#we discuss romance novels and I tell her plot points to my current stories and ones I want to write someday

[herembers]

A friend of mine was reading THG for the first time recently and she was saying how she wished there was a book from Peeta’s POV and I was like…uh…there is…sorta…gave her a link to Peeta’s Games on Ao3 and she’s like, “wow omg this is so cool. How did you find this site???”

Meanwhile I’m sweating… listen, friend, 😔 don’t make me spell it out for you lmao

[angryschnauzer]

Full Mast - Part 2

Summary: Your idyllic life as a trophy wife of a rich lord is suddenly disturbed with the arrival of a pirate ship and a kidnapping that goes wrong... leaving you in the care of a band of pirates that seem to treat you better than your husband ever did.

Part 1, 

Fandoms: Henry Cavill, Sand Castle - Movie, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Night Hunter, Hellraiser Hellworld

Pairing: Captain Syverson x Female Reader, August Walker x Reader, Walter Marshall x Reader, Mikey (Hellraiser) x Reader.

A/N: This is a CRACK FIC. After a brief discussion with @nuggsmum about the cheap romance novels that you could find in the 80′s and 90′s, i called upon the awful storylines, plot holes, and general cheesyness of those books that walked so fanfiction could run. Read the warnings please.

Storyboard note: The only artwork i could find that was suitable to show a Henry-like character included the woman seen above. I tried to crop as much of her out as possible, the story itself does not describe the female reader at all.

Warnings: NSFW, 18+, Unprotected Sex, Vaginal Sex, Oral Sex (F Recieving), Blowjobs, Multiple Blowjobs, Multiple Partners, Implied Age Gap (but never confirmed). Pretty Poly Pirates.

Only the finest organic free range typos for me, allowed to run wild and free.

Full Mast part 2

Standing in the grand cabin you took in your surroundings; the large table that was half covered in maps, the scattered chests and crates, the large four poster bed with messy linens. You wondered if the Captain had many other women between those sheets, or whether he kept his liaisons to his time on shore. At the mere thought of the man that had just taken your innocence you felt your stomach clench and another wave of arousal coat your already soaked petals. 

A quiet knock at the door drew your attention, smiling when you saw Mikey come in pulling a large chest and setting it down in the middle of the room;

“So err… Captain says there should be some stuff in here that will be ok for you, so umm… help yourself Miss…”

“Thank you Mikey”

The young man must be at least 20 yet a blush covered his cheeks as you spoke to him, and with a nervous smile he nodded his head and left the room, half tripping on the rug as he did so before slamming the door shut.

Stripping out of your ruined clothing you saw a pitcher of water and a bowl on the side, using it to wash the Captain's seed from your thighs. Crossing the room in just your silk stockings you opened the chest and pulled out a number of items, gauging what would fit. Looking around you set the items onto the large bed, pulling the covers straight as you made your choice and a thought came to mind.

-

Sy stood outside his cabin, his hand hovering over the door handle. What had he gotten himself into? When he’d heard that his old friend Walter was having issues on the island, he’d set sail immediately and between the two of them and his right hand man Walter, they’d come up with a fool proof plan; kidnap the lord’s young trophy wife, demand not even a ransom - just what they were due, return her unharmed. Instead he ended up with another officer onboard, a woman on his ship that was said to bring bad luck, and the puzzle of what the hell to do with her now it had been made abundantly clear that her husband didn’t want her back. Taking a deep breath he entered the room, expecting the worst…

“Darlin?... Don’t be mad…”

He looked around the room, surprised that at first he wasn’t pelted with whatever wasn’t tied down, but when he couldn’t see you at all he frowned.

“Captain, over here…”

His jaw dropped when he saw you, kneeling on his bed, bare save for your stockings and a smile. Crossing the room he came to stand at the foot of the bed, licking his lips as his gaze traversed your naked body;

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes…I don’t know what i was expecting, but it wasn’t this…”

With a single finger he beconned you towards him, watching as you moved until you were up on your knees, his large hand at the back of your neck and you were kissing again, his glorious tongue exploring your mouth as your hands clung to his shirt. Deliberately falling back on the bed you pulled him with you, his mouth making its way to your breasts where he lavished each one with full mouthed kisses, his tongue laving over the hardened peaks before pressing a trail of kisses down your stomach before settled at the apex of your thighs;

“Gotta be the prettiest little Puss i’ve seen in a long time, bet you’re as sweet as a peach too…”

His tongue swiped a wide path through your folds, your fingers clawing at the sheets as his beard tickled you and he did to you things you’d only read about in the secretive books that were hidden in the depths of your husbands library.

“Oh Captain!” you gasped as his tongue dived into your soaked entrance, his nose rubbing at your sensitive clit and you could feel your stomach tightening with anticipation of the inevitable. Seemingly in no need of air he continued to work the thick muscle inside of you, driving you closer and closer to the pinnacle of pleasure until the point of no return was met and you came with a cry, your legs clamping around his head. 

Finally he pulled himself free of your grasp, climbing up the bed until he was nestled between your thighs, his hardness pressing against your soaked core. Holding himself up on his strong arms he looked down at you beneath him;

“This time i’m gonna take my time and savour it…”

Your hands found their way to his breeches, unbuttoning him and gasping as his hot flesh sprung into your palm, heavy and weeping with need you guided him to your entrance. As he plunged into your depths the world seemed to fade around you; you’d had a taste of heaven and now you wanted more;

“You’re so big…”

“You want me to slow down Darlin?”

“No! It feels… so good…”

With practiced skill he rocked into you, slow but rough thrusts that had his length hitting a spot deep inside you’d had no idea that existed. The man had probably fucked his way around half of the Carribean but for a barely touched blossom as yourself he cherished the way your petals opened around him. 

He continued to fuck you closer and closer to orgasm, feeling your body tighten around him and tremble, he slid a hand between your bodies and rubbed at your sensitive pearl, a grin spreading across his face as you came again with a shout of his rank;

“That’s a good girl, so fucking good… almost there…”

He quickly pulled out and spilled his seed over your stomach, watching as rope after rope of his creamy seed patterned your body, before he fell to your side, his chest heaving. Covering his eyes he let out a shaky breath;

“What the fuck have i gotten myself into…” He peeped out from between his fingers, smiling at you before pulling you in for a sloppy kiss, finally resting his forehead against yours; “Wait there a moment Darlin, i’ll get you cleaned up”

-

You’d dressed in front of your Captain, watching how he admired your choices from where he sat at the long table;

“Wasn’t expecting you to go for breeches…” he commented as you fastened the half length velvet garment, your stockings beneath the knee length trousers. A loose shirt with a wide leather belt fastening it at your waist was the only other garment you put on, standing in front of him and doing a little twirl; “Very nice… and practical”

“I spent ten years of my childhood aboard spice ships, running up ladders and rigging in skirts was a recipe for disaster.”

You crossed the room and sat across his lap;

“So, how is this going to work? You gonna drop me at the next port, leave me to my own devices? Wait until we’re in shark infested waters and throw me overboard?”

“What? Now why would i do that to a pretty little thing like you?”

“Well I know you didn’t end up with the outcome you were hoping for, and now you’re stuck with a ransomee that isn’t due any ransom”

He let out a sigh;

“I wouldn’t do that… it ain’t your fault your husband had the balls of a eunuch. No, i’m sure we can find a use for you, even if it’s just warming my bed… did you have an education?”

“Of sorts. Whenever we docked in Grace Bay i’d see a governess. I can speak spanish, french, and italian” you nodded to the maps spread over the table; “... and i can chart courses and know the currents of the Indies better than anyone that ever sailed on the spice route” 

You gently stroked his beard;

“So Captain, what do you want me to do?”

“All of the above and more…” he stroked your cheek; “I won’t always be able to please you in bed, and from the signs of it you’ve got quite a carnal appetite...So, firstly you can call me Sy when its just us or the officers. When we’re on deck it’s Captain like everyone else. Secondly, if you want it, my officers could do with a bedmate, if you don’t mind sharing?”

Your eyebrows shot up so far you were surprised they didn’t meet your hair;

“Share me with your officers? Who…”

“There’s the Constable - who you’ll know from town - Walter Marshall, and the Armoury Officer - August Walker, and you’ve met Michael, he’s first mate”

“O-Okay”

“You’re alright with that?”

Stroking his beard you leant forwards and kissed him;

“Yes, yes I am. I’ve always wanted a little more adventure in my life, and now here it is”

“Well, you can be the one to decide when you want to go to the others, i’ll leave that move to you… i wont say anything yet”

“Thank you Sy, let's tell them Friday night. You can tell them.”

“Anything for my little Rose” he pressed his face to your neck and inhaled; “Still smell as sweet as that rose garden…”

“You can call me Rose if you like?”

“A new name for a new start?”

“Something like that” you grinned at him.

-

You’d spent four nights in the arms of Sy, some nights just falling asleep in each others arms, other’s you would fuck until dawn. That particular morning you’d taken him in your mouth and he’d taught you how to suck a man, working your tongue and lips over his hot flesh until he’d flooded your mouth with his thick salty seed. He’d held your jaw as he finished;

“Now be a good girl and swallow it”

You gulped down the mouthful before smiling;

“Tasty”

With a laugh he kissed you, before giving your naked ass a cheeky spank as he rolled out of bed;

“You gonna join me on deck?”

You stretched and sighed;

“I’m gonna try and find that earring i dropped when you had me bent over the table last night…”

-

Sy entered his cabin just as the ship’s cook was leaving, nodding to the meal he’d set out;

“Creole Stew tonight Cap’n, bread and ale like always”

“Thanks. Have you seen Rose?”

“No Sir”

Nodding Sy entered his cabin with a weary sigh, it had been a long day and all he really wanted to do was crawl into bed to sleep, grateful it was Friday which meant August took early watch on deck the next day, but he had dinner with the other officers and he hadn’t seen you for the last few hours, last he knew you were still on the hunt for your lost earring. Leaving the door ajar he sat at the table and started to eat, moments later Walter and August joining him.

“Where’s the others?” Walter asked as he sat, helping himself to a large chunk of bread

“Mikey is in the crows nest, he’ll be down shortly” August confirmed; “Haven’t seen Rose for a while though”

“Rose?”

“Sy’s bit of fluff. Decided as its a new start onboard she may as well choose a new name. Apparently its because Sy say’s she smells of Roses”

Walter snorted out a low laugh;

“She’s gonna be smelling of Sy sooner or later”

Sy listened to his two oldest friends banter back and forth, unaware of the surprise he was about to get. Hearing quick footfalls coming along the corridor he looked up to see Mikey at the doorway just as two soft hands pressed to his thighs from beneath the table. He nodded to Mikey to take a seat, before leaning back and peering down to his lap, hiding his surprise when he saw you on your knees beneath the table, hidden from the view of the rest of the party by the many overhanging maps and the low candle light.

Grabbing a chunk of bread he stayed leaning back but parted his thighs wide, wide enough to allow you to unfasten him and pump his hardening length and slip him into your mouth.

“Dig in boys, its gonna be a spicy meal tonight!”

As you worked quickly with your new found skills, sucking on the bulbous head as you fondled his heavy ballsack with your free hand, working quickly and silently as the men above you talked amongst themselves. You could feel Sy’s leg start to tremble, his hand sliding beneath the table to hold your head in place, and as you relaxed your jaw you felt his hot seed flood your mouth.

“WOO!” he exclaimed above you; “This stew is HOT!”

He took a deep breath and slapped his hand on the table with a laugh, before you tucked him carefully back into his breeches and you continued with your plan.

“Sy, we need to consider restocking the armoury” August started; “Scuttling the boats used up a lot of ammunitionnnnnnnnn”

Sy looked up and smirked, August looking at him wide eyed but recovering quickly, clearing his throat;

“Anyway as i was saying… umm... wow, the stew… the spice really hits after a while doesn’t it…”

August scrunched his face and rested his hand on his fist, before grabbing his tankard of ale and taking a large gulp, some of it spilling from the sides of his mouth as he spluttered on the liquid that did only a little to hide the groan. Sy shovelled another mouthful of stew into his mouth to hide his grin as August sat back in his chair, a half glare on his face. 

Walter frowned at both of the older men;

“I have no idea what you two are on about, this stew is fine”

August wiped the slight sheen of sweat from his brow, before finally sitting straight and digging back into his meal;

“Walt, just wait, it takes a while to hit you but when it does… ooooh boy it takes your breath away”

The big bear of a man frowned and shovelled another mouthful in, before his eyes went wide. Swallowing awkwardly he nodded, shifting in his seat;

“Oh… oh yeah… its hitting… wow, its a good burn, ya know…” taking a leaf out of August’s book he grabbed his tankard, taking a gulp as he fidgeted in his seat, both Sy and August doing poor jobs of hiding their smirks, whereas Mikey was sat at the far end of the table without the slightest clue as to what was going on;

“Seriously? You guys must be getting old, this stew ain’t spicy”

Sy raised his tankard to his son and grinned;

“Just wait, it’ll hit ya… anyway, i got an announcement to make”

The three other men looked at Sy, Walter’s gaze faltering now and again as his focal point seemed to change, but he shifted in his seat and leaned his elbow against the armrest of his chair, his hand sliding beneath the table as he muttered about ‘cramp’, when in fact his large hand was holding your head in place as he pushed deeper into your throat. Sy cleared his throat and continued;

“We all know the events at the island did not go to plan. We’re down on funds and supplies, and we’ve increased the crew numbers with those that helped with the land mutiny… we’ve also of course got Rose to consider, she never asked for any of this, but we have come up with a solution of sorts”

“I think i might know what that solution could be” Walter panted out, his face contorting into something that resembled a grimace as he muttered about spiciness and cramps again before with a sigh a smile spread across his face; “Ooooh that’s it… the cramps are going…”

“Anyway” Sy interjected with a wry smile; “Rose can speak numerous languages, can read and chart maps, she’s probably the best educated of everyone on the ship”

Just then Mikey squeaked and jumped in his chair, a thud sounding beneath the table;

“S-s-sorry... my knee hit the table”

Sy nodded with a smile;

“No problem Son, carry on. So Rose will also be here for other duties, but only for the officers at this table tonight” he paused; “And i think you all now know what those duties will be”

August nodded as he eagerly mopped up the last remaining morsels of his stew with a chunk of bread;

“That sounds a fucking brilliant idea Sy. She has the greatest tits...” at that moment Mikey let out a groan and his head thudded against the high back of his chair; “... and i think we all now know she’s got a fucking brilliant mouth on her”

There was little point in denying what had just happened, the very fact it was still going on and Mikey had so little control of his reactions as you were sucking his meaty dick, having just done the same to the other three men in the room from the darkness under the table. In fact the three older men started to chat away candidly as you lavished Mikey’s beautiful cock with your tongue, before taking him in hand to move your mouth down to his tight ballsack to suck on the warm globes. His athletic thighs had parted enough for you to get much closer than you had done with the other three men - all of whom had thighs that could crush a coconut - and it meant that the top of your head could now be seen in his lap by the other men.

“Grab her hair Mikey” August shouted from behind his refilled tankard; “Get deep down in her throat, its fucking amazing, feels like she’ll suck your soul out of your dick”

You felt Mikey's hands curl into your hair, holding your head in place as he started to rock his hips up, filling your mouth and throat. Gripping hard to his thighs you could feel him start to tremble, preparing yourself for the flood of seed and as he came with a cry, looking down at you as you stared back with wide innocent eyes that completely ruined him. 

Finally he released his grip on you, and as you looked down you smiled at what came into view. Seconds later you were climbing out from beneath the table, turning to smile at the rest of the men as you fastened the earring to your lobe;

“Look Sy, i found my earring!”

Walking around the table you took the tankard of ale that August held out for you with a smile, before sitting across Sy’s lap;

“I think they like the idea”

Sy looked at the men around the table, his trusted friends and family and smiled;

“I think they do, my sweet Rose”

He clinked his tankard to yours and you both drank, the joyous laughter filling the room as the night continued.

__________________________________________________________

I do not run a tag list. Instead please visit @angryschnauzerwrites​ and follow that blog and put it onto notifications. You will then get an alert when i post new stories.

Masterlist can be found on AO3, link here.

[akatsuki-shin]

Review: 天官赐福 Tiān Guān Cì Fú (Heaven Official's Blessing)

Notes:

(Very) long post ahead

Contains spoiler

This is my personal review and does not represent the entire audience, you are free to agree or not agree with what I’ve written here

Feel free to reply/send me a message if there are things you want to discuss

Summary:

The most beloved Crown Prince, pride of the Kingdom of Xianle with abundance of talents and achievements, Xie Lian, ascended to Heaven and became a martial god at the young age of 17 on the path to fulfill his dream "to save the common people".

Three years after his ascension, he saw his kingdom beginning to decline and in order to save his beloved country, Xie Lian defied the rules of Heaven and descended back to the mortal realm. Nevertheless, instead of saving them, his interference ended up accelerating the fall of Xianle, annihilating the once prosperous nation under the war of rebellion and a mysterious, horrifying plague.

The people who once praised and worshipped him day and night now condemned him, his devotees left him, they burnt his temples and divine statues, and Xie Lian himself was ultimately banished from the Heaven.

He ascended for the second time a short while later, but was banished once more very soon after. Since then, he lived among the mortals - surviving by collecting junks as he was now branded as the "God of Misfortune", the "Scrap Collecting Immortal".

800 years later, Xie Lian ascended again for the third time. Though having neither temples nor devotees, he accepted his responsibility as a martial god and carried on with his duties until one day, there came a certain, incidental encounter with a mysterious youth clad in red.

STORY: 7/10

TGCF overall is an (almost) complete, satisfying read with well-written twists and development.

Unlike the two previous MXTX's novels, the main pairing here (HuaLian) did not have to go through complicated misunderstandings and is a beautiful representation of love and devotion. Of course, this means there is a lack of conflict between them, but considering all the trials and tribulations the characters have gone through, this lack of conflict feels like a relieving fresh spring amidst the painful and exhausting journey throughout the entire five books.

The best and my most favorite plot twist is the Earth Master Ming Yi having been dead for a while, and the "Ming Yi" we know turns out to be the Black Water Submerging Boats, He Xuan. I'm the kind of person who always suspects characters, but even my furthest suspicion was "only" him being the Reverend of Empty Words, not He Xuan.

Truthfully, prior to reading this novel, I've seen Shi Qingxuan's "MING-XIONG, I'M SORRY x9999" post before without context, and I thought Ming Yi was going to die a tragic death because of Shi Qingxuan. Turns out it's kind of the opposite, huh? Nice one, really.

I also like how each character's "end" feels satisfying. Especially for the villains, they didn't necessarily have to die some tragic, vengeful death, but was provided with an ending that perfectly fits their background story and deeds. For example, in most stories, a character like Xuan Ji would be most likely be given some well-deserved punishment as her death, given everything she's done. But no, in the end she was given a reality check and was finally able to let go of her hundreds of years grudge. And then Qi Rong - I will talk more about him later on in the "Character" section.

One part I really love is the Extra Chapter about the Cave of Ten Thousand Gods. The chapter itself overall is mostly nonsensical and chaotic, but it was just so touching when HuaLian created a "Little Hua Cheng" statue to accompany Xie Lian's "Crown Prince who Pleased the Gods" statue, especially when this Little Hua Cheng statue gave Crown Prince Xie Lian statue a flower, and then Crown Prince Xie Lian received it, lifted him up and carried him in his arms. This one was maybe a bit biased because as much as I love the current HuaLian, I have a special soft spot for the young Xie Lian carrying, cradling the little Hua Cheng back then in the past. ;v;

Though, with all due respect, I must say that TGCF is actually below my expectation.

The biggest issue I have with TGCF is... What is Xie Lian's motivation? What drives him to move forward in the story? What is even the whole story's purpose?

I'm not quite sure how to word this properly, but let me give some examples.

When you read Harry Potter, you know immediately that Voldemort is the bad guy and he must be defeated.

When you read the Lord of the Rings, you know immediately that the One Ring must be destroyed to prevent Sauron from regaining his power.

Or, in MXTX previous works...

In SVSSS, it was clear since the beginning that Shen Yuan's mission is to fix the "Proud Immortal Demon Way" if he wants to survive.

In MDZS, it was clear that Wei Wuxian, together with Lan Wangji's, needs to unravel the mystery behind that fierce left arm. All of their past stories and WangXian getting together in the end are just something they discovered along the way, not the initial "motivation" that drives the character to move forward.

What about TGCF? The Xie Lian who ascended for the third time actually looks like he just wants to go along with the flow, carrying out his duties day by day with responsibility. When Bai Wuxiang later, later, later on appeared to haunt him again, it didn't seem like Xie Lian has any ambition to hunt him down or exact a revenge, just that he wanted to forget about Bai Wuxiang and never recall anything about him ever again. The main character looks like he's not being driven by anything, just...carrying on where the plot takes him? It's just missions after missions and whatever huge things happening in between is just something they accidentally passed by along the way.

At this point, the only purpose of the story I can think of is bringing Hua Cheng and Xie Lian together. The romance is great, I have no complain. But if it's just that, no need to jammed-pack 250+ chapters just to make two people getting together?

Speaking of which, I also think that the way new characters keep being introduced all the way to almost the final showdown of the story feels info dump-ish, because the background story needs to be dropped there along with the characters, but then most of these characters fade away immediately after.

For example, the previous Civil God before Ling Wen, who looks like he’s going to pose some real trouble, but then was easily defeated and was never mentioned again afterwards. And this is especially true for He Xuan; after such a huge arc where he committed such extreme things, after that he was barely mentioned again, even having his “strong impression” leveled down by the joke about him being the poorest Calamity and owing lots of debts to Hua Cheng.

Basically what makes TGCF a long story is because there are too many stories about the side characters in addition to the main characters that are dumped out of the blue instead of slowly being revealed along the way.

Though, I love how the story gradually unravels the "Four Famous Tales" because initially, I thought it wasn't something crucial, and I wished they could've done this for other characters, too.

There is a little bit of plot holes here and there, as in who actually cut open Jian Lan/Lan Chang's baby and made it a ghost, and for what? Even if it turned out that she just met a bad guy or nobody important, at least provide an explanation in one paragraph? Especially because important side characters like Feng Xin and Mu Qing are involved here, so I'm pretty sure us readers need some explanation.

And more importantly, how can Jun Wu become the Emperor martial god? There's no mention about him ascending, only that he annihilated a dynasty of gods before sitting on the throne of the Great Martial Hall. But how can he, like, emitted god-like aura and not some evil aura? Is it because he used to be a god? But he's a ghost? Explanation where???

The gags and comedies are pretty fun, but honestly, the more I read, the more they ruin the atmosphere and suspense, added with the uncalled PDA between Hua Cheng and Xie Lian even during the most important moments. Honestly, I was bored the fuck out of my life from the moment they start fighting Jun Wu with those divine gundams, and only start gaining interest again much later on when Hua Cheng dissipated into butterflies.

Not saying the story's bad. Just... It's not up to my expectation... Characters being inserted here and there with a bunch of background story, gags and a show of PDA being flaunted during crucial moments. And when Mei Nianqing started telling the truth about the Kingdom of Wuyong, that's just plain info dump right there, seriously...

CHARACTERS: 7/10

Interesting characters, but only a few bore a lasting impression on me. Other than the main characters, which are Xie Lian and Hua Cheng, the only side characters (minus Bai Wuxiang as the main villain) who left quite some impression on me were probably just Feng Xin and Mu Qing.

Pei Ming is okay, at least he is still memorable until the end, and his character improved, too.

He Xuan, after having been introduced with such extreme, after his arc is over, was easily forgotten just like that.

Mei Nianqing, is borderline Deus Ex-Machina with a huge chunk of info dump that could solve everything, then he stopped being useful for the rest of the story.

Shi Qingxuan... Honestly, he's almost annoying, too noisy. I don’t hate him (and I kind of like him initially), but the way his character was being handled and presented post-Black Water arc feels disappointingly lazy and he was just there to make the party more merry.

Xie Lian himself, as the protagonist, how do I say this... This is maybe due to the translator's writing style (not MXTX’s fault), but whenever he screams in all capslock, it feels too extreme and borderline OOC? Of course, the original novel written in hanzi couldn't have included capslock.

What's great about him, though, is that despite all he'd gone through, he can still retain a pure heart and could not be swayed to be evil, just as he himself said "Body in the abyss, heart in paradise".

Now Hua Cheng, he is overall a super interesting character and I personally love this type of male characters. But he seriously is way too OP, almost like the original Luo Binghe (Bing-ge) a.k.a. too ideal, too perfect, no flaws, always capable of easily finding a way out in every single peril. I only forgive him for being like this because he dissipated into butterflies at the end of the battle with Jun Wu, making me think "oh, finally he's actually not invincible".

Still, his devotion to Xie Lian is very well written, very well presented, and his "I am forever your most devoted believer" is just downright the most powerful line in the whole story.

Now I promised to talk about Qi Rong, yeah? I haven't the slightest idea why it is even necessary to have Qi Rong as the Night-touring Green Lantern. I mean, yes he is there to make up the number of the Four Great Calamities, but that was for the characters who live in that world. As the novel's reader, I don't see any particularly important roles there for Qi Rong other than being an annoying meme fodder despite his actually pretty-cool first foreshadowing and appearance? Even his issue with Lang Qianqiu does not seem to give that much impact on the overall story, it could've just passed simply being explained in several pages.

Though I'd say he's got the best character development compared to others. Instead of dying as some hateful villain, the way he ended up deciding to protect Guzi at the cost of his own life can already be expected from miles away, but still bittersweet and touching nonetheless - how this crazed, mental person could still love when being presented with such pure, innocent feelings to the point that he acknowledged Guzi as a his own son.

By the way, E Ming and Ruoye are cute, I take no criticism.

TECHNICAL ASPECTS: 8/10

I can't really describe this with words, but MXTX's overall writing technique has greatly improved since MDZS.

It feels more "solid" to read instead of scattered here and there.

The info distribution has improved (fewer info dump compared to before), the story's no longer switching between past and present all of a sudden.

Description of characters and environment are sufficient, the plot is progressing steadily.

Several issues I have with this aspect though, the Prologue being ten pages is just way too long, I don't think I need that much information being stuffed right to my face right from the beginning.

There are excessive use of "Turns out..." every single time an explanation is going to come.

"Xie Lian didn't know whether he should cry or laugh" is honestly has been used probably more than 50 times just in the last two books. Although I'm reading a translation, I'm pretty sure the original Chinese version is being repetitive with this phrase, as well, because the translators couldn't just whip up any other phrase from thin air and put it in someone else's novel.

Almost half of scene transition is always caused by some sudden, external disturbance like "All of a sudden they heard someone's coming", "All of a sudden X visits their room", etc.

OVERALL SCORE: 7.3/10

Worth to read, satisfying overall. The main pairing's love story is just so well written and sweet. As long as you can withstand the violence and gore, though. 😂

TGCF highlights perhaps one of the ugliest natures of mankind: Being nice to someone as long as they're beneficial, and immediately throwing them away once the benefit was no more.

Once that person does not seem to be beneficial anymore, everyone would leave them instantly, even turning on them and start spitting on them without even trying to understand the reason why said person "stopped being beneficial".

Both as a Crown Prince and a martial god, Xie Lian and the Crown Prince of Wuyong were praised, revered, worshipped by the citizens of Xianle and Wuyong respectively. Because they were always helping, always fulfilling the people's wishes. But how easily it was for those very same people to turn on Xie Lian and the Crown Prince of Wuyong when they encountered misfortunes, completely turning a blind eye to the laborious effort both characters have been putting to save them from annihilation, even if it was visible in broad daylight.

It is also worth to note another trait of mankind that this story underlines: To always find a scapegoat or blame others for one's own misfortune and failure - be it another human being, another group of people, the government, even the gods - after having taking their generosity for granted.

Which is why I think the true villain of the story is not Bai Wuxiang, but those citizens of the ancient Wuyong who were now nothing more than resentful spirits eternally burning within the lava of Tonglu Mountain - a well deserved punishment after what they did to their Crown Prince.

[sonickedtrowel]

1, 2, 4, 10, 20!!

Tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

Oh boy so I’m sure I must have mentioned it at some point but I won’t turn down a chance to ramble about it again: me and @regalpotato​ are working on a Day of the Doctor rewrite and I’m pretty psyched about it!  Basically, Eight is there rather than War (although War does make an appearance!) and also River is there, because Duh, and there are other Things going on that are different from the episode/novel, but that’s spoilers and also still partially cooking in my brain, lol.  It’s at 11k-ish right now but still pretty early in the story, too early to probably say what I will love most.  But I’m having a ton of fun with it, especially the dialogue, and currently torturing Ten in every way I can think of.  You know, lovingly torturing.  For the most part.

That is the really big thing I’m excited about, but I do still have two prompts left from a couple weeks back (I didn’t forget you, anons!) and those are milling around in my head too waiting for inspiration to strike. 2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

No secret that I love writing multi-Doctor / River stories, and in fact having somewhat recently finished an 8 and 11 / River fic I will have to be on my toes to not repeat myself too much haha.  But I just love getting everyone together and letting them yell at each other for a while - the best honestly - and then later we get Revealing Conversations about Feelings, as well as POV changing chapters.  Not to overhype it but!  I think it’s gonna be fun! Putting the rest under a cut because I am long-winded lol.

4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

Hmmm I’ll pick something I like from the WIP that’s all my writing - this is from Night of the Doctor with Eight and Ohila, but it’s diverged from the original script here and iirc pretty much all new dialogue for Eight.  I don’t normally write this sort of Doctor speech because I’m usually doing romance, but I can hear Paul McGann righteously shouting/soliloquizing in my head so I’m pretty happy with it: *** “What would you have me do?” the Doctor hissed.  “What does your broken prophecy foretell?  That I become one more loyal soldier in Gallifrey’s glorious army?  I can join this fight and take a thousand lives, die a thousand deaths, and this war will still go on.  The universe doesn’t need another soldier!” “Not a soldier,” said the Sister, “a warrior, with the power you’ve refused to wield.  You could have destroyed the Daleks before they were even created.” “Yes, I could have done.  And I didn’t, because I have no right!  Whatever it is you think you can turn me into, Sister, you’ll continue to be disappointed.  Because there’s one person who is always needed in a war: a good doctor, willing to help whomever they can.  No matter if they’re despised, or called traitor— no matter who they lose or how many times they fail!  There will always be more lives to save, and I’ll be there, helping, wherever I can.  I only hope I’m strong enough to carry on doing it half as well as another doctor I knew.” ***

(Yes of course we have Liv Chenka references!) 10. How would you describe your writing process? It takes me forever to get ideas, but once I have a sort of general amorphous direction for the story and an emotional starting point for the characters, I just jump in.  And then I keep getting shower thoughts about more and more stuff happening and what was supposed to just be some fun fluff starts growing a plot and getting wildly out of hand and this is just my life.  I am very much not in control. 20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?) Ohhhh this is such a good question!  Definitely going with There is a love I reminisce because there’s a lot going on under the surface in that fic and not all of it stated super explicitly.  So um, huge spoilers below if you haven’t read it!

Manhattan and Trenzalore (both times) are essentially retconned, through a combination of River’s innate abilities and Eleven going around the timeline trying to do better after being confronted with his shortcomings in TNOTD.  How the Doctor survived Utah is explained and it’s not because he was in a stupid robot.  It spawns an implied post-Library reunion with River, Eleven and the Doctor’s oft-referenced and never quantified or named children from Gallifrey.  It implies a different resolution to the Hybrid thing and an alternate series 10.  And of course it uses BF’s far-superior Ravenous 4 plot twist to preemptively annihilate the timeless children crap, and a combination of Ravenous 4 and Doom Coalition 4 to make River basically a time goddess.  But maybe my favorite thing was giving life to this headcanon of mine.  IT CANNOT BE REFUTED!  They’ve never said ANYTHING specific about his family so it’s free real estate baby!

*** “Yes, sorry to harp on about this, honey, but I think we can discuss the regeneration semantics later,” River cut in.  “You’re saying I came back from your future to your distant past and just… stayed?”

“Well… yes, I think so.  There were certain things we couldn’t discuss.  I had always just assumed that I’d reached the end of my last regeneration and you weren’t too pleased with that, so…  You know, describing it now, it does seem very irresponsible.  But I don’t recall having any complaints.”

“No, I shouldn’t think you would.”  River smiled, but her mind was racing.  “How would that even work?  Eventually, we’d come back round to when we first met on your end, and what, I wipe myself out of your memories?  Selectively, for your entire lifetime?  I think you might notice a little thing like that.”

“I suppose you must have had a plan for it, but I can’t remember it now.  I just remember the two of us, together through the centuries.” He smiled fondly and River felt like the ache in her chest would strangle her.  “I remember our family.”

“Our what?” she cried, as the older Doctor had a sudden choking fit.

“Our family.  Our children and…”  Dread slowly dawned on the young Doctor’s sweet face.  “Oh, please, no,” he whispered.  “Don’t tell me they’re…  No, this happened! It happened in both versions of my memories!”  He looked to his older self, panic-stricken.  “Tell me you remember!”

“You had a family,” River soothed, as Babyface stumbled over his own tongue.  “It just wasn’t with me.”

“What?” he laughed incredulously.  “Who else would it be?”

“Your first wife, sweetie.  I’m your second.  Well, the second one that counts.”

“No, that’s— I’m sorry, that’s nonsense.”  He turned to the older Doctor again. “You can’t tell her, is that it?  Because she hasn’t done it yet?  I’m sorry, River, maybe I shouldn’t have—”

“No!” Babyface shouted, finally collecting himself.  “Yes, we— I had a family, on Gallifrey, before I ever left.  River wasn’t there, obviously, because that’s not how anything works!”

“Who, then?” the young Doctor demanded.  “Who was your first wife?”

“I— I— she was—”  He opened and closed his mouth silently, looking increasingly horrified.

“You don’t like to talk about it,” River explained.  “She passed away.”

“Yes, but just between me and myself,” the young Doctor pressed on with an utter absence of tact that made it easier than ever to see this was the same man before her, “who was she?  And your children, what were their names?”

River hesitated, watching as the older Doctor wrestled with himself.  These were details not even she had ever asked him for.  She knew the general outline, of course, and that was enough.  It was a hurt so deep and so impossibly ancient, she couldn’t truly imagine how distant it must be for him now.  No sense in forcing him to open that door and dwell on it again.

“I, I don’t,” he finally muttered, looking almost fearful, “I don’t talk about it.  I don’t think about it.”

“You’ve forgotten them,” the young Doctor said, voice low and furious.  “How could you?”

“S-Susan,” Babyface stammered, wide-eyed.  “I left Gallifrey with Susan.”

A relieved smile flashed across the young Doctor’s face.  “And where did you suppose she came from?”

“No, she… I don’t…”  Chair legs scraped abruptly across the tile as the older Doctor bolted up from his seat, white-faced, and stumbled back from the table.

“Doctor?”  River stood, her hearts racing.  

His eyes met hers for a split second, the strange terror in them sending a chill through her, and then he was gone like a shot.  

“Doctor!”  She made to chase after him, but his younger version was still clasping her hand.

“He’ll be fine,” he reassured her.  “He’s just working it out.”

“Working it out?” she repeated, too stunned to reach out and grasp for the obvious.  She turned to him in a daze.  He smiled, and for a fleeting moment she fancied she could see the long contentment of a life she’d never dared dream of, etched in each little line on his older, younger face.

“I told you, River.”  He laid his other hand over hers, warm and steady.  “It was always you.”   ***

[lostbutterflyutau]

Still in Love

Note: Written for the EoA appreciation week prompt of the same name, the beach used to be a fun place. Sun, sand, laughter... memories. Now, a year after the dissolution of her marriage, Carla only finds reminders of what used to be.

Part of the For My Broken Heart songifc collection.

*** We walked side-by-side

Leaving footprints in the sand

Now only my footsteps remain

When the tide rolls in

Now time is moving

Faster than before

And now we can’t even

Seem to find the shore ******

Carla stared down at her still-untouched wine glass as the chatter around her continued. Somehow, the conversation had gone from frustrations regarding recent events at work to plans for Lila’s wedding. From the bits and pieces she was picking up, Carla learned that Lila wanted something big and extravagant on the beach they were currently camped out on. It wasn’t what she would have picked, but then again, what did she know? It didn’t matter how beautiful her wedding had been. Not when it was nothing more than a memory long gone.

She flicked her eyes up briefly, the reality of the situation setting in as, with a quick glance around the fire, she realised she was the only single person in the group. It was the same when she hung out with her friends, most of whom were married and, if they didn’t already have children, were talking about having them. But these people weren’t her friends. They were just colleagues. People she had to associate with due to her job. It wasn’t that she minded. Not really. They were nice enough both on and off the clock and had been more than helpful in getting her into the swing of things during the first wedding she assisted with, but they also weren’t her friends.

With a silent sigh, Carla set down her glass and grabbed her shoes, keeping them in her hand as she stood. Luckily, no one said anything. In fact, she’d wager they didn’t even notice. Not that she expected them to. She had only agreed to come because of how nice they’d been in inviting her. For a moment, she wondered if her mask had started to crack. Did they finally notice how fake her smiles were? Or how she avoided questions about “true love” when brides asked?

One last look back at the group around the fire told her that no, they didn’t notice she’d moved. Nor did she think they had any inkling of the mess she hid with cute dresses, ribbons, headbands, and professional smiles. On the one hand, it spoke to her acting skills, something she’d not only spent years perfecting, but had recently put into practice through a side gig at the local theatre. On the other, not having anyone to talk to only brought to the surface the loneliness she worked so hard to bury each and every morning as her reflection stared back at her, eyes filled with a lingering sadness that she had yet to come to terms with.

It had been a rough year since she signed the papers and took off. After that night it was a few months before Elena finally tracked her down to reconnect, something that she was grateful for. Initially, she thought she would be fine on her own -- and she was, in a sense. It took weeks to secure both her jobs, but she luckily had saved up and brought enough money to cover the rent on her little cottage on the water. In truth, she probably didn’t even need the two jobs, but she liked working. As hard as it was to spend hours a week looking over and discussing wedding plans while rehearsing for her bit parts and helping out at the theatre, it kept her busy and gave her more to focus on than her thoughts. Those first few weeks were miserable. All she remembered about them was unpacking interspersed with bouts of what felt like endless crying as she grappled with her new reality and trashed much of her old one.

Carla stopped, took in a breath as she tilted her head up towards the sky to look over the stars, the smallest of smiles forming when one shined back at her. She liked to think it was her mother telling her that it was okay. Her conflicted and complicated feelings were more than valid. She then turned from the sky to the path ahead.

Luckily, the group had settled in a place not far from her home, so she was able to escape when she did without worrying about how she’d get back. It wasn’t right in her backyard, but she didn’t mind the walk. The location was beautiful, and she considered herself lucky to have found such a nice place at a reasonable price, which she figured was probably due to how isolated it was from the city.

Isolated. Alone. Solitary.

Different words that all held the same meaning and said exactly how she felt. It was almost like when she was younger and being moved around from place to place with only her father for company, ‘almost’ being the key word. This time, it hit so much harder. Back then, loneliness was the only thing she’d known. She even believed at one point that she didn’t need or want friends. But now that she’d experienced having not only them, but a bigger family who was there for her alongside her father and the fairy-tale romance she had always dreamed of as a child – or, rather, what she had  believed was the fairy-tale romance of her dreams – it was hard to steel herself back to accepting a life of solitude.

She supposed that she hadn’t truly lost all of those things. It was true that her relationship with Gabe would never recover in any shape or form, no matter how much she still loved him, but she did still have her other friends. Sort of. Moving across the kingdom meant that she rarely saw anyone from her old life in person. They mostly just wrote from time to time and she wrote back, which she preferred. It was so much easier to lie in her letters and play things off. But she also knew deep down that those relationships wouldn’t be the same as they were before. Everyone was grown now with families of their own. Well, almost everyone. Both Naomi and Moana revelled in their singleness. Neither were in a rush to settle and both loved their chosen ventures. And that was fine. Fortuna had been the same and even marriage didn’t faze her. Her stepmother was still as headstrong as ever, which Carla figured was one of the things that drew Victor to her.

Carla took in a shaky breath in an attempt to ward off the tears that always came at night. She wished so much that she could be the same. That she could be okay with being ‘single and free’ and ready to jet off at a moment’s notice. But she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She wanted a relationship. And now she had almost none of any kind. Her friends were barely in her life anymore and she doubted they would ever be again. Not because they didn’t care, but because they had their own lives. This mess was hers.

Mostly.

As she trudged on, vaguely aware of the familiar feel of the sand against her feet, she thought not for the first time about how he was handling it all. She wanted to hate him. God knows she did. It would be so much easier to just be mad. To kick and scream and throw her rage into the ocean in front of her. But she wasn’t.

“Why?” She said to herself, kicked at the sand. “Why couldn’t we make it better? I tried. I really did.” Carla sighed again, dropped her shoes so she could free her hand, using it instead to help climb her way up onto the large rock she’d stopped in front of. It was a place she was attracted to shortly after arriving. One to just sit and relax and dip her feet in the water without the annoyance of sand in her dress. Once she reached the flat surface at the top, she brushed it off with her hand and took her usual place. She gave a fleeting glance up to that star again as she reached into her pocket before turning her attention to the locket in her hand.

“Mama, I know I ask this a lot, but does it ever get better? When do I stop loving him and start loving myself? That’s what used to happen in my books,” She looked up again, turned her focus back to that star and, with shaky breath, gave in and let the silent tears fall.

She used to spend hours poring over romance books and dreaming about what her ‘Happy Ever After’ would look like. Stories littered with cliched plots and characters that provided nothing more than an escape from her rough-and-tumble lifestyle. She knew they were stupid and cheesy and mostly fake, but she had loved it at one point. It had been a long time since she even picked up one of those novels. The last time it wasn’t even to read them. It was to pack them away with the other belongings she had shipped to Nueva Vista. She hadn’t opened them since, but also didn’t have the heart to give them up or throw them out. Not yet. There were too many good memories intertwined with those pages.

She’d instead starting reading books about magic – which she studied almost religiously – and adventure and whatever her friends sent her way. Anything to get away from the lies about true love and eternal happiness.

“I don’t get it,” Carla found herself saying as she kicked at the water. “You and Papa found it. Heck, Papa even found it again.” She frowned at herself for even entertaining the idea that, if he could learn to love again, maybe she could too because she knew she couldn’t. Papa was different. He was widowed and had his daughter to focus on after his wife’s death. What happened was no one’s fault. And while it hurt him deeply, it was also a special circumstance. He hadn’t been neglected and then dumped and forced to start all over while having the stigma of a broken marriage on his back. Something she hid from absolutely everyone that wasn’t in her inner circle.

As far as her colleagues knew, she was a single lady who’d never been married and, though she tried, just hadn’t found “the one.” Her only one.

She reached up at the thought, wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan. A person only got one chance at having the one. Their one big love. The kind of whirlwind romance described so often in novels. Others may come and go, but there would always be that one. The one you always remembered and held onto years later, if only in your heart. She was so sure she’d had it. After all they had been through before and after marriage, there was no way it was all a fluke.

She kicked the water again, looked up and out at the ocean. She couldn’t see much, only a few waves dancing in the moonlight with the occasional blip of shimmer that told her there were Sirenas out and about. Though she didn’t often talk to them – or anyone outside of her work colleagues for that matter – she saw them a lot. The same rock she was currently sitting on was a favourite spot of theirs as well and there’d been many a morning where she’d stepped out on her back porch to see two or three of them sitting and conversing. It was something that – if she had more talent in that area – would make a great painting. She saw it so clearly in her mind. The sun, the sea and the fun air popping off the canvas and adding a stark contrast to the dark vastness she often stared at in these moments.

What used to be as much fun for her simply wasn’t anymore. At one time, the beach was a happy place. The sound of the waves was both an excellent lullaby and a calm reminder of what used to be. The last time she’d visited for more than a moment of contemplation was over a year ago.

Carla recalled waking up that day with high hopes and smiling as she wrote out the message detailing her plan. She hoped and prayed that it would work. It had to work. The beach was a special place for them. One filled with laughter and light and memories of picnics and sunset walks. Unfortunately, she found that hope wasn’t enough. After waiting for two hours, she picked herself back up and trudged home. It wasn’t until days later that she found out that while he received her note, he never read it. Or any of the ones she’d sent over the past few weeks. She remembered so clearly the way she felt the cracks in her heart growing as she stared down at the stack of envelopes Armando had given her. He hadn’t meant to find them. He’d actually been searching for another document when he opened that desk drawer by chance. Not that she ever blamed him. He was just the messenger. In fact, she was glad that he said something. Then she knew to stop writing them. She never confronted her husband though. Didn’t see a point in it, really. It wasn’t until she made up her mind to leave that she bundled up the letters and tied them together, leaving them with the signed dissolution paper as a last trace of her presence.

She gave another heavy sigh, wiped her face a second time before finally shifting to climb down. As hard as it was to come by some nights, she needed to sleep. It was getting late and she had an early morning rehearsal before working a bridal shower the next afternoon.

Once on the ground, she swiped up her shoes, turned to head up the path home, looking back only once to see the single set of footprints in the sand and wishing, not for the first or last time, that she could turn things back to when there were two. *****

So, tell me…

Why can’t we make it better?

Because all that I know

Is found in you  

I’m missing your love

I’m missing your face

All of our past…

You let it erase

[thecreativegeorge]

The Implications of Overly Masculine Heroes

Okay, so we can’t exactly rip off Indiana Jones, Thor Odinsson or Clark Kent, but when I asked my mother to name some Overly Masculine Heroes, these are her offerings. (Yes, mother, I am proud you named Thor.) And these men are the reason men run the risk of developing testosterone poisoning.

There are heroes who define what it means to be masculine. With muscles, girls as prizes to win at the end of the quest, and fast cars. These are the men of the ‘80s, and I’m surprised my mother didn’t mention the A-Team (though, to be fair, I said “heroes” and not “guys”).

One of the main problems of these men is that, because they are the definition of masculinity, they tell males how to and how to not behave. They reinforce the stereotype of Heterosexual Male in a Quest, where the prize at the end is A Fair Maiden.

No, not in this time period.

There is some great literature out there which deconstruct this stereotype, such as Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus and Magnus Chase, or Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter Chronicles. And yes, I do realise I’m naming young adult and teen fiction. But that’s where this awesomeness lies.

And this is bad for current adults.

But in terms of younger writers and readers, it teaches that it’s okay to not have muscles. It teaches that it’s okay to not be heterosexual or to fit the gender binary.

Because the world is full of shades of grey and blurred lines. Your work should reflect this.

But this is not a lesson on social acceptance. It’s a lesson on how to avoid stereotypes.

Firstly, I’d suggest you “ask” your characters who they are as a person.

Then, you ask yourself why you’re including this in the story. Because “diversity” isn’t good enough. Readers can tell when something’s just been added in for the sake of adding it in.

Characters don’t need to be perfect. Perfect is an ideal. It’s poison, it rots society. Your characters have flaws which make them relatable and likeable. Your flaws are what makes a character human (if they are, in fact, human).

Maybe your overly masculine hero has a sexual dysfunction he’s hiding. Or a tiny penis. Because someone with those muscles cannot be a perfect human. A perfect human is impossible to achieve unless you’re a saint.

No, don’t write about a saint. What are you, a Christian author from the Late Medieval Period?

I’m tempted to include a bit about the science of testosterone poisoning, you know, like I did about what drinking blood does to humans? But then I decided against it. Because I’m ranting about muscles and low-key bitching about romance novels.

Moving on, let’s discuss how masculinity affects the plot.

One blog post I read a while ago said you shouldn’t think about the gender of your narrator as a deciding factor for writing it. Or that it should play a part, at all, in deciding who does what, when, and why.

Because gender should not be a factor in the actions of your characters.

This is called toxic masculinity. It is where society says a man is strong, emotionless, and earns all the money. He drinks beer and likes violent sports. He drives fast cars and treats women like prized possessions.

Insert the song, “You Don’t Own Me”.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that generalisation doesn’t apply to every man on the planet. And as such, it shouldn’t apply to every character who was born with certain genitalia.

Where there’s a character, there’s a cliché and a stock character. There’s a Manly Man and a Sensitive Guy. There’s the Straight Gay and the Raging Gay. There’s a character trope for everything, and whether or not it’s written well depends on how the author handles the characterisation.

I suppose the female equivalent for this is the Femme Fatale, the sultry woman who seduces men for whatever reason. Dresses in revealing dresses and has bright red lipstick. She’s usually the bad guy, or knows the bad guy, or works for the bad guy. James Bond probably slept with her at some point.

But the problem with manly heroes and seductive women is that they reinforce certain gender norms.

This is going back to the eighties and the use of women as props. We should be past this; our male characters should deal with their emotions like a mentally stable person. Our female leads should treat men as people and not eye candy.

This is about equality and respect.

Women are more than seductresses and prizes to be won. Women are more than empty vessels for the reader to squeeze into who react to the story at large. This should be reflected in the books we read and write.

Men are more than action heroes and lone rangers. Men are more than shallow and vaguely abusive love interests for the female lead to idealise. This should be reflected in the books we read and write.

As I mentioned in my article on villains, every character has a goal and motive.

Every character.

Every character must have a purpose for being in your story. And I do mean beyond “but my lead needs a love interest.” What actual role does your character have in the story?

How does your love interest move the plot forward?

Your love interest needs a real reason for your inclusion of them in the story. Are they also the mentor? The sidekick? Princess Leia was, I argue, the mentor. Han Solo was the contagonist. Fight me on this.

What message have I tried to convey in this rant?

Well, I’ll give the short and sweet answer to that question. Mills and Boons is not a good idea if you want diversity. But anyway:

Overt masculinity has been relegated to the last century. This does not reflect the current times and views. Unless your book is set in the eighties, don’t have big muscles, a fast car, and a girl as a prize for completing a quest.

No man is perfect, ladies. Everyone has flaws. Characters have flaws. And if I read one more story where the female narrator harps on about how perfect her love interest is, I’m assuming he has either a sexual dysfunction or a tiny penis.

Women are more than love interests for men. Men are more than Greek statues for women to gawk at. So why am I still reading that shit?

I realised that this article turned into a social rant on equality. I’m kind of not sorry.

Now, go forth and think about the implications of overly masculine heroes.

[lizziestudieshistory]

Books of 2020 - February

It hasn’t really shown in the number of books I read this month, but I’ve been struggling with a reading slump for the last two weeks... I’m not sure what brought it on but it’s sucked and I’ve ended up reading 5 or 6 books simultaneously. However, I did manage to push through on a book so hopefully it won’t affect my March reading too much! (Apologies for the Robin Hobb rant at the end, I hope it’s coherent! i also haven’t proof read, again...)

The Well of Ascension - Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn Era 1 #2)

This book was so much better than The Final Empire, in my opinion at least. I was a bit aprehensive going into it as a lot of people dislike WoA (at least in comparison to TFE) and I was worried about a dip in quality. However, I really enjoyed reading this one, and the twist at the end has got me so excited to read Hero of Ages!

A big reason why I loved this book is that it falls more in line with the type of fantasy story I love. There was much more focus on the politics of Scadriel and we saw the misfit band of theives step up into responsiblity. The style of story fell much more in line with Stormlight Archive (if no where near in scope) and it felt like a return to form in this book, so much so that it actually improved my opinion of TFE. I’m excited to see where this series goes, although I have had the ending spoilt, and finally understand why everyone loves this series so much. I was starting to get it with this book, but it’s come nowhere near my beloved Stormlight...

The Golden Fool - Robin Hobb (Tawny Man Trilogy #2; Realm of the Elderlings #8)

The Golden Fool had the distinct disadvantage of following the book that almost destroyed me and my favourite Hobb novel to date - Fool’s Errand. As such I was probably being a little harsh on this novel in hindsight when I wrote my indepth Goodreads review. However, this book just couldn’t compete with the intense emotional whirlwind Fool’s Errand left me with - I still cry a little bit whenever I think of THAT character death at the end. Hobb is a master at writing real characters, human or otherwise, and each character feels alive in her books, which means when a character feels loss and grief I do to, for a long time. It also means it was probably too soon to pick up the sequel and do the book justice.

Nevertheless, I really did enjoy The Golden Fool. The pacing from the end of Fool’s Errand slowed down and we got a real character study for Fitz, the Fool, and in places Prince Dutiful. Relationships grow and come into their own, Dutiful and Fitz really bond and we start to see his relationships with Nettle and Hap grow. However, the shining heart of this series is always Fitz and the Fool, we see their childhood friendship really mature and grow into something new. This whole series is their lovestory at the end of the day and this book is full of all the love they have and the pain they cause each other. 

For me the only let down was the plot - I actually don’t love the whole arc for the Tawny Man Trilogy, which is one of the reasons it’s not my favourite series within the Realm of the Elderlings. Personally, I couldn’t care less about the Piebalds, Outislands, and Pale Woman. I love the series for the characters, and Fitz and the Fool are why I keep coming back to Hobb’s world.

When a Scot Ties the Knot - Tessa Dare

I still don’t know why I read a romance novel... This was my first ever romance, and it will probably be my only one for quite a long time. It was an interesting experience, but not one I’m in a hurry to have again. Saying this for what it was it was enjoyable, but I am not well read enough in the genre to have a serious opinion on the characters, plot, or quality of the book in comparison to other romances. 

Beowulf - Anoymous

I’ve been meanign to read Beowulf for a while, but have only just managed to get aorund to doing it. I didn’t love the epic as much as I have other epics in the past (nothing has yet surpassed my beloved Iliad), however, I do think it was a problem with the translation rather than the poem itself. I adore epic poetry, and I think they are always a triumph of the culture that produced them. But the modern translation by Michael Alexander was dry and over written. Read aloud it probably would have sounded better, but on the page it was often confusing and a bit dull at times (how anyone makes a battle with a dragon dull I don’t know!) I’d be eager to read another version of Beowulf in the near future (I have my eye on Tolkien’s version), and I’d highly recommend reading Beowulf if you haven’t, just not this sepcific translation into modern English. It was an exciting tale told poorly, which was a disappointment. 

Fool’s Fate - Robin Hobb (Tawny Man Trilogy #3; Realm of the Elderings #9)

I cried. For quite a long time. Not as much as Fool’d Errand, but it was a lot.

I’m not going to talk about the series as a whole, I haven’t processed it enough yet as I only finished it last night and I like to sit on it for a few days/weeks. Also, I’ve gushed about Hobb for a long time at this point. But I will discuss the conclusion...

SPOILERS, obviously

Hobb finished this series with a lot more finess than she did the Farseer Trilogy, but not quite as well as Liveships, however, I think this is because Hobb wasn’t sure if she was finished with Fitz and the Fool or not (spoilers, she’s not!) Fool’s Fate does have a satisfying plot conclusion, in fact almost too much, everything PLOT wise is tied up with a nice little bow and everything looks life it’s going to be peachy.

However, what left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth was the lack of conclusion to the story, particularly the story of Fitz and the Fool. We spend the entire series with these two characters. It’s their story - it’s Dutiful and Elliania’s too, but we as readers see it as the story of Fitz and the Fool. For me the whole Realm of the Elderlings story is about Fitz and his relationship with the Fool - how their love story changes the world. And if Hobb was finished with them here it would have been one of the most unsatisfying endings I’ve ever read.

We see the growth of their relationship throughout the books. We see them mature, grow, and depend on each other for the entire series. But in the final 100-150 pages we see the Fool leave Fitz (for VERY good reasons), and it’s a good decision for both of them, they need to learn who they are apart from each other and process the trauma they both have by the end of the novel. However, Fitz returns to his old life, almost. He has relationships Patience, Chade, and Kettricken agian, he mends his rift with Burrich before his death, and to top it all of he marries Molly and it’s framed as Fitz getting the ‘love’ of his life back. I don’t begrudge Ftiz his happiness, God knows he’s earned it!

Yet the ending feels forced and contrived, to me, because it’s not the ending to the story we’re being told. Personally, I don’t like Molly - which doesn’t help. However, the steroetypical fantasy conclusion doesn’t fit with Hobb’s unique story and I wouldn’t be content (as Fitz apparently is) with this ending for the two main characters. To me it feels like another pause in the true story Hobb is telling, which we know in hindsight, but as the narrative is framed it’s the end of Fitz’ adventures. We get an immensly more satisfying conclusion in the Fitz and the Fool trilogy - one that makes so much more sense with the rest of the narrative - and I can’t wait to get to it. 

Currently Reading

The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson (The Stormlight Archive #1)

Annual re-read and my (very early) preparation for Rhythm of War... However, I have struggled to get through it at the moment with my reading slump, so I might set it aside for a couple of weeks.

Winter’s Heart - Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time #9)

This is on a slight pause for no apparent reason... Although I really did hate the Perrin/Faile opening couple of chapters... Loving Elayne in Caemlyn though!

The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien (Lord of the Rings #1)

My annotation re-read! I’m loving doing this and really taking in the whole world Tolkien created VERY slowly

The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion - Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull

I’m using this to supplement my re-read and it’s amazing! I wouldn’t recommend it for a causal fan but if you’re slightly obsessed with Middle Earth then I would highly recommend getting your hands on it for your next re-read.

[thesilverheroineproject]

The title of the rant explains itself, I think. I’ve put “more” in there because I’ve written rants in the past about different ways to diversify female characters, and slashed heroines/female protagonists because of the unfortunate connotation that “heroine” sometimes has.

1) A life in thought.

One thing missing from a lot of fantasy novels is philosophy—not morality, since there’s often a clear sense of right and wrong, but the exploration of abstract questions. What is truth like in that world? How is beauty regarded? Knowledge? Wisdom? (Is there a difference between knowledge and wisdom?) Is there a purpose to existence for your invented culture(s), and what is it? What is the philosophy of art?

Even in a society where philosophers don’t exist as a separate profession, class, or guild, I bet there are people doing some thinking about these things. And some of them can be women. Or should be women, since female philosophers are rarely, if ever, central characters in fantasy novels.

Want to use a noblewoman character as your protagonist but have absolutely no idea what to do with her if she’s not involved in a marriage plot? Make her a philosopher! She’ll certainly have time to think that a working-class character probably won’t have, and curiosity makes for a good way to show off the fantasy world. And if she gets into intellectual debates or is forced to defend her ideas, she’ll develop as a thinker in a way that many female protagonists don’t get to.

2) Friendship, complicated and complex.

As much as I enjoy reading about and depicting lesbian relationships, I think female friendships (at least, female friendships that are not centered on winning and discussing men) are even rarer in fantasy. They give you all kinds of things to consider. Here are just a few:

How did these women meet?

What drove the initial formation of their friendship? Are those factors still around? If so, how have they developed? If not, what kept them friends when the initial common ground turned to mud?

What wrinkles have their friendships gone through? What really spectacular fights, conflicts of principles, arrival of subjects on which they’ve agreed to disagree?

How hard do they pull on one another? For example, is one friend always supportive of the other no matter what, because support is what she needs most in her life, or does she smack her friend upside the head regularly and tell her not to be an idiot?

What do they talk about most often? (This seems to be especially hard for many authors to write about if they want to ban men as a discussion subject).

I’m probably prejudiced, because all the most complex relationships in my life have been friendships, not love affairs. But they’re also less “regulated,” because of the absence of common models in fiction, than relationships like mother-daughter or sister-sister or lover-lover. I always perk up when I see a pair of fictional female friends, because I feel I’m able to expect more variety from them. (Note that this does not tend to happen if their sole subject of conversation is who likes them and who likes-likes them).

3) A truly equal footing.

What would it take for a woman in a fantasy society that’s not gender-equal to gain freedom and the ability to form equal relationships with other people? Imagine that the solution is not to become male and abandon everything that makes her female. Maybe she likes some of the things that make her female (and, in any case, deciding that to be “free” a woman has to remain a virgin or never have a child is a limited vision).

So. How does she do it?

It’s going to depend on the circumstances of the society you’ve set up, of course, and the individual qualities and flaws of your protagonist. But say you’ve rejected the “substitute male” and “complete runaway” routes (the first for the reason given above, and the second because it insists that the character has to give up all connections to everybody else). How does she win her freedom without paying a price that’s intolerable to her?

4) Asexuality.

By this term, I’m talking about true asexuality, the lack of sexual desire and any longing to engage in a sexual relationship, not a character who’s been scared away from sex by rape or abuse. And yes, male asexual characters are rare, too, but men are more often written as though romantic relationships are unnecessary in their lives—asexuality in practice if not theory. Whereas female characters have to be located in relation to romance the moment they appear on-stage. They’re lesbians, or they’re going to fall in love with the men they’re currently screaming at, or they’re casually bisexual, or she’s had two kids in the past but they’re living with her sister now, or she’s a repressed virgin who just needs to find the right man.

But say that she’s asexual. She just has no interest in any sexual relationships.

Maybe her society has no classification for this, and so other people still try to shove or manipulate her into a sexual category. But this character conceives them all as not mattering to her. She slips out of the categories in her own head, or creates her own. And she doesn’t need to have children or take a lover to be a “real woman.”

Or the author can write her independently of romance whatsoever. If her society is accepting of bisexuality, homosexuality, and polyamory, they could be equally accepting of asexuality. Romance is dispensed with. It does not come up.

Any version of female asexuality could make an interesting story.

5) Changing oneself.

The version of this story that I’m most fascinated with is the human who ventures into a nonhuman culture, absorbing their point-of-view, shifting her own attitudes, mentally becoming the alien. But there are other ways to do it:

The female privileged protagonist who becomes aware of and tries to deal with her own privilege and the consequences of it.

The heroine whose life changes radically later on, rather than with puberty or as a child, and who has to integrate her sudden magic or destiny or binding to another person into the connections she’s already formed.

The oppressed/colonized woman who begins to be able to separate her consciousness from the oppression or colonization, and starts the process of changing what she can.

The woman who’s been hurt and whose life is not suddenly 100% better because a goddess chooses her or a man falls in love with her; she sets her sights on a goal and works towards it, even though complete healing may not be possible.

This requires a lot of introspection, which might be one reason it’s not that popular a plot for fantasy novels. But I think adventure is indeed possible in a story like this; it’s just that it can’t take over and be the sole thing happening.

6) Dealing with human limitations.

Her own and others’, in this case. And no, not in the so-familiar holding pattern in which everyone else’s needs—children’s, male partner’s, siblings’, parents’, random passing men’s—come before the needs of the heroine, who is a selfless (and often spineless) martyr. A woman in this kind of plot would need to choose and act; the difference is that she’s not able to knock down every barrier in her way as if she were a queen or a conquering savior.

What’s her life like if she’s living in the middle of an occupation? A natural disaster? A magical disaster? The sudden appearance of an alien species? A difficult political situation, with necessary compromises and powerful opponents who must be appeased? A personal limitation, such as a disdain for violence in a society where violence is one of the prime ways to advance? A chosen limitation, such as a refusal to go on bailing a rebellious child out of trouble?

This is where I have a lot of frustration with some specific fantasy plot devices, which are designed to destroy all the barriers the protagonist faces. Loopholes are the ones I hate most, but also common are sudden unbeatable power, prophecies, coerced loyalty because of prophecy (“But we have to obey her! She’s the Chosen One!”), and a simple lack of ethics (such as the heroine who has no problem killing other people because they’re The Enemy).

Why waste a beautiful difficult situation by insisting that the difficulties are just an illusion?

7) Work.

If the center of a female protagonist’s life is her work, that’s often a problem. If she has children, of course she’s too busy to be a proper mother to them. If she’s performing a job commonly done by men in her society, then she runs the risk of losing her femaleness (see point 3). If she’s an artist, she turns out not to be as good an artist as she thinks she is, and/or discovers that she wants a man/a family more than her art.

Why not have work be the center of your female protagonist’s story? She can still have a perfectly ordinary life outside work. Many male protagonists in fantasy are presented as having had friends, lovers, training, different jobs, and families in the past before they started saving the world or going on the quest or fighting in the war. A female protagonist can be a dedicated botanist, but that doesn’t mean that she’s automatically a bad mother or a dangerous workaholic.

Of course, fantasy also has an allergy to work as such. (Tasks are a different matter. For one thing, you can tell that it’s a task because the hero/ine is reluctant to undertake it and certain that s/he’ll be no good at it). There’s no reason that prejudice has to endure, especially because something that’s simple here may be difficult in another world—or another world may have work that doesn’t exist here. Try giving your female protagonist a job without implying that she’s a bad person for having one, and see what happens.

[leilas-digital-scrapbook-blog]

Giving Love a Bad Name – Confessions of a Fanfiction Writer

I know we’re supposed to blog about our major projects this week and I promise I will get to that soon, but I’d like to go off book for a moment to address something that’s been bugging me since last Thursday’s class. As someone who’s always tried to engage with fandom in as creative a way as possible, I hoped a class on user generated content would offer a fresher perspective than the usual amount of prejudice and self-righteous superiority that sadly seem to accompany the subject of fanfiction even amongst people that make stories and their passion for it their bread and butter.

Guess I should have known better.

In the world of professional writers, fanfiction is still a filthy word. It sums up everything that’s wrong with the people you’re sharing your stories with: the obsessiveness, the entitlement, the disregard for boundaries, the penchant for making everything about sex. Worse, gay sex, as unspeakably dirty as it’s hilarious. Be warned, writers: if you make it big, your stories will inevitably become a free-for-all at the mercy of those people. A worse fate than even George R. R. Martin could wish on his own characters.

I’m used to seeing the world of fanfiction belittled and disparaged, of course, and I’m the first to admit that the community is often its own worst enemy. But for some reason it still hurt a little to sit in class and listen to people I’ve come to like and respect during these past few months buy into every bad stereotype associated with the form. Not because I felt called out (though yes, I do write fanfiction from time to time, and I happen to quite enjoy reading it too), but because of the underlying assumptions that 1. something that’s not 100% original cannot be art, it’s a violence in fact, especially if it twists someone else’s creation into something it was never meant to be (in this case, queer representation); and 2. there’s something wrong with creating exclusively out of love, without ever expecting to be paid for it. And I have Strong Opinions on that.

So let’s talk about fanfiction.

Actually, scratch that, let’s talk about my favorite subject – yours truly. As you may have gathered by now, I love fanfiction. A whole fangirly lot. My gateway drug into it was my obsession with Lost about 10 years ago and its pesky habit of offing every character I was foolish enough to get attached to. But lo! Someone was keeping them alive through their stories! I felt blessed. I got to spend more time in a world I loved, and I stopped flirting with the idea of giving up on the show every time another character I liked bit the dust. Everybody won.

Even more than as a fan, though, I appreciated the world of possibilities that fanfiction opened up to me as a non-native speaker. I come from a small town in the north of Italy; the access I had to foreign books in their original language was limited, and if I wanted to read something in English I’d have to spend quite a lot of money on one of the very few novels (usually chunky airport bookshop thrillers or housewife romances – not exactly my preferred genres) that shared a single shelf in the bookstore with German, French, Spanish titles. But fanfiction was free, accessible, and there was so much of it. If I didn’t like a story, all I needed to do was move on to the next. Suddenly there was an infinite library of engaging stories to help me make my English better. True, they didn’t all read like a published novel would – there’s a lot of unpolished, error-plagued, stream-of-consciousness-y material out there. But there are also so, so many beautifully written works, and believe me, even for a non-native speaker it’s very easy to spot the difference.

Fanfiction also gave me the chance and motivation to practice my English writing in a way school never could have done. I’ve been writing my own stories since I could hold a pen, but I didn’t dare write in English until I was a fanfiction-loving teenager. It was a marketing decision, really – my first foray into writing fanfiction was for a fandom so small that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out I’m the only Italian representative, so if I wanted any kind of feedback on my work I’d have to suck it up and try my hand at writing in a language that didn’t come natural to me. I would never argue that the feedback I got on my works made me a better writer – contrary to popular opinion, the fanfiction community is made up of the nicest, most supportive people, and alas, you’ll never get a comment on everything you did wrong with your structure or even just pointing out common grammar mistakes from them (though I was lucky enough to have someone explain to me how dialogue punctuation works differently in English than in Italian, so I guess something can be learned even from the Internet). It did motivate me to keep writing, though, and that made me a better writer. If you think I’m being too dramatic, dishing out this monster of a post nobody asked for just to declare my eternal devotion to fanfiction, it’s because it’s personal to me. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been told that I write in English as well as native speakers, and fanfiction is a big part of why that’s true. I doubt I would even be in this course if it wasn’t for it.

And then, of course, there’s the gay thing. I’m not going to argue about how heteronormativity sucks and representation matters because I’m sure everyone’s as sick of talking about it as I am, but please try to understand how it felt for a gay person like me, used to be depicted in media as a plot device or token secondary-character representation if at all, to be able to step into a world where queerness was the default for once. Where queer protagonists had meaningful queer love stories and queer friends and got to save the world from the Apocalypse too. Or to fight the Empire or go to Hogwarts or everything else fictional straight people have had a right to do since the dawn of storytelling in addition to romancing the hottie of their choice. I’m not asking you to feel as passionately about it, of course, but (especially if you’re straight) you might try and empathize the next time you think a fanart of two boys kissing is something deserving of your amused contempt.

I hope I’m not coming across as the person that screams “homophobe” at everyone who disagrees with her because I guarantee that’s not what I’m trying to do here, but I think the general distaste for slash says a lot about the way our society sees heterosexual relationships as love and homosexual relationships as sex. Yes, there’s a lot of gay porn in the world of fanfiction. But you know what you’re most likely to find? Romance. Not in the saucy literary sense of the word, but in its simpler, most literal acceptation. Fanfiction is just one more way for humans to express themselves, after all, and love has always been front and center in our art. Love, not sex – even if it’s gay. In fact, explicit material doesn’t even make up the majority of what you’ll find on a fanfiction website. Don’t worry, I don’t want anyone to taint their souls by visiting one of those dens of iniquity so I pulled some stats myself. Here’s the number of works for each rating in three of the most popular fandoms on Archive Of Our Own, the current go-to website for the fanfiction community (sorry Fanfiction.net) – Harry Potter, Supernatural and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of 9/3/2019:

Even counting both Mature and Explicit works as straight-up porn (which I don’t think is quite fair, but that’s a discussion for another day), they only make up less than 1/3 of the material. Kinda disappointing, for a medium that’s supposed to be all about filthy graphic gay sex. Imagine if only one in three musicals actually featured singing and dancing, or superheroes weren’t in the majority of superhero movies. They’re lucky fanfiction is shared for free, or I’d be screaming for my money back.

Maybe I’ve just been brainwashed by SJWs, though, and this has nothing to do with my being an immigrant or a lesbian. Maybe my inability to see what’s so bad about appropriating someone else’s intellectual property for your own amusement is a cultural thing. I apologize – as mentioned, I’m Italian, and we all know Ancient Roman culture was basically just a ripoff of everything those inventive Greeks came up with. It’s in our blood. Hell, our 2€ coin, the biggest, has the face of Dante Alighieri on it, a writer most famous for having written 14.000+ verses of self-insert real-person-fic in which the girl he fancied as a teenager, his favorite author, and God himself all fall over themselves to tell him how awesome he is and he gets to prophesy an eternity in Hell for his political enemies. Talk about wish-fulfilling entitlement. Not to mention all those creatively arid Renaissance “artists” celebrated for stealing characters from the Bible and Greek mythology (seriously, the fact that Greece hasn’t unleashed an army of lawyers on us yet is nothing short of a miracle) and putting them in their cheesy paintings. Other countries can rely on a much stronger moral backbone and endless imagination – I’m sure Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, those creative geniuses at Disney and countless others never had to resort to something as cheap and despicable as borrowing other people’s characters to tell the stories they wanted to tell.

Either way, I can’t help it – I see the prospect of creating something that will resonate with people so strongly that they’ll make it a part of themselves, that it’ll compel them to make more art, to reach out and connect with other fans, as something incredibly beautiful rather than scary. Maybe this is my usual naiveté speaking, and I will come to eat my words. It’s certainly disturbing that a bunch of entitled fans bullied the Mass Effect developers into changing the series’ ending, and sending actors explicit fanart of themselves is straight-up harassment, but is fanfiction really the problem here? Or is it social network culture, with its power to destroy all barriers and foster hive mind? To give resentment a platform to spread and be heard? I promise that the average fanfiction writer wouldn’t campaign to get an ending changed. They’d just roll up their sleeves and write a better one themselves.

[dillydedalus]

what i read in march

several antigones & some other stuff

call me zebra, azareen van der vliet oloomi

oh boy. i really wanted to like this one, but uh. nah. so this book is about zebra, a young iranian-american from a lineage of ‘autodidacts, anarchists and atheists’, still traumatised by her childhood experience as a refugee (incl. her mother’s death on route). when her father dies years later, zebra decides to retrace the route of her exile thru barcelona, turkey, and back to iran. this sounds great! the beginning is good! but zebra is a quixotic figure (don quixote is unsubtly flagged as THE intertext several times), delusional about her own importance, obsessed with some kind of great literary mission and obnoxious & condescending & egotistic as all fuck (she looks down on students but treats her realisation that like, intertextuality is a thing, as this grand revelation when like..... we been knew since Lit. Theory 101) - and this is intentional & part of the quixotic thing & in general i approve of abrasive & bristly & difficult female characters BUT i expected there to be a gradual process of realisation where she sees that a) maybe her entirely male lineage of geniuses ain’t all that, c) her mission is uh.... incomprehensible. instead, once she reaches spain, she gets bogged down in endless pretentious bullshit and a #toxic relationship that takes up way too much space. knowing that all of that is likely intentional doesn’t.... make it good. also the writing is pretty overwrought for the most part & not even your narrator’s voice being Like That excuses plain bad writing, like the  absurd overuse of ‘intone’ and ‘pose’ as dialogue tags. i see the potential and i see the point & i liked some of it but uh. not good. 2/5, regretfully, generously

in the distance, hernan diaz

i don’t really go for westerns or man vs wilderness stories but damn i’m impressed. despite the violence & deprivation and sheer amount of gross shit, this story of a swedish immigrant getting lost in the american west for decades remains at its core so human, so tender, so sad (honestly this book is SO SAD, yet sometimes oddly hopeful), so evocative of isolation, loneliness, and the desire for human connection. 4/5

notes on a thesis, tiphaine rivière (tr. from french)

god, if i ever considered doing a phd i sure don’t anymore. this is a short graphic novel about a young woman’s descent into academic hell while writing her dissertation about labyrinths in kafka. it’s funny, the art is expressive and fanciful, and it is incredibly relateable if you’ve ever tried to actually write your brilliant, glorious, intricately constructed argument down, battled uni administration or had a panic attack over how to phrase a harmless email to a prof. Academia: Not Even Once. 3.5/5

red mars, kim stanley robinson

this is a very long hard sci-fi novel about mars colonisation & terraforming, discussing the ethics of terraforming, the potentials of a truly ‘martian’ culture, and how capitalism will inevitably fuck everything up, including outer space. all of this is up my alley and i did really like the first half (early colonisation efforts), but the 2nd half (beginning of terraforming, lots of politicking) was a slog - i liked reading about how terraforming was going, but the rest was just bloated, scattered and confusing. also there’s a tedious love triangle the whole time. 2/5

dragon keeper (rain wild chronicles #1), robin hobb

i love robin hobb she really can write a whole 500+ page book of set-up, characterisation and politicking and make it WORK. anyway, this has disabled dragons, a quest for mystical city, lots of rain wilds weirdness, a dragon scholar in an unhappy marriage, liveships, a sweet dummy romance, and uh... a lil penpalship between two messenger bird keepers? not much happens but it’s so NICE & so much is going to happen. also althea & brashen & malta turned up & i screamed. 3.5/5

season of migration to the north, tayeb salih (tr. from arabic)

this is a seminal work of post-colonial arabic literature, a haunting tale of the impact of colonialisation, especially of cultural hegemony in the education system, the disturbing dynamics of orientalism and sex, and village life in a modernising post-colonial sudan. it’s important, it’s well-written, it’ll make you think, but fair warning, there is a lot of violence against women - it has a point but still uh... wow. 3.5/5

dune, frank herbert

SOMETIMES.... BOOKS THAT ARE CONSIDERED MASTERWORKS OF THEIR GENRE.... ARE WORSE. so much worse. the writing in this is atrocious (”his voice was charged with unspeakable adjectives”), herbert somehow manages to make court intrigue and plotting UNBELIEVABLY DULL and sure, it was the 60s, but i’m p sure people knew imperialism was bad in the 60s! the main character, the eugenically-engineered chosen one or whatever, literally spends years among the oppressed & resisting natives of a planet ruled by a space!empire and at the end he’s like ‘i own this planet bc imperialism is Good Actually’. emotionally neglecting/abusing your wife, who you (!!!) decided (!!!) to marry for political reasons bc you’d rather marry your gf is also Good Actually (cosigned by the protag’s mother....) the worldbuilding is influential for the genre, sure w/e, but mainly notable for there just.... being a lot of it, the whole mythology-science makes No Goddamn Sense, all around this is just Bad. Bad. 0.5/5 i hope the Really Big Worms eat everyone 

dragon haven (rain wild chronicles #2), robin hobb

this healed my soul after toxic exposure to dune. anyway w/o spoilers: everyone is very much In Their Feelings (including me) and there’s a lot of Romance and Internal Conflict and Feelings Drama and Complicated Relationships and Group Dynamics and also dragons, which are really like very big, very haughty cats who can speak, and a flood and a living river barge with a mind of his own (love u tarman!). it’s still slow and languid but so so good. also: several people in this have to be told that People Are Gay, Steven, including Sedric, who is himself Gay People. 4/5

an unkindness of ghosts, solomon rivers

super interesting scifi story set on a generation ship with a radically stratified society in which the predominantly black lowerdeckers are oppressed and exploited by the predominantly white upperdeckers, mixed in with a lot of Gender Stuff (the lowerdeckers seem to have a much less stable and binary gender system than the upperdeckers) and neuroatypicality. it’s conceptually rich and full of potential, but just doesn’t quite stick the landing when it comes to the plot. 3/5

sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass, bruno schulz (tr. from polish)

more dreamy surreal short stories (ish?). i didn’t like this collection quite as much as the amazing street of crocodiles, but they are still really good, even tho you never quite know what is going on. featuring flights of birds, people turning into insects, thoughts about seasons and time, fireman pupae stuck in the chimney, and the continuing weird fixation on adela the maid. 3.5/5

angela merkel ist hitlers tocher, christian alt & christian schiffer

a fun & accessible guide to conspiracy theories, focusing on the current situation in germany and the current boom in conspiracy theories, but also including some historical notes. i wish it had been a bit less fun & flippant and more in-depth and detailed bc it really is quite shallow at points, but oh well. also yes the title does indeed translate to ‘angela merkel is hitler’s daughter’ so. yes. 2.5/5

the midwich cuckoos, john wyndham

fun lil scifi story in which almost all women in sleepy village midwich are suddenly pregnant, all at the same time. the resulting children, predictably, are strange, creepy, and possibly a threat to humanity. i get that it was written in the 50s but it is strange to read a book where almost all women, and only women, are affected by A Thing, but all the main characters are men & no one tells the women ‘hey we think it’s xenogenesis’ -  like realistically 80% of women affected went to the Neighbourhood Lady Who Takes Care of These Things like ‘hello, one (1) abortion please’ and the plot just ended there. i still liked it tho! 3/5

antigone project

antigone, the original bitch, by sophocles (tr. by fagles)

god antigone really is That Bitch. that’s all i have to say. 4.5/5

antigone, That Bitch but in french, jean anouilh

the Nazi-occupied france antigone. loved the meta commentary on what tragedy is and how antigone has to step into the Role of Antigone, which will kill her “but there’s nothing she can do. her name is antigone and she will have to play her part through to the end”. i didn’t really like (esp. given the ~historical context) the choice to make creon much more sympathetic, trying to save antigone’s life from the beginning. hmm. 3.5/5

antigonick, anne carson

look, antigone really is That Bitch and you know what? so is anne carson. best thing i’ve read so far this year, don’t ask me about it or i’ll yell the task of the translator of antigone at you. 5/5

home fire, kamila shamsie

honestly i really wanted to like this bc politically it’s on point and an anti-islamophobia antigone sounds amazing, but it just doesn’t succeed as a book/adaption. it spends way too much time in build-up/backstory (the play’s plot only starts in the second half of the book!), waaayyy to much time on the weirdly fetishistic antigone/haimon romance, and even the most interesting characters (ismene & creon) don’t fully work out. sad. 2/5

currently reading: the magic mountain by thomas mann, but i should be done in a week or so! also: the paper menagerie by ken liu, a collection of sff short stories

[themildestofwriters]

Meet the Writer Tag

Thank you @gottaenjoythelittlethingzz for tagging me in this post! It brought a smile to my face and was a great way to start the day! I love the interaction and hope it only continues.

Now, onto the questions asked.

1. What’s your favourite Fandom/media source to write for? If not an FF writer, what Fandom would you like to write for? What would you write for if you had no other choice to get out of writers block?

I don’t have a preference. Though I have written for The Familiar of Zero, “Star Wars: The Old Republic”, “Dragon Age”, and “Avatar: The Legends of Korra”. Speaking of which, I should probably work on those, but my WIP calls!

2. Is quantity of words or pages important to you?

As implied above, I come from a fanfiction writing background where the rules don’t really matter, a thirteen thousand-word chapter is normal and a prologue that’s long enough to be its own novella is expected. I am trying to make my chapters a wee bit smaller in my WIP. If chapter 2 is any indication, it’s going to bee a bit difficult.

Pages are of no use to me; when someone asks how many pages a chapter is I don’t really care and instead prefer to mention word count.

3. What’s the last book you read?

The last book I read was a lovely romance novel by the name of The Dark Wife written by Sarah Diemer. It’s an LGBT+ ‘re-imagining’ of the Persephone and Hades tale from Greek Mythology with the twist being that Hades is a woman. Now, I’m not normally interested in romance but it was quite inspiring and interesting to read. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a good read I recommend. I should probably write a review of it later...

Either way, you can thank the magnificent artist @almondmilkgirl for introducing me to the novel via fanart which looks an awful lot like two characters of mine. I had been looking for art of a gender-bent Hades for my WIP (Greek dress up party) only to find some done by the aforementioned artist.

4. Who’s your favourite author?

I don’t have one. I see a book, I read the book, I don’t really care who wrote it. There are some authors that I do have an interest in, but I can’t really pick and chose which author is my favourite.

5. What’s the last TV show you watched?

The last show I watched was Altered Carbon, if Netflix counts. In fact, my most famous post on Tumblr happens to be about Altered Carbon. Good show; recommend. 10/10 would guillotine the rich again.

6. What’s the last movie you watched?

I watched it a third time with my parents—first time for them—and it was good. It wasn’t perfect, had its ups and downs, but it’s certainly a highlight movie. Mother didn’t seem impressed as I may have blown the ending out of proportion upon returning from my first visit. Okay, not everyone died, but a lot of people did!

7. Who’s your favourite tv show/movie writer/director?

Same with authors, I don’t really care for who writes, who directs, it’s the content itself that matters. There are some writers and directors that I do have an interest in, but ultimately, it’s only a passing interest and not something I care too much about.

8. Where’s your favourite place to write? If you don’t have one where would you like to travel/visit to write?

My bedroom. It’s comfortable, it’s quiet, it’s the furthest room from everything else. It’s small, it’s cramped, my desk is an old organ I gutted and my chair is a dining room table chair. It’s convenient.

9. What’s your dream career that involves writing?

Author. That’s what I want to be, a published author.

10. Do you use outlines when planning for a project? If so, at what part of the story do you start (characters, plot, beginning, middle, end)? What’s your process?

There are three main stories of mine which I’ll discuss because I’m pretty sure I did a bit different for each of them.

The first I’ll discuss is A God Among Us, a WIP about the primordial goddess of night coming down to Earth to learn about the mortals and why her brothers and sisters destroyed each other for them. I started with a concept, the basic plot of a slice of life tale about a goddess out of her element trying to learn about humans. After the concept came the Goddess and from there the rest of the characters. The plot, the actual plot came last.

Then there’s Star Wars: The Sith, Zero, a fanfiction I’m writing and the longest thing I’ve written... ever. I chose the character first, the fan-favourite Lousie de La Valliere (accent not included), and then built the concept of it around the character and the two fandoms I had chosen (Familiar of Zero and Swtor). After the concept came the plot and from the plot came an endless stream of rewrites.

Finally, there is my current WIP, Divine Intervention or: What Comes After Immortality. For this, the characters and general plot had already been crafted way before I decided to write anything. Babette is my oldest character, someone who has been with me before I even started writing. Her love interest, Josephine, is a new addition but still at least a year or so old. I never really planned to write these characters. I was just going to day dream and add to the characters that way. Then a friend of mine and I began talking and talking and he was very interested in these characters. Eventually, we reached a point where I decided to throw out some small snips of their meeting about how much of an utter dork Babette was, and ding-ding, I started writing the story itself not too long after.

I tag: @fluffynexu, @inquisitorhotpants, @jenniferrpovey, @rose-writes-and-drinks-tea, @cometworks, @ariellaskylark, @focusdumbass. If you want to answer the questions, go ahead and consider yourself tagged.

My questions are:

What character has proven difficult to write?

Is there are story in your head that you’ve always wanted to write but never felt skilled enough to write? If yes, tell us about it! If no, tell me about your current WIP, if you’re willing.

Is there any theme or genre you find yourself unable to write?

Is there any theme or genre you find easy/fun to write?

What do you feel as if you’ve got to work on the most in your writing?

Which works have inspired you over the years?

Has there ever been something you’ve written where you’ve just stopped and marvelled at its existence?

How often is writing on your mind? Are you constantly daydreaming about characters/worldbuilding/plots or something else?

What is the one thing you want your readers to take away from your writing? It could be a feeling or a message or anything, whether it be from a single work or something overarching a collection of things you’ve written.

Why do you write?

Please tag if you’re going to answer, I’ll love to hear your replies! Good luck.

[kbreenreads]

Week 7 Activity: Reading Log #2

Reading Log #2

Traditional Tale

Scieszka, John. (1989). The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! Viking Children’s Books.

Summary: In this “fractured fairy tale”, the traditional story of The Three Little Pigs is told from the perspective of the wolf. As “Alexander T. Wolf” tells what he refers to as “his side” of the story, he is insistent that he is not so big and bad as we might believe, and that the events of the original Three Little Pigs story are all one big misunderstanding. For example, he only visited the pigs’ houses to borrow sugar for his grandmother’s birthday cake, and ended up blowing down the pigs houses by accident due to his sneezing cold. The wolf ends the story locked up in prison, though he still claims that he was framed for everything.

Personal Comments: Because this book is a “fractured fairy tale”, it gives a fresh, somewhat modern twist on a traditional story. This puts it in a unique position in terms of evaluation: some of the criteria for evaluating traditional tales applies to it, while some does not seem to fit. One quote from the Vardell text stood out to me while evaluating this book: “The reteller’s style in capturing a traditional tale is partly based on one individual’s unique voice and partly based on the need for capturing the sound of spoken language in print” (97). While reading this book, I kept thinking that it seemed perfect for a read-aloud event, as the Wolf (also the story’s narrator) tells the story with plenty of personality and humor. Vardell also states that “The themes in traditional tales are big, global messages with a clear stance on the importance of good triumphing over evil” (97). This is one of the evaluation criteria points which I feel this book diverges from, as “good” and “evil” aren’t so clearly defined in this version of the story. The “big bad” wolf is seen as more sympathetic, while the pigs (who are traditionally known as the “good” characters) are unfairly rude and judgmental to the wolf.

Library Use: I think this would be a great book to read to children directly after reading them the original Three Little Pigs story, then have them compare and contrast the two perspectives of the story’s events. The original story has very set-in-stone “good and evil” roles, while this version makes things more ambiguous. Therefore, hearing children’s thoughts on the wolf’s character would be interesting.

Poetry

Latham, Irene & Waters, Charles. (2018). Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship. Carolrhoda Books.

Summary: In this collection of poems, fictional elementary school versions of poets Irene Latham and Charles Waters are paired up for a poetry assignment. Irene is white, and Charles is black. The assignment has them writing poetry about their everyday experiences, which ends up highlighting their differences in an honest way. However, the assignment also shows them that they have more in common than they might have originally expected.

Personal Comments: One of the first things I noticed while reading this book is how the poems by Irene are structured quite differently than the poems by Charles. One question Vardell asks in regards to rhythm is “does the poet use short lines to create a staccato rhythm or long couplets to create a flow?” (130). Irene’s poems have short, staccato lines, while Charles’ poems have long, flowing lines. The fact that the two poets/characters poems always appear side by side on each set of pages does even more to highlight the differences between the two of them. Vardell also brings up the emotions involved in poetry: “poems also have an emotional impact, making us laugh or sigh or feel what the poet might have felt capturing this moment” (31). The poems in this book contain plenty of complex, sometimes uncomfortable emotions, but do so in what I feel is a realistic way that doesn’t feel forced. One point where this stood out to me was a poem where Charles discusses witnessing police brutality in the news, and feeling conflicting emotions as he recalls a time where a cop helped him untangle his shoelaces from a chain-link fence. The final line of this poem reads “it makes my heart twist, without any hope of being disentangled.”

Library Use: This book could be a great tool to start an honest discussion with children about race, as it goes beyond the typical “we’re all the same inside” message and really highlights the differences in growing up white vs. growing up black. I might ask children which poems they found relatable and which ones they did not, and if the ones they did not relate to taught them anything new.

Realistic Fiction

Rhodes, Jewell Parker. (2020). Black Brother, Black Brother. Orion Children’s Books.

Summary: This book tells the story of Donte, seventh-grader who is one of the only black boys at the upper-class prep school he attends. Donte’s older brother, Trey, presents as white. Because of this, he has a much easier time fitting in at school than Donte, who is constantly subjected to racist bullying by his classmates and discrimination by his teachers and the school’s faculty. Donte’s main bully, Alan, causes Donte to be suspended from school at the start of the book. Alan is the star of the school’s fencing team, so Donte decides to get back at him by beating him at his own game. He begins to learn how to fence and is coached by a former olympic fencer who now works at the Boys and Girls Club (and has also faced his share of racial discrimination). Through fencing and his new friendship with his coach, Donte is able to learn more about himself and grow as a person. Eventually, he faces off in a fencing match against Alan and wins.

Personal Comments: Vardell states that in realistic fiction, “we’re looking for a story that feels current, that could happen today in the world as we know it” (169). The start of this story sees Donte being suspended from school and taken into police custody over something he didn’t do, as a result of racial discrimination from his school’s faculty. Unfortunately, this is something that can and absolutely does happen today in the world - and it’s important for young readers to be aware of it. Vardell also notes that “the climax and conclusion of the story are also critical and should seem inevitable, but not obvious; hopeful, if not always happy” (170). While the story does end on a happy note, with Donte winning against Alan during the fencing championships, there are still aspects of the plot that are left open-ended. Donte’s mom’s court case against the school system is still ongoing, and not all of Donte’s issues at school have been completely resolved. The book ends with Donte taking part in a “heritage sit-in” at school, with the last line simply reading “One small step.” This sets a hopeful tone, despite the loose ends still present.

Library Use: This book explores a lot of interesting topics that would be worth discussing in a book group - probably for grades 5-7. Donte’s experience of being unfairly suspended and taken out of school by the police is something that unfortunately happens to young black students often in real life. Raising children's awareness on these issues by bringing up real-life news stories which describe cases similar to Donte’s is one way this book could be put into action. Another idea that could be inspiring for children is to invite a black fencer to come speak about the sport and their experiences in it.

Diverse Book

Gino, Alex. (2015). George. Scholastic.  

Summary: The story’s main character, George, is a transgender girl who calls herself Melissa. At the start of the story, Melissa keeps her gender identity a secret from her family and friends, and even has a hidden stash of fashion magazines in her room. When Melissa’s class puts on the play Charlotte’s Web, Melissa decides she wants to play the role of Charlotte in order to show the world who she really is. However, the role ends up going to Melissa’s friend, Kelly. After having a negative experience with coming out to her mom, Melissa works out a plan to swap roles with Kelly in the play. Melissa ends up successfully performing the role of Charlotte, and after seeing the performance her mom seems to understand her a bit better.

Personal Comments:

In the School Library Journal article “Can Diverse Books Save Us?”, school librarian Nancy Snow states that “we can help develop empathy if we read books about others and try to put ourselves in their shoes.” In this book, young readers get to see the world through Melissa’s eyes and experience some of her struggles of growing up transgender - including not being understood and accepted by classmates, teachers, and even her mom. Reading this book can help those who aren’t transgender understand and emphasize with those who are. It also has the potential to help young readers who are transgender feel seen or even better understand themselves. George is a contemporary realistic fiction novel, and Vardell states that “Most contemporary realistic novels for young people focus on the search for an independent identity, the desire for an understanding of one’s role within families, friendships, blossoming romances, and other landmarks of growing up into adulthood” (171). This fits the plot of the story well, as it entirely revolves around Melissa forming and becoming more comfortable and confident in her own identity.

Library Use: This would be a great book to feature during pride month as it gives young readers the opportunity to get a glimpse of what life is like for a transgender child. A way to highlight this book might be to invite a transgender activist/speaker to come speak about the book and also share some of their own experiences.

Challenged Book

Telgemeier, Raina. (2012). Drama. Scholastic.

Summary: This graphic novel follows seventh-grader Callie, who is in the stage crew of her school’s musical. Callie is a bit boy-crazy and tends to fall for anyone who is nice to her, which leads to her developing a crush on Jesse, a boy who is in the stage crew with her. Callie is also friends with Jesse’s twin brother, Justin, who confesses to her at lunch one day that he is gay. After two successful performances of the school musical, the final performance faces a setback when the musical’s lead actress refuses to perform after being broken up with by West, the other lead. Jesse rushes in at the last minute to replace her, even wearing a dress and kissing West as part of the performance. Jesse later goes to the school dance with Callie, but ends up ditching her to talk to West. When Callie confronts him about it, he confides that he is gay, but thanks her for being a good friend to him.

Personal Comments: According to the ALA, Drama was the seventh most banned or challenged book of the 2010s due to its LGBTQ content. Drama serves as a great contemporary realistic fiction story because much like in Raina’s autobiographical series, its plot weaves together more familiar issues that all young readers will find relatable with issues that are less common but still likely prevalent in many young readers lives, in this case discovering and accepting one’s sexuality. As Vardell states, “This expanding range of life experiences is part of our global society in the twenty-first century” (152). The themes in Drama are well-presented in the way that they “emerge naturally from the story, from the conflicts in the plot, and from the nature of the characters” (Vardell, 171).

Library Use: This would be another great title to highlight during pride month, considering there are three different LGBTQ characters in the story. Though the characters in this story are middle schoolers, I would probably want to discuss it with fourth or fifth-graders - according to Vardell, children “typically enjoy reading about protagonists who are a year or two older than they are, ostensibly giving them a glimpse of the growing up years ahead” (150).

Historical Fiction

Kushman, Karen. (1996). The Midwife’s Apprentice. Houghton Mifflin.

Summary: This story takes place in medieval Europe and follows a young homeless and nameless orphan girl. When the local midwife offers the girl food in exchange for work, she becomes the midwife’s apprentice. Though the midwife, Jane, is not very kind to the young girl, she works hard to learn all she can from her. Eventually, the girl ends up naming herself Alyce. Over time, Alyce becomes so skilled at midwifery that she is able to deliver babies on her own, but temporarily gives up on it after one particularly difficult experience with a delivery. However, Alyce comes to realize that she is truly passionate about being a midwife and feels that it has given her life purpose, and in the end she goes back to work for Jane.

Personal Comments: According to the Vardell text, an important aspect of historical fiction is accuracy and validity within the story’s plot. “Historical validity rests in accurately recreating the social fabric of the times and the patterns of daily life” (205). The Midwife’s Apprentice is very honest, sometimes brutally so, about what life was like for the poor during medieval times. Alyce starts the story without anything in the world: not a family, a home, or even a name - displaying the harsh reality of the lives of homeless orphaned children. It also goes into quite a bit of detail about childbirth (more than I was expecting from a children’s book, at least) and how dangerous it could be before the existence of modern medicine. Vardell also notes that in historical fiction, “Universal themes that still speak to readers of today carry as much weight as ever” (207). Though readers may not be able to relate to Alyce’s exact situation, they will still appreciate her experience of trying, failing, then trying again. One of the main themes of this story is resilience - a value which is important for young readers to witness in a character.

Library Use: This story goes into great detail about what midwifery and childbirth was like during medieval times, but things have definitely changed over the years. I think it could be interesting and educational to bring in an actual midwife who could do a presentation comparing and contrasting the book’s description of the profession during medieval times to what the profession is actually like today.

Audiobook

Parish, Peggy. (1963). Amelia Bedelia. Greenwillow Books. Narrated by Suzanne Toren.

Summary: On her first day as a maid for the Rogers family, Amelia Bedelia performs the chores on the list that was left for her. However, she ends up taking the instructions a bit too literally and as a result does not do any of the chores correctly. For example, when told to “dust the furniture” she sprinkles dusting powder on everything. When the Rogers family gets home, they find their house a complete disaster. They are about to fire Amelia, until they try the lemon meringue pie she baked for them. The pie tastes so good that they decide to keep Amelia as a maid despite everything she has done wrong.

Personal Comments: I chose this audiobook because I was curious about what the approach to it would be. As someone who is familiar with the print version of the book, I know that a lot of the humor comes from the pictures, as they tend to tell parts of the story that the text does not. I learned pretty quickly that the purpose of this audiobook is to help children as they read along to the print version of the book, rather than something to be listened to on its own. At the start of the audiobook before the story begins, the narrator instructs readers to “follow along in their book.” Considering that Amelia Bedelia is a beginning readers book, this kind of format makes sense. This audiobook was well-produced and met most of the Odyssey guidelines, such as the narrator having “good voice quality, diction, and timing.” The entire narration contained light, upbeat background music, which “represents the emotional and structural content of the text.”

Library Use: Amelia Bedelia is a beginning readers book, and this audiobook seems like it is meant to help children follow along as they read (rather than be listened to on its own). Despite this, it could still be a very useful tool if the library was to run a book group for children who are learning to read independently.

[oliverphisher]

Cathryn Hein

Cathryn Hein is a best-selling author of rural romance and romantic adventure novels, a Romance Writers of Australia Romantic Book of the Year finalist, and a regular Australian Romance Reader Awards finalist.

A South Australian country girl by birth, she loves nothing more than a rugged rural hero who’s as good with his heart as he is with his hands, which is probably why she writes them! Her romances are warm and emotional, and feature themes that don’t flinch from the tougher side of life but are often happily tempered by the antics of naughty animals. Her aim is to make you smile, sigh, and perhaps sniffle a little, but most of all feel wonderful.

Rocking Horse Hill (A Levenham Love Story Book 1) By Cathryn Hein Buy on Amazon

Cathryn lives Newcastle, Australia with her partner of many years, Jim. When she’s not writing, she plays golf (ineptly), cooks (well), and in football season barracks (rowdily) for her beloved Sydney Swans AFL team.

Cathryn’s latest release is EDDIE AND THE SHOW QUEEN, book five in her popular Levenham Love Story series.

What are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

Riders By Jilly Cooper OBE

Riders by Jilly Cooper

What an eye-opener this book was. All those horses! All that upper-class naughtiness! That promiscuous but oh-so-sexy cad Rupert Campbell-Black! It was Riders and Cooper’s other early books that had me on a desperate hunt for Australian equivalents but, sadly, I could find none. I knew then that I would have to write my own, so it was a bit of a shock to discover my stories turned out nothing like Cooper’s.

A Place In The Hills By Michelle Paver

A Place in the Hills by Michelle Paver

It was probably more a combination of reads (see above), but I suspect this book is the one that cemented my desire to write romance. Everything about it is romantic, from the opening line, “It was noon on the Day of Blood when he first saw her” to the south of France setting, the forbidden love of both the historical and contemporary characters, and the kántharos - or chalice, that binds them all.

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

I signed up for Dragon Anywhere, a dictation software that I can use on my phone or tablet and works as long as I have an internet connection. It’s $20 a month and such a handy thing. I can dictate at home or when I’m out and about, and it’s quicker than note-taking or typing. Once I’ve relayed the words, I just tell the app to email the document to me. Easy.

There is a learning curve with dictation but the more you do it the easier it becomes. My goal is to write the first draft of an entire novel with it. So far, I’ve only managed the occasional chapter, and notes and blog posts. I’ll get there though.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

It reminded me why I write – because it brings me joy.

One of the books I’m most proud of is Wayward Heart and I wrote that just for me. It wasn’t contracted and I was resigned that it was unlikely to appeal to a publisher if I did shop it, which meant there was absolutely no pressure during its creation. I could make it whatever I wanted. So I did.

I love that book. It was written with absolute delight and I think that shows in the finished story. Wayward Heart was picked up by Harlequin Harper Collins and is loved by readers too.

Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?

I’m going to go with an oft-quoted one, which I think belongs to Nora Roberts – you can’t edit a blank page. Because it’s true, you can’t. Even the worst day’s writing can be turned around.

My process is to edit as I go, which means I’m always rewriting. Some days getting that raw page down can be incredibly hard (other days it can pour out fast and near-perfect – if only there were more of those… sigh). The words will be awful and wrong and the doubt-demon on my shoulder will start sniggering and telling me how terrible I am, and I’ll wonder why I’m bothering. Then tomorrow will see me picking up those raw bones and rewriting them into something good.

I love that part of the process. Mind you, I’d love it even better if the words came out right the first time but you can’t have everything!

What is one of the best investments in a writing resource you’ve ever made?

My workstation. I love this desk, although in some ways it’s been a lot of trouble. I bought it when I was working on my second contracted book, Heart of the Valley. It’s a commercial corner workstation with loads of space that I can sprawl my stuff over and lets me keep important things like my notes and diary, and collection of fountain pens and books close at hand.

It’s been trouble because with my partner being in the military we moved house a lot and it’s not only big but an awkward shape, and not designed to be pulled apart. Getting it into its current position took some serious manoeuvring and resulted in a couple of wall dings. Worth it though.

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

I’m not sure this is particularly unusual, but I do like to have a theme song for each book. If I can find the right song, I’ll play it on a loop over and over, across the day until it fades into the background and I barely notice it.

What happens then is that the songbecomes so entrenched with writing the story that hearing it acts as a trigger. I hit ‘play’ and am immediately thrust into the story’s world again.

The biggest hassle is finding the right song, with the right feel.

In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?

I walk a lot. Being a keen golfer, I tend to walk a fair bit anyway but about three or so years ago I developed an eye condition that stopped me driving and forced me to walk more. Walking time makes for fantastic thinking time.

Want to solve a plot problem? Go for a walk. Or have a shower. That works brilliantly too.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven aspiring author? What advice should they ignore?

I’ve never prescribed to the “write every day” school. I do write most days, but I don’t get het up if I don’t. That doesn’t mean I don’t think about writing or my storieson a daily basis. If I’m in the middle of a book, I’m thinking about that baby all the time, sometimes to the point of obsession. But writing every single day? Nah.

I treat writing like a job because it is my job, and take weekends off. Although I do tend to do admin type stuff and write blogs on weekend mornings.

As for what advice I’d give... Finish your stories.

Every book you write will teach you something – even if it’s not what to do. Don’t fret over those words being wasted because they won’t be. Some will go the high-jump, sure, but you’ll probably find yourself later mining those stories for gems. You might steal back a character, a dramatic scene, or a setting. Maybe you’ll recycle the premise but approach it in a different way.

I think I wrote six full-length novels before I was first contracted, and every one of those books have been raided and had parts of them recycled in some form since.

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)?

I really want to say I’m better at limiting my time on social media but that would be a big fat fib. I’m trying though and I’m much better at scheduling now, which helps a lot.

Social media is an excellent way of keeping in touch with your readers and the writing community. It can also be a massive time suck and distraction from writing.

What marketing tactics should authors avoid?

I’m not sure I’d rule out anything specifically. Market according to your goals and target audience. Try things out. Make mistakes and learn from them. Although please, please do not be one of those people who friend or follow a person on social media, then once that person has friended or followed you back, you immediately reply with a ‘here’s my book’ message. Urgh. Even the thought makes me shudder. It’s stupid and rude and just about guarantees that person won’t touch your book.

What new realizations and/or approaches have helped you achieve your goals?

Readers don’t care who the publisher is. They just want your next book. Understanding that has allowed me to embrace self-publishing, in addition to releasing traditionally. Self-publishing means I can release more books for my readers in all sorts of lengths and formats. What fun!

When you feel overwhelmed or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do?

Walk. Take a shower. Or go and do something completely different, preferably something mundane or mind-numbing, like doing the dishes. It clears your head and lets creativity flow again.

If it’s a particularly stubborn or difficult issue, I book a get-together with my writer buddies so we can talk the problem through. Writer buddies are gold. I don’t know what I’d do without them.

Any other tips?

Make friends with other writers. Loved ones can be supportive, of course, but only writers truly understand the quirks of this weird life. They can empathise when you’re in knots over horror revisions or the bad cover the publisher wants you to accept or the scene you’ve ground to a halt over. And they can cheer with you and know how truly amazing it is when you’ve achieved something magical, like finished a book or reached a best-seller list or solved a thorny plot problem.

________

Enjoyed this Q&A? Want to discuss in more depth? Join Community Writers. You'll get access to 100+ exclusive writing tips. Q&As with successful authors, an exclusive ebook on building an audience and much more. Sign-up for free as a community writer here

source https://www.thecommunitywriter.com/blog/cathryn-hein

[mermaidsirennikita]

October 2017 Book Roundup

As much as I tried to stick with ~spooky~ books, I found that a lot of the horror novels I looked at (especially those written by men, to be honest) seemed incredibly cliche or just... grimdark.  You have to have a good story, you know?  So I drifted into more familiar territory with fantasy quite often--though I did read one really good horror novel at the end of the month--and threw in a thriller.  But my favorite book of the month was An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson, a darkly whimsical, romantic fairy tale.  Another YA fantasy standout, if you’re looking for diverse reads written by Own Voices authors was Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao, the origin story of Snow White’s evil queen with a dose of East Asian mythology.  But all in all, it was a good month, especially after a couple months with rather meh ratings.

An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson.  5/5.  Isobel has built a reputation as a portrait painter of the fair folk.  Fairies from far and wide come to the town of Whimsy to have their portraits done by her, and so it’s no surprise that Rook, the autumn prince, wants the same.  But after Isobel paints mortal sorrow in Rook’s eyes, his authority is questioned and he spirits her away to stand trial for the crime--but their journey is treacherous, and even their attraction toward each other presents a challenge.  For if a fairy and a mortal fall in love, they break the Good Law--and are condemned to death.  Okay, so this is definitely a whimsical “girl gets whisked off to fairy land by hot fairy, romance ensues” story but a) what the fuck is wrong with that and b) I???  Loved???  It???  This is no Sarah J. Maas bullshit.  Rook is not only a bit scary but hilariously inhuman, making him a totally lovable character, not all rapey and weird like most hot dude fairies in recent YA.  His feelings for Isobel seem completely real, and aren’t presented in an over the top way.  The book maintains the sense of a fairy tale, but it’s also funny and Isobel has a sense of practicality that’s juxtaposed to the world she lives in.  If you want to get swept away, this is a book for you.

Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.  1/5.  A small town is haunted by an actual witch (not the ghost of the witch, or at least not from what I could tell) who, after being unjustly executed centuries before, wanders about with her arms bound to her sides and her eyes and mouth sewn shut.  In order to keep everyone safe, the townspeople--who are unable to leave after moving there and encountering the witch--use surveillance systems to monitor the Black Rock Witch.  But, unable to abide by the strict regulations, teenagers make her presence go viral, causing a downward spiral in their society.  Basically, I wanted to read more horror this month and going onward, and this sounded cool...  It isn’t.  It’s basically a rundown of the various ways in which the Black Rock Witch and the other women of the town are lesser than the men, caricatures of themselves, or punching bags.  When teen boys started talking shit about the witch getting “wet” for them, I was... kind of getting over the book.  By the end, I was rolling my eyes.  And it is incredibly slow, so be warned--cool concept, shittiest of executions.

From Here to Eternity by Caitlin Doughty.  4/5.  Progressive mortician and proponent of erasing the fear of death Caitlin Doughty traveled the world “in search of the good death”, observing various rituals surrounding death and grieving.  This is basically her memoir of that time, divided from place to place.  Caitlin also hosts the web series “Ask a Mortician” and wrote the great “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” about her time as a crematorium employee, and honestly... she seems like a super cool person, and it shows through her writing.  She’s frank without being unsympathetic, and even when she disagrees with people (she doesn’t only discuss cultures of whose practices she approves, which I appreciated) there’s a ton of respect and understanding on her end.  But she also expects respect in return, and is very frank regarding her own views.  The book is part death, part travel, and it’s also incredibly interesting and human.  The only critique I can make is that I wish Caitlin had been able to go to other countries just to cover even more, but I understand the limitations there.

I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh.  3/5.  Following the hit and run killing of five year old Jacob, Jenna Gray runs off a small Welsh town to hide from the death of her child and everything that preceded it.  As her story unfolds, the parallel narrative of the cops struggling to figure out what happened during that hit and run is detailed.  I was promised Gone Girl fuckery, but while this was a good and entertaining thriller, it wasn’t anywhere near as subversive as Gone Girl.  It’s not paint by numbers either, and is definitely interesting.  But don’t expect something out there.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik.  4/5.  In Agnieszka’s small village home, a girl is chosen every ten years by the Dragon, their wizard protector in the cursed Wood.  Agnieszka is sure that her best friend, the beautiful Kasia, will be the next girl chosen--so imagine her shock when the Dragon selects her.  This is one of those stories that feels very classically fairy tale-ish, with lovely writing and tons of magic.  It gets points for focusing on the friendship between Kasia and Agnieszka and going places I didn’t expect--but I do wish more page-time had been given to the romance.  It didn’t have to be central, but what we got was good and I wanted more.

Forest of A Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao.  4/5.  The beautiful and poor Xifeng lives in a small village, constantly tormented by her controlling aunt Guma while stealing away to meet her lover Wei in secret.  Guma has great plans for Xifeng, seeing the throne of Feng Lu in her future.  But there will also be a price to pay for that throne.  Running away with Wei, Xifeng arrives at the palace, only to find a caring empress--who she believes that she’s destined to replace--and enemies on every side.  This is a reimagining of Snow White’s Evil Queen, drawing from Chinese mythology.  It takes a while to get going, but once it grabbed my attention--specifically, when Xifeng arrived at the palace--I was gripped.  Xifeng is a compelling and ruthless protagonist, who I’d hesitate to call a heroine.  The book doesn’t have a lot of black and white good and evil.  A few characters fell somewhat flat, but as the book went along it became stronger and stronger, and by the end I was dying for the sequel.

Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore.  3/5.  For generations, the Nomeolvides women have been the caretakers of La Pradera, a famous garden estate.  But they have a secret: if a Nomeolvides woman falls in love, her lover will disappear.  Five girls of the current generation--cousins--are in love with the same girl, and terrified of her disappearing.  But suddenly a boy appears, rather than disappearing, and the girls are thrown into disarray, questioning his origins and what it means for their family.  McLemore is a beautiful writer; I’m so jealous of her ability to craft sentences.  This is a true magical realism book, which makes sense as McLemore is Latina, and the genre was crafted by Latinx writers (and thanks to a certain hugely popular white writer dabbling in magical realism lately, it’s been a hot topic).  I will say that for all that the book was beautifully written, I didn’t connect to the characters as I have with past books, and the plot was a little hard to grasp at times.  But it was still lovely.

The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp.  4/5.  The book is set up as the final manuscript of Jack Sparks, annoying atheist and shock-value journalist.  The book was meant to be Sparks’s attempt to take down the supernatural, following his previous publishing success/personal disaster, in which he tried “every drug” and ended up with a cocaine addiction.  Sparks’s journey takes on exorcisms and combat magicians, and--as we know from the foreword by his brother--ends in his death.  But as for what happens between then and the beginning--that’s where things get interesting.  The book is creepy; actually, the creepiest parts are that Jack’s an unreliable narrator, and you’re never sure what is real, what his his intentional embellishment, and what is something he literally forgot due to the supernatural events occurring.  Jack is a dick, which is kind of good because the shit that happens to him happening to a good person would be hard to read.  But he’s a good character, and certainly grows and unveils his true self throughout the book.  It’s a super entertaining, sometimes spooky ride through a man’s descent into the paranormal, and maybe madness too.

[comicteaparty]

March 18th-March 24th, 2019 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from March 18th, 2019 to March 24th, 2019.  The chat focused on My Hero! by Alli & Jim Perry.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Week Long Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on My Hero! by Alli & Jim Perry~! (http://www.myherocomic.com/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Remember, though, that while we allow constructive criticism, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic. Below you will find four questions to get you started on the discussion. However, a new question will be posted and pinned everyday (between 12:01AM and 6AM PDT), so keep checking back for more! You have until March 24th to tell us all your wonderful thoughts! With that established, let’s get going on the reading and the chatting!

QUESTION 1. What has been your favorite scene in the comic so far? What specifically did you like about it?

QUESTION 2. Do you believe that Lark and Hasera will eventually solve their differences and learn to work together? If so, what will it take to do it? Alternatively, what might be the last straw that drives them apart?

Natara (My Hero!)

Hi I'm Alli the artist for My Hero! I'm excited to see what people think :)

Evil_Chippy (My Hero!)

1: My favourite scene was where Hasera meets The Lark for the first time. I really liked this because everyone thought he was going to be some kind of creep ( he still is in his own way) and it turns out he's trying to steer her off a course that has killed so many others

2. I certainly hope so, but that would require both of them to change. In order for them to work together, they would have to let go if their preconceptions of each other. The last straw would probably have to be Lark doing something overtly bad, like throwing an old man down the stairs or something moustache twirling evil style(edited)

snuffysam

Oh man the introduction of The Lark was so good. He's a creep, but he's been through a lot, and his experience shows immediately. One thing I wonder... were the other guardians assigned to him by the council's decision, or because they too believed the stories?(edited)

RebelVampire

QUESTION 3. At the moment, who is your favorite character? What about that character earns them this favor?

QUESTION 4. What do you think is the full story with Hasera’s ice powers (besides the shape)? Additionally, why does Lark seemingly get saved even when Hasera knows no healing like spells? Lastly, what might this have to do with her father Keenar?

Evil_Chippy (My Hero!)

I cannot answer #4. So much delicious spoilers contained within!

snuffysam

I think Lark getting saved is as simple as "the best defense is a good offense". Especially since Lark seems to be naturally way tougher than you'd expect.

My favorite character is probably Hasera. I just love how she tries so hard, only to get her hopes shattered over and over.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 5. What has been your favorite illustration in the comic so far? What specifically about it do you like?

QUESTION 6. How might Hasera’s journeys with Lark further disillusion her from all the things she believed in and was taught at the academy? How might this affect how she conducts herself as a guardian or her choice to be one in the first place?

RebelVampire

1) my favorite scene is probably when we get to meet some of the other heros and guardians. That's a moment where i really felt Lark's attitude was vindicated since it wasnt really just him who was disillusioned with everything. all of them were. so it was a great piece of world building with just having the characters exist. i also like it in the retrospect contrast between when all the guardians get offed cause i also morbidly enjoy that their attitudes about things might have played a bit of a role in them getting killed. 2) I think eventually they'll work things out between them, but not in the near future. In the near future I expect something more along the lines of tolerance. Hasera tolerates Lark cause she has a job to do and maybe his experience does mean something. Meanwhile, Lark tolerates her cause shes persistent and if he doesn't, theyll just send him a new guardian to get killed in a never ending cycle of death.

3) Ok. I really can't pick between Hasera and Lark. I love how innocent and inexperienced Hasera is. It's an endearing trait, but one that also bits her in the butt sometimes. And I think it's a really good mix in how it's handled. But I also really love Lark. He really walks that fine line between being vulgar just cause and being vulgar cause he's seen some shit. And that to me makes him very interesting. I really want to know all of his life experiences becaause of how he portrays himself. 4) I have no evidence for this theory, but I'm just gonna go with this headcanon for now anyway. While Hasera's father has been mentioned, we never hear much about her mother. And we know there are different planes. So maybe Hasera's mother was from some other plane and not someone Keenar was supposed to get with. But Keenar was like "I do what I want" and thus a magic baby named Hasera was born.

RebelVampire

5) my fave illustration is probably this one http://www.myherocomic.com/comic/ch3-15 where Hasera summons the ice weapon. I love the shot choices for this, because it allows us to see all the little effect details that went into the summon. It truely captures that magical and mystical feel while also having a sort of bad ass gonna beat you over with the ice feels. 6) I actually think her journey with Lark will strengthen her desire to be a guardian in the long. At first, probably because stubborness and its what she worked towards for so long. But down the line, I think she'll just try to become the guardian she thinks the world needs when the system has degraded to such an extent. However, I definitely think she's going to play less by the book as time goes on. I really think she's going to mature and come into her own as she realizes that books and classrooms can't cover all the scenarios that are possible in life. At the very least, books and classrooms dont teach you how to deal with people, which seems essential for the job. I also think through Lark shes going to rethink how she views the current system and see its not the glitz and glamour she made it out to be. Also, she'll learn trash romance novels are called trash romance novels for a reason.

Natara (My Hero!)

This is one of my favorite scenes because it shows Hass letting her fangirling of Lark get the better of her.(edited)

RebelVampire

QUESTION 7. Which characters do you enjoy seeing interact the most? What about their dynamic interests you?

QUESTION 8. How and/or why is Lark cursed to live a dangerous life? Do you believe it really is a curse, or is Hasera right that he’s faking it? What might it have to do with Lark supposedly having died according to Sasskra?

RebelVampire

7) Lark and Hasera, which makes me feel predictable to say. Their just such opposites it leads to some really great banter. Equally so, though, I like seeing the world built up through them because they both have such different ideas on how the world functions in a way. and i like how they both challenge how each other lives. 8) I feel pretty confident the curse is real. There seems to be plenty of evidence for that. And I 100% feel like him having died had to do with it, though not necessarily in a direct sense. More like Lark died but someone was super pissed at him and made him a cursed zombie. Or more I guess I kind of feel like the world is trying to correct the mistake. Like it knows hes supposed to be dead so it keeps throwing danger his way trying ardently to rekill him and return balance. Thus why hes always in a poor spot as the world tries to correct this clerical death error. As for the why though, I'm a 50/50. Either he pissed someone off like a god or something, or someone powerful thought the world still needed him.

Evil_Chippy (My Hero!)

the real answer to number 7 is pretty close and it has to do with everything going on in the background of the comic.(edited)

There's actually a point in the future where 7 is addressed indirectly. A lot of My Hero!'s background lore is done through hints, asides or Delvers (specifically our favourite Delver couple, Morridan and Gurtie)

One of the biggest things for the background of the world are the short side comics that are going to be made. They are not integral to the plot of the main story, but they are super important at revealing what is going on in the world of Alteria(edited)

The titles are as follows: Hasera's garden Melinda x Magnus The Death of Lark Rise (the story of Sasskra) The tomb of Quel'Lan

RebelVampire

QUESTION 9. What sorts of art or story details have you noticed in the way the comic is crafted that you think deserves attention?

QUESTION 10. How might the other guardians like Calen or Lu play into the story in the future? Do you believe their experiences are similar to Hasera? Is there some way they might help Hasera?

RebelVampire

9) I want to say I really love the accents on some of the characters. So few people are willing to risk accents but i think when done correctly they can add a lot of personality to the character. And I think the ones in the comic strike a good balance between being readable while having that flavor in their manner of speech. <3 10) I feel like if Hasera talks to Lu again she'll gain some new perspective on her situation with Lark. Like I could see Lu kind of opening the metaphorical door and pointing out ways Hasera could gain a new partner or something. which in turn will make Hasera stick to her guns and be like, "no i have a job to do gotta uphold the guardians." as for calen, idk what role but i hope he appears again. especially if in the practical application of the academy hes doing a lot worse than Hasera but has to try and maintain that pompous nah im great attitude.

RebelVampire

QUESTION 11. What do you think are this particular comic’s strengths? What do you think makes this comic unique? Please elaborate.

QUESTION 12. What do you think the Abyssals are up to given they’re going around killing champions and guardians? What do you think they did in the past that got them kicked out of the High Council? How are Lark and Hasera going to be affected?

RebelVampire

QUESTION 13. What are you most looking forward to in the comic? Also, do you have any final thoughts to share overall?

QUESTION 14. In what ways do you think the world will have changed for champions and guardians by the end of the story? How will the role and the methods of the Order of the Nine have changed as well?

RebelVampire

11) I think the comic's strength is having a great balance between stuff happening in the foreground and the background. Like there's definitely this deep world behind the scenes that you see presented to you into small, manageable sizes. However, it's never presented in a way that's distracting to the characters or immediate things going on in the foreground. Rather, it enhances it and leaves lots of little lingering questions that slowly build up and keep you hooked in. 12) I assume its something to do with the gods. Cause reading about the world theres a lot of shenanigans with the gods and the current state of the planes. and generally people always want more than they have so in the vacuum of power, now would be prime time to start setting up situations to get some of that more. alternatively, they could just also want to restore their plane more and damned be all the others. 13) right now im most looking forward to just seeing more of lark and hasera interact. cause it has now been the 2nd time lark has been saved despite hasera not helping and hasera's ice powers seem to be getting more in your face. plus a bunch of guardians just died so that has to have an affect on hasera to some extent. so im interested to see more of what they make of the situation and how they can get through it together.

14) I feel like things may go back a bit more to the old ways. In the sense that the world needs heros to actually fight monsters again. However, I think guardians will be desired for more than just healing abilities. as they always say, the best defense is a good offense.

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about My Hero! this week! Please also give a special thank you to Alli & Jim Perry for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked My Hero!, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: http://www.myherocomic.com/

Alli & Jim Perry’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/alliperry

Alli Perry’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/alli_perry

Jim Perry’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jimininstrovich

[cassatine]

On a scale of 0 to 10, how worrying do you find the revelations about Lucasfilm having no idea where the Sequel Trilogy is going?

Not that much. I’m having major flashbacks to the R1 reshoot drama. Sometimes i put my tinfoil hat on and I start to think they intentionally fan the flames to amp up The Drama. Anyway! I’m not worried because Lucasfilm & co doesn’t know where they’re going, I’m worried that they did. Until Carrie Fisher’s death. Scratch that, i’m not worried, I’m bitter. 

But first, what I think is that this idea that Lucasfilm doesn’t know where the story or anything is going has more to do with fandom being bitter about the reevaluation of expectations which has become necessary after the new revelations; i’m probably missing some things but:

there’s Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson being evasive about the title [here]

I don’t see how that translate to no-one knowing what the title actually means. I do see two people being close-lipped about that meaning because it would give out huge spoilers. Unlike, say, Lucas giving out the meaning of The Phantom Menace’s title when that movie came out.

there’s the “no one knows about Snoke” thing, a wild extrapolation of this:

Q: Do we learn anything about Snoke’s identity? Does he get a fight scene?  

A: I asked Rian Johnson about Snoke—Who/what is he?—and Rian was fairly up front in saying that Snoke is not a character he particularly gets into in TLJ. Hmmm.

From David Kemp’s Reddit Q&A

I’ve commented on that earlier, and again, that’s not particularly surprising nor does it means no one knows who Snoke is. He’s like the final boss, and he’s got three underlings that need be beaten before getting to him. I expect we’ll see him send his underlings on their merry way, and that he’ll fulfill the same narrative function in TLJ he did in TFA, or the Emperor did in ANH and ESB.

there’s the Finn-not-using-a-lightsaber thing

That one… okay at first it kind of rubbed me the wrong way; it’s not the lightsaber that makes a character interesting, you know? But then again, I don’t think the bait-and-switch TFA marketing of picturing him with it everywhere was a good idea at all; it set up expectations, didn’t change much in the long run, and in a franchise in which central protagonists tend to have lightsabers, it doesn’t seem to spell anything good for Finn’s continued co-protagonist role in the story. Add to that the fact that he starts the movie incapacitated, that it’s unclear whether he’ll be reunited with Rey at all during TLJ, and that we know very little of his future storyline…

But I’m relatively hopeful, there; it’s not like we know much of anyone’s storyline for starters, and tbh I always saw Finn becoming more a leader-of-men kind of characters than a Jedi. I never was a fan of the “he resisted indoctrination because he had the Force” explanation as well, and it’s not like there’s tons of lightsabers lying around. It seems like TLJ is going to spread its (expanded) cast across the galaxy, and I don’t doubt Finn will have his own storyline, or that it won’t be a key part of the movie. But I do wonder if TLJ will have less clearly defined main protagonists.

there’s the lack of Han/Leia type romance

Cue despair on one side and gloating on the other. Tbh the most virulent reaction to these quotes I’ve seen comes from the Reylo part of the fandom. I did not dare go to the tag, tho, so that might just be why; still, the fact that #romancegate came on the heels of #boobsgate made the cold shower colder so. There’s a to be made about semantics - it’s not like Reylo was ever slated to become a Han/Leia type of thing, it doesn’t mean there won’t be a romance at all, and it doesn’t mean there won’t be subtext.

And tbh that’s like the least of my worries. I ship it but it’s one of these cases where you like the thing, the fandom less so. In any case, I don’t particularly want a canon romantic relationship, and I never thought TFA telegraphed it either (especially not in light of Abrams’ mystery-boxes-and-red-herrings brand of storytelling). An important relationship, subtext, sure. A future canon romance? No. Not impossible, just unlikely. 

What made it all blow over was this:

What the story group does not do, Hart said, is impose plot-point mandates on the filmmakers. Johnson told me he was surprised at how much leeway he was given to cook up the action of Episode VIII from scratch. “The pre-set was Episode VII, and that was kind of it,” he said. If anything, Johnson wanted more give-and-take with the Lucasfilm team, so he moved up to San Francisco for about six weeks during his writing process, taking an office two doors down from Hart’s and meeting with the full group twice a week. (x)

and also this:

Biggest surprise to me is how much creative leeway Lucasfilm is giving Rian Johnson and Colin Trevorrow to write their films and make up plot and characters from scratch. I had presumed (wrongly) that JJ Abrams and Larry Kasdan might have sketched out an arc for the entirety of the current trilogy. But as Rian Johnson told me, it really was a creative handoff—“Over to you, Rian.” And Rian is handing off to Colin Trevorrow in the same way. He said he’s made a mess that Colin will somehow have to clean up.

David Kemp on reddit Q&A

Which is not new in any way? Look at literally every interview of Kathleen Kennedy or a Story Group member, or X creator about X novel/comic/whatever in the franchise’s new canon, and you’ll find something similar. The Story Group has been relatively open regarding how they function and what they do, and interconnected storytelling or not, the new EU was designed not to constrain the movies. Creative freedom in writing the script and no mandated plot list point doesn’t translate to no input on the scripts once written, no discussion on themes or whatever, and clearly not closing Lucasfilm’s door on Johnson when he asked. (And as far as I know, he’s still credited a co-writer on Episode IX as well? The mystery thickens!)

But mostly, like it or not, it’s not new, and what it means in regards to speculation is usually conveniently forgotten, until something seems to go where we don’t want the story to go. And then it’s brought back, because it totally proves the story going there is a terrible choice made by people who can’t tell a story. Not so long ago, there was great happiness over the fact that Johnson had so much leeway because he was clearly a better storyteller than JJ “Mystery Box” Abrams, and still not much longer ago, there was great happiness about Abrams taking over the story from Lucas because clearly, better storyteller. What can I say, fandom’s fickle. 

In any case, I don’t particularly care for the tendency to suddenly find everything terrible and creators dumb idiots who can’t tell a story as soon as there’s a hint things might not go the way we’d want it to. And on some level, I find it darkly hilarious; it’s petty, but I do. 

Because Lucasfilm & co knew where they were going. And the fact that they’re not going there anymore is unbearably sad:

Vanity Fair: And as for Episode IX, how mapped out is it?

Kathleen Kennedy: Well, as you can imagine, we were really stunned by the death of Carrie. So we had mapped something out a year ago that [Episode IX writer-director] Colin Trevorrow was working on. In fact, he delivered a script to us in early December. So her death was a real shock, and changed things quite dramatically. (x)

In the Reddit Q&A, Kemp specified he made the interviews between February and April, after Carrie’s death, and repeated that it’d changed the plan as it had existed:

When I was doing these interviews, it was still Feb, March, April, and bear in mind that Carrie Fisher died only on Dec 27—still not that long ago. So it was a little heavy, dealing with people who are grieving but have to get back to work. The original plan was, as Kathleen Kennedy put it, for Episode IX to be “Carrie’s film,” in the sense that VII was Harrison Ford’s film and VIII is Mark Hamill’s film. As I was speaking with Kennedy, she said that Colin Trevorrow and the Lucasfilm Story Group were working on reconceiving the Episode IX script. I don’t think that they would consider recasting the role, and Kennedy seemed emphatic in asserting that they wouldn’t use the tech they used in Rogue One to reanimate Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin. I suspect, though I don’t know for sure, that Leia will not appear in Episode IX, and her absence/death will be alluded to in some elegant way. 

So imo the real mess would be that Leia was set up in TLJ to have an expanded role in Episode IX. Which is clearly not going to be the case.