#the author would probably receive even more backlash than the original

[newtscamandersbf]

unpopular opinion but i think skip westcott should still be aknowleged by marvel. not necessarily in the mcu, and not necessarily in detail either. like ok the author regrets writing the comic and. i can understand that, and it was badly written, but it was the 80s and was a PSA. and the author only regretted it bc of the backlash. i feel like revisiting what happened to peter and having skip have a past role in modern spiderman, finding a way to also make that part of his past relevant in his present, is something that should be done.

[bookishfeylin]

Anon who brought up Rhys needing be added in here: I know, I know. I’m just frustrated that there are so few receipts because most of the surviving ones are ones that are more pro-SJM being a “literary genius” than the ones where she implicates herself… which ironically should have more proof since it’s quite literally in every single thing she’s involved in. So thank you for wanting and finding receipts! 🥹 It makes me feel crazy because I know I remember this stuff, but since I don’t have the things to back it up no one ever believes me. 🥲

But I’ll say this as someone who has been here since her debut and was a hardcore stan with a fan page dedicated to her. (Deleted now, unfortunately. 😩) The thing about SJM is that she is a pathological liar. (I’m pretty sure she even admitted to being a huge liar when she was younger once in an interview, along with the fact that she was a “weird” kid because she was into fantasy and nerdy stuff (sounds a lot like not like other girls syndrome that’s trickled to her characters oop.) You can’t read/watch/listen to one interview by her, you have to read/watch/listen to them all. You have to go through her twitter (which she wasn’t active on for long) and her instagram (which she isn’t active on for long) and her tumblr and her livejournal (all or most of which aren’t even up anymore I think. It’s been a while since I checked). Because she would throw in random facts that she later tried to hide (irl retcon anyone?). This is why newer readers are at a disadvantage. They don’t know all of this because it’s pretty much scrubbed from the internet (…suspiciously) with few saved screenshots or transcripts. (Though tbh, I highly doubt they would care even if it was all still out there. They’d probably still be like damn, that’s crazy.. so anyway!)

SJM in the beginning of her career was a lot more loud mouthed than she is today. She revealed a lot during those days, including but not limited to her stating that she doesn’t plan, that she changes the stories’ endings even as they were being published, etc. She started getting more quiet when she started getting more criticism for her harmful work and then when dick soap gate dropped, and she fully started being called out for having adult content in YA, and more and more authors and booksellers and fans started alluding to her horrendous behavior behind the scenes (calling Bardugo fat and making fun of her disability, her whole toxic relationship with Dennard, her disregard for her fans when they asked her basic questions like if TOG would have a lesbian couple endgame because of the way their relationship was written in the fourth book and she rolled her eyes or hustling a fan along when she saw that she had scars on her face like she was embarrassed to be seen speaking to that fan, etc), that was her nail in the coffin for her social media presence. That was when she all but left the internet, started charging extra for her signings, pretty much stopped the book signings in favor of pre-signing books, started having what questions she could be asked moderated and even those are limited to how many are asked to the point where now every single one of her interviews ask the same questions with the same (mostly scripted) answers, etc.

Also pro tip: Whenever SJM says her books keep getting longer, it’s not because she following a story. It’s because she’s changed it and now has to write retcons to fit it. See: TOG originally being a trilogy like the original version she wrote on ficpress… and then it expanding by three more when she decided to change the endgame and having to change the rest of the story to put them together and then expanding it by one more book after she received backlash for cutting out the pov o a character who was a main character in the first four books and was then character assassinated in favor of said endgame love interest (which was also supposed to be a novella, not a full length book that you had to read in order to continue on with the series, but as she introduced a character literally not one single person heard of in the first three books as part of the character assassination, she had to do something with her too) (All my TOG girlies, listen I love Nesryn but you can’t sit here and tell me she serves anything to the plot other than being a romantic plot device to try to get Chaolaena shippers who still had hope to jump ship and since people weren’t buying that (because Nesryn literally didn’t exist until that fourth book), she set him up with Yrene instead). See ACOTAR originally being a trilogy. I’m pretty sure Crescent City was also supposed to only be a trilogy, but somewhere it expanded to more books. The only difference with Crescent City is that it seems like she figured that out before it was published, not after, although with the second book it does seem like she, again, scrapped whatever she set up in the first book in favor of creating a story where she could converge CC and ACOTAR. 🤷🏼‍♀️

TLDR: SJM is a bad author on and off page.

Oh yeah! And in her most recent ACOSF interview she also said she rewrote the second book from the original version (though she was trying to say she was setting up what she had planned in acosf since then which is bull lmao it’s more like she reread acomaf and decided to play around with something because we know from acofas she’d planned an illyrian rebellion for nesta’s book and that was scrapped)

Well that's disappointing. :/ Definitely a white feminist then.

The funny thing is, I have receipts that show Throne of Glass was changed (the wiki acknowledges the original Queen of Glass fanfiction Sarah wrote, and a booktuber made a video on it after reading the fanfiction. Apparently it was, as you said, originally a trilogy, and it ended up with Dorian x Celaena, not Rowan x Aelin, and changing the endgame ship meant she had to add more books and plot to the original to fit Rowan in), but ACOTAR receipts are harder to come by (probably because it was never a fanfiction.)

And now I almost want to go to that ACOSF interview just to find her saying she rewrote ACOMAF, because boy would that send this fandom into a tizzy. ACOMAF is ~the sacred book~ and heaven forbid Sarah change it for any reason.

But we do know a few things that also point to ACOTAR 2 being... very very different from ACOMAF:

-First and foremost, her newsletter where she admits to scrapping ACOTAR two and keeping the romantic arcs (interesting she said romantic arcs and not love interest. Hmmmmm) but "starting over" which caused the plot to "explode in ways she hadn't imagined." (and stans are already being testy in the notes there. Hooooo boy. I'm sorry, OP!!!).

-Her old comment saying Nesta and Lucien were the og ship and that she changed it to Elain and Lucien (if Elucien DOESN'T happen, then, that's just one more receipt for you and me :) ) and that Nessian were not a thing until Nesta and Cassian met at that dinner table. This suggests that most of the plot of ACOTAR 2 was not Night Court centric, given Nesta wouldn't be interacting with anyone in the Night Court and therefore wouldn't have a chance to meet and fall in love with Cassian.

As it is, we'll never truly know what the original plot was. We don't even know how many times she's changed ACOSF! Until more interviews and newsletters are found/dug up where she admits to changes, we're just going to have to guess at what the original plot was. But hints here and there suggest the ACOTAR series was originally very, very different, and given Sarah's track record with her other series, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire plot was changed to make her endgame ship sail.

[juantheashura]

So I gotta ask and I don’t remember if anyone asked before, but was it originally planned for Ignis to always end up with Seeker or do it change overtime?

This is a bit complicated, but the short answer is 'Yes-ish'. Let me explain.

Ignis was always meant to be in love with Seeker. This has been the case since the very first draft I posted of the game back in 2021, one of the very first things you learn about her is that she is attracted to him, and he has yet to reciprocate.

And their relationship has always been an integral part of the story. The way Ignis and Seeker trust each other, the way they interact, and, being honest, and the way they both care for each other more than for the rest of the League combined has always been something I intended to be part of the story. Ignis and Seeker have the deepest relationship of the whole cast, they have changed each other, and, in more than one way, they complete each other. Ignis is the first light in Seeker's life since Victoria stopped being around, and Seeker is... probably the only reason Ignis is even around.

At the point the MC joins the team, I don't believe Ignis or Seeker could function without the other. They don't know how to not need each other any more.

There are two big reveals in Book 1 of AToH. One of them has to do with Aki and Forlorn, but the other is Seeker's, and approximately half of it is dedicated purely to Ignis's reaction, to her proving how inexorably the two of them are tied, and to showing that there exists nothing in the universe that will make them ever let go of each other.

And I made a mistake.

Originally, AToH was only going to have three romances: Aki, Latooni, and Nova. A lot has changed since that idea, but those are the three I always knew I wanted to write. I received a bit of backlash because of that, stuff like 'too few options', 'only one male RO?', and even complaints that Aki and Lat were too basic, or... too overused (I have played every game on Jason Hill's platform. There is no character in there like Aki).

I don't begrudge people who made those comments. Criticism is how authors grow, of course, and those comments helped me grow. I ended up creating Iris, expanding Mars' role, and sidelining Dark Star.

But I overcorrected. I began to consider if Ignis and Seeker's relationship couldn't be written platonically- after all, plenty of superhero stories make a big point of the bonds of friendship. Ignis and Seeker didn't have to be a successful Batman and Wonder Woman, they could just be Goku and Bulma, right?

Wrong. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the climax, the reveal, the characters themselves don't work without both being desperately in love. If I don't have Ignis and Kratis declare they love each other at the game's climax, then there is no point to writing the story. It took me a while to understand that, but I did, eventually.

But as you can obviously see, that didn't mean the MC's relationship with Ignis was scrapped.

And the fandom has a lot of takes about that. Some are subtle, some are not. Some are hostile, some are not. Some are rational pieces, others are impassioned comments.

But the one thing they all have in common is that they're wrong.

I am not writing the path as some sort of punishment, or exercise in hurting the reader. It's certainly not done because I want to scam whoever ends up reading the story, or because I 'don't understand what a RO is'.

I'm writing the Ignis RO because it serves the narrative. It is probably the path I spend the most time thinking about, it has the largest build-up, and it is the path that has the biggest pay-off in narrative weight.

If AToH was to have anything close to a 'canon' path, Ignis would be it.

I hope that answers your question. Thanks for the ask.

[interact-if]

Day 2 of Pride Month interviews! You know them, you love them…. give it up for Ames!

Ames, author of Attollo and Metamorphosis

Pride Month Featured Authors

“…and it was a singular, terrible thought, which burrowed itself into your mind like an engorged maggot. This was not a man nor a monster. This was a concept, an ideology, a terrible myth, which had personified itself to stand before you now.You were, to put it simply, screwed.”

After several years of radio silence, you receive a message from your younger sibling that carries a strange sense of urgency to it. Either out of familial concern or boredom, you embark on a journey from your residence to your sibling’s apartment in New Hampshire to see what’s going on and, hopefully, be home before the weekend.

Too bad it’s never so simple.

Demo: Attollo, Metamorphosis (TBA)

Tags: cybernoir, thriller

(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!)

Q1: Tell us a little bit about your project(s)!

Attollo is a cyber-noir horror set in a walled city off the coast of the Atlantic that’s been a victim of a nuclear disaster. After several years of radio silence, you receive a message from your younger sibling that carries a strange sense of urgency to it. Either out of familial concern or boredom, you embark on a journey from your residence to your sibling’s apartment in New Hampshire to see what’s going on and, hopefully, be home before the weekend. Too bad it’s never so simple. Attollo is a 17+ game that deals with heavy topics and a lot of moral questioning; from cults to corrupt government, it has no shortage of monsters in the dark—both metaphorical and literal.

Metamorphosis is a crime/horror story based in the world of crime scene cleanup, where there are three simple steps: Get the call, clean the scene, and don’t ask too many questions. These are the rules that you live by under the employment of Noctua’s Crime Scene Services, and you credit them for keeping you alive.

However, after a routine house call brings forth nightmares of memories that are not your own, you find yourself pulled deeper into Noctua—a city of both monster and man—in a bid to find out the truth behind the murder of Deirdre Callow, and better yet, how her memories came to be yours. Your job mandates that you don’t dig too deep—but could this finally be the exception?

Metamorphosis is 18+ and will have explicit content; follow the last moments of a stranger to find out not only who took her life, but how this connects to the underbelly that Noctua works so hard to hide.

Q2: Why interactive fiction? What drew you to the medium?

Lmaoo, oh man. I think it really all began last summer when I first found examples of interactive fiction. I don’t even remember how I came across it, it might’ve been that I saw it mentioned in a post or I saw it as a tag on Itch.io, but at some point, last summer I began to investigate it more. I think what really drew me in was the ability for the player to control the narrative; it was like playing an old RPG, but modernized, and the fact that I could see a story unfold that was influenced by my decisions was so fascinating to me. Not to mention that IF allows so much more character depth than regular novels, in my opinion.

I’m 99% sure my first exposure to interactive fiction was through the game Crème de la Crème (a fantastic game, by the way) and I just enjoyed it so much that I went haywire for the genre. Then Temple of the Endless Night came out (another fantastic game that I’m looking forward to!), and that was really the turning point for inspiring me to give it a go. Now, almost a year later, here I am working on my own two games!

Q3: Are your characters influenced by your identity? How?

My bisexuality doesn’t have much of a major influence on the game, but I do think it contributed to the way that I view and write relationships. I figured out my sexuality around high school (I kissed a girl in high school and found out I liked it just as much as when I kissed a boy) and since then I’ve been very involved in the LGBTQ+ community of both my hometown and uni town.

I think this involvement, like being able to hear about other people’s experiences and share my own, has made me feel a lot more comfortable writing some of the characters in the game. Although Attollo and Metamorphosis both don’t focus heavily on relationships (both have murder in them, which I feel is a bit more pressing), I do keep the option for any RO’s to be romanced by anyone, regardless of gender or preference, because that’s simply what I’ve become so attuned to. In terms of side characters relationships as well, I think my involvement and my own experiences have allowed me to write far more diverse relationships than I might have, and I think that this has also allowed a more fulfilling experience for players when reading through.

I also have incorporated some struggles that I’ve faced before because of my identity into the games. For example, I and a few others have faced issues with religion due to who we are, and I incorporate this into both games. Dreamwalker, Pariah, and Sysba from Attollo all have shadows of this experience in their character origins, and Ilali and Ariston from Metamorphosis has a major point involving identity and beliefs. Both games also have undertows of ostracization and division between groups, which is also something I’ve experienced in the past. Being able to grapple these moments and control them via a narrative has been eye opening for both myself and others involved, and I’m hoping it can be a learning experience for the readers as well.

Q4: What would you like to see more of in LGBT+ fiction?

I think, now, the amount of progress in LGBTQ+ fiction is expanding at a wonderful rate. There are so many interactive fictions with options to select sexuality, select gender, select beliefs, etc. However, despite this expansion, there’s still a good deal of backlash against some aspects of LGBTQ+ fiction.

For example, as a bisexual woman who has dated men, I know there are some individuals who may not consider me a part of the LGBTQ+ because of this aspect. Not only is this incredibly disheartening, but it’s a viewpoint that I think should be educated against, and fiction is a fantastic pathway to do this. Another example I can think of is a friend of mine who identifies as asexual but is sex-neutral rather than sex-repulsed. Most people can’t believe her when she says this, and she often faces backlash for this declaration as well. This is another thing that I think that, with exposure through a medium such as fiction, can be worked on.

What I’m trying to say here is that I think LGBTQ+ fiction can be a brilliantly educational platform—if used right. Although it already teaches so much with what it has, I think having that representation of different subgroups of sexuality, of their experiences and beliefs, so people can become aware and knowledgeable of these options, is something I’d like to see more of.

Q5: What or who are some of your biggest inspirations?

Oh man, I struggled to list off inspirations because I know I have some, but as soon as someone asks me who they are my brain just goes ‘brrrrrr’ LMAO.

In terms of the games that I write and the worlds that I build, I think David Lynch and Robert Chambers are probably the two that I somehow incorporate. Attollo and Metamorphosis both have a lot of surrealist horror, which are what these two really specialized in. Shirley Jackson is also another person who inspired me a lot when it came to the writing and creation of Attollo, especially the intrapersonal relationships between the characters.

In terms of life, this is something else I really struggle to answer. I don’t really have celebrity inspirations or anything like that, but I do get inspired by my close friends and sister a lot. Seeing them go through the struggles that they face and absolutely thrive really drives me to push through my own struggles. They’re the strongest, most brilliant group of people that I know, and I consider myself incredibly fortunate that I can be a part of their lives. Not only that, but we also all collectively encourage each other to push further and to chase our dreams (as cheesy as that is LMAO) and that’s something that I think is another stroke of good fortune. I struck gold when I met them, and they’re some of the biggest inspirations in my life.

Q6: What’s a super vague spoiler for your current project?

For Attollo, I’d say ‘Home is where the heart is.’ For Metamorphosis, to quote John Berendt, ‘Always stick around for one more drink.’

Q7: Lastly, what advice would you give to your readers?

What advice would I give to you all? Oh my, I’m not exactly a wise woman here, but I’ll do my best to give you something lmaooo. I think what I really want you to walk away with, from both my stories and this interview, is that if you’re passionate about something, then share it with the world. Don’t let anyone deter your passion.

I remember listening to this painter once who commented to his friend how he ‘really liked painting’, and his friend’s first response was ‘but are you good at it?’. He then compared this to the scenario of walking; would you say, ‘but are you good at it?’ to someone who said, ‘I really like walking’? No, because it simply wouldn’t make sense, and it doesn’t make sense to say that to anyone who’s doing something out of passion.

To put it simply—if you love something, then don’t let anyone take that passion from you. I began writing these stories because I’m passionate about Attollo and Metamorphosis; I love each character, each bit of lore, and I share it with you because I want you all to enjoy it as well. Am I the best writer? God, no. Does everyone like what I write? Definitely not. But will I let this stop me from writing, from enjoying what I’m doing? Never, and I want you to do the same.

Explore your passions, embrace your passions, and let what makes you happy continue to do so

[miminiac]

Korrasami had build up, just maybe not one you identified with and that’s okay...

I am tired of the LGBTQ+ community hating on Legend of Korra (LoK) for not being gay enough. The critique that there wasn’t enough build up is (1) not productive at all and (2) honestly, not true. There was build up. It may not be the build up every LGBTQ+ person will like, and it may not relate to the experience of every person’s coming out, but it was there. Korrasami was something the creators had tossed around as soon as Book 1 (not that they necessarily had permission to do anything about it). Take this quote from Bryan Konietzko’s tumblr post after the finale aired:

As we wrote Book 1, before the audience had ever laid eyes on Korra and Asami, it was an idea I would kick around the writers’ room. At first we didn’t give it much weight, not because we think same-sex relationships are a joke, but because we never assumed it was something we would ever get away with depicting on an animated show for a kids network in this day and age, or at least in 2010. (link)

The post also discusses how Makorra was never meant to be endgame after Book 1. Again, the time LoK was airing was at a point where states were passing laws to actively prevent gay marriage (LoK ended in 2014, legalization of same-sex marriage by supreme court ruling wasn’t until 2015––context is important). Did they actively write a romance in Books 1 and 2, no they did not. However, as many creators and writers, they let the characters lead them and they discovered that Korra and Asami were more than just friends. Again, taken from the same post:

The more Korra and Asami’s relationship progressed, the more the idea of a romance between them organically blossomed for us

So what we have with Korra and Asami is not a planned romantic relationship from the very beginning, however, the characters have been leading them there since the beginning, whether they realized it or not. Now, I am a big fan of Barthes’ “Death of the Author”, so I 100% percent think that viewers/readers have the ability to inject their own narratives and that multiple narratives can coexist. However, the point of this post is to explain why a critique of “wish they did more” is not productive when it comes to discussion of LoK of a piece of LGBTQ+ media representation. Therefore, I turn to the creators to show that there was intent and there was subtext and build up within Book 3 and 4 (as Bryan discusses in his post, please read in full when you have time).

A lot of Korrasami was hidden in subtext, and that happened because of homophobia within the industry, which still exists today. Content creators of LGBTQ+ media continue to have to walk a fine line. Take Noelle Stevenson talking about Catradora:

My big fear was that I would show my hand too early and get told very definitively that I was not allowed to do this

And like with Catradora (though a little easier since Noelle told viewers that every character is a part of the LGBTQ+ community by default unless explicitly stated otherwise), people saw Korrasami from as early as Book 2 (if not Book 1 on a rewatch).

At the time LoK started airing, I still thought I was straight; I still thought I was straight when I was watching the third season and telling my then boyfriend how Korra and Asami were going to be a couple by the end (literally, when they interacted in the first episode of season 3 while Asami taught Korra how to drive, I turned to him and said it; he said they would never do that and it was a pipe dream). I continued to see Korrasami’s friendship build into something romantic (even if the characters themselves were unaware of it).  

Come Season 3 Episode 9, where Asami carries away a helpless Korra, mimicking Katara having carried away a helpless Aang. For those who had watched the original series and were big Korrasami shippers, this scene basically made it canon. It could be argued as the point that maybe the friendship switched to something more romantic. The rest of season 3 and all of season 4 only added moments between these two (side note: I came out as bisexual soon after season 4 started airing, though I had been questioning my sexuality probably since the end of season 3).

Now is the Korrasami relationship perfect, absolutely not. Bryke admits as much, but it was a significant step forward. Again, this happened in 2014, so a lot of narrative within media of states passing laws to discriminate against same-sex couples and deny marriage. The hand-holding scene everyone screams about not being enough. Well, they received plenty of homophobic backlash from that.

The critique that they didn’t do enough is not productive. It is a critique that could be said about most main-stream LGBTQ+ media. I get that we are tired of scraps; I get that we are tired of having to read between the lines because creators are still afraid to come out and say it (pun intended). However, to critique LoK as “not being gay enough” ignores the context in which it was created and what that representation meant to many of the viewers (like myself) who were discovering themselves and their sexuality at the time.

Avatar: the Last Airbender (ATLA) was made for 8-13 year olds (from season 1), and I would argue that LoK was made for that same group of people, who would have then been 14-19 years old when LoK first aired. Thus, LoK was being watched by those entering high school and college––a time of self-discovery.

Additionally, a critique that LoK doesn’t do enough leads to an idea that there is “a right way” to create a LGBTQ+ relationship, which I would argue is harmful to the community at large. If you did not identify with Korra’s coming out, that’s completely valid. If you did not identify with the way the Korrasami relationship progressed, that is also valid. But you cannot invalidate the relationship of Korrasami, as a relationship built off a friendship and mutual respect that blossomed by into something more. The relationship was not sexualized with wistful glances and blatant sexual tension, instead, it was built on a friendship and respect for boundaries.

Again, multiple narratives can be drawn given each viewer has a unique set of experiences. One such reading could show that Asami was more in tune with her feelings for Korra than Korra was about her feelings for Asami. And, instead of flirting non-stop with Korra, Asami respects Korra’s space (though we all saw her check out Korra’s back muscles) and recognizes that Korra has a lot on her plate being the avatar, a relationship is not something on the forefront of her mind. It is only after defeating Kuvira (and the healing/growth from a few episodes prior in "Beyond the Wilds”) that Korra is able to truly understand her feelings to Asami, suggesting they take a trip together––just the two of them.

Now, you may not identify with that type of coming out, but other people do. And to argue that “LoK didn’t make Korrasami explicit enough” undermines the experiences of those in the LGBTQ+ who heavily identified with Korra’s experiences and her coming out.

Holding LGBTQ+ media to this higher standard is inherently toxic. I would like to believe that these creators are coming from a good place with good intentions. There is nothing toxic or abusive in the way Korrasami is portrayed. There is nothing unrealistic about the way their relationship progressed throughout the series. It was not a fan service––it was the natural progression of the characters.

And let’s not forget that Korrasami is not only confirming a relationship between two women, but it is also two women of color. Now, it may not seem like a huge deal within the contexts of the Avatar World, but it is important to remember the context of where this show was airing.

There are things we can critique LoK on. It isn’t perfect. We can discuss the hiring of white voice actors (as a way to hold new media that is being created or will be created accountable, not as a way to just hate on LoK); we can discuss the voices within the writers room and the lack of diversity there. These are critiques that can be made of ATLA and LoK and countless of other media produced. This is a valid critique when used constructively. It is not meant to tear down an entire piece of media and everything that it has done for various communities, but rather to point to a flaw within the way media is being produced and the racist, sexist, and homophobic systems in place that determine what and how media is produced.

If we are to critique, we could look to reimagining how we create and consume media, not tearing down media that has already been produced and stands in a pivotal spot of the community. As Audre Lorde says:

For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

If we are continually operating within the systems of oppression, we will never truly be able to dismantle them. Thus, to operate within the institutions of Nickelodeon, Netflix, Disney, etc. is to be beholden to the rules and constraints of a moderate, heteronormative, sexist, racist society. If creators stray too far from that line too quickly, there will be backlash. The perfect LGBTQ+ representation cannot exist while made within these institutions.

I would like to mention this statement is not to say that we cannot critique or boycott movies or shows that are performative in their diversity. There is no excuse for Hollywood after the successes of Black Panther (2018) and Crazy Rich Asians (2018) (and others) to not fill the crew and writers with the same representation being shown on the screen. We can, and should, hold production companies accountable––and given the internet, it is something we can do even early on in the production process.

I have gotten a little off track, but my point is, think about your critiques. Really ask yourself if it is a productive critique, or if it is critique that actually harms or is toxic to the community. Critiques are hard, I understand that. When we first start to think critically, it is easy to just jump on these “low hanging fruit” type critiques. It takes practice and comfortability learning and expanding your world view to construct a critique that looks at context from various point of views and experiences.

[ethelindawrites]

October 2

Fictober, Prompt 2 - "You have no proof."

Original fiction.

Warnings: magical battle of sorts, non-graphic description of someone being dead.

The man clutched the scroll to his chest and looked at me as if I had just insulted all of his ancestors.

“Of course I won’t hand it over to you! It is mine, and acquired only at great trouble and cost!”

“And you didn’t stop to think about why that might be the case?” I asked him, keeping my voice even and my face calm. He had no idea what he was holding, and it was going to cause trouble for more than just him if I couldn’t stop him from using it.

“Obviously, because it confers a great boon to the user,” he huffed, as if this was obvious.

“It was stolen,” I said, losing a little bit of my temper, “out of one of the most secure magical facilities in all the known lands. I know that you know this, because that is why the thieves you hired to steal it charged you so much, and why you had so much trouble finding anyone to even attempt the theft in the first place. Has it not occurred to you that it was under such heavy guard because it doesn’t do what it claims to do, rather than because it does?”

A brief – very brief – flicker of doubt crossed his face, but then it settled into a scowl again.

“You have no proof,” he spat at me, “no proof at all of those rumors! Have you ever even seen it yourself?”

I had not, of course, looked at the scroll myself. Its rolled-up exterior was all anyone I knew had ever seen.

“No one,” I said slowly and meaningfully, “who has ever looked at that scroll is around to tell us what exactly happened to them.”

“And when I gain the promised powers,” he sneered, “I certainly won’t be remaining in these petty little principalities either. Are there not vast cosmos to explore? Lands beyond even the Empire? Why should I or anyone else who has gained such magical control be contented to stay where we were trapped before?”

In that instant, I knew there as no way I was going to be able to convince him to hand the scroll over. It would almost have been better if past attempts to use it had left behind an immediate devastation, because at least then the connection and disappearance of the user would have been obvious.

Unfortunately, the harm was not so obvious. It was something creeping, insidious, a spreading blight that our known magics could slow but not completely cease or reverse, as the people of this very area had come to know all too well.

That was why it had taken so long to identify this scroll and its use as the likely cause, and it was only the previous Emperor who had ordered it found and destroyed.

Someone – we still did not know who – had convinced both the Emperor and the senior Magic Council that the potential backlash from the scroll’s destruction was too dangerous to attempt, and so it had been locked away.

Locked away…but not destroyed.

This man was not responsible for that decision, but he was certainly the latest in a line of pawns being used by whoever had been responsible for it. Unfortunately, there were always men who thought that they could get something for nothing, and who were unwilling to work to earn their way, preferring to leech off of others in one way or another.

I tried one more time, just in case. “It is proven beyond doubt that blight has spread in every place where this scroll has been used, and no other possible cause has been found. There is a price for everything, and it is clear that this price for using this scroll is everything the user has to give and more. For your own sake, if nothing else, I implore you not to use it!”

He scoffed. “It is all rumor, begun by powerful men who wish to keep power limited to themselves. You have no proof.”

I took one quick breath, then another.

“Very well,” I told him. “In that case, since you have admitted to the theft of this scroll, then I will take the steps authorized by the Council.”

And, I had already decided, one that had definitely not been authorized by them. I thought of the nearby villages, and hoped desperately that they had listened to me.

“You really think you can arrest me?”

“Yes,” I told him, “and it’s the one way you might make it out of this alive, so I’d recommend coming quietly.” I pulled out a talisman and activated it, conjuring a pair of magical restraints for his wrists. “Set the scroll down, and let me bind you, and I’ll send you out of here.”

I would, too, if he stopped now.

But his hands were already untangling the cord holding the scroll closed. “So that you can use the scroll yourself? You must be mad to think I’ll give it up now! All I have to do is open this scroll and then I’ll be—”

I snapped out a scroll of my own with one hand, flicking another two talismans across the room. One latched onto the scroll, yanking it out of his grasp just before he could start to unroll the paper, while the other hit him with solid force to slam him back against the wall. Grabbing the other end of my scroll with my now-free hand, I spoke the activating word as the stolen scroll hovered briefly between us. There wasn’t much time before he’d grab it back and he wouldn’t hesitate again—

Deep purple lines of magic burst from my scroll, binding the other in a sphere that filled with the hottest fire magic could conjure, pulled from the heart of a volcano.

Instantly, I could tell that something about the other scroll was fighting back, and fed more magic into my spellwork, keeping the conjured fire burning at full strength. Slowly, the resistance lessened, and I squinted at it through the containing sphere and the flames. One end of the other scroll seemed to be burning now, and that was enough, the fire would take care of the rest, and I could burn myself out permanently if I wasn’t careful, using such intense magic was always a risk…

I stopped myself from drawing my active stream of magic back just in time.

Only the barest hint of other, gibbering voices underneath the coaxing whisper in my mind had alerted me that something was wrong.

Doing the opposite of what that whisper said seemed like the best possible thing I could do, so I reached deep and poured absolutely every drop of magic in my body into my scroll.

It hurt, and I could trace the damage being done to the magical veins as the pain spread and branched along them.

But the fire kept burning, and burning, and burning, and now the only voice the other scroll could conjure was a gibbering, shrieking thing as it finally began to heat, and then singe, and then blaze.

Still pouring my rapidly dwindling magic out, I gasped for air against the pain, and didn’t stop.

At the moment when the last of the scroll vanished into ash, power exploded outward and slammed into the containing sphere.

A scream wrenched itself from my throat as I tried and failed to hold the spell against it, and the backlash threw me back into the wooden wall of the house that crumbled under the power almost before I made contact with it. With that barrier gone, the next thing for me to slam into was a rock that I did not remember being anywhere near the house itself, and black engulfed my mind.

Rain woke me, an unknown amount of time later.

Rain, in this place that had not seen rain for nearly two years.

There was almost nothing left when I finally managed to stagger to my feet and hobble over to where the house had been. The man who had stolen the scroll lay where he had fallen, and his staring eyes and the stillness of his body told me that he was dead. I could not summon even distant pity for him right now, given that this was undoubtedly a kinder fate than he would have found through the scroll. But he had given me the chance I needed, so I would make sure that he received a proper burial at some point.

Some of the stone foundations and part of the chimney were all that remained of the house itself. All the wood and thatch, and even the trees for a wide distance around were gone, fallen into a gray, dead-looking dust now turning to mud beneath the rain.

Concerned, I let myself slump to my knees, and pleadingly summoned a spark of violet from my battered body. But the dust felt inert, magic-less, and the ground beneath it felt different too. It was hard to describe what the blighted areas felt like, but it wasn’t like this.

And there was the rain.

I knelt there for a long time and didn’t examine too closely how much of the wetness on my face was rain and how much was tears.

There would be consequences, I knew. I could tell already that I probably wasn’t going to fully recover from this, if at all, and there was still the question of whether there really had been someone out there trying to keep the scroll intact. Given how insidiously it had protected itself, I wasn’t so sure about that anymore, but it would still have to be investigated.

There would be time, now. The scroll was gone.

So I let myself weep, and then I pulled myself to my feet again, and began the long, slow, painful walk to the now-distant edge of the forest. I let the returning villagers catch and carry me when they found me, unable to go another step.

And for the first time in a very long time, I let myself hope.

[heatherwitch]

Lyme Disease Info

Quick note: I started compiling this and soon felt completely overwhelmed. There are SO MANY things I simply do not have the capacity to fully cover and there is always controversy and backlash when speaking on these things. 

I am not an expert, nor should I have to be in order to be believed or receive medical care. I am simply one person who has done their best to learn about a disease that many medical professionals are under-educated on or simply don’t believe in.  I continue to seek out new information and have a ever-evolving opinion. 

This post contains a variety of resources, with varying opinions. I don’t necessarily agree with everything, but that’s part of researching something.

If you suffer from Lyme disease, or related illnesses or infections and have resources to add, please send them my way. I am not looking for medical advice. I am looking for websites, authors, documentaries, articles, and related resources to further my studies. 

If you feel the need to speak your disbelief of this disease without reading any of the resources attached (or even after doing so, tbh) you can kindly fuck off. This disease affects my life whether you approve of it or not. If this post raises strong emotions and the desire to lash out to me, evaluate why that is--I hope you get the help and support you need with these unresolved issues. Truly, I do. 

The Various Names:

Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), Borreliosis, Lyme disease (LD), Chronic Lyme disease (CLD), Post-Treatment Lyme Disease/ Syndrome (PTLD/S), Persistent/ing Lyme Disease, and probably more I’m forgetting. 

Sites to visit:

LymeDisease.org

International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS)

LymeDiseaseAssociation.org

Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation

Bay Area Lyme Foundation

Envita: Chronic Lyme Disease Complex Treatment

LymeStats

TickReport (for testing ticks in the U.S., $50+ per tick)

(Chronic Lyme) Symptoms:

Many of these sources also include early Lyme symptoms, and I strongly encourage you all to familiarize yourselves with them and to not rely on a EM rash as an indicator. (which is far less common than believed)

Lyme Disease.org - Symptoms list

Lyme Disease Association - Symptoms list + Chronic Lyme Symptoms list

Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation - Symptoms list

Healthline - Symptoms list

CDC - Symptoms list

Books, Podcasts and Documentaries:

Informative Books:

“Why Can’t I Get Better?” by Dr. Richard Horowitz 

*“How Can I Get Better?” by Dr. Richard Horowitz 

*“Unlocking Lyme: Myths, Truths and Practical Solutions for Chronic Lyme Disease” by William Rawls MD 

*Currently reading: “Healing Lyme” by Stephen Harrod Buhner

*I currently have these books in my possession and would be happy to share information from them if you have Lyme. Please reach out to me!

Personal Experience Books:

“Bite Me: How Lyme Disease Stole My Childhood, Made Me Crazy, and Almost Killed Me” by Ally Hilfiger 

“Believe Me: My Battle with the Invisible Disability of Lyme Disease” by Yolanda Hadid 

Podcasts:

Lyme Ninja Radio

Living with Lyme

Tick Boot Camp

Lyme Voice

Blooming With Lyme

Documentaries:

Under Our Skin and Under Our Skin 2: Emergence

Our Battle Ongoing: Lyme Disease in Australia

CDC’s + NIH’s + IDSA’s views on CLD:

CDC’s views (link)

NIH views (link)

IDSA Lyme Disease Page (link)

On the Lyme Vaccine:

“The Bitter Feud over LYMErix: Big Pharma Takes on the Wrong Little Osp” (link)

“The Lyme vaccine: a cautionary tale” (link)

Scholarly Articles on the Proof of Chronic Lyme:

“Proof That Chronic Lyme Disease Exists” (link)

“Clinical trials validate the severity of persistent Lyme disease symptoms” (link)

“Persisting atypical and cystic forms of Borrelia burgdorferi and local inflammation in Lyme neuroborreliosis” (link)

“Suppression of Long-Lived Humoral Immunity Following Borrelia burgdorferi Infection” (link)

“Study Shows Evidence of Severe and Lingering Symptoms in Some after Treatment for Lyme Disease” (link)

“The conflict on posttreatment Lyme disease syndrome: a clinical mini review” (link)

“Post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome symptomatology and the impact on life functioning: is there something here?” (link)

“Development of a foundation for a case definition of post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome.” (link)

“Lyme encephalopathy: long-term neuropsychological deficits years after acute neuroborreliosis.” (link)

“SPECT brain imaging in chronic Lyme disease.” (link)

“Two controlled trials of antibiotic treatment in patients with persistent symptoms and a history of Lyme disease.” (link)

“The Post-Lyme Disease Treatment Syndrome (PTLDS) a review of its origin and its consequences in the socio-economic sphere.” (link)

“The Clinical Evolution of Lyme Arthritis” (link)

My tumblr posts:

Post with links for credible sources on chronic lyme (most listed above)

How Lyme affected me and presented over the years

Post with links to LymeStats (simplified stats with in-depth sources)

Post on what species might transmit Lyme, and the possibility of congenital transmission and sexual transmission.

An overview on misconceptions, symptoms and testing methods.

How doctors view Lyme in my country

I would love to eventually include more information on spirochetes, co-infections, neurological lyme/neuroborreliosis, testing for lyme, additions to all the resources above and so many more things. As I stated before, I am simply one person trying my best to understand this disease. If you have Lyme disease and have more questions you’re more than welcome to reach out to me and I will do my best to help!

This post was last edited on May 9th, 2020. 

[copperbadge]

Do you have any thoughts about the announced adaptation of 'the City Watch' books by BBC America? Opinions seem pretty mixed in the fandom and I'd love to hear your take?

For a show I was almost definitely never going to watch from the outset, I have more thoughts about the Watch adaptation than I really know what to do with, to be honest. It’s actually hard to assemble them coherently. 

There are basically three strands of opinion I have about watching The Watch: personal, critical, and literary. 

The personal: 

I don’t have a great history of enjoying media adaptations of Terry Pratchett’s work. One reason I didn’t watch Good Omens until a month or two after its release is that I knew this about myself and I didn’t want to turn it on, get disappointed, and turn it off, as I’d done with The Hogfather (we need not speak of The Animated Soul Music, lord). Granted, the Death books are not my favorites, so I was never going to deeply engage with The Hogfather, and then they came out with The Colour Of Magic, another non-favorite, so I skipped it, and so I was super disengaged by the time Going Postal came out (though I should really give Going Postal a chance because I do love Going Postal as a book). So I acknowledge this isn’t objective, this is personal, but it’s still a factor.  

So I’m not coming into this whole situation with The Watch as someone who actually wants, or enjoys, TV adaptations of Pterry’s books, Good Omens notwithstanding – and let’s be real, Good Omens is an outlier. It was a collaboration, one of the original authors had deep control over the adaptation, and also Good Omens isn’t a Discworld book. It’s much more thoroughly rooted in our known reality, which makes it easier to convey to television. But my ultimate point is that when I hear about a Discworld book being adapted to TV, I shrug and move on. I have the books. I don’t need the shows. 

The critical: 

I think it is a bad habit of fandom that we extrapolate a lot of inference from a relatively small amount of data – we tend to take a couple of photos, a press release, some casting information, and very quickly make a large set of assumptions. It’s not necessarily that these assumptions are wrong, but we jump to a lot of conclusions. I’m thinking of early backlash over Good Omens, which I don’t even remember what it was about but I remember Gaiman having to get pretty stern about “could you wait until at least the trailer is out before jumping down my throat”. I’m also thinking of the casting of David Thewlis as Remus Lupin, which was not well-received until we saw more than blurry set photos. 

Now, all that having been said, some of the casting news has been…difficult. On the one hand, a Black Sybil Ramkin? Sign me the fuck up. On the other, I know that for a lot of people, having a Sybil who is both large and older is really important (I think it’s important too). Especially if Vimes is older, it’s creepy and backwards to have Sybil be young and hollywood-idea-of-pretty (even if the time travel element is involved, it gets into a weird area). Also, I’m really over only ever casting people of color as villains or supporting-role-women. Vimes canonically comes from a “poor but respectable” neighborhood that could easily be reframed as an ethnic neighborhood, which would be especially pointed and interesting given his family’s long connection to the history of the city. An Indian or part-Indian Sam Vimes would be really, really interesting and cool, for example. 

There’s also a lot of discussion about casting a nonbinary person as Cheery and explicitly setting Cheery up as nonbinary, as opposed to explicitly a trans woman*, especially since in the books she identifies as a woman, not as nonbinary. But I’m not entirely sure if Cheery as nonbinary is actually going to be canon or if that’s just the reporting on the show not knowing how to handle the whole Female Dwarf situation. Not everyone interprets Cheery as trans at all, either, because of how dwarf gender identity works, which complicates matters somewhat, so I’m not going to wade too far into these waters. I do think it’s great enby actors are getting work in enby roles, but there’s some issues there that need further examination. 

(* Note -- corrected the above after it was pointed out to me that NB are not trans light; I’ve changed it to trans woman rather than trans-as-umbrella-term, more here.)

So I think overall it’s early days to make a lot of calls about what The Watch will and won’t be, but I also think there’s a lot of reason to be concerned and annoyed, and that brings us to the real, hardcore reason that I saw the first reporting on The Watch and immediately noped out: 

The literary:

“Punk rock thriller.”

Oh go fuck yourself. 

Despite everything I said above about not making snap judgements I immediately read that it would be a dark punk rock thriller police procedural and went “Well, guess that’s that” and walked away from the idea of being even vaguely excited about this show, because what I read demonstrated a basic, fundamental lack of grip on what the Watch books are about. 

One, the Watch books aren’t about crime. They really genuinely aren’t. The crimes are macguffins on which to hang social commentary about other things entirely. Even in the very earliest Watch books, when Pterry was still mostly making fun of high fantasy, the crimes the Watch investigated were committed in the service of a larger discussion about things like totalitarianism, interculturalism, and civic life. There’s at least one moment, and I believe several but I’d have to re-read the books to be sure, where Pterry explicitly makes fun of murder mysteries where the hero Solves Crimes Like Sherlock Holmes. Vimes hates clues. Feet Of Clay has an extended subplot about how you 100% cannot trust clues even when the author is the one feeding them to you. I do not want a Watch series that is about Clues.  

Two, the Watch books are explicitly the antithesis of the action genre. They have action in them, but the point is that nobody in these books are action heroes; they’re ordinary people attempting to go about their jobs in a situation where that constantly becomes increasingly difficult. I read “punk rock thriller” and I thought to myself of the dedication of Guards! Guards!: 

They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to. This book is dedicated to those fine men.

This does get a bit tricky because by the end of Snuff, Vimes is very heroic, almost too heroic for my comfort, but at the same time his heroism is of a very specific sort: he is heroic not because he slaughters the palace guard who get in his way or shoots the baddie or blows up a cop car with a helicopter (or vice versa) but because he deeply, intensely hates those things, and wants nothing to do with them. He is heroic because he is forced into it by circumstance, but spite in the face of monstrousness is what powers him. I think of The Fifth Elephant, where Vimes has just killed a werewolf: 

There were a lot of things he could say. “Son of a bitch!” would have been a good one. Or he could say, “Welcome to civilization!” He could have said, “Laugh this one off!” He might have said, “Fetch!” But he didn’t, because if he had said any of those things then he’d have known that what he had just done was murder.

I don’t trust someone who thinks The Watch should be reimagined as a thriller to understand Sam Vimes. Like, there’s room for interpretation as to Vimes’ character, but there is a fundamental underlying bedrock Vimes is built on and if you don’t grasp the broad points of that, you’re just writing a cop show with some names stitched on.  

Three, the Watch books aren’t a static series, they aren’t like cozy mysteries where the circumstances change but the hero rarely does. That’s nothing against cozy mysteries; I love mystery novels and some of my favorites involve characters who don’t even age over the course of the forty years the books were written in. But you cannot pastiche the Watch and expect it to work. 

Again this is a bit of extrapolation based on low amounts of data but I think it’s probably accurate – the casting indicates that either we’re dealing with the events of Night Watch or at the very least heavily engaged with aspects of it. But Night Watch, while I think it’s one of Pterry’s best books hands down, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is one point in a very specific developmental arc, not just for Vimes but for the entire Watch. If we’re dealing just with the plot of Night Watch (which I don’t think we are) that’s tough to pull off. If, as I suspect, they’re going to be pulling from various aspects of various Watch books, then that’s just fucking nonsense. 

Even Carrot, who is a very constant figure, undergoes some fundamental shifts in personality between Guards! Guards! and, say, The Fifth Elephant. Vimes, while maintaining his personal moral and ethical code, undergoes a radical shift between Guards! Guards! and Night Watch, and he continues to develop emotionally and in some ways spiritually up until Snuff. The Vimes who bitches about diversity in hiring in Men At Arms will not react to any given situation the way the Vimes who befriends the goblins in Snuff will. 

And because these books also all address very specific issues, you can’t just slam them all together and expect to get anything resembling the Watch as Pterry envisioned it over the course of the books.

So while I love the comedy, the characters, the plots, even the macguffin crimes, I believe that a Watch book – a Discworld book of any kind – without that satirical bite is just a high-fantasy husk. There’s no point to it, nothing that sets it apart from a bad Saturday Night Live skit about Game of Thrones. The tv series might actually turn out great and all my concerns will have been unfounded, but first looks aren’t promising on a number of really basic levels. 

So we’ll see. If I’m wrong, great; the show will probably electrify fandom in the same way Good Omens did. If I’m right, well, I had no hopes to begin with, so I’ll just enjoy re-reading Night Watch, which is the book that got me back into fandom and which you can all blame for my presence here today. :D

[ohlayarfp]

Film Review - Misteri Dilaila by Syafiq Yusof

Misteri Dilaila is a Malaysian horror thriller film that went viral in 2019. I rarely watch Malaysian films because when i do, it’s usually the same plot all over again. Drama, romance, action, comedy and everyone’s favourite, Horror. I feel like these genres are the usuals everywhere but what makes it unbearable for most of us Malaysians is how similar every story is. Rich boy meets a poor girl. Rich boy falls in love with her and when they get married the mother hates the poor girl. They fight and one day someone dies and the end. For horror, it’s just about some people getting haunted by a ghost that was sent by a close friend of theirs.

The thing I understand about the horror hype for Malaysians is how our culture is deeply rooted with mystical beliefs and as religious as we tend to be, ghost stories seem to intertwine with our faith for countless years. Personally, I believe in Asian ghosts more than the western versions. This is probably due to my own family having our fair share of sights into the world of the undead. 

The reason why I chose to talk about this film is because of how disappointed I felt when I watched it. Unlike most Malaysian films, it had the potential to be a great one. The look of the film was far better than the usual ones we got and the story building had a Gone Girl vibe. What made me disappointed was the fact that while watching that film I was hopeful and excited thinking finally a Malaysian Filmmaker is making a psychological horror instead of those in your face jump scares. 

The story is about a married couple, Jefri and Dilaila, who were spending their holiday together at a luxury vacation home in Fraser’s Hill. After a petty issue where they end up quarrelling at each other, Jefri discovers his wife went missing the following morning. Next thing he knows, a mysterious woman who also goes by the name of Dilaila shows up one night where she claims to be his wife. Adding more confusion is the supernatural occurrences that regularly haunts Jefri whenever he’s alone in the house.

Throughout the whole film, I was at the edge of my seat thinking that there’s finally a malaysian filmmaker that is about to introduce a character with a mental illness as the protagonist which would’ve justified his hallucinations of the ghost. Unfortunately, it was just like other films where there’s no actual context to the sightings, they were just ghosts being ghosts and haunting him for no reason. Well that’s for the 2nd version of the film.

Another fun fact about this film is that it went viral due to the alternate endings it has. When the film came out in the cinemas, people were surprised to hear that they had different endings when they discussed it with their friends. This was purely the filmmaker and his team’s intention. Different halls have different endings and this was meant to be a surprise for the audiences. It was a great marketing strategy and considered as a genius way of thinking for some people while some were mad that they were being ripped off. 

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

As a person that watched both versions, I was unsatisfied with both versions as both endings angered me. Nevertheless, I didn’t think it’s an absolute flop though. Both versions have the fair share of plot twists. The first version revealed that the protagonist we thought all along was the actual antagonist. He was the one that killed his own wife whilst every supporting character was a part of the police team that were acting to make him confess to his wrong doings. It was then stated that the hallucinations he got was a result of his guilt and him being under the influence of drugs all along.

The second version on the other hand is more mystical. The ghosts made more appearances in this version. The protagonist is still the good guy but the inspector that was involved in the case turned out to be a fake policeman and he was working with the imposter Dilaila. Towards the end, Jef found out that his wife has been dead a long time ago and the ‘wife’ he was holding turns out to be something else (this we never see on screen though). 

Personally if i were to choose an ending, I would choose the 1st version as it makes more sense logically but I can understand why people love the 2nd Version.  Malaysians and their thirst for horror films explains the statistics. But a famous film reviewer on YouTube (ZhafVlogs) once made an instagram poll and asked his subscribers to choose between the two versions and surprisingly it was a tie. This proves that the director made the right decision to come up with alternate endings. 

*END OF SPOILERS*

The film then landed in a controversy within the next few weeks after the premiere. Someone noticed that the story was awfully familiar. It was then proven that the story was 90% similar to a few films from India, America, Russia and more. People were comparing it to a film called “Vanishing Act” and they were right. 

As a film student, I am aware about the concept of adaptation so I personally see no wrong in the filmmaker’s act. However, I can understand why people are mad. The filmmaker went silent once news got out about him “stealing” the idea and “claiming” the story as his. But based on my research, I never found him claiming the story as his before. Although, he also never mentioned about him making a remake of the initial film as well. The filmmaker went silent for a long time and people kept sending him hate comments but soon died after a few months. 

A year later, the issue was raised yet again by someone and this caused the filmmaker to finally speak up. He explains the concept of adaptation and how he was inspired by a scriptwriting book called Save The Cat which said that “A good artist copy, but a great artist steals”. He also states about there being so many films abroad that have the similar concept to an older film such as Fast and Furious with Point Break, Avatar with Pocahontas and Inception with Paprika. He finally came clean and stated that he was inspired by a stage play from France called “A Trap for a Lonely Man”. He then added his own twist by adding some horror elements knowing that it being the target audience favourite genre.

Also regarding the quote from Save The Cat, (in my opinion) I feel like what the author was implying is about ‘stealing’ stories from life. Not stealing the exact plot codes from other films. This is based on my understanding from the phrase which I assume Syafiq may have misinterpreted it.

He raised logical points from a filmmaker’s perspective and he also raised some issues about being pressured from his father (Yusof Haslam) and brother (Syamsul Yusof) who were well known filmmakers as well. He said that everyone kept on telling him to be better than his father and brother. Sadly, when he was at his lowest, even his family turned their backs on him and said that it’s fully his fault. 

From my point of view, I was initially furious with him for not being able to defend himself by explaining about the adaptation because I feel like most Malaysian audiences are unaware about it. People assume adaptation is from book to film when it's more than that. I, myself, learnt that from film school. And I’m not entirely defending him as well, I’m still disappointed in him for not speaking up sooner. But I do empathise with him as well. The audience were quick to attack him. The film industry in Malaysia is not entirely in the best state for these past few years. So a film like Misteri Dilaila made everyone hopeful for more quality films like it only to be betrayed at the end when they found out that it wasn’t his own creative idea and a total rip off. I still feel like he did a good job with his visuals which was an improvement from the local films around that time.

Reading through the whole issue and looking at how this decision to “copy” the plot codes as he was inspired from the Save The Cat book has opened my eyes. As a filmmaker, I feel like i should always do research before starting on a project and the best thing is to always be honest with our intentions. If it’s inspired by a remake, then set it straight and give credit to the original piece. Don’t keep it to yourself. It is terrifying though, being in his state where everyone turned their backs on him, even his own family. He released a few films after that, saying that film is his job and that it is his source of income so as much as it may seem hard sometimes, life still goes on. Sadly, he received a lot of backlash and people lost their faith in him. People were being sarcastic and teasing him if the film was even his.Seeing that happened to him opened my eyes. People may let it slide but they’ll never forget. Once you screw up, people will remember and use it against you. 

Pictures of the set:

Links to Film Reviews:

A Non-Horror Fan's Guide To Watching 'Misteri Dilaila'

https://rojakdaily.com/entertainment/article/6414/a-non-horror-fan-s-guide-to-watching-misteri-dilaila

Misteri Dilaila (2019) Review

https://www.caseymoviemania.com/2019/02/misteri-dilaila-2019-review/

Movie review: Misteri Dilaila

https://www.thesundaily.my/style-life/reviews/movie-review-misteri-dilaila-DJ649603

Link to news about the controversy :

Is Local Horror Film ‘Misteri Dilaila’ a Rip Off? Here’s What The Director Had To Say..

https://juiceonline.com/is-local-horror-film-misteri-dilaila-a-rip-off-heres-what-the-director-had-to-say/

Horror fans slam ‘Misteri Dilaila’ for ripping off Hollywood film ‘Vanishing Act’

https://www.malaymail.com/news/showbiz/2019/03/05/horror-fans-slam-misteri-dilaila-for-ripping-off-hollywood-film-vanishing-a/1729154

Clarification/Statement by the Director about the issue (in Malay);

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=649749852534594&set=pcb.649750949201151

[littlemisssquiggles]

Hi! So I know that at the beginning of the vol Whitley stans were very adamant about NOT having Whitley a villian but right now I'm a little open to the idea. His set up could go down the villain origin route and it would likely make a lot of sense. We didn't want Whitley to be a villain bc we thought he would be written as a mini Jacques. What would your thoughts be if Whitley was turned a villain, but bc of what's happened to him, and not bc he's a mini Jacques? Do you think it could happen?

Hello anon-chan. Here’s the thing with that idea. I used to be open to thethought of Whitley potentially playing villain…but only as an accomplice to Jacques in his crimes. 

Once upon a time, I shared a Whit-tyheadcanon describing a scenario in which Whitleyhad unlocked his Schnee family semblance, giving Jacques a golden opportunityto exploit his son’s newfound abilities and his grandfather’s powerful familybloodline for his own selfish gain. Since the World of Remnant episode on theSchnee Dust Company teased a secret criminal underbelly connected to thebusiness involving nefarious schemes against competitors and abuse of Faunuslabour, I was banking on the story delving more into that for Weiss’ side ofthe story for the Atlas Arc.

Unfortunately, the PLOT for V7 neverreally touched upon the topic of Faunus abuse or any of the other crimes of theSDC.

As a matter of fact, all that was previousestablished groundwork seemed to have been rolled into Jacques one plot to workwith Watts in order to gain a seat for himself on the ruling Council of Atlasand…that was it. Sure, we got to see Jacques get his just desserts by beingarrested but that was mostly for assisting Watts by granting him access toAtlas’ and Mantle’s key mainframe. Even now, there still hasn’t been any moreproper acknowledgement of the Faunus abuse under the SDC as teased last seasonby Adam Taurus’ revealed scar.

The conclusion with Jacques is anotherexample of the PLOT providing the audience with an outcome without anot-so-good build up to it. It’s like eating a cheeseburger without the meatand cheese. All you get is the two dry buns. While it’s edible and serviceable toyour hungering appetite, it’s still not as good as it could have been if youhad the filling to complete the full burger you were expecting; y’know what Imean? This is how this subplot felt to me. I got the intriguing beginning andthe befitting ending but the middle that should’ve better sold ending for meleft more to be desired, in my opinion. But that’s just me.

Anyways, going back to Whitley, why Ibring up the Crimes of the SDC, I was originally opened to the idea of Whitleytemporarily playing the villain role as a means of helping his father. Heck Ieven had one idea that I never shared in which Whitley was blackmailed intohelping the villains capture our heroes as a means of protecting his familyinclusive of his father.

However given how the show has wrappedup this subplot, I’m not for Whit temporarily playing villain anymore. What Imostly wish for Whit right now is for himand Weiss to reconcile their relationship and start things on a new page. With the PLOT having Willow urge Weiss to look out for heryounger brother, I’m banking on them delivering on that; possibly going forwardtoward V8.

Like imagineif…by the end of V7, with Jacques now inthe custody of the authorities charged for his crimes, Willow decides to checkherself into rehab so that she could finally get help for her alcoholism. Sonow with all of his family leaving him behind, Whitley is even more alone thanhe ever was before and it takes a toll on him emotionally. During this time,Weiss attempts to extend an olive branch to Whit. However each time Weiss makesan attempt for her and Whit to finally connect, Whit shoots down Weiss’propositions; metaphorically slamming the door on the two potentially sharing agood relationship. I likedthis idea since it synonymously hearkens back to the timeduring V4 when Whitley extended help to Weiss only to have her use hersemblance to slam the door on his face. While I know Whit approaching Weiss backthen was right after she had been punished by Jacques and accused him ofmanipulating her, nonetheless, I’d still like to think that Whit genuinelywanted to help his sister back then only to have her refuse him.

So if Weiss were to do the same withWhit right now, I’m certain he would slam the door in on her. As a matter offact, I can even picture Whit being less willing to have any kind of associationwith Weiss especially since she was the one responsible for their father’simprisonment.

Instead of there being a villain subplotwith Whit, I’d much rather watch Weiss try and be a better, more supportive bigsister for her little brother and have the plot focus on her working to repairtheir bond; possibly even with flashbacks to their childhood together.

Plus I don’t want Whit to be a villainsince it would more or less lend to the impression that folks originally had ofhim. As a Whit myself, I’d like to believe that part of the reason why Whitleystans don’t favour the villain angle with him is because it plays into the FNDMassumption that Whitleywas going to turn out exactly like his father–-as you said, a mini-Jacques Schnee.

It is for this reason why I fell inlove with the idea of Whitley unlocking his family semblance. It could give himsomething to connect with his sisters on since Whit’s original belief was thathe was exactly like their father. It’d be interesting if in the end, Whit isactually no different from his sisters as he shares in their power. Who knows?Perhaps this could’ve even lent to Weiss training Whitley on how to use hispowers, similar to how Winter taught her.

I’d also loved to think that growing upWeiss was also trained by her grandfather: Nicholas Schnee. As a matter offact, I like the idea of Weiss originally being trained on her powers by Nickbut after he passed away, Winter—who had already joined the military at thetime—returned to take over her sister’s training in Nick’s place and that’show the two were able to bond.

I also have this idea in my head where whenWhitley was younger, he used to be more like Nicholas in terms of personalityand thus this lent to him and Weiss originally being close as children untiltheir father forced a wedge between them the instant Nick has passed away. Orsomething like that. I just thought it would’ve been nice to see Whitley beingtrained to use his powers, gaining a different impression of his family powerand his sister’s desire to become a huntsman. While Whit still doesn’t become ahuntsman himself, his main takeaway ends up being his newfound appreciation forthe huntsman and what they represent as inspired by his older sister. I likedthe idea of Whitley taking over as CEO of the SDC but through his time withWeiss, he is reminded of the side of him that had more in common with NicholasSchnee than all the Schnee Siblings. So basically the SDC undergoes a return toform with Whit as its new head; mirroring the same level of brilliance andcompassion that his grandfather once had. That’s one idea.

As a Whit, part of the reason I eventuallylatched onto his character was because I felt sympathetic toward Whitley. I never really pegged him as the manipulativelittle bastard that the PLOT wanted me to believe he was after V4 especiallysince I reviewed that whole volume and realized that Whitley had done nothingto deserve the backlash he received from both his sister and the FNDM.

I always liked to idea of Whit beingmore of a misunderstood character and even now, I still believe that. If I had to picturethe villain card being played for Whitley, I can only see it from the angle ofWhit being a pawn— manipulated by other more antagonistic characters preying onhis vulnerability and insecurities surrounding his relationship with his familyto use Whit to achieve their own selfish desires. At least as a pawn Ican still empathize with Whit over him just going flat out evil.

This is why I liked my original headcanon of Whit unintentionally unlocking his own abilities and Jacquestaking advantage of his semblance to bank on more success for himself. But sinceJacques’ out, so is that idea. 

The one concept I’m willing to chum up to now asan alternative is one where an emotionally vulnerable Whitley; starved forproper support and attention by the women in his life, is seduced byNeopolitan and manipulated into helping her and Cinder somehow.

I’m still waiting for that so-called “super-duper irredeemable thing” that Neo does to shock the FNDM that was teased last V6. Still notsure where folks heard that rumour but I’m waiting on it. It’d be interestingif Neo gets her mittens on Whit and preys on him especially if he is very vulnerable right now.

I don’t know how old Neo is supposed tobe. I keep hearing people imply that she’s supposed to be young, probablyaround the same age as our young heroes. Cinder even called her ‘girl’ backin V6. If I had to guess Neo’s age, she’s probably around 18-19 years old for theyoungest.

And if I had to guess Whitley’s age, I’vealways pegged him as being around the same age as Ruby. Some folks peg Whit tobe closer to Oscar’s age but for me, I more placed Whitley between Ruby and Oscarleaning closer to Ruby’s age. So if Ruby’s currently 17 years old, I peg Whitto be probably be around 16-17.

That being said, I’m picturing ascenario where Cinder convinces Neo to chum up to Whit; play into using herfeminine wilds to makefriends with Whitley especially now that he’sall alone with not even mommy dearest to really look out for him. Not saying this willbe a possibility. I mean I can’t even picture a prospective PLOT motive for Neoand Cinder to even need Whitley.

Outside of Ruby, the only other personI can picture Fire andIce-cream targeting is the Winter Maiden. Andunless the hospital facility Fria is currently housed in is somehow connected tothe Schnee Dust Company then I can’t really see a reason to have Whitley beaffiliated with Neo and Cinder. If Weiss Schnee had been Neo’s target insteadof Ruby then I could’ve easily seen Neo getting to Weiss through manipulatingher little brother; sparking furthertension between the Schnee Siblings.

However that’s not the case. I dunno.

I think for now I’m just going to stickwith my earlier aspiration. Just having the PLOT more focus on rebuilding Weissand Whitley’s relationship and let that be the focal point of their conjoinedstory. Toss in the idea of Whitley unlocking his semblance and being unable tocontrol his powers leading to Weiss having to help him get that under controldespite their tension and that could be a cool subplot to see play out. I’drather that than Whit being a villain entirely.

A pawn, maybe. But not a villain. Even with all that’s happened to him now, I wouldn’t expect that of Whit. That’s my verdict anon-chan.

~LittleMissSquiggles(2020)

[1dreality]

Why The Normalization of Stan Culture is Unhealthy

How a tweet about Ariana Grande made me realize the extent of harm this subculture has done.

Haaniyah Angus

FollowJan 27

The way in which pop culture is consumed in the 2010s is unlike anything else we have witnessed since the dawn of pop culture itself. Social media has created a hyperreality wherein the distance between regular individuals and their idols is slowly shortening, or at least appearing to. This is most obviously seen within ‘stan Twitter’, a section of Twitter dedicated to celebrities even to the most harmful lengths.

I want to make myself clear here: I don’t hate stans or stan Twitter. Throughout my teenage years, I was part of this subculture in various ways, whether it be K-Pop, One Direction, Justin Bieber, 5SOS and — ironically enough — Ariana Grande. Through ‘standoms’ I was able to meet people and make friends in a way I couldn’t in real life. I felt as if I were part of a community, that I finally belonged. But, as I got older, I realized the obsession I had wasn’t healthy, and that’s why I worry about the direction that many young people seem to be heading in. Their dedication to strangers in order to boost their own self-esteem feels almost like a car crash ready to happen and, for some, it already has.

But, though this is undoubtedly a phenomenon of the social media era, in order to understand what stan Twitter is and its origin, we need to travel back to a time before Twitter even existed.

Currently, on Urban Dictionary, a stan is defined as an overzealous maniacal fan for any celebrity or athlete, stemming from Eminem’s 2002 hit, Stan. In the video, Stan wants Eminem to make contact with him but Eminem doesn’t reply to his letters and, due to this, Stan thinks he has been ignored. As revenge, Stan ties up his own girlfriend, stows her in his trunk, drives along a rain-soaked highway and drives off a bridge. Eminem gets around to responding and says how thankful he is for the support, only to understand that Stan is obsessed with him and then, finally, to connect the dots and realize that he’s the man who killed his girlfriend.

What many psychological professionals would describe this as is a parasocial relationship. This is not a made up disorder nor an armchair diagnosis, but simply the definition to a relationship many people have with famous figures. Parasocial relationships are one-sided dynamics in which energy, interest and time are extended towards the object of obsession whilst they (commonly a celebrity) remain ignorant of the existence of the other.

But, though critics and think piece writers often frame them as a symptom of young people’s generational rot, behaviours such as this are not new in the slightest. Before the boom of social media, obsessive fans had existed for a long, long time — such as during the Roman reign, where people collected gladiators’ sweat out of admiration; or the Victorian era, when hordes of fans forced author Arthur Conan Doyle to revive his star character, Sherlock Holmes. The Beatles had a superfan plotting to murder John Lennon, Michael Jackson had to prove that he didn’t impregnate a stalker, and Uma Thurman received a card from a fan that had a drawing of an open grave, a headstone and a man standing on the edge of a razor blade.

This is not an exclusively Western phenomenon either. In Korea, this type of idolatry exists heavily within the K-Pop industry. Sasaeng fans are over-obsessive fans of musical idols, to the point that they engage in stalking. According to Yahoo Lifestyle, Korean idols have been filmed, had their phones wiretapped, and even had fans breaking into their homes.

What makes this new era of ‘stalker fans’ different, in my opinion, is the admiration that seems to be growing towards such behaviours. Today, even as a joke, the terminology of ‘stalker fan’ or ‘stan’ has been the latest object of amelioration — where a word’s negative meaning is elevated to a positive one.

Last year when culture writer Wanna Thompson received a hateful DM from rapper Nicki Minaj and decided to share it, the following backlash shone a light for many in regards to this behaviour. Minaj clapped back at a comment Thompson had made on her Twitter account and Thompson brought it to her timeline, shocked that a celebrity of that magnitude could do such a thing. According to an interview with the New York Times, Wanna received hateful messages via Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and even email; including insults to her infant daughter and suicide bait. The majority of these hateful words came from stans, who seemed to have a soldier-like sense of duty to protect Minaj. It was as if they would do anything for their idol.

Though Wanna and Nicki’s beef was recent and particularly notorious, one could pick any of all the major stan groups and they’d find that they all exhibit this need to protect their idols from critique, even when it is valid. Which brings me to the point of this article.

We need to talk about Ariana Grande.

It was last week when Grande released her song ‘7 Rings’ and, as a longtime fan of the 25-year-old star, I was ecstatic. I loved the song and felt like she was finally blossoming into the artist she could always be. That was until it was rightfully pointed out to me that Ariana was walking along a tightrope that many young white pop stars toe — and often fall off of. Like many ex-child stars before her, Ariana was rebelling against her ‘good girl’ image by appropriating Black culture.

As stated by writer Erin Dyana:

Viewing her 7 Rings video after seeing her come up in real time throughout the years has left a bizarre taste in my mouth and I’m not sure if there’s anything that can cleanse my palate of it. The video has quite literally glamorized a trap house (something she wouldn’t know anything about) while she raps in an airy voice about buying weave, being rich, and having a “stacked” ass (a lie). These lyrics and visuals aren’t fitting and belong to a Black woman, period. It’s inauthentic and corny to me that she felt the need to cherry pick from Black culture to make something that’ll sell and get clicks.

As much as I love Grande, I couldn’t ignore this issue, which has plagued Black culture for years. The more I listened to 7 Rings, the more I understood why it made people, specifically Black women uncomfortable. While I wasn’t the most damning critic of Grande’s song, I immediately got pushback for suggesting that those who dislike it weren’t in the wrong. Historically white pop stars have been able to cross genres (pop to trap, in Grande’s case) while Black singers haven’t.

I was noticing that anytime someone dared speak about Grande, they were silenced by her fans and stans alike, even though some of the people criticizing Ariana might have disliked her already, or been indifferent to her, many of us truly loved her music. Though stan Twitter might have you thinking otherwise, critical consumption doesn’t negate enjoyment. I and many others are perfectly able to spot the problematic aspects of music, writing and film whilst still having fun with it. Critical thinking only makes our experience richer, and definitely doesn’t mean that we hate an artist for making mistakes.

The drama culminated when people noticed that Ariana herself was liking tweets defending 7 Rings, its music video and the genre choice. I find that, when celebrities try to defend themselves against valid critiques such as cultural appropriation, it does more harm than good. This self-victimization causes the stans to be even more defensive and thus lash out against anyone critiquing their idol. Grande seemingly felt attacked or felt that these critics — mainly Black women — were harassing her. Her fans didn’t just internalize those feelings as their own but, of course, felt the need to defend Ariana by attacking anyone who dared criticize her.

I probably wouldn’t be paying as much attention to this if I hadn’t been also a victim of the harassment her stans were dishing out online. What sparked it, you may ask! I had simply tweeted a ‘judgemental’ reaction image in response to Ariana’s Instagram story. In it, it seemed that someone had jokingly written in their Insta-story: You like my hair? Gee, thanks just bought it” *kissing emoji*!!!! white women talking about their weaves is how we’re going to solve racism. Grande then proceeded to repost that story, thanking the OP for praise, even though it was clearly a mockery of that line.

As I mentioned earlier, I’d already gotten pushback from Ariana’s stans, and I didn’t care if people got mad at me. I would have continued on not caring but, after that tweet started circulating, it got to a point where my direct messages started blowing up with fans threatening me and telling me to delete it or else. I didn’t pay them any mind since I felt that there was no reason to take their threats seriously. However, come the next morning I woke and saw that my Twitter account had been suspended. It didn’t take long for me to realize that I had been falsely reported by stans in order to get the tweet taken down.

You see, Twitter’s reporting system is beyond repair. Reports are evaluated by algorithms, making it ridiculously easy for abusive accounts to skirt suspension by misspelling slurs, and even easier for ill-intentioned people to ‘game’ the system by mass-reporting innocent users. I only got a tenth of the backlash that Thompson received from Minaj fans and yet my Twitter account, a platform on which I had built a following of 12,000 and which held contacts throughout various industries was gone. Not only that but, once I tweeted on my new account that I had been suspended unfairly, stans started to mock me and say that I deserved it for posting that tweet. A tweet that simply reacted to a foolish post of Grande’s — which, mind you, she acknowledged as such and took down.

But why do these things happen? Why do hordes of fans maliciously attack critics? Why do ‘stans’ behave in such an obsessive manner? Some say that social media is to blame and that isn’t a completely ludicrous view. As stated earlier, stans existed long before the age of the Internet, but the anonymity and the mass reach of social media allow their harassment and stalking to be extremely harmful while sheltering them from consequences. You can’t get a restraining order against an anonymous person who could use various accounts to stalk you. If stans are harassing those critiquing their favourite celebrity, blocks may prove futile, as they could make uncountable new accounts, and online harassment may continue until the aggressors get bored or the target finally gives in and deletes their account, whatever happens first.

I want to be positive when it comes to stans, I want to say hey! let these kids do what they want and oh, they’ll grow out of it, but I’m worried it may be too late. These stans have projected their own self-esteem issues and insecurities upon celebrities that make them feel whole. I know this because I did this, and many of my friends did this. Maybe obsessive fanaticism is an inescapable part of growing up, and maybe stans will come across this article and drag me for it. They will say that I’m being extra and that I just want clicks but — while I do want clicks, that’s why we’re all here, right? — I am genuinely worried. What was seen as fringe behaviour before — the invasion of privacy, obsessive fantasies, aggression and possessiveness, absolute disregard for others’ wellbeing — seems to be expected now in order to be “a true fan”. I’m worried that this has become the new norm for celebrity culture, and that the popularization of ‘standom’ has cemented this behaviour for years to come.

Edited By: Andrea Merodeadora

[marauders70s]

jk Rowling is just ruining the series at this point

Neutral but with lots of thoughts. 

Pottermore started as an INCREDIBLE site that I adored for its beautiful paintings, concept art, and wizarding world discovery. I enjoyed reading the world she created, the backstories she enriched, the characters she developed. I’m still ride-or-die attached to my wand, loved reading the wandwoods, loved learning about Remus’ family, Minerva’s life before Hogwarts, and the development of Hogsmeade. The Universal Studios of Harry Potter drew heavily on this portion of Pottermore and the film set and development and design in creating its theme park.

Then Pottermore was changed to not be interactive, and the art (my FAVORITE part) went away. And I hate to say it but the herald of that change was the “7 Wizarding Schools” article which was so embarrassingly Mom-racist that it was hard to witness. (Mom-racism is like…accidental ignorance like moms who say HOLA super loudly to Latinx people or try to excuse behavior of people for reasons regarding ethnicity or culture because they honestly don’t know differently). We’re talking weird general “African shamanism” and large birds and lions and ESPECIALLY the spin-off and expounding on Ilvermorny about American culture (and I say “culture” with every intentional sarcastic drip) which was so horribly 1840s British Imperialist about the “dumb but willing servant Red Man who has no Magic or Intelligence or Tradition” basically waiting around for the heir of Slytherin to “found magical learning and populate (an already populated??) continent.” Instead of drawing upon the beautiful traditions, languages, customs, legends, and mythology of the native peoples (and even the neighbors and migrants), she decided magical creatures of America should be fake (non believed/non mythological) pop-culturalist supernatural creatures like Slenderman/hide behind. Literally it was so bad I was mortified to think that I could ever be associated with Ilvermorny, whose houses (regardless of what is said) are just poor Hogwarts parallels with even more confusing requirements and was not original at all in its founding, traditions, or teaching. It made me embarrassed and ashamed to be American, and in telling my witchy narrative, I definitely use the transcontinental floo network and apparition stations to get to Hogwarts because I would HATE to go to Ilvermorny. (Also just…………the number of magical schools versus population is so embarrassing. Like 1 school for all of Asia (60% of the world’s population) and 1 for all of Africa (15%)? The two statistically largest portions of the globe that clock in at ¾ of ALL PEOPLE but by god there are three wizarding schools in Western Europe which is just 2.5% of the world’s population.

In regards to JK herself and the fantastic beasts series, I try to tell myself the following true facts:

She does not write the screenplays. At best they are fanfiction contributing to a world already built, much like LOTR content.

JK’s only interaction with “Fantastic Beasts” was the short book I read as a child annotated by “Ron and Harry” that was written for a charity event. In addition, Newt Scamander was mentioned in the books as an author, but never saw pagetime.

Fame comes with a host of things, including people heavily editing your views and stances in order to preserve mass appeal. I’m not saying this is right or just, but everything even tweeted by her is probably censored by four or five publicists to cultivate the “aesthetic” of an approachable “middle-class Mum”

Sadly these publicists seem to either be of her Idiotic Persuasion and Casual Racism or she just has someone checking for grammar mistakes and nothing else on Pottermore writings, for which she has received so much backlash you’ll notice they’ve slowed to almost nothing

J.K. did not actually have a lot of life experience or job experience before writing Philosopher’s Stone in 1996 (pub 1997 in some ed). Born in 1965, she would have been 31 and hadn’t been very active in the job market due to having a family young. 

None of this excuses any behavior, but it does filter the lens of which I critically view anything she says. 

Finally, I’ll say this. J.K. will always have a special place in my heart, more than almost any other author because of what the series has meant to me and my family. How much joy it has brought me and still brings me (interacting on this blog, for one), and I can’t forget that. My other literary heroes aren’t imperfect either. I know C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are painted as the best of friends, but the sad truth is that they drove each other away and were not speaking for the years leading up to Lewis’ preceding death in 1963. Let’s not get started on classic literature authors, most of whom were substance abusers, violent, and depressive. I don’t know if I’d say JK is ruining the series, because it’s beyond her now. It’s already entered a glass case in my heart and in the cultural eye that will survive her actions in life, and long after her death.

send me a ☕️ and a harry potter opinion (popular or unpopular) and i’ll say whether i agree or disagree

[aion-rsa]

What the Mank Ending Leaves Out About Orson Welles and Citizen Kane

https://ift.tt/2VFtrLe

This article contains Mank spoilers. You can read our review here.

It’s like the climax of a Western. Two men stare across from each other in a showdown of ego and calculation. And Gary Oldman’s Herman J. Mankiewicz (or “Mank”) has just told Orson Welles (Tom Burke) he wants writing credit for the Citizen Kane screenplay. This is not going to end well.

Before this moment, Welles had been conciliatory to Mank, feigning concern for his health and offering to take sole rewriting duties on the gargantuan script. He’s even providing $10,000 from RKO Pictures as a consolation. It’s of course more bribe than bonus. Yet as Welles realizes that he might have to share credit, or worse have no credit at all for a screenplay we just watched Mankiewicz write alone for two hours, the budding director throws a temper tantrum worthy of Charles Foster Kane, and Mankiewicz uses it as inspiration for exactly that—hubris run amok.

In the end, Welles is unmasked as a bully and an opportunist: a charlatan who wants to claim credit for a masterful screenplay that is all Mank’s, at least according to Mank. Yet the movie’s “Boy Genius from New York” wasn’t smart enough to see the writing on the wall about how the newly formed Screen Writers Guild would arbitrate this, nor did he predict that when Mank finally accepted his eventual screenwriting Oscar from his front lawn he’d say, “I am very happy to accept this award in the manner in which the screenplay was written, which is to say in the absence of Orson Welles.”

Is all this true? Did Welles put his name on a screenplay he didn’t help write a word of? It’s a question that has bedeviled the legend of Citizen Kane for 50 years, and even longer if you consider how many decades before that most people just believed the “Boy Genius” created everything substantial in Kane out of whole cloth. That myth is perhaps why Pauline Kael created one of her own when she published her 50,000-word essay “Raising Kane” across two volumes in The New Yorker in 1971—an account of Citizen Kane’s creation that suggests Mankiewicz alone wrote the script.

The Influence of Pauline Kael and “Raising Kane”

Kael’s essay, which is the clear basis for Mank, has been discredited in the ensuing years as inaccurate, unfair to Welles, and at best sloppy (or at worst intentionally misleading). But it makes for a hell of a story, which five decades on still finds life in David Fincher’s new Netflix film.

“Orson Welles wasn’t around when Citizen Kane was written, early in 1940,” Kael emphatically stated midway through the first volume of “Raising Kane.” Rather, she’d eventually elaborate, he was too “deeply entangled in the radio shows and other activities and a romance with Dolores Del Rio” to be bothered to do anything at Victorville’s dude ranch but stop by to have dinner once with Mankiewicz. In his absence, Kael paints a picture of a disabled Mank dictating the masterpiece of his script, more or less fully formed, to secretary Rita Alexander—and with the good support of Welles’ one-time business partner and now increasingly estranged middleman, John Houseman.

In Kael’s telling, “Welles probably made suggestions in his early conversations with Mankiewicz, and since he received copies of the work weekly while it was in progress at Victorville, he may have given advice by phone or letter. Later, he almost certainly made suggestions for cuts that helped Mankiewicz hammer the script into tighter form, and he is known to have made a few changes on the set.”

Basic key facts that Kael had access to while researching her essay would call this account into question, including how Welles and Mankiewicz spent five weeks in consultation, hatching out the general story of the film, as well as Welles simultaneously penning his own rough draft while Mank was in Victorville. But the blind spots turned out to be even bigger than these oversights.

So why the omissions? In part, as with Fincher after her, Kael clearly wanted to shine a light on one of Hollywood’s forgotten talents, as well as his entire generation of early talkie screenwriters. Unlike the playwrights and script doctors who came after him, Mankiewicz arrived in Hollywood as part of a singular era in the New York literary world, a member of the fabled “Algonquin Club” who came to Tinseltown for easy work and fat paychecks.

As Mank famously telegraphed to his buddy Ben Hecht, “MILLIONS ARE TO BE GRABBED OUT HERE AND YOUR ONLY COMPETITION IS IDIOTS.” But as Kael sharply illuminated, writers were one of the least valued cogs in the machinery of Golden Age Hollywood’s assembly line. They gladly took the money, but disdained the business as much as themselves.

“The vacation became an extended drunken party, and while they were there in the debris of the long morning after, American letters passed them by,” Kael opined. Mankiewicz, a journalist who wrote (often drunkenly) for The New York Times and The New Yorker, came to Hollywood and sold his soul—but then got little of the credit he deserved for doing so. That includes his immeasurable contributions to Citizen Kane.

Mank highlights elements from Mankiewicz’s own personal biography that became essential to crafting the 1941 masterpiece. Obviously Mankiewicz’s friendships with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance in the film) and his movie star mistress Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) informed much—though crucially not all—of the biography of Charles Foster Kane (Welles) and Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore) in Kane. Other episodes in the ’41 film were also lifted from Mank’s own life. Kael underlines a good one where Mank fell asleep drunk at his typewriter while writing a scathing theater review for The Times. It was so toxic his editor refused to publish it, similar to the experiences of Joseph Cotten’s Jedediah Leland in Kane.

These contributions had been obscured in the 30 years between Kane and Kael, with most only remembering Welles’ multi-hyphenated talent. And as the late ‘60s and early ‘70s rolled around, a new generation of film critics like Peter Bogdanovich and Andrew Sarris emerged with an almost worshipful reverence for the contribution of film directors. Sarris even coined “auteur theory,” and Kael became one of its biggest skeptics. It seems likely that “Raising Kane” was as much about tearing down “auteur theory,” and going after one of its adherents’ biggest idols, as it was meant to raise Mank up.

The problem, of course, is that for as much as Kael got Mankiewicz, she missed Welles—and the actual making of their picture—by miles.

What Mank Misses

Backlash to “Raising Kane” was fierce, with Sarris and Bogdanovich among its most vocal early critics. Indeed, both wrote pieces criticizing Kael, and Bogdanovich’s Esquire article, “The Kane Mutiny” published in 1972, proved to be the first major yank at unraveling Kael’s (and now Mank’s) version of events. Hardly an uninterested party—Bogdanovich was a protégé and friend of Welles, who likely had input on “The Kane Mutiny” from Welles himself—Bogdanovich nonetheless did something Kael failed at: legwork that could corroborate her story.

For starters Bogdanovich unearthed much of the research for “Raising Kane” was not done by Kael but UCLA film professor Howard Suber. “Raising Kane” was originally intended (and eventually published) as the introduction to a screenplay book on the movie titled The Citizen Kane Book (1971). Kael agreed to write an introduction in part so she could publish it as an excerpt elsewhere, but she also agreed to co-author the introduction with Suber, who’d been researching Kane for years. In the end, she wrote her epic alone, but with Suber’s treasure trove of material. Yet she failed to mention his name once in 50,000 words.

Bogdanovich interviewed Suber about these events and the professor came to a very different conclusion than Kael, saying, “After months of investigation… I regard the authorship of Kane as a very open question. Unfortunately, both sides would have to be consulted, and Miss Kael never spoke to Mr. Welles, which as I see it, violates all the principles of historical research.” For that comment, Kael declared she’d never return to UCLA until Suber apologized. He waited until after her death to speak publicly in detail about how he was supposed to co-write the original introduction.

Read more

Movies

Mank and Amanda Seyfried’s Quest to Save Marion Davies from Citizen Kane

By David Crow

Movies

David Fincher’s Joker and Orson Welles Criticisms Shouldn’t Matter

By David Crow

The vision Mank offers of the screenplay’s origins existing exclusively in Victorville seems based primarily on the accounts of two people who were there: Houseman, Welles’ bitter ex-partner who spent much of the rest of his life criticizing Welles on all matters, and Rita Alexander, whom Kael described as saying, “Welles didn’t write (or dictate) one line of the shooting script of ‘Citizen Kane.’”

That might be Alexander’s account, but Bogdanovich reached out to Welles’ own secretary, Kathryn Trosper, who likewise typed out much of Welles’ version of a script written concurrently with Mank’s, as well as the subsequent drafts that Welles worked on. “Then I’d like to know what was all that stuff I was always typing for Mr. Welles!” Trosper responded.

More convincingly are the accounts of major third party figures Kael referenced but never interviewed, like Charles Lederer. As another screenwriter who was good friends with Mank, and nephew to Marion Davies, Lederer is played in Fincher’s film by Joseph Cross as a man loyal to both his aunt and pseudo-mentor. He also is the go-between who Oldman’s Mankiewicz gives a copy of American (Citizen Kane’s original title) to, in order to decide if Marion would be upset. The fallout of letting the script into Hearst-friendly hands nearly derails Kane’s release. This is also how Kael described events in her essay, even though she never reached out to Lederer. Bogdanovich did.

“That is one hundred percent, whole-cloth false,” Lederer said in 1972, revealing he received the script from someone else within the industry. “I gave it back to him. He asked me if I thought Marion would be offended and I said I didn’t think so.”

Regarding authorship, Lederer said, “Manky was always complaining and sighing about Orson’s changes. And I heard from Benny [Hecht] too, that Manky was terribly upset. But you see, Manky was a great paragrapher—he wasn’t really a picture writer. I read his script of the film—the long one called American—before Orson really got to changing it and making his vision of it—and I thought it was pretty dull.” He would go on to add, “Orson vivified the material, changed it a lot, transcended it with his direction.”

As early as ’72, Bogdanovich picked apart Kael’s essay, from finding a 1941 affidavit by Richard Barr, executive assistant on the film, where he stated Welles made revisions that included dialogue, changing sequences and characterizations, and creating new scenes, to also citing Lederer’s claim that Kane never had its writing credits arbitrated by the Screen Writers Guild. This contradicts Kael’s assertion that the guild forced Welles to accept Mankiewicz’s name on the screenplay—and first above his own.

However, it has since been confirmed that Mankiewicz did lodge a protest with the Screen Writers Guild in 1940 before withdrawing it. He clearly worried about receiving credit because he had genuinely agreed to go uncredited on the script. The primary reason for this arrangement was because RKO’s contract stipulated that wunderkind Welles was to write, direct, produce, and star in his own movies. The studio didn’t want the mystique impugned by a co-writer. Whether Welles personally orchestrated this is unknown, but after Mank made noises and RKO decided (without the guild’s intervention) to give Mank credit, it was Welles’ decision to give Mankiewicz first credit. Assistant Richard Wilson recalled Welles circling Mankiewicz’s name and drawing an arrow to move it in front of his own for the end credits.

Beginning in 1978, film professor Robert L. Carringer offered the definitive rebuttal to Kael, and therefore Mank’s, story. First with “The Scripts of Citizen Kane” and then The Making of Citizen Kane, Carringer analyzed all seven drafts of the script, from the original 266-page behemoth Mankiewicz turned in from Victorville to the 156-page shooting script, with Welles being held chiefly responsible for most or all of the changes after the third draft.

Among Carringer’s discoveries, significant lines like “If I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a great man” are attributed to Welles, as are several of the film’s most significant sequences, such as Kane’s loveless first marriage being conveyed through a series of dissolves at the couple’s breakfast table over the decades.

Carringer concluded, “[Mankiewicz’s] principal contributions were the story frame, a cast of characters, and a good share of the dialogue… Welles added the narrative brilliance – the visual and verbal wit, the stylistic fluidity, and such stunningly original strokes as the newspaper montages and the breakfast table sequence. He also transformed Kane from a cardboard fictionalization of Hearst into a figure of mystery and epic magnificence.”

Reconsidering Orson Welles and ‘Auteurs’

The truth is Welles wasn’t there when Mank wrote his first draft—though even that occurred after more than a month of story meetings between the two men—but he did write many of the later drafts; and he wrote enough to deserve co-screenwriting credit.

It’s easy to understand the frustration for many about Mank being overlooked, including Mank’s own resentment. After the Citizen Kane premiere, where attendees were greeted to a program declaring Welles the author, director, producer, and star, Mankiewicz wrote to his father, “I’m particularly furious at the incredibly insolent description of how Orson wrote his masterpiece. The fact is that there isn’t one single line in the picture that wasn’t in writing—writing from and by me—before ever a camera turned.”

Yet this resentment, which in turn eventually fueled Kael and now Fincher, is divorced from reality.

Auteur theory is flawed and certainly not perfect. While some directors can clearly leave a signature on their body of work that is distinct, filmmaking is still a collaborative process, and emphasis on the director too often cultivates neglect for many other talents. But Kael, and now Fincher after her, seem so determined to undermine the concept that they created an ideological prism of their own, which is separated from the actual truth.

In a recent interview with Premiere, Fincher said, “Sure, there is genius in Citizen Kane, who could argue? But when Welles says, ‘It only takes an afternoon to learn everything there is to know about cinematography,’ pfff… Let’s say that this is the remark of someone who has been lucky to have Gregg Toland around to prepare the next shot.”

This is a fair critique of Welles’ boast in the 1970s on The Dick Cavett Show that “technically the whole bag of movies can be learned in a day and a half.” This was braggadocious late night TV blather, then and now, which undervalues talents like Toland and Mank. And it informs Fincher’s vision of Welles as a Mephistophelian figure who slithers up to Oldman’s hospital bed to make a Faustian bargain. But it’s not the whole picture of Welles or his legacy.

After all, Welles was the first (and still one of few) directors to place cinematographer Toland on the same title card as himself in the end credits of Citizen Kane, giving the man equal due for the visual wonder of the film.

And in a more thoughtful interview Welles had with Bogdanovich in 1969, he said, “It’s impossible to say how much I owe to Gregg. He was superb�� Up until then, cameramen were listed with about eight other names. Nobody those days—only the stars, director and the producer—got separate cards. Gregg deserved it, didn’t he?”

And as for Mank? In the same interview, Welles said, “I loved him. People did. He was much admired… [A lot of Hollywood writers] were pretty bitter and miserable. And nobody was more miserable, more bitter and funnier than Mank… A perfect monument of self-destruction. But you know when the bitterness wasn’t focused onto you—he was the best company in the world.”

While he additionally gave Mank credit for “rosebud” in that interview (his least favorite aspect in Kane), Welles also heaped praise on Mank writing the scene where Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane) recounts seeing a girl on a ferry in 1896 and thinking about her every day since.

“That was all Mank,” Welles said, “it’s my favorite scene… If I were in hell and they gave me a day off and said what part of any movie you ever made do you want to see, I’d say the scene of Mank’s about Bernstein. All the rest could be better, but that was just right.”

Late in Fincher’s Mank, Herman insists the Susan Alexander character is not really based on his pal Marion Davies—just the idea people have about her. It’s an act of betrayal, but it doesn’t undermine how great Citizen Kane is. Similarly, Fincher’s devilish vision of Welles doesn’t undermine the quality of his superb film, even as the 21st century filmmaker is playing into Kael’s false, hatchet job of a portrait of him.

Later in life Welles regretted how people got the wrong idea about Davies from Kane, saying she and Hearst had a “right to be upset about that.” And if he were alive today, maybe he’d have a right to be upset about his portrayal in Mank.

Both inaccuracies make for good stories, and both are pure fiction.

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The post What the Mank Ending Leaves Out About Orson Welles and Citizen Kane appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/36FVU9Y

[dailynewswebsite]

October Crisis, 1970: Crackdown ignited by authorities’ fear of young people

Shut to three,000 Quebecers gathered on the Paul-Sauvé enviornment hours earlier than the invocation of the Battle Measures Act would ship Canadian troops onto the streets of the province and many individuals – a few of them on the enviornment rally — had been arrested in subsequent raids. Éditions du Septentrion, CC BY-NC-ND, CC BY

Within the years main as much as the October Disaster in Quebec in 1970, younger individuals in Western international locations had been engaged in a collection of ruthless battles. Civil unrest had damaged out in France in Could 1968, and in the US, demonstrations and riots in opposition to segregation and discrimination, in addition to the U.S. involvement within the Vietnam Battle had gained floor. All of it occurred in opposition to a backdrop of political assassinations, main social upheavals and a rush to independence of former colonies.

Québec was no exception in these years. Demonstrations generally was riots, such because the St-Jean-Baptiste Day parade in 1968. The actions of the Entrance de libération du Québec, a clandestine group generally generally known as the FLQ, turned bloody in 1963.

(Éditions du Septentrion)

Québec youth discovered themselves in turmoil in October 1970. “Certainly, it was younger individuals, primarily college students, who could be arrested as quickly because the Battle Measures Act was applied,” explains Éric Bédard, who has simply launched the second version of his ebook dedicated to the occasions of October 1970, Chronique d’une rebellion appréhendée.

Bédard is a historian, professor on the Université TÉLUQ distance studying establishment in Montréal and the creator of L’Histoire du Québec pour les Nuls. His new quantity on the October Disaster features a doc that had, till now, remained unpublished: a listing of individuals arrested within the Better Montréal Space inside hours of Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s federal authorities adoption of the Battle Measures Act on Oct. 16, 1970.

The Dialog spoke to professor Bédard concerning the October Disaster.

A Canadian Military soldier patrols a avenue in Montréal after the invocation of the Battle Measures Act. (AP Photograph)

The Dialog: In your ebook, you analyze the political actions of younger individuals who had been enrolled on the Université de Montréal, the newly created Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), in addition to Concordia College and McGill College. Who had been they?

Eric Bédard: To begin with, there have been lots of them. They had been a part of the Child Growth. There have been practically 80,000 of them in universities in 1969 and so they benefited from the democratization of upper schooling.

Probably the most politicized had been very interested in revolutionary concepts and infrequently noticed violence as a needed evil. Many of those younger individuals dreamed of remodeling establishments, liberal democracy and capitalism and equated the political awakening of Quebecers with that of individuals within the “Third World” preventing for his or her emancipation.

Others had been extra involved a couple of revolution in morals, a radical transformation of viewpoints. They needed to abolish the establishments inherited from the previous, reminiscent of marriage, the church and conventional colleges. It was the counter-culture, the psychedelic expertise.

That’s the background. The FLQ was based in 1963, one 12 months after the Évian Accords, and its very identify is clearly impressed by that of the Algerian revolutionaries: the FLN (Entrance de libération nationale. In the US, African People had been struggling for his or her civil rights and younger individuals had been very vocal of their opposition to the Vietnam conflict.

The Dialog: Have been the scholar actions organized?

Bédard: Only a few. There have been stormy debates between them. In 1964, the scholars based the Union générale des étudiants du Québec (UGEQ). It might turn out to be more and more politicized and would declare to be separatist. For them, it was not solely a matter of defending their members’ pursuits, as unions do, however of fixing society.

At McGill, in 1969, it went very far. After two or three referendums, college students joined the UGEQ and a few even supported the motion that might have turned McGill right into a francophone college. Issues had been additionally going badly at Concordia (then Sir George Williams College), the place Black college students revolted in opposition to a professor deemed racist and vandalized the pc centre.

This radicalization affected the scholar motion. Within the late 1960s, UGEQ itself was thought-about too bourgeois and hierarchical, and was scuttled in favour of involvement in several types of organizations, reminiscent of neighbourhood residents’ committees. Probably the most militant college students most popular to affiliate with employees and labourers. We discovered ourselves with out a big pupil affiliation in 1970.

The lawyer for the Entrance de libération du Québec, Robert Lemieux, addresses college students at l’Université de Montréal in 1970. A graduate of McGill College, Lemieux known as on college students to create a parallel energy, that of the Éditions du Septentrion, CC BY-NC-ND

The Dialog: Does the context during which the October 1970 kidnapping disaster befell, throughout all this turmoil, clarify the response of authorities, in your view?

Bédard: The authorities noticed what was occurring on the earth, they adopted the information. Two years earlier, France was paralyzed through the rebellion of Could 1968, which started with a pupil strike. A number of months earlier, in Could 1970, the Nationwide Guard intervened at Ohio’s Kent State College in an illustration in opposition to the Vietnam conflict and 4 college students had been killed. It created an unimaginable backlash, which I might evaluate to the one surrounding the killing of George Floyd within the spring.

The authorities right here had this in thoughts after the kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross and extra clearly after the kidnapping of Immigration, Labour and Manpower Minister Pierre Laporte.

(Editor’s notice: British Commerce Commissioner James Cross was seized by the FLQ in North America’s first political kidnapping on Oct. 5, 1970. Laporte, a provincial cupboard minister, was snatched by one other FLQ cell days afterward Oct. 10.)

In my readings, what comes up on a regular basis is the worry of dysfunction stemming from younger individuals, a younger inhabitants that can not be managed. It surpasses worry of the separatists for my part, at the least from the perspective of the forces of regulation and order. We should take into account that the scholar motion was very totally different from the commerce union motion, which had a number of many years of historical past behind it, with its traditions, its buildings, its assemblies, its elections and its acknowledged leaders. With younger individuals, there are not any interlocutors, not like in 2012, through the Maple Spring pupil protest. No spokespersons, no buildings.

As a substitute of calming the authorities, who may have concluded that this motion was disorganized and due to this fact innocent, it elevated their worry of a militant overheating on campuses. Perceived as a type of unpredictable beast, the youth impressed actual worry within the authorities.

The testimony of the Québec authorities’s lawyer, Robert Demers, could be very revealing. He recounted that on Oct. 15, 1970, just a few hours earlier than the Battle Measures Act was decreed, Premier Robert Bourassa met with the chiefs of the Montréal police and the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial power, on the Queen Elizabeth Lodge the place the federal government had decamped.

The police had been centered on just one factor: the scholar menace. They requested for particular powers as a result of, they stated, if the state of affairs spiralled uncontrolled, they’d be powerless to take care of it. They insisted they’d not have the ability to arrest everybody. That is the thesis of my ebook. To be able to perceive the origins of the Battle Measures Act, one should perceive this ambiance of worry related to the youth of the time.

At UQAM, a number of gatherings in assist of the FLQ’s goals had been held through the fall of 1970, notably to denounce the Battle Measures Act. Nonetheless, no pupil political power was capable of mobilize younger individuals. (Éditions du Septentrion), CC BY-NC-ND

The Dialog: And it was these younger individuals who had been the primary to be arrested as quickly because the Battle Measures Act was proclaimed?

Bedard: Sure, they had been primarily younger individuals. Final 12 months, I received my palms on a listing from the then-deputy lawyer common of Québec, Gilbert Morier, who would later turn out to be a choose. There are 263 names of individuals arrested within the Better Montréal Space (there have been 497 in all, in line with John Turner, then-federal minister of justice). I’ve the date of delivery for 220 of them: three-quarters are below 30 years outdated and 15 per cent are below 20 years outdated. They had been primarily those who had been focused, at the least those that had been engaged in so-called subversive actions.

The Battle Measures Act created a shock wave amongst these younger individuals. It was like pulling out a bazooka. However the loss of life of Pierre Laporte had a fair better impact, for my part.

Pierre Laporte’s widow and her two kids comply with the funeral procession on Oct. 20, 1970. The Canadian Press/Peter Bregg

The Dialog: Your analysis reveals that these younger individuals weren’t very harmful…

Bédard: Sure, certainly, nevertheless it’s simple to say that 50 years later and I insist on that as a result of it’s too simple to provide classes. I perceive the fog that enveloped the actors of the time and I actually have a sure sympathy for them. I perceive that they had been below lots of strain. However a rational and chilly evaluation ought to have protected them from this panicky worry of youth, which was then scattered in a myriad of small teams, torn and divided, even inside the FLQ. These younger individuals weren’t geared up to make a revolution.

Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau enters the Home of Commons in Ottawa on October 16, 1970, to advise members of Parliament of his causes for enacting the Battle Measures Act. The Canadian Press/Chuck Mitchell

The Dialog: Did Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau actually imagine in a large youth revolt?

Bédard: The archives recommend that he was hesitant as a result of he knew the historic implications of invoking that odious liberty-destroying regulation. Therefore the priority to acquire letters from Bourassa and the mayor of Montréal, Jean Drapeau, who stated they feared an “apprehended rebellion.” This hesitation is contradictory, nevertheless, as a result of however, since 1969, Pierre Elliott Trudeau had arrange a disaster committee and an entire safety equipment to maintain sovereigntist militants in examine. He needed to do intelligence work, to infiltrate the campuses.

The Dialog: What impression did these occasions have on this era?

Bédard: It was like going to sleep after a tough day. No extra partying, no extra innocence and no extra lyrical revolution. All of it ended when Pierre Laporte’s physique was discovered within the trunk of a automobile.

Éric Bédard is vice-president of the Lionel-Groulx Basis, which promotes Québec historical past.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/october-crisis-1970-crackdown-ignited-by-authorities-fear-of-young-people/ via https://growthnews.in

[singingwordwright]

can you talk a little about what brought you, as a published author, back to writing fanfic. also what was your inspiration for your One Easy Answer fic/universe?

Hi there.

I’ve pretty much always been a fanfic author, ever since that day when I was 12 when my current beta @roseglass asked me how I would re-unite two ex-lovers in a story and thus began our six-year journey of writing Riker/Troi fanfic long-hand and snail-mailing it back and forth to each other after she moved away.

So it’s not like I ever intended to turn my back on writing fanfic, even once I published some of my original work. These days there’s a lot of crossover between the two, and my publisher, in particular, @riptidepublishing, specifically seeks out authors of fanworks and was started by someone who is very active in fandom.

For a few years, my mind was more in a place of generating original stories than it was in fanfic mode. Now the pendulum has swung the other way, in part because I’ve lost–or at least misplaced–my ability or desire to write sex scenes, and erotic romance was sort of my wheelhouse as an author so now I really can’t produce the sort of content most readers of my original works would expect from me. When I do get back into original writing, unfortunately it’s probably going to have to involve starting from scratch in a new genre with a new pen name to make a break from those expectations.

In the meantime, though, there’s this lovely show and this lovely ship that has brought me back into fan writing and consumes incredible amounts of my creative energy. And at least I’m writing something (also the last time I was this inspired with my fan writing, it ended up sparking my inspiration for original writing, which I’m hoping will happen again.) 

Now, as for what inspired the One Easy Answer concept/universe, the short answer is that I emailed @roseglass one day and said “I want to write an arranged marriage AU that isn’t, like HUGELY AU, it’s still mostly canon, but with a twist” and she said “that’s a fine idea, go for it!.” (Actually, it may be more accurate to say I wanted to READ a mostly-canon arranged marriage AU and realized the only one I could find had long-since become an abandoned WIP so it was down to me to write it.)

And in truth, I never got that thing I wanted initially. I WANTED a situation where Alec and Magnus didn’t become familiar with each other or fall in love until after they were married. But if I wanted that and still wanted to keep it close to show-canon, I would have had to have them getting married…oh, around maybe 1x04 or 1x05?

Like, I imagine the scenario would have been that the backlash from the Clave over the unsanctioned raid on the Hotel Dumort came in the shape of the Clave being afraid that Robert and Maryse’s children were going down the road of Nephilim supremacy the way their parents had, conducting “special missions” the way the Circle had, and in order to prove that wasn’t the case, Alec had to marry a Downworlder. That’s how that story would have looked, if I’d gone that route.

But for some reason, that premise didn’t occur to me until later. What occurred to me at the time I decided to write this arranged marriage AU was that I needed to pull one thread from the tapestry, and watch how it unraveled.

I’ve always been a tremendous fan of the idea of parallel universes, or that a universe exists in which each possibility to becomes reality and redirects the course of events in that universe (this is probably the teenager who got her first exposure to genre TV with ST:TNG popping up, actually.)

So I wanted to construct a universe in which the split point between show!canon and my!canon was Magnus backtracking on his promise that he wouldn’t approach Alec about their relationship again.

Now, I adore 1x12, don’t get me wrong, but let’s be honest. Ghost!Ragnor (or Magnus’s imagined construct of his recently deceased friend) convincing Magnus to change his mind and try one more time was almost bordering on deus ex machina. At least, so it seemed to me.

Like, we’d never seen anything in the show indicating that Magnus–or anyone else–tended to get wise counsel from ghosts, nor had we seen anything indicating that Magnus tended to have imaginary discussions with his lost or absent friends. So this idea that he was conferring with Ragnor and it shifted his determination to let Alec go after his last attempt to talk to Alec had failed, was…highly convenient and sort of came out of nowhere. It was the last-minute miracle solution to an unresolvable dilemma.

So I decided to explore what would happen if Magnus had stuck to his guns. Maybe he never received his visit from the Ghost of Warlocks Past, or whatever. But Magnus never wavered in his determination not to pursue Alec any more. 

Now, the first question is: would that mean Alec didn’t call off his wedding? Possibly, and I’m sure there could exist yet another parallel universe in which he didn’t. Maybe I’m cheating a little, but I like to believe that even without Magnus there, staring him down, Alec would have come to his senses before he crossed the point of no return.

So yes, Alec called off his wedding.

The next event where we might have seen ramifications of Magnus not interrupting Alec’s wedding is in the scene where Alec walks in on Magnus and Camille. 

Magnus, not having had the recent refresher course from ghost!Ragnor on why Camille is Pure Evil, is probably much more vulnerable to her manipulations and less wary of her. Maybe even inclined to seek comfort from someone he once had feelings for, no matter how bad he knows she is for him. He’s perhaps not going to be as unwilling a participant in that kiss as he was the way things happened on the show.

Which is what majorly shifts things into parallel reality territory, because it puts a rather effective kibosh on Alec approaching Magnus and saying, “hey, you were right, I chose not to go through with the wedding, let’s see where this thing we have between us might go.”

Because imagine how Alec was feeling that day after his wedding. Like, yeah, he’s concerned about the Hodge running off and giving the Mortal Cup to Valentine thing, but setting that aside, he did it! He cancelled his wedding. He came out to his parents. He prioritized his own happiness. He’s got to be chomping at the bit wanting to run to Magnus, tell Magnus what he’s done, and ask for another chance. But when he finally gets the opportunity to see Magnus again, he finds Magnus in someone else’s arms.

Ouch.

From there, it’s a cascade effect, isn’t it? Alec, hurt and stinging, is going to want nothing to do with Magnus, so all the events of season 2a feel the ripple effect of them not only NOT building their new relationship, but actively avoiding each other whenever possible.

Sure, Magnus keeps Alec alive in 2x03, but probably only because Izzy begged him to and because he feels guilty over what happened with Camille. Alec doesn’t nearly kill himself in 2x08 because he’s not being influenced by the spell at Magnus’s party, but he and Clary have still not found any sort of conciliation after Jocelyn’s death. Without the framework of their relationship, Alec remains ignorant of Izzy’s yin fen addiction because Magnus doesn’t clue him in during the events of 2x09, which means nothing stops Raphael feeding on Izzy that night, which becomes its own very dangerous situation. So now these events between Alec and Magnus have influenced events between Raphael and Izzy because without his confrontation with Alec, Raphael doesn’t have any reason to confess his feelings for Izzy. And so on, and so forth.

I just find it a fascinating study in how one event can influence so many other, and that’s really where the inspiration came from.

I deviated a bit farther from that original “one event causes ripples that influences others” mission statement in A Separate Peace, because for one thing, some of the events of season 2b (like the body swap plot) wouldn’t have worked in the canon I had established. Also, after season 2b, I decided one thing that was really missing on the show was character agency. So I decided to take an approach where the characters drive the events instead of vice-versa.

I also decided to make it an attempt to fix things that were bothering me about the show, such as the fact that the show leans heavily on “situationally convenience incompetence” (and hyper-competence, at times) wherein a character either becomes a total blundering idiot or the most awesome person to ever do A Thing depending on how tidily it moves things along in the story. 

Alec being more competent in his due diligence to vet Sebastian doesn’t actually CHANGE anything, except that it shows just how terrifyingly devious Sebastian is. Alec being competent forces Sebastian to be MORE competent. Which is frankly awesome because that’s the way it should be. You shouldn’t have to force your heroes to be dolts in order for your villains to pull the wool over their eyes. You just need your villains to step up their game and be that much craftier than your heroes.

I decided in A Separate Peace to fix the fact that there seemed to be storylines for Aldertree and Robert Lightwood that might have been set up initially, but never went anywhere, either because the show didn’t have time to include them, or because the actors were unavailable. If you’ve read my metas there were some really obvious clues laid down in both cases and there was just…no follow through. It was frustrating and I had the ability to work all that in and frankly it was some of the best plotting I’ve ever done.

The final thing I decided to tackle with A Separate Peace was the fact that the obligatory adherence to book canon relationships is getting in the way of the fact that, on the show, the characters are demonstrating insane chemistry that those pro forma relationships will never allow to flourish.

Wow. This ended up being really long. Sorry, nonny. I hope this answered your question?

[jurakan]

13 Reasons Why Review/Discussion (originally posted on Facebook)

I think it’s about time we talked about 13 Reasons Why, dear reader.

If you follow my Notes you probably already know that I read the book a couple of years ago. I had mixed feelings. On one hand I thought it was doing something desperately necessary--getting teens and people who interact with teens to talk about suicide, and the unintended impact we have on each other with hurtful rumors, remarks and actions. Sometimes we just don’t understand how much we hurt each other. But on the other hand, we’re not getting around the fact that the key character’s suicide is an extravagant revenge plot that ultimately works, humiliating all of her enemies beyond any repercussions, and the book doesn’t seem at all concerned with the parents and family of the deceased. It’s all about our protagonist instead.

I should back up and give you a recap.

The story of 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher goeth thusly: Hannah Baker, a teenage girl, has killed herself. Clay Jensen, our protagonist, knew her and had a crush on her while she was alive. He receives in the mail a box of cassette tapes that Hannah recorded before her suicide, explaining the “thirteen reasons why” she killed herself--thirteen people who made her feel like life wasn’t worth living. Each person has a side of a tape dedicated to them. If you get the box, you’re one of the thirteen reasons. You listen, and then you pass them on to the next one. If you don’t pass them on, then she has made arrangements that the tapes become public.

Through listening to the tapes, Clay finds out that at times we all accidentally ignore people when they need help the most, and that very often teenagers do stupid things that severely damage people without knowing. They’re not all bad people, just clueless and irresponsible.

Except Bryce. Seriously, f*** that guy.

I sort of liked the book. It wasn’t perfect--like I said, what Hannah’s parents felt, or even their relationship with their daughter was like, is all glossed over. It’s also a bit weird that the issues of being a teenaged girl are all framed from a teenaged boy’s perspective. But in many ways what also looked like a glaring flaw was that most of the novel read like an elaborate suicidal revenge story. The ending made it clear that this wasn’t what Jay Asher was aiming for; it’s about realizing we don’t always think about how we treat others and reaching out to people who need help if we see the signs. It was an okay read, but I understand what the author was getting at and appreciated it.

When the book became a bestseller, there was a lot of talk about a film adaptation with Selena Gomez signed on to play Hannah Baker. But the movie sat in Development Hell for so long that it became clear Selena Gomez wasn’t a high schooler anymore and probably far too recognizable and busy to be doing the part. She still ended up producing the adaptation when it somehow it ended up in Netflix’s hands as a 13-episode series.

So...I watched it.

13 Reasons Why--the Netflix series is able to dedicate an episode to each side of every tape. But in doing so it draws out the story from a single night to weeks of Clay listening to the tapes and confronting the other Reasons Why, along with how the parents and adults in the community react to the suicide and the Bakers bringing a lawsuit against the school.

The expansion provides a lot of backstory, fleshing out many of the novel’s one-note characters. We get to see more of the impact of the suicide on the community. We see Clay facing the other people on the tapes and their sides of the story are developed, casting doubt on the narrative Hannah’s tapes provide. But we also have to sit through thirteen episodes of Clay asking people what happened, only for people to tell him to finish listening to the tapes that provide most of the answers, which of course he takes thirteen episodes to do.

From a strictly critical standpoint what struck me most was that the show is trying to be an edgy teen drama. I realize that the novel was marketed for teenagers and young adults, but the show has oodles of swearing, sex, and worst of all a cliffhanger ending to presumably lead into a second season. When I started watching, silly optimist that I was, I didn’t think the show was meant to be more than thirteen episodes. So when several subplots are left unresolved, including a suicide attempt, the tapes becoming public, the lawsuit, Wal-Mart pushing out local businesses, and an upcoming school shooting, I was exasperated with how convoluted it had all become.

From a non-critical standpoint, the show received backlash from mental health professionals and concerned parties for the whole “glamorizing suicide” thing. Which, let’s face it, is definitely an accusation one could make at the show. Tony and Clay have heated conversations over “what Hannah would have wanted,” everyone’s lives revolve around these tapes, and we’re told by several characters that Clay is just at fault for Hannah’s death as people who actively bullied her because he gave her space when she asked for it.The series also contains a scene depicting Hannah’s suicide, an element that the book didn’t contain and is highly recommended against by mental health professionals. The makers of the series claim that they shot and edited it in a way so that it wouldn’t be romanticized with artistic music or glamorous shots, in order to state that suicide is a terrible thing to do. But that’s a massive ‘Your Mileage May Vary’ type of thing.

I have to admit that I find it hard to take the makers of the show at face value for their claims of attempting to raise awareness of difficult issues. Yes, they released a video (it plays after the series finale on Netflix) discussing the need for more public consciousness for mental health problems that are on display in the story, but the story is framed as the first season of an edgy teen drama with sex, drugs, alcohol, swearing, and cliffhangers clearly meant to elicit audible gasps. It’s a bit difficult to think they’re sincere in making any sort of public service announcement when Netflix is telling me that if I liked 13 Reasons Why, I should check out Secret Life of the American Teenager.

It isn’t as if the show is completely devoid of any value or narrative entertainment. And I’ve noticed some of the harsh criticisms of the show are fairly weak. For instance, I’ve seen it pointed out that the school counsellor’s actions are something a student counsellor should never do and therefore bad, when the whole point of his subplot was that he ultimately failed as a counsellor to see the problem right in front of him. And I did enjoy quite a lot of the show--Tony in particular, riding up in a fancy car to glare ominously at bullies like a gay Hispanic fairy godmother. Although it’s odd to see Christian Navarro as a teenager; it’s not that he’s that old for an actor playing a high schooler (only twenty-five), but he was married to Mr. Monk’s assistant for three years.

But I don’t think it’s wise to throw out the advice of mental health professionals and people genuinely concerned about the possibility of distasteful or haphazard handling of the topic of suicide. As someone who has friends who have attempted or committed suicide, I can’t disregard that counsel out of hand. I kept wondering while watching if the show was really that brilliant as the critics and fans were all saying, but with the clear set-up for a second season for more obvious teen drama, I don’t consider it a must-see.

You’re better off skipping. If one really wanted to open a dialogue about suicide, there are better ways than watching a Netflix series, such as looking up professional resources and talking to doctors.