for straight white manbaby sensibilities, because you think that's what good fiction is.

Me. Oh, do please keep responding (laugh emoji) you're amusing me and exposing your ignorance nicely. Have you considered therapy? It might help with that whole ... hatred of everyone who isn't me... thing, you have going on. I actually can't stop laughing at the loads of shit you're shoveling. I hope you're getting a decent wage for that. Shoveling shit is hard work.

I did say I wasn't in a good mood.

Anyway... because I'm me... pretty sure a lot of people who play Dragon Age games also play BG3. And liked both. It's not an either or. People can shockingly like both! While accepting that there's no such thing as a perfect game/book/movie/show/anything.

I know several people I'm on good terms with who absolutely loved Veilguard. I didn't, but it's not their problem. I don't make it their problem.

Veilguard doesn't write queer people well. Period. (I'm a queer AF author and editor.)

"Doesn't get off on victimizing non-white people or writing them as innately evil and savage." *blinks*. 'Who do we put across from Harding for a death choice. "Assan."' -John Epler (Not the whole Black man attached to the bloody griffin. The griffin.) That doesn't even get into what having the only Black male companion being part of that choice in the first place says. (Pssst. It's not good.)

Um... the Qunari have long been PoC coded and what they did to the Qunari in Veilguard is nothing short of writing them as innately evil and savage. Seriously? Truly shocked by that one. Taash's first romance scene is really problematic, too.

"A storyline where a goddess is a prop to paint a white guy as awesome?" Did they even play BG3? I've played it 5x and have no idea what they're on about there. And Vlakkith has always been a bitch. (I've been playing D&D since 2E. Is it problematic? Fuck yes.) I guess female and woman presumed people aren't allowed to be evil. Who knew?

Snorts. I'm not white, not a man, definitely not straight, and good fiction is my actual job.

As far as the ad hominem attacks. (Sad head shake) Dirthara-ma, da'len.

All that in response to this post of mine.

[elainsgirl]

Saw a tiktok that said “I’m highly convinced book 6 is going to be about the spring court. It’s Elaine’s turn for a book (and we all know she’s a Spring). The “night court” editions are signifying the end of that part of the series. We are moving into spring. Tam tam might get a redemption. We might find out a certain someone is LUCIENS DAUGHTER.” … This had 24K likes😐

With comments like “I need an Elucien Calanmai scene so his last memory is not of Ianthe” (seriously? so it’s Elain’s job to replace Lucien’s trauma?), “I lowkey hope tamlin and Elain end up together and we never hear about the spring court again 😂” (fuck you actually lmao) and “the last crescent city book set up the next acotar as being another Nesta book! I dont think we've seen it all from Nesta yet”. Not to be dramatic but I would legit swear off SJM forever if I have to read ANOTHER Nesta book before getting Elain’s. I can’t deal with another Nesta story. After Elain’s book, if there’s still another ACOTAR book happening, I want it to be Feyre’s pov again. Or a multi pov. But please not another 600-800 pages of Nesta’s pov. I find her bitterness genuinely exhausting.

But anyway like… how did I end up in enemy territory??😭 Everyday I’m genuinely shocked by people’s reading comprehension. If SJM really goes in these directions, focusing on spring court of all places, after all the foreshadowing of Elain and the prison and her being a seer (which how on earth would that work in spring? who would train her? seriously people🙄), as well as the heavy elriel foreshadowing, then she’s a bad writer. Sorry lmao.

And how are those the main comments? I only saw one rational person telling OP it makes no sense to connect Elain to the spring court just because she likes flowers and gardening and that Feyre herself said Elain likes the night court. The rest of the comments though… YIKES. And I’m filled with such exasperation and the intense need to take each person by their shoulders and shake them. But I don’t wanna get involved in unnecessary fights on tiktok so I just scrolled passed. But I needed to show you how bad it is out there💀

”But I needed to show you how bad it is out there💀” … listen yeah, I haven’t been on tiktok for over a month. My last video was on March the 31st, but idk why today I decided that I wanted to become active again and start posting with the same schedule as last time only problem is the fact that, since I was so inactive for a long period of time - I cant just post videos as they enter review and shadowban, annoying but fine I get it. So basically, I have to start interacting with my fyp again to show the algorithm that im now once again active - so Im here scrolling on the fyp and 5 minutes in, I get a “the NC is so toxic Nesta needs to leave” video, then I get a “Rhys is a manipulator amd terrible partner to Feyre” and finally - I get this pro elucien video where the first slide is Azriels quote, “Lucien doesn’t deserve her” “i can defeat him with little effort” and the next slide was a fanart of Lucien in full on day court battle gear and it said “unleash” something. It had 5k likes and scared asf for my bp, I open the comments. My first stupid mistake. And my god. I had this epiphany as to why I quit tiktok for a while in the first place - the comments were jst filled with hateful arrogance. “Az being afriad of fire and expecting to go against someone w fire” - like, maybe I forgot but when is it confirmed Az doesnt like fire? At the HL’s meeting, didnt he do something with berons flames? Idk. But moving on, they where just makimg fun of Az saying he couldn’t defeat Lucien and want to know what they were using to prove their statement? The fact he calmed Cassian down…they’re rlly out here comparing Cass who doesnt have magic to Azriel whose quite literally compared to Rhys, THE most powerful HL AND the same shadowsinger who went up against Eris and had to be pulled back by Feyre. And whats rlly hilarious is that…he calmed Cass down w a flame in his eyes, it was his autumn power coming to the front - not day yet Lucien mom boys have convinced themselves Lucien will be this powerful day court icon and warrior when he was called Lord of FIRE - a nod to Autumn. Not Day. And after that I considered myself irritated enought that I just went through my mutuals videos which were obviously pro elriel 🙂‍↔️ and that made me feel better.

So I fully understand how terrible it is on tiktok, I literally understand the feeling of irritation and exasperation when reading those comments and seeing those videos. The urge to reply back to them all and shake some good ol canon into their heads but deciding to be peaceful instead because you dont have time or even the energy going back and forth with people that have such a twisted view of canon. I cannot even begin to explain the amount of times I received or even read comments that made me want to bang my head against a wall. I genuinely think that would be less painful. Bright side tho - that video inspired some new content for me to make 😌

Back to the spring video- atp its just insulting Sjm. Like. Come on. She is going to write a better story for Elain then her going to live in Spring with her sisters ex…a character Mass doesn’t even like and why on earth would Lucien be there after what Tamlin did to him? You know that HC of elucien doing it on calanmai gives the same energy as elucien’s romantacising Lucien saying he is a mated male now line…as if the poor guy wasn’t using it as a way to not get SA…I know eluciens dont hve enough pro elucien content but that always makes me cringe.

I highly doubt Mass wants to write about Spring, that woman is fully obsessed with the NC as she should be especially considering HOFAS further leans into the NC so A5 will obviously take place there. For the love of God, I cannot torture myself with another Nesta book. I loved liked tolerated reading acosf because the knowledge of elains book being next made it easier…if I had to wait 4 years for another Nesta book I think I’ll actually cry and just give up with Mass all together. It is bad writing because all the signs in acosf and even both bonuses hint to elains book being next + Mass literally said its one couple per book and I dont see why she’d lie or change her mind about it. It does make her a fickle, untrustworthy author + a bad writer for leaving all those elain/elriel foreshadowings and scenes when she could have focused on Gwynriel/Elucien instead.

Tiktok rlly does shock you with peoples reading comprehensions, but some people do it just for the shock factor so they can gain more views and interaction. You’re telling me, im in enemy territory too 😭 I cant even click disinterested because it ruins the feed I spent 2 years crafting. I went on tiktok this morning about 9 am and it’s currently 2am as im writing this and I have not been on TikTok since. I just cannot deal with seeing anti bs and the worst part is I liked every elriel post I came across from my mutuals so now im just waiting for them to make new elriel content as motivation to enter that pool of hell again. This is why I cannot take antis seriously when they claim to be the minority. You open up any shiprelated video and its 90% just antis stating the wrong opinions and yes in aware, opinions cant be wrong. Yet somehow they manage to do it.

Hopefully we leave enemy territory together soon anon 🫂

[wingsofhcpe]

Mar's BBC vs Book Canon Musketeers Assession: a Short Yet Comprehensive Guide

(read under the cut!)

bbc d'Artagnan: baby. has not done anything wrong in his life ever, actual angel, just very stupid.

vs

book d'Artagnan: has the power of god and anime on his side, most annoying little bitch you'll ever meet, broke, has a stupid horse, perpetually single.

*

bbc Athos: depressed older brother figure that's not-so-secretly very soft and loving of his found family and would die to protect them, also still horny for one Milady de Winter. Carries the communal garrison braincell.

vs

book Athos: drunk misogynist who yearns for death and whose only reason to live is his son Raoul. All his braincells have committed self-murder.

*

bbc Porthos: feisty ray of sunshine who has never had a single evil thought in that silly head of his, actually quite clever, complicated and emotional, deserves the world.

vs

book Porthos: vainest person you'll ever meet, doesn't know when to shut up, sugar baby who cares only about himself (and maybe Aramis), has not had a single intelligent thought in his entire existence.

*

bbc Aramis: cinnamon roll, golden retriever, actually quite clever, troublemaker who can't keep it in his pants, lovable self-sacrificial idiot who would get himself killed in a heartbeat to save his loved ones, brightest smile in all of Paris. Invented bisexuality.

vs

book Aramis: mean, edgy, probably secretly a vampire, would sell you to satan for one (1) corn chip, one bad day away from going on a murder spree. Also invented bisexuality.

*

bbc Treville: exasperated dad.

vs

book Treville: extremely exasperated dad.

*

bbc Cardinal: genius evil mastermind played by Peter Capaldi.

vs

book Cardinal: genius evil mastermind sadly not played by Peter Capaldi.

*

bbc Rochefort: worst person you'll ever fucking meet, arguably the only downgrade in the show.

vs

book Rochefort: sneaky lil bastard that's also the bestieTM, we stan.

*

bbc Constance: feminist icon, beautiful queen I'd kill and die for, gaslight gatekeep girlboss.

vs

book Constance: she's just there and then she dies ig.

*

bbc Milady: my cunning evil murderwife, would die for her, deserves the world.

vs

book Milady: actually I believe Athos should have strangled her with his own hands, fuck her.

*

bbc Bonacieux: evil greasy little man, fuck him.

vs

book Bonacieux: he's just... kinda... there I guess? Idk man Dumas looked at the Bonacieuxs and went "nah".

*

bbc Louis: annoying little shit but he's kinda cute and nice sometimes

vs

book Louis: manchild, just There ig.

*

bbc Anne: radiant angel who has done nothing wrong in her life ever and she's also perfection itself.

vs

book Anne: literal drama queen.

*

BONUS ROUND- GRIMAUD

bbc Grimaud: hot evil emo dude, idk what his problem was tho

vs

book Grimaud: actually he just doesn't get paid enough for this shit so if he wanted to murder Athos like in the show I'd understand that lmao

[the-pale-chancellor]

Have you watched the recording I sent @majeremorozova ? If so I’d love to hear your thoughts

Oh yes, I have.

I have.

And that's gonna be a long(fucking)read, beware everyone who dares to step further!

Disclaimer: Those are just my overall thoughts, I do not want to insult or humiliate any of the actors, directors or any other person with my words, though they may be harsh in some places. And that is totally my fault. So! With that out of the way!

Let me divide this thing into small parts.

1. Plot.

That's the biggest improvement here, literally. I could not thank Anton enough for actually making things understandable to a regular viewer, who didn't for example watch 4 different plays and read the books like I did. Scenes were moved between each other to make a comprehensible storyline. Though, at first I somewhat got confused with the pre-Conclave scene and the Nightmares suddenly being the second to play (which they weren't actually but at first it seemed so). They even added Paladine! (loving good old Fizban finally showing up, but sadly not Tas). Interesting way of singing Lord of Nothing along with Crysania and not Takhisis!

But there always will be things I don't like: first of all, just for the sake of Paladine, whAT IS HAPPENING IN THE ABYSS????? CABARET???? WITH TAKHISIS???? HALF-NAKED DANCERS???? That was supposed to be a serious, dark scene of Raistlin going nuts and not..whatever it was. Bruh. Lacked the emotional impact from the Cataclysm scene, it literally did nothing to achieve at least a sense of fear, meh. Also, for some reason I cringed from a JCSS reference before Battle for the Zaman Castle, Raistlin is not supposed to reperesent Jesus in any way, it just doesn't suit the character arc. Also Dalamar appearing in the most random places?? Where he was not supposed to be even in the book???? But oh well, characters are another problem here.

2. Characters

Oh boy. I am going to rant here alot, ain't I..We'll go with everyone here for getting at least some improvements.

-Tika. Absolute favourite, nothing can change my opinion here. New version of the tavern scene is precious and some other scenes like holding a baby in her hands. Adorable.

-Caramon. Nothing changed x2. Rostik just slays and may I notice the cameraman was mostly filming him lmao. Fighting scenes were both appealing and wonky in different places, but he made it through really well.

-New: the Nun and the Inquisitor. They were added specifically in the new version of the musical and I rather enjoyed seeing them honestly. Especially the latter. The Nun though..she doesn't integrate with the plot well, too much of a comic relief which I don't like.

-Takhisis. Apart from the abyss scene and her costume design which I'ma mention later, she wasn't bad. Neutral opinion, that's all she gonna get.

-One line for the two: The Kingpriest and Par-Salian. Both are just okay, again, without additional rant about the costumes yet. One thing is that I don't like how the actor for the first one (woops, I don't remember his name, shame on me) - his voice is too rude, too harsh and rough when he sings, he's supposed to be like the Abbot from Curse of Strahd, like the Saint Being himself, and he just roars. But that's just taste, I got used to Plamenev and Sydorenko singing some parts I suppose.

-And here we start a rant. Ladies, gents and other people - Dalamar Argent! Even though I don't mention him a lot in my posts, I fucking love this character, even my DnD PC kinda reminds of him. bUT. Both in the books and in the previous staged versions he still HOLDS his respect towards his shalafi, his master. In this one he just goes "yeah whatever this mf is gonna die" and what??? where's the rest of it at least???? he appears in the Abyss to notify about the scenes (why would they even make him do that???) and what? Ending where? Also, his whole vibe of a twink gothic vampire is not what he's supposed to feel like. But alas, bonus points for the cane and for looking gay. And he got some new scenes, I'd say I liked (e.g. him going against Raistlin and losing miserably).

-*breathes in* Crysania. Just Crysania. I had my share of doubts about her at all times, I've never liked her originally so no expectations were there. She has bread instead of her brains in the original media, bUT THEY SOMEHOW MADE HER EVEN MORE STUPID. HOW GUYS. JUST HOW. Wtf you mean she pretended to pray to do her own things insted??? She is a CLERIC. She prays furiously, she lays all her hopes on the gods, on Paladine. Her behaviour is utterly childish, her descisions are peak dumbass, and the only good about this version - her laughing madly by the end and the very Lord of Nothing she sings in a duet. The "I can fix him" woman cannot get fixed herself I suppose. Ehhh.

-Oh, we really got here? Yes, yes we did. Raistlin. Again, outside the costume and prop design. Why in the sweet hells he is THAT disabled??? It's the 4-6th books, he's nearly fully in full health, he doesn't need his staff to walk like this, he isn't supposed to whither and wipe the floor with himself - he literally becomes a god so how come he looks like this? And with the actor thing - this man doesn't suit him, nor does Rostislav. I understand that choosing actors might have been a big deal, but not them. Maxim was there, he could have played Raist and not Dalamar, yet they decided otherwise. I completely disliked this Raistlin, but that's just some opinion of mine, don't get angry. I "grew up" as a fan of Ruslan and then original Anton version, anyone else (maybe except for Egorov) just don't feel any right, especially with this kind of acting out a character. Woah, that was a long rant, teheee.

3. Costumes.

I am utterly horrified. Literally zero words. Raistlin without a wig and with a mop on his head (not talking about SpB vers, it got better there), sport-like costume with white print AND a suit??? In fantasy????? (yeah, I read the comms of Anton about it all being just a fable, not fantasy-like, but then you could've made everything modern!au?)(Raist in the suit lowkey looks like the 12th doctor, I couldn't help but imagine 12th singing the last bits instead of Raist himself). Horrible. Just horrible. Everyone has different styles of their costumes, half of the actors are literally wearing curtains (yes, Kingpriest, i am looking at you). Par-Salian somehow got the best one here, I like the mirror thingies on his shoulder pads.

The Abyss and Takhisis are something else entirely, I hate how this powerful character got turned into a..what, brothel hostess? Her original costume design was rejected, they didn't have time to make a new one so they literally bought pieces from WildBerries and paired them together! (joke's on u, the comment section even found the exact version of her coat and body part)(alright, I mean this one costume doesn't look that bad, no, it just..too open, too out of place, not for a Dragon Queen).

Please, return Dalamar his ears, I beg. If not his wig, then at least his eARS-

4. The last one. Production and the props.

As it was just the recording, I cannot truly get you the whole picture, so bear with what I noticed.

The sound went off on minute 20. Raist's mic started flopping so he had to get a hand one and then just the other one between the scenes. The sound team didn't do their work properly, besides I sometimes couldn't understand what the characters were singing or saying (luckily, when you know most of the arias, it's easier). The orchestra was a bit louder than the leads, but maybe it was because of the recording itself.

Props were either good or bad, no in-between. The moons everyone were laughing at, were rather good in my opinion, just not something one would get used to in a matter of seconds. They looked funny when moving and not flying in one place, because they bent into different sides like balloons. Also the staff broke down a few times.

well, i do hope this review is fine! thanks for reading!

[cto10121]

Twilight Clown Takes—Part 10

Featuring “Twilight is badly written,” “Meyer did not intend to write X thing she definitely wrote,” “The series is über Mormon,” and other chestnuts. Fortunately, I do love nuts of all kinds, so om nom nom

The writing was so gibberish it was a bestselling phenomenon on par with Harry Potter.

The only thing bad about the writing in Twilight is that Meyer got a very bad editor. There are stray typos and errors in my original copies. Sadly, book editing has gotten worse since then, and I have found many modern books with similar errors.

Bella is not like other girls, all right. So much so that she constantly claims she is. Like here:

“Well, look at me,” I said, unnecessarily, because he was looking at me. “I’m completely ordinary.”

IF the dialogue in the books is like the movie dialogue…IF

“This main character is such a main character!!1!1” 😡 “Also big words make my wee lil brain hurt!!1!1”

Bella is literally so expressive around Edward and the Cullens, to the point where Alics mentions sourly she had “forgotten how exuberant” she was. Emmett and Jasper have a bet over how many people Bella could kill in her first year just on her temper alone. And re: Edward, Bella has no problem arguing and pleading and crying and ranting to him.

Also, Jacob is a different, much more immature character than Bella, so of course his POV would be different.

“Deeply desperate for sexuality” 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣And these clowns claim Meyer is a bad writer. Don’t go throwing stones with your glass house, hon.

Anyhoo, Edward is the one who pushes for marriage, not Bella. Rosalie and Emmett get married every decade or so, but that’s only because Rosalie loves weddings—as in, being the center of attention. Do Alice and Jasper even have a wedding ceremony??? I don’t even think they got married in the traditional sense even once. No doubt they did, but they aren’t portrayed as a conventional married couple at all.

Other vampires that are not the Cullens do not marry at all—they are mated, which is an actually a greater and more permanent commitment than marriage in the Twilight world.

Also. The Twilight series, fearing sexuality? The Denali sisters literally went vegetarian because they loved fucking human men too much. And they are considered not only good vampires, but the Cullens’ extended family. And Renesmee nor Claire are child brides.

Twilight isn’t explicit about sex purely because Meyer realized her first book would be targeted to a YA crowd. But it is a romance through and through.

Ho boy, where to begin?

“Edward is supposed to be creepy, he is a vampire after all—” Would you like a cookie for this very obvious reading, Clown OP? That is some elementary school-level reading comprehension there.

“Failed to write an arc where the character recognize the problems, learn, and then overcome them—” Edward literally went from “She is my prey” to “I have her blood on my lips, and I am laughing at a joke she just made” in the first book alone. In New Moon, Edward made the disastrous decision to leave Bella, ramifications of which he was still dealing with in Eclipse (and he explicitly said it was the worst mistake he ever made). In Eclipse, Edward finally learns to trust Bella, fight for her love, and even decides to give her what she wants (i.e., sex) because he felt that he had been fucking it up the whole time. By Breaking Dawn, we have an Edward who finally accepts himself for who he is and learns to be happy in his vampire life.

As for Bella, she went from an introverted parentified teen so neglected she felt she had to cook and clean for her parents in order to feel less of a burden…to the powerful member of a coven who loves and supports her, saving the lives of said coven and mate from the Volturi. By the end Bella finally learns that what she wants is important and to fight for it. She learns to accept gifts and attention. She even finally describes herself as beautiful…as a human. That’s so big! That is an arc.

It is glaringly obvious, that I must question whether Clown OP has read the series or not. Most clowns do not, of course.

“The story never digs deep enough into him being a real danger to Bella—” Bitch, that’s all of the story. It’s literally 80% of Edward’s personality right there! He is too bad for Bella, it would be better if he weren’t in Bella’s life, it’s literally never-ending. A whole chunk of Bella’s motivation for becoming a vampire is because his world is too dangerous for her as a human. The whole plot of each book is Bella being hunted by a vampire, who are consistently the villains and described as monsters.

“Trying to turn Stephenie into the new J.K. Rowling—” When I picked up Twilight in ‘06 it was labeled as “Romantic Suspense.” The whole series was explicitly marketed as a paranormal teen romance, which was and is a subgenre of fantasy, with the whole Team Edward and Team Jacob thing riding strong. Twilight never tried to be something it wasn’t, and Meyer has never tried to make it out to seem like some epic fantasy. On the contrary, it was the anti fans that preferred the lore to the actual romance.

Nowadays the series is shelved under YA Fantasy, but that was after the series was completed. Breaking Dawn was perhaps the deciding factor.

Sure, Meyer was not aware of something she absolutely 100% wrote.

Bella’s parentification was canon before Midnight Sun was a twinkle in Meyer’s eye. And sure enough, when that landed, Bella’s neglect became downright glaring. But go on espousing sexist biases about female writers “not intending” certain things, Clown OP. It’s not like that isn’t a page taken from the Suppressing Women Writers handbook. When you know, you know.

Sigh. *schedules Movie Bella vs. Book Bella post*

[erismourn]

watching the james somerton apology video so you don't have to. this isn't entirely comprehensive, just a summary, if you want the nuance of his exact wording please just go watch the video

opens by saying he's monetizing the video to donate the money to hbomb's team so they can distribute it to the harmed individuals, and if hbomb's team don't accept he'll be making monthly donos to wikipedia and trans lifeline going forward

talkign about how he's a bad representative of "the queer community" as a cis white gay man

he's reached out to as many people he harmed as he can, some haven't responded but others have been incredibly kind

he's extending a specific apology to Jessie Gender - he wants to be clear that he didn't report Jessie to the police, as is the common understanding, but a fan of Jessie's who sent him a death threat

wanted his channel to be "welcoming to every queer person" which is impossible - he says he should have made voices that aren't his more accessible, but he didn't

blaming the algorithm for his popularity over queer creators of colour, disabled queers, etc

he thought that crediting people in the opening credits of videos was enough, but he admits he was wrong - people should have been properly cited (personal note: come on man you went to business school. you know how citations work.)

he has obtained permission for use of sources in the past, but "most of the sources" he didn't get permission for

brought Nick on with the idea that Nick would write most of the scripts and James would voice them

james had to put out more videos to make more money because he was let go from work during covid and was also dealing with other stuff so he had to take on more of the writing (and we all know how that went)

[sic] "my intention was to use [giant blocks of text i pasted into the script] as a jumping off point that we would elaborate on when we did table reads but *I have memory issues as a result of a head injury I got as a child*"

the head injury is real, he has epilepsy as a result. I want to be clear here that we need to respect James' disabilities, regardless of how much of a plagiarist he is. however as someone with memory problems I don't buy that it caused him to entirely forget to cite sources over many, many hours of work that he did to churn out these videos.

"when it came to editing the scripts, I couldn't remember what I had written and what I had copy-pasted"

blames his unwillingness to take account of those issues by for example writing notes in the script so future james would know he copypasted them on recently diagnosed ADHD

he had to take on a bunch of additional responsibilities when his mom passed away because his father is illiterate and can't do the legal stuff you have to do when someone dies

Telos grew out of his need to crowdfund after his mom died because RBC's insurance policy was weird (and dunks on RBC which i agree with. fuck all canadian banks)

Telos was supposed to start small but the success of the campaign gave them bigger dreams for their films

he describes the plot of hsi final girl movie and then says "to those who say I plagiarized final girl by grady hendrix, read the book. it's nothing like the plot of the movie." talks about how "final girl" is a trope and if using a trope was plagiarism, then every slasher movie since texas chainsaw would be plagiarism. fair, but i'm suspicious.

talks about the details of having to move to ontario for better opportunities

realized that making movies is a lot more expensive than he originally thought and thus had to make more movie ideas (?? not sure about the logic here but ok)

James and Nick were both involved in writing scripts n stuff

"the intention was never, EVER, to take the [telos] money and run"

James regrets moving to Ontario

James is working with a producer now and is actually making something from Telos - he will make no money from this project

"I am not nor did I ever intend to be paid money from Telos"

stresses again that he and Nick needed to crunch to make videos to make more money and get more sponsors

describes his apology in december as "horrendous"

begins detailing his suicidality

people found James' address, he claims people showed up at his house while he was hospitalized for suicidality (I want to be clear: this is fucked, the people who did this should be shamed)

he's reactivated some videos on his channel that "dont' have plagiarized content" and has done some heavy editing on other videos so they only contain original content and revenue will be going to either Hbomb's team or the charities mentioned above

he's going to be releasing a new video written by him with cited sources

he has no sponsors now

"we didn't intend to have misinformation in past videos" - it was never malicious

he won't be relaunching his patreon but starting a new patreon account if people want to support him

hes going to "work his ass off" to earn people's trust again

"there is no excuse for what I did"

reiterates that he thought putting names in opening credits was fine

"I thought it was ok to [plagiarize vito russo] because the book was out of print and he had passed away"

he wants to make a documentary video about vito russo

"I want to do the work. I want to prove not just to you, but to myself, that I can do the work"

"I can't get across how sorry I am"

[tomasens]

Your thoughts on Fanfik the movie make me wonder what exactly is going on in the book(s?), lol sadly I don't speak polish. I've read some reviews saying the plot was rushed and simplified, but none quite so negative

Hi!! The English post about Fanfik was a jokey parody of a Will Wood post (I assume that's the post you saw!!) haha, my thoughts are still negative but not that... Dramatic ahahah, thank you for asking though and I'll try to explain my biggest gripes with the movie in a (hopefully) comprehensive way since it's 1 am here and I am Big Tired (finals season is starting this week and I am struggling ahhh)

I will discuss only the first book since the movie is only based on it btw‼️

I wanted to like this movie so bad, especially that Fanfik was a book that made me realize that I am not cis myself. I had very high hopes for the movie, especially that they hired a trans actor to play Tosiek! Like! Woah! But of course it couldn't have been good because FUCK YOU JULEK, YOU'RE DOOMED TO NEVER GET GOOD ADAPTATIONS OF YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS!

My biggest issue is that the movie GREATLY oversimplified the social commentary of the book. It involves a regular, dingy polish highschool that is basically a symbolic miniature of the polish public and its largely homophobic and otherwise generally xenophobic tendencies. The movie takes that idea and throws it out the window completely, making the school a lovely, clean and shiny private school (i don't remember if it's stated it's a private school but you can definitely TELL. No polish public highschool is like this. Trust me. And even if there are public schools like that, they're well funded and still don't deal with the same problems as regular schools do). Not only that, but the story's setting (for some unknown reason?? Genuinely I don't understand this choice) is changed from Poznań to the capital, Warszawa and I really hate that since Poznań is a symbol of the more progressive parts of Poland and using it as the setting furthered the ideas about how even the progressive parts of our (polish) society still need work. It could be me looking to deeply into the symbolism though - even then, I don't understand the change. Also, Leon lives in an extremely nice place - in the book his place was, again, dingy, cramped, he was barely getting by in general. These weird choices destroy the mature social commentary the book has to offer and it sucks! :/

Another big issue are the HORRIBLE writing choices and the oversimplification of every. Fucking. Character. I do not have the energy to discuss everyone, so I'll just focus on Tosiek and Leon, plus their relationship.

Tosiek. Oh god. He is not complicated and interesting like in the book, he's a douche. His drug habits are mentioned but quickly forgotten, the fanfic writing aspect is generally abandoned for most of the movie, his character is mean and dicky but because the movie refuses to give him actual problems he looks like a spoiled, whining rich kid. His only problem seems to be his relationship with his father but it isn't explored well enough for the audience to sympathize or at least understand Tosiek's stance. His transness is also flattened, like, to the point that it's comedic to me. I know some people did just. Put on boy clothes once and were like "oh I'm a guy cool" but if we're adapting a story of a character who is definitely NOT like that... Maybe we shouldn't present his trans journey as that simple.

Leon. Oh GOD. Leon is also a douche and that HURTS. He doesn't really face any meaningful consequences for wanting to use Tosiek as a beard when the dude was still girlmoding without telling him (asshole move btw. Like bro had no actual reason to do that he was just being a dick), he generally doesn't face any consequences, his character is boring, and when it's not boring it's rage inducing because like. Tosiek is a fucking asshole but I don't think movie Leon deserves even that guy. He's not a flawed person, he's one dimensional with a bunch of holes in him. Also please stop teaching ur boyfriend how to burp i am eating /j

Their relationship becomes the core of the story which is awful - the book focuses on Tosiek slowly coming to terms with his gender identity, on him trying to find new ways to cope, with him discovering things about his past (shown to him not by his father like in the movie but by the greatest character of all, his aunt, who was cut for... Time's sake I guess? Which is such a big fucking loss), with him learning to love himself. His relationship with Leon is slow, they're friends at first, they slowly, gradually develop feelings for each other, but Tosiek's feelings for Leon are only an excuse for the narrative to study his relationship with gender even more. Their attraction is shown at first by touches, by brushes of hands, not by KISSING. 20 MINUTES INTO THE MOVIE. Sorry I cannot get over it, 20 MINUTES INTO THE MOVIE. and 25 minutes into the movie Tosiek is sure of his gender identity completely and never questions it ever again because it would get in the way of The Cute Gay Romance. Like, the movie could be about Tosiek being a cis gay dude and experiencing homophobia and it would still make sense without changing barley anything - that's not a good trans story in general, but especially if you have such great, introspective source material ffs!

In conclusion, the movie got Netflix'd and Americanized - everything about it is devoid of the inherent polish...ness that was present in the book, the movie truly could've been written about some guy in Connecticut and it would be THE EXACT SAME, which sucks since polish queers are awesome and should have our stories properly shown. And also it feels like it was written for cis people, while the book definitely knows that it's target audience is trans people and shows love to them in many ways.

Keep in mind that I haven't read the book in a while and I might be mixing details up - I was already planning to reread the book carefully and make a post explaining how the movie fucked it up big time after my finals, I'll make sure to translate it into English so keep an eye out for that in the summer!

Thanks again for asking and reading anon! Cheers<33

(Also Tosiek is a nerd and it's a CRIME there wasn't at least one Hamilton reference because OH BOY do I remember being excited reading a Hamilton reference in one of the books when I was younger and still in my theatre kid who cannot sing act or dance era.)

[eolewyn1010]

Reading Percy Jackson TLT was an ordeal for me 1 - Writing

Now, as a disclaimer in the name of fairness, I only ever read The Lightning Thief and none of the Percy Jackson series beyond that, so my experience with Rick Riordan's writing is limited (and I'm not planning to change that). It's also a distorted experience because I didn't read the original - I read a translated version, and I often noticed that it wasn't the best translation. For example, whoever was responsible was apparently incapable of translating an imperative mood, crippling quite a lot of dialogue. So I'll give Riordan that: I have probably not seen the best of his work.

That said, I massively disliked this book. Yes, even within the boundaries and rules of Kids' Fantasy. I won't tag this to the fandom because it seems nigh impossible to find anyone who so much as tolerates negative criticism of Percy Jackson. I've been called brain-damaged for not liking it, which is certainly a mature take. But I will feel better listing it all down that one time, getting it out of my mind, so here we go.

These dialogues are weird, these people are weird

I constantly catch myself thinking, "no one talks like that??" Even taking the translation aspect into account, a lot of the dialogue sounds just stilted. After the bus crash, some of the passengers are described by Percy as literally running in a circle yelling "We're gonna die" - no one behaves like that. It's a funny, over-the-top imagination that would fit in a cartoon, and it completely breaks with the serious tension of the preceding scene, and with my suspension of disbelief. People, even hysterical people, don't do that seriously. It feels like a scene in a theater play.

It appears equally forced when Annabeth apparently mutters to herself as she walks away from Percy: "Mission... Poseidon? ...[some cussing]... need a plan..." And I sit there like: Really? You mutter that to yourself? I can believe that you mutter a curse to yourself, but this "shreds of sentences" thing? Why would she talk to herself in the first place? So Percy can randomly hear some incomplete thoughts? No. It's to tease the readers. Riordan, you shouldn't make me aware of the author's presence all the time. Annabeth never talks to herself otherwise. It isn't even a character thing for her. And made out like this, it's so unnatural.

Same goes for Percy talking in his sleep... apparently very clearly and comprehensibly, so that Annabeth can piece together what he's been dreaming of. Except. People who talk in their sleep? They mumble. They hardly get a cohesive sentence out. How am I supposed to believe that this is playing in the real world? These people don't behave like people.

And one more thing that struck me as odd: A description of Grover with "his eyes narrowed; there was fear in them." Hm. Have you ever tried to look afraid with your eyes narrowed? It isn't actually that easy. When people are scared, their eyes widen. Tell me when you can narrow your eyes and get your expression not to look angry, not distrustful or doubtful, but afraid.

Is this plot ever going anywhere?

So, it's one thing that this structure of quest-hopping isn't how I personally like my books. A bigger problem seems to me that it's lacking coherence. Most of the kids' stops on the way and monsters to slay have nothing to do with their mission. Why is all of this so disconnected? Did we learn anything new from the Medusa adventure, from the episode with Echidna?

And at times, it feels like the plot is artificially prolonged. This is really bad in the beginning when no one can be arsed to tell Percy what the hell is going on. Neither Chiron nor know-it-all Annabeth can just give him a straight answer to anything. Which, Chiron comes off as plain gaslighting Percy at his human school when he denies that Percy just fought for his fucking life, and Annabeth? Percy even lampshades it; at one point he's like, "as if I was supposed to already know all that." Well, HOW IS HE SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT WHEN NO ONE OPENS THEIR FUCKING MOUTH? And the one time that Annabeth actually wants to tell Percy something, she gets interrupted by a random outside occurence that isn't even important. Can anyone get this shit moving already?

The worst foreshadowing since Stephenie Meyer

I wish Riordan would stop slapping me over the head with Dead Herrings (aka Red Herrings that don't work the way they should). Telling me something very specific and then going "Nooo, it's couldn't possibly be that highly specific thing!" will not redirect my thoughts the wrong way; it will just make me wait jadedly for the moment when, oh, such surprise, it turns out it was exactly what you thought of first.

"Oh, Percy can do funny things with water and the only thing he's good at is rowing - who could possibly be his father!"

"This lady is surrounded by scared-looking statues and we can't see her eyes - who could she possibly be!"

"This statue looks like my uncle - what a weird coincidence!"

"Dude keeps telling Percy to put on the flying shoes - wonder what he's on about!"

Honestly, it feels very condescending. My friend said the book is written for 12-year-olds, but does Riordan know that 12-year-olds aren't idiots? It's not a good idea to treat your readers as being dense.

Inconsistent worldbuilding

Do we ever get a reason for Grover eating literal garbage? Oh, I know, the extra-diagetical explanation is a joke I'm not in on and that frankly enrages me (later more on that). But in-universe we are never told how he's capable of chewing tin cans without cutting himself to shreds. We're never told how he can digest that shit. If you have to make this a thing, Riordan, at least make it work!

Camp Half-Blood is... eh. Okay-ish? Riordan doesn't know the first thing about Ancient Greek architecture, and it comes back to bite him with Annabeth. But for now, I have questions about the strawberries. How are they growing so well when they never have rain over the valley? Like. Plants do need water. And there's no reason why Dionysus and his kids should be able to make them grow well, none. Dionysus isn't and has never been a god of nature, ever since he separated from Pan (and Pan IS a separate character in this book). The only plant he has a connection to is fucking grapevine. I can buy that he can make grapevines grow, but everything else should be under the jurisdiction of Demeter and her children. Who are allegedly largely unimpressive, but we'll get to that. Also. All strawberries? Nothing but strawberries, ever? Monoculture is ruining the soil, y'know. That camp should be on dead ground within a decade or so.

Then again, Percy also claims he hasn't eaten anything unhealthy ever since he entered the camp. And then counts, "grapes, bread, cheese, lean barbecued meat." No strawberries then? Anyway, my point is: This isn't healthy. It's a very reduced diet - a balanced diet for 12-year-olds, still growing and physically very active 12-year-olds, requires more than that! How do the kids in the camp not all have deficiency symptoms?

I'm not sure how the disappearing monsters work. Body parts can just randomly stay behind as the spoils of war? Who decides which parts? Riordan wanted Medusa's eyes to still do their work after Percy slays Medusa, because the eyes still working is part of the Perseus myth that he's processing, but that really doesn't roll with "the body just disappears when the creature is slain." Like, what. Why wouldn't her head just disappear with the rest of her; it's a part of her body? Can just the head disappear instead and randomly leave the body behind? What are the rules here?

And there's the bit with "does this actually play in the real world?" again. Because when they wander the forest, Grover complains that they cannot see the stars because of the pollution. Which. This red sheen over the sky shouldn't be a thing in the middle of a forest. This is not how light pollution works, unless they are close to a city, in which case, why are they sleeping in the forest? Or is Grover trying to tell me that there were no clouds before environmental pollution? (Granted, I don't know why they went into the forest in the first place and didn't just sleep at Medusa's shop...)

In a similar vein, why is the police looking after Percy as a criminal suspect and not as a missing child? When a 12-year-old disappears, who in their right mind goes, "he could have murdered his mother"?? Why isn't the reaction, "something really bad happened to them both; we need to look for them both!", but "we need to look specifically for this kid because he has definitely done something terrible to his mom"? What is that for an outlandish approach to a missing kid?

This is a Very American Perspective (and it doesn't work)

Now, telling me that the USA are the center of Western civilisation is obviously extremely subjective, and as a non-American, I'm probably not supposed to agree. That Chiron goes on to declare the nebulous future "fall of Western civilisation" this huge, apocalyptic catastrophe and in the process sounds like a whiny rightwing politican - okay, that's me being cynical. But this really fails as soon as the Olympus and the Greek gods get in on the equation. I cannot imagine any place in the world that's less into pagan polytheism than the USA. The Greek gods aren't revered there, or if they are, it's by very small groups.

So, if Riordan's train of thought is "they are revered by whatever name; they may have different names, but it's always the same gods", then we get into a real conundrum with the multitude of pantheons in various religions. Because the gods in different religions are very incongruent in what functions and personalities they have. It already fails with the Greek-to-Roman transference - close as these two mythologies may be, they don't work in 1:1 accordance (something which Riordan heavily misrepresents, but I'm not going into that here). So, if the modern USA are so central to Western civilisation that the gods moved the Olympus and the Underworld and everything there, how did the gods' personalities and powers not massively shift over the millennia; how did gods not disappear and appear and merge to fit more contemporary notions of God / gods? Are they completely unperturbed by mortal developments and mindsets? Then why would they ever change anything, including their location?

Speaking of Greek and Roman gods... I really enjoy the action scenes. Riordan is good at writing action; it's fun. So. It ires me that I got completely ripped out of the scene by Percy randomly spouting Latin curses. Why Latin? What does that have to do with his prodigious propensity to Ancient Greek? Why. Why does Riordan keep mixing up Roman with Greek mythology, one language with the other? They are very distinct!

Chiron at one point describes the cooperation of gods with mortals as "the dawn of the Western civilisation". This is funny, as Western civilisation hit a real low after the fall of the Roman Empire (and yes, I'm focussing on Europe in this part of my argument - there was no Western civilisation in America before the late 16th century). And it stayed like that throughout a large portion of the middle ages. The civilisation on a roll until about the 11th century was what we'd today sum up under "Arab". They were the big scientists, the big architects, they dominated the trade, they spread all over the place; it was a whole thing. Yet of course gods of Western civilisation cannot be worshipped in Fez, in Tunis, in Granada, in Baghdad, in Alexandria - so where were they in the meantime? How did they not disappear while Christianity became a thing? They were not being worshipped anymore; the majority of people alive in the Western world weren't aware there had ever been other religions in Europe than Christianity because translating the old texts into modern languages was something Arabian scholars did early on, but it was a late fashion to Christians.

"The Second World-War was a war between the children of Zeus and the children of Hades, and the losing side (aka the Nazis and their allies) were the children of Hades." ... There are certainly ways to help kids approach the very complicated layers of politics and social aspects regarding the World Wars. This isn't one of them, and I curse Riordan in the tongues of a thousand historians for the paragraph in which he summed it up like that. This is how you're explaining fascists? "Oh, they're the children of Hades, so I guess they're just born evil." This is just vile.

The weird implications of fantasy creatures being treated as animals

Percy doesn't want to walk behind Chiron because he thinks the dude would just randomly take a literal shit on him. Toilet humor is funny, you guys! Except this isn't a horse, no matter how often Percy calls him one. The nymphs aren't trees. Grover is not a goat. It's one thing to integrate features of these because we're talking fantasy mix creatures, but they are still sentient and sapient on a human level! In case of Chiron, he's hundreds of years old and a wise guardian and teacher to Percy and others. Why are we always accompanied by the implication that they are, in some capacity, animals? That's just plain old Fantasy Racism. Stop dehumanizing people you yourself have established as people, please?

Grover is the most present non-human character in this book; so he's the usual victim of this. I cannot count the times Percy calls him a goat boy, or just plain a goat. He is not. A goat. He's a person. I'm supposed to believe he is Percy's best friend. Why does Percy talk to or about him like he's holding him in contempt half the time? Why does Annabeth? She's been living with intelligent non-humans since she was seven! They make fun of him, they dismiss his warnings and instincts as "whining", even though he turns out to be right. They don't treat him seriously, they aren't friendly, they hardly do more than scold him, boss him around or roll their eyes at him.

We still get the other side of the coin

Despite the former problem, Riordan manages to be contemptuous of humans, too. People inside the camp, Annabeth most of all, but Chiron (in a softer way) as well, and eventually Percy and Grover keep talking down at humans. Chiron says the reason why Percy's sword can't kill humans is because "mortals aren't important enough." You know, I would have been fine with "it's to protect humanity" or something; I didn't need a complicated justification for how this sword works. But it would have been nice to not get the most disparaging version that makes icky humans out to be a lower class of life! "Not important enough"? With all his talk of the precious Western civilisation, Chiron should know that mortals are vital to the immortals. No humans, no gods.

Funny thing is, Annabeth repeatedly describes mortals als blind and stupid because they don't know of the mythological goings-on. I thought that was the Mist(TM)? So, what is it? You are magically protected from being perceived as being and doing supernatural stuff - then it isn't the humans' fault, is it? - or people are just stupid and self-censor in their heads. Then why bother with the Mist. The Mist existing and being explained makes me wanna yell at Annabeth to stuff her high-and-mighty attitude. Granted, the Mist isn't too internally consistent. It hides centaurs randomly galloping across the landscape in plain sight of humans, it hides the furies, but it doesn't hide Echidna and the Chimera. I would have liked an explanation for that.

Harmful stereotyping

So. Riordan really hates dog owners, doesn't he? What was with the pink poodle? I mean, I got it; the owners are terrible - that's why he has an unfitting name and why he ran away. But Riordan has to hammer me over the head again. They dyed the doggo pink. Oof. And then Echidna. Here's wondering if Riordan ever depicts a dog owner as a decent person who treats their dog well.

But I take a vastly bigger issue with his consistently hateful depiction of step-parents. Now, Evil Step-Parents(TM) are a well-worn fairytale trope. And Riordan just... never questions it. Personally, I hate it. If it's a step-parent, they're abusive; no exceptions. Percy's stepfather is beating his wife, Annabeth's stepmother treats her as a freak and isolates her from her siblings; it's all very on-the-nose. Only once, I wanna read an acknowledgment that step-parents are just people, and they are as likely to be good people as everyone else. In fact, someone who decides to take a partner who already has a child usually has to internalize that fact at first and accept that this child is going to be a part of the relationship in some capacity. Can we not shit on non-biological parents all the time?

In that context, Annabeth's biological father being a lousy parent as well looks odd, granted. It's definitely something different than Percy's angelic mom. Is Riordan telling me that Athena just has a bad taste in men? Or is that more shitting on humans?

Oh boy, and he loves him some fatshaming. And no, it isn't just "this fat character turns out to be evil", it is "every single character described as being overweight is a negative character in some way, plus depicted as someone with really poor hygiene, plus just generally physically revolting. Go on, re-read the Echidna scene. Tell me that he doesn't go out of his way there to hammer home just how obnoxious and repulsive she is before she turns out to be a monster. How many unflattering words can he squeeze into one paragraph? Why would a kid care? Why does Percy even look at a complete stranger long enough to study how bad her sense of fashion is? Other big characters include Dionysus (more on him when I talk about Riordan's takes on mythology) who's... not evil, but mean-spirited and grumpy and contemptuous and constantly pissed-off. And Gabe, the stinking, ugly, abusive stepfather who literally lives among trash and is so unsubtle that he complains to his wife's face that he didn't get her life insurance because she showed up alive. Gabe Ugliano, because he's ugly, you see? Rick Riordan is funny. He's also trying to beat me to death with an anvil. And showing his ass, because a lot of domestic abuse is way subtler than that.

Ugly = evil is a shorthand that Riordan keeps reusing - and that his hero has weirdly internalized! And don't even tell me of a judgy 12-year-old as an unreliable narrator - because the narrative keeps proving Percy right. Ares' ugly daughters and the ugly girl at human school are brutal bullies (I mean, Annabeth keeps insulting and bullying Percy, but she's pretty, so it's fine when she does it). That Medusa looks elegant and refined and "must have been a beautiful woman once" makes Percy trust her, but the moment he stops trusting her, she starts looking monstrous. It's really lazy characterization.

Also, a fun little detail from Camp Half-Blood: The phenotype of people with sharp noses? Is associated with troublemakers. Uh-huh. I'm comfy with that. That doesn't sound anti-Semitic at all. ... FUCK THIS. Riordan, stereotypes like this are HARMFUL. Do. Your. Research.

An afterthought

Does Riordan have any faith in his own writing? Because the one time I'm sold on a dramatic moment, he ends up subverting it. I'm all, "Percy's falling towards the river! Monsters! Everything is panic!" And then the new chapter starts, and the moment falls flat. Because Riordan doesn't hold onto the fear Percy feels in that moment; he makes him snark about it in hindsight. It's really not a good idea to set up an emotionally captivating moment and then make fun of it.

[gaterrecha]

I'm trying to get into Gideon the Ninth's audiobook and so far it's been an exercise in frustration. I haven't felt this bad about my English in a long, long time. And I'm not even sure what the issue I'm having is.

Like. Yeah. English is not my first language (or my second, for that matter), but actually *reading* the book with my eyes poses no problems. There are no words I can't understand. I've been reading in English at this level for almost a decade. I write and read academic papers in English more complicated than this. I read novels. I read non-fiction. I watch YouTube videos and TV shows in English with no subtitles on, and listen to podcasts with zero issues whatsoever. So what is it about this book in particular that's so fucking difficult for me??

Sure, the woman's voice was a bit too high pitched and was low-key giving me a migraine; but I lowered the tone of the audio a bunch and that's that solved. Honestly it did help a bit with comprehension but... I don't know. I don't know what my brain's problem with this is. I'm guessing it has to do with her enunciation? She doesn't seem to have a strong accent, though, and I rarely have issues understanding different accents anyway.

...

*sigh*