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mahou-furbies · 2 months

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Closing thoughts on Magia Record Scene 0

Scene 0 has finally ended! Or the translation I've been following has been completed. To those who don't know, it tells the Madoka Magica story, but the point of view of a new character Mabayu, who for some reason keeps her memory through Homura's time loops and can move while time is stopped. And since we all know how the Madoka plot goes (right?), the main story here is the mystery of Mabayu having lost her memory of why she is already a magical girl.

(spoilers)

First things first, the whole premise conflicts with what I think is one of the core points of the Madoka Magica drama, that is, how Homura had to do her thankless time looping job all alone and became increasingly isolated because of it. But here it's "revealed" that she had a buddy all along, with whom she became very close friends and who is eventually cast as the reason why Homura is able to keep going on in the first place. The whole thing considerably waters down her devotion to Madoka, when most of the story is about how she bonds with Mabayu. And then there's also the inherent awkwardness of inserting a brand new nobody to the story you already know, to whom the characters you've known for a decade become the side cast.

Then again, that is the premise, so you just have to make peace with it if you want to enjoy the story at all. And in fact I like Mabayu a lot, so I'll take it, though I'll have to consider everything a non-canon super AU (even within the canon's actual AUs). There was also the other problem though that some of the stuff was kind of fanservicey, and not in the horny way but in the superficial "let's put the whole cast in maid outfits for no particular reason" way. But I was a fan of some of it, like Nagisa being un-witched in one time loop, so fine.

I don't know how much this is about what the story actually is and how much should be blamed on me not paying enough attention, but in the end I think there's still plenty of holes in the story. Like we learned how Mabayu became a magical girl and what how her personal magic power works, but I didn't understand how her memory doesn't reset through the time loops and why she can move when Homura stops the time. Also the way she erased other characters' memories was inconsistent, she had to cut Sayaka's memory all over again in each loop, but when she cut Mami's, the effect was carried to the next loop. And I guess it was explained how the final resolution worked (duh) but I don't think I quite understood.

That's a lot of complaints but I did have a decent time with this actually, and that is because I really like Mabayu. She's the kind of character I'd really like to see more in magical girl stories: low energy, kind of lazy and self serving, passive and loner but not in an edgy way, and it was interesting to see her grow to be more heroic. She also has a lovely voice, and it turns out the same actor also did Ha-chan whose voice is also great. She also had really good dynamics with the main cast, and I especially like growing friendship between her and Homura, they had good banter with Homura being super serious all the time, and their growing friendship was touching. And she had some interesting stuff going on with Sayaka and Mami too.

And while I complained about the whole premise being about rewriting canon, I also think there were some worthwhile additions. For example in this version Mami used to recruit other girls to become magical girls with Mabayu, and the guilt from that is a major reason for her breakdown when she learns the truth about witches. On one hand I prefer the version of a seemingly strong character actually being weak and emotionally unstable, like she's been through a lot and doesn't need a more noble reason for her breakdown, but I think the Scene 0 version is also interesting.

Ultimately the ending left me somewhat sour with how inconclusive it was. Mabayu cut herself from everyone's memories (including her own), but it feels like there's a ton of stuff about her that's not resolved. Like she's still able to move during Homura's stopped time and doesn't understand why, she's still a magical girl even if she doesn't remember it, becoming friends with Mami again doesn't lead much anywhere if she's going to die to Charlotte in a few days… If the idea is the bittersweet knowledge that Mabayu made a difference in the Homura-Madoka story but nobody can remember it, it doesn't work for me since I didn't really get what her contribution was. Or I guess it was pretty clear how important Mabayu's presence was for keeping Homura sane through all the failed time loops but that was like my number one issue with the premise, so maybe I'm just incompatible with the whole story to begin with.

Still I had a good time following this as the translations came out, I was eager to see where the plot would go and watching a short video every few days didn't require that much from me. Though I do think the story was too long for its own good and especially the early loops could have been condensed.

#puella magi madoka magica #magia record #review I guess

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roobylavender · 6 months

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i missed that class what dont you like about starlins rendition of their relationship?

(and also like, DID you think he did something in particular well or was it all…meh

the crux of my issues in this regard stems from batman #416. in the post-crisis era you began to see this way more lopsided depiction of bruce and dick's relationship wherein the former was portrayed to be almost.. bitter that dick had moved on to establish his own life. and it stood in great, great contrast to the bruce of the pre-crisis era, who was certainly devastated at the realization that dick was growing up, but also very intent for him to find his own happiness and way in life. they would have their disagreements on occasion (e.g., bruce initially disapproving of dick dropping out of college, bruce immediately taking leadership of a situation where the titans were involved when dick was better equipped to handle it, etc.) but the outcome of those situations was never outright bad yknow. bruce was very much capable of recognizing where he might have overstepped and subsequently stepped back to let dick have his own space. and i think initially max allan collins expanded on that dynamic in the post-crisis era in interesting ways by juxtaposing bruce's desire to see dick flourish against his own constant fear for dick's life. so instead of mike w. barr's comedic and lighthearted backup stories in early 80s tec where bruce disguised himself to keep an eye on dick's shenanigans and assure himself everything was going alright, you got this more serious confrontation within bruce with regards to his position as a parent. i don't think a lot of people read it that deeply but i've always viewed batman #408 as one of the most sensible depictions of that dilemma. the general complaints tend to be that this issue robbed dick of his pre-crisis decision to retire robin on his own, and i'll concede that as a worthwhile concern. but i don't think it's esp damning what with the implication that bruce no longer wants to be the person indirectly making the decision for dick to continue to be in this line of work. their moment at dick's bedside is less about bruce robbing him of the decision and more about him saying, if i let you still be robin, that's a direct reflection on me, bc i'm the one who got you to do all of this originally. i'm the one who put you directly in harm's way. if you're going to do this from now on, you need to do it on your own terms. you need to decide for yourself that this is who you want to be, without your relationship with me even being a factor.

it's a moment contributive to that delicious dynamic between them wherein every decision bruce takes to service dick's agency is inevitably read the wrong way by the latter to imply that he's not valued or not worthy of being seen as bruce's equal (and before the hounds pounce on me this obv does not include the increasingly abusive depiction of their relationship as the 90s progressed). that is an unavoidable dilemma when you're simultaneously someone's ward/adopted son and also their partner-in-crime! dick wants to be bruce's son and to be entitled to all of the love and care and protection that that entails but he also wants to be bruce's brother, his equal, his confidante, the one person he trusts more than anyone else in the world, etc. it's a tough place to be! it is paradoxical! and i'm so, so open to seeing that explored and think the way collins attempted to approach it in #408 was marvelous. but the way starlin (and other writers as well) totally swerved right in #416 to create this sudden resentment in bruce that dick had grown out of needing him was.. so utterly bizarre. like completely out of left field in a way i don't understand why people don't question it anymore bc in light of everything in the immediate fifteen years prior to the crisis it makes so little sense. their relationship with each other was so valued, bruce was so anxious to see dick establish himself while nonetheless maintaining a protectiveness over him, but it was all very much in good will even if he could overstep on occasion. it had all of the potential to allow for a very nuanced, empathetic exploration into the dilemmas of parenthood and esp when you are someone like bruce who has to forever live and contend with the crime of taking kids with him out onto the streets. bc he has to feel guilty! there is no escaping it. this is history, done and dusted forever, can't go back in time, so on and so forth. whatever harm comes any robin's way he has to live with as in some part being traceable back to his own actions. and i frankly believe that would be far more likely to evoke grief and anxiousness and concern than it would be bitterness that his son is charting out his own life

#as to do i think starlin did anything well. hmm #i like that he was able to acknowledge that jason's parents were loving people despite their circumstances #it didn't matter that willis was a criminal. what mattered was that he loved his family and would've done anything for them #which was a rare concession from starlin bc his writing could be pretty classist elsewhere #but at the same time idk sometimes i read it back and it's like. i don't think he was actually as classist as winick was ultimately #like it's been a While since i reread the starlin issues #but you could tell he believed jason's demise was less about his social class and more about being unable to fully recover from #or process his trauma as a result of the life he'd lived and the things he'd experience. hence the garzonas saga #and even in a death in the family the question is never about whether jason is acting out bc he's criminally inclined #bruce explicitly says he doesn't think he's given jason enough time to mentally and emotionally recover and that's why #he suspends him. so even starlin knew it was about the trauma first and foremost #and i mean that somewhat goes in line with his reasons for wanting to kill robin to begin with #he thought robin was symbolically representative of child abuse #in that it wasn't the conduit through which a young boy should necessarily grow #and ideally? the way to explore that in a medium that Requires the existence of child vigilantes #would have been to make the distinction that while there is always going to be some danger to every robin at the end of the day #what made the danger to jason distinct was that robin didn't work to resolve His trauma specifically #what robin did for dick is never something it could have done for jason let alone tim. there were too many other factors at play #so if this dilemma had been approached that way rather than starlin pursuing a blanket robin is child abuse ideology #that was subsequently picked up by other writers. then i think we might have gotten somewhere quite interesting #but anyway yeah so he's not my most hated by any means. there are parts i love there are parts i hate #ultimately at the end of the day winick will always be a gazillion times worse #outbox

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mixedupmysteries · 1 month

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rowan/thomas lore :D

Rowan is one of my favorite personal OCs, and Thomas is his boyfriend.

Lore explanation under cut ^_^

Here they are in case you don’t recognize them by name.

ANYWAYS there’s a lot of lore to their relationship and this story is very dear to me so I want to share it!

Rowan grew up in the Place Long Forgotten, which is a large dreamscape that connects to the real world. The two worlds are connected by a field of rose bushes. In the real world, the rose field sits on the outskirts of a fictional city in Arizona. Residents of the Place Long Forgotten live in pairs. Rowan lived and traveled with a boy named Abadoni.

One day, when the two were around 12, Abadoni disappeared and Rowan left the dreamscape. He was seen outside the real world’s city, and an ambulance came for him. After a few days of examination in a hospital, Rowan met a nurse who seemed fascinated. This nurse would later become his adoptive father. Rowan was enrolled in middle school, and — when the time finally came — Elanius High School.

Rowan and Thomas met in their freshman year of high school after sharing one class. They became good friends and bonded over discussing one another’s interests. After about half a year of being friends, Rowan asked Thomas out to a movie date. Thomas accepted and they started dating a few days later. They were happy together for most of 2023.

After a few months of deep contemplation on both ends, Rowan and Thomas started to silently grow tired of each other. Thomas was selfless and put everybody else’s feelings before his - especially Rowan’s. If there was one thing Rowan valued in the world, it was fairness. He grew frustrated with Thomas trying to give all the help he could and accepting absolutely nothing in return. Rowan was tried of Thomas constantly reassuring him and often snapped at him. After all, Rowan wanted a boyfriend and not a personal therapist.

“If you’re not gonna let me help you, I’m not gonna let you help me either.”

Thomas backed off after that, but he still didn’t understand why Rowan said this. Rowan seemed perfect to him; everything about him was beautiful and perfect no matter what he had gone through. In a way, Thomas felt like Rowan was above him and more worthy of kindness. They spent less time together, but still dated for as long as they could. Both of them wanted to make the relationship feel worthwhile.

Rowan had been rethinking the past two years. He remembered Abadoni leaving him behind, and he was still angry after all this time. Rowan also thought about how difficult it was for him to live in the city and try to be a normal person. He wanted to return home, but there was one issue.

He needed somebody to come with him.

On a chilly evening in September of 2023, Rowan and Thomas rode their bicycles to the rose field. They sat down on a patch of grass. Rowan took a retractable knife out of his pocket and slowly revealed the blade.

His original plan was to carve out Thomas’s eyes in an attempt to make them resemble his. Much to his dismay, Thomas fought back and refused to speak to him for a week. Thomas’s eyes were relatively unharmed, but he was left with a scar directly under his right eye.

After a while, Rowan halfheartedly apologized and came up with an excuse. He took Thomas back to the rose field to “make new memories.” That day, they started to take journeys to the Place Long Forgotten together.

Rowan enjoyed the dreams and the chaos that came with them. Thomas did not, and he began to take Rowan’s plan to live there less seriously. They would still go together, and Rowan would get progressively more upset with Thomas’s disapproval.

On October 30th, 2023, Rowan died in his dream. This resulted in Thomas finding his corpse in the rose field. In a state of grief, Thomas dipped his fingers in Rowan’s eye fluids and rubbed them under his eyes. He returned to the Place Long Forgotten in Rowan’s honor. Without Rowan being there, Thomas faced even more danger and strife. His visits started to exhaust him. He panted and looked at the ground as he tried to return one morning. He fell unconscious and entered a new state of dreaming.

He was in a dark corridor, and he saw Rowan at the end of it. He approached Rowan slowly. Rowan made eye contact with Thomas but didn’t say a single word. His silence told Thomas a thousand stories. Thomas woke up gasping and shivering from the cold.

He got back on his bicycle, left the rose field, and never returned.

#lore #a place long forgotten #rowan #thomas #abadoni

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olderthannetfic · 2 years

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[This is for a person with whom I have quite a contrary opinion. And I want to get it off my chest]

You. Have. No. Idea. What. Fanfic. Is.

For you, quality literature has to have the qualities you demand of it. Yes, I agree that you need a minimum of quality in all areas, but a lot of fanfic is written by people who spend their time (for free) to give you a story with characters you already know and want to read in that context.

"But you shouldn't write about real people." You're missing the point of fanfic.

"But you shouldn't use non-LGBTQ+ people/characters for LGBTQ+ stories." You're missing the point of fanfic.

"Sex scenes with real people are disgusting". For you, but not for everyone.

"I hope one day the 14 year old girls who read this kind of fanfic will realise that writing about real people is wrong and move away from the dark and toxic side of fandom." Don't say what people can read or not.

"I hope you grow up and leave your fanfic era to read worthwhile literature." Honey, I can read fanfic and I can read books that were Nobel Prize winners, one thing doesn't take away from the other. Oh, again, you're missing the point of the fanfic.

So please, stop throwing all the bad stuff at fanfic writers and thinking you're mature for reading Stephen King (I guess he can talk about Beverly's boobs because it's not fanfic). And I hope you never leave Wattpad, because if you go on ao3, first you'll faint and then you'll cry about the "atrocities".

You're good at giving writing advice and encouraging new writers, but stop talking about a subject you don't understand and don't want to understand. If I vent here it's because I know that if I write it in your comment box, I'll be the hater and I don't want arguing with people.

[Sorry if I made a mistake. English isn't my first language and I'm really upset right now]

There's an interesting thing I read as a kid about language acquisition. It was specifically about vocabulary acquisition among native speakers. The researchers observed that parents, teachers, etc. thought kids should read "good" books that "challenged" them because this would improve vocabulary and comprehension...

But in fact, the thing that most improved reading skills was reading books that were just barely hard. They might have learned only one new word per crappy Nancy Drew, but they read thousands of them and learned thousands of words. The kids reading "good" literature that was much too hard for them learned much less.

Needless to say, I waved this in my mother's face and went back to reading Nancy Drew.

Mom absolutely suffered from Buy The Child Boring And Depressing Literature syndrome, like many intellectual adults. Also, she was terrible at judging a book from the cover blurb and was always buying things she thought would be fun pictures of some cultural moment that were actually about the horrors of war and teenagers fleeing their countries.

I find it hilarious that this person is a Stephen King fan. Nothing wrong with King! He's rightly beloved and famous. But in the minds of Real Literature snobs, he's also fun trash, not Serious Books For Serious People.

That's the danger of snobbery: there's always someone who can show you up.

The only way to win this game is to be completely secure in your own tastes to the point that you don't even care about defending them when people attack.

For me personally, fic made all the difference in my writing ability. I was surprised a few years ago to realize I'd turned into someone who could write the kinds of things I actually want to read. I never used to reread my own work, and I never used to be able to live up to my own standards. Lack of revision was part of it, but that wasn't most of it: I just wasn't very experienced and thus I wasn't very good.

After a decade of writing Yuletide fic and the occasional other thing as the mood struck me, I apparently gained enough experience while not paying attention to level up.

Those 14-year-olds dicking around with Jungkook readerfic or Taekook or Minecraft dumbass RPF or whatever has this person's panties in a twist will probably turn into good writers one day if they just keep writing.

It's a question of stamina as much as anything, and nothing kills stamina faster than elitism.

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insanityclause · 3 years

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Penzey Spices -- loves Loki!

Bill Penzey, owner of Penzey Spices in Wisconsin, sent this to his online customers today. I thought it might be of interest to those of us who gather here:

Like everybody, Jeri and I look for shows to watch. Sometimes things are recommended, other times something just pops up and you give it a try. In that "just give it a try" category was the English version of Wallander. It’s well acted and you care about the characters but its four seasons really are a long, dark spiral. Ultimately, in the very last moment it ends in a way as a cook I think you would appreciate, but the road there is hard. If you were to watch it you should give serious thought to watching the episodes in backward order, that way the show’s arc would be ever more hopeful, ever brighter.

Somewhere watching the show, towards the end of the first season or beginning of the second, I actually paused the show and said to Jeri, “That guy.” As I pointed to one of the junior detectives in the back of the scene. “Why won’t someone give that guy a show? I could watch him read the phone book.” With the way he almost never got any lines this would mean him reading the phone book silently to himself, but I was okay with that. In the bleakest of shows he somehow managed to deliver humanity with just the look upon his face. Most every scene he was in became something better, something more decent just because he was there.

Flash forward 10-12 years and that actor, Tom Hiddleston, now does have his own show, Loki, on Disney+ and since the universe responded to my request, I feel obliged to put in a plug for it. Plus, it’s starting to cook. New episodes air every Wednesday. Last week’s episode was a breakthrough and in many ways was a retelling of the Grinch story where Loki’s heart grows not one, not two, but three times larger simply by coming to understand firsthand he is someone worth loving. In some ways it reminded me of the also very worthwhile Elton John biopic Rocketman. Good stuff all around.

And of course this is one of those shows with a mystery behind about who really is in charge and what they really are up to and those shows never end with viewers happy with the big reveal. As I was explaining to the kids just last week, as much as it may well seem like naming a street after a living person is a really good idea, in the moment it rarely is. But even if, as hinted at, Loki only gets this “one brief shining moment” to be good and find happiness within the Marvel Universe, it’s still a good moment to be a part of. Obviously Loki has some work ahead of him and obstacles to overcome if he is to prove he is indeed a good friend to Möbius, but I’m rooting for him.

Earlier in the season in a restaurant scene that wasn’t really a restaurant scene, there was a discussion over what to order and one of the options was potato skins. This started a discussion in the Penzey house. Jeri and I will be married 19 years next month and to the best of our recollections in all those years I’ve never made her potato skins. The kids have never even had them. So, start with larger baked potatoes the way you like to bake them. If you are new to baking potatoes, wash them, poke them with a fork 8-9 times all around and then place them in a 400-degree oven for about an hour turning once while baking. They are done when they “give” when squeezed, or if you prefer to use a thermometer when the center reaches 205 degrees.

You can bake these a day in advance, but they are even better the same day. Let them cool for a bit and then cut potatoes into thirds lengthwise (this is the fun bit :) ) then scoop out the center part of the potato leaving about 3/8ths of an inch of potato still attached to the skin. In the old days I would butter the inner part of the potato, now it’s a drizzle of olive oil. There are trade-offs in life. Then a good sprinkling of Sandwich Sprinkle followed by the shredded cheese of your choice. Inspired by Loki visiting 1985 Oshkosh, Wisconsin in the second episode, I went with three cheeses: mozzarella, 2-year Cheddar, and pepper Jack. Wisconsin is fun.

Next comes bacon or no bacon. Usually I’m not a crispy bacon kind of person, but for this if you want to use it, precooking it to crispy and then crumbling is the way to go. And if you picked up the Potato of Love as part of our June Rainbow Pride giveaway, this is a really good spot to use those. Then it’s just a matter of placing them in the oven until they reach your desired level of melty. I like them just a little bit browned, but the kids had not had them before and we wanted these to be liked.

While they cooked I mixed 1 tsp. Justice Seasoning with 1/4 cup Sour Cream and Jeri cut up and lightly mashed a medium avocado to which we added 1 and 1/2 tsp. Salsa & Pico Seasoning and served these on the side. We had a hit! Jeri said we should do these more often. And Grandma Ruth, who loves nothing more than sacrificing for her grandkids, quickly grabbed seconds before the kids even noticed the supply wasn’t endless. This made me so happy!

If you have access to Disney+ please consider giving Loki a try. To get people to cook they have to see the value in caring for one another. There’s not a lot of shows out there that radiate this. Ultimately as the show itself says: “Most things in history are kind of dumb and everything gets ruined eventually.” But for now we have Camelot quotes and DB Cooper and people caring about each other.

And if a segment of this year’s Emmys is to be Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson and Sophia Di Martino quietly reading the phone book to themselves I would be good with that. But Wilson has a whisper like no other. They probably should consider using that. And maybe if Wunmi Mosaku was up there with them as the one who isn’t getting many lines now but should have her own show ten years from now, that would be good as well. Progress matters.

Thanks for reading, thanks for being our customer,

Bill [email protected]

P.S. If this email did not come from us directly but was forwarded by a friend, would you please consider signing up for our email list? A business is only as good as its customers and you would make us even better. Thanks!

---

What a fantastic read! Thank you, @honeyfromtheweed.

#submission

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the-bjd-community-confess · 3 years

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Dear 'Anime Bad' Anon: I Want To Help I pity your situation, so please have a list of weebshit that isn't moeified, or wherein the cutesy art-style serves a greater purpose. (Note: though they won't be soft marshmallow uguuuu, they may still have issues in other ways. Some may have aged badly with regards to how society views or portrays groups or beliefs, some may have upsetting content and dark themes, and some may simply not be to your taste. Note: Anime is a genre, not a monolith, and the disparaging stereotype that it's all cute girls uwuing over their brother s-s-senpai!!! is as much of a disservice as saying all western movies are just vapid cash grab superhero movie sequels with no inegrity or thought put into them. There are indeed a lot of superhero movies, but they're not all identical schlock (megamind vs venom vs kick-ass), but even more than that, there is a wealth of creative endeavor just beyond the veil of Marvel's cape: just as there are plenty of good anime if you dig past the isekai high school harem wish fulfillment genre that no one wants to keep making but people keep making because it prints money to a very small demographic of the animation equivalent of a mobile game whale thereby allowing this frankly quite-small industry to work on engaging and worthwhile series where the budget permits, Regardless,)

Mushi-shi: -Pros: gorgeous animation, tranquil vibes, episodic stories so you can cram in an episode between classes or on your lunch break. highly recommended by the literal-who typing this out. -Cons: some themes or stories may cause emotional distress, learning to tell apart Urushibara Yuki's characters is a learning curve.

Baccano-Pros: meticulously-researched 20s-and-30s-era mafia violence with a hint of the supernatural, as a treat, told anachronistically with flair and jazz music. practically made to be binge-watched. the novels are finally getting translated into english as well. -Cons: lots of characters to keep track of, fair bit of blood and violence, some scenes or themes may be upsetting, lots of jumping around between different time periods. See Also: Durarara, another series by Ryōgo Narita with a ton of characters and a plot with more threads an overpriced sheet.

Cowboy Bebop-Pros: incredibly well-regarded, space bounty hunters are cool, episodic series that slowly takes on a plot towards the end, fantastic animation, scoring, and even dub work. -Cons: some scenes or themes may be uncomfortable, some parts have not aged quite so well, the smart doll version of the main character is ugly, you're gonna carry that weight.

Trigun-Pros: starts lighthearted, develops an increasingly investing plot as the series goes along. fictional westerns are cool. this world is made of love and peace -Cons: some scenes or themes may be upsetting, and probably will be. gun violence is naturally present, but that ain't all of it.

Hellsing (standard or Ultimate. or Abridged)Pros: vampires killing nazis. the original adaptation isn't bad, the second adaptation (ultimate) is generally viewed as an improvement. abridged is a youtube parody version that was so popular the voice actors reference it in convention interviews.Cons: a Lot of violence, even trending to the gorey side of things. Uncomfortable Themes Everywhere, but it's a horror-tinged action series about killing nazis, so that's to be expected.

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood-Pros: while the original anime was quite good, the second iteration is a large improvement. does to alchemy what naruto does to ninjas: It's Basically Battle Magic. the plot starts on a strong note and doesn't let up from there. -Cons: there are distressing scenes and themes that may or may not be tolerable to the viewer. there are moments of cheesecake and even an occasional joke or a moeblob here and there, and it's not all doom and all gloom all the time, but this doesn't detract from the abject horror-despair that comes to permeate this series as it progresses. finally understand why people on the internet respond so negatively to the name 'nina'!

[Mod: many more recs/reviews under the break, worth reading for those who like more obscure anime and animation]

Grave of the Fireflies-Pros: you will remember how to cry. it's a good reminder that one country's 'triumphs' often come at the expense of another country's people. -Cons: this movie is incredibly dark, do not watch if you are in a bad headspace. see also: Barefoot Gen, a similar tale but this time from the perspective of an actual survivor from Hiroshima.

Michiko to Hatchin-Pros: an actually diverse cast of characters tangled up in a messy and very humanizing story, interspersed with Shinichiro Watanabe's particular flare for adventure. -Cons: some scenes or themes are very likely to be distressing. can be tricky to find, too.

Mo no no Ke (not the ghibli movie, though it is also quite good.) -Pros: incredibly unique art style and pacing that draws heavily from japanese theatre traditions, every screenshot is wallpaper-worthy. -Cons: may cause motion sickness. it is a psychological horror series, and one that does not need blood, nor gore, to cause visceral emotional response in the viewer. scenes and themes will be distressing- as really, that's the point.

Tokyo Godfathers-Pros: a transwoman, a (self-identified) homeless bum, and a runaway teen girl find a newborn in the baby on christmas. incredibly wholesome, somehow, and grounded in reality, with wonderful animation from the tragically late satoshi kon. -Cons: it is grounded in realism, and sometimes, people are dicks. mild transphobia warning, too, but in-universe- the transwoman herself is portrayed with kindness and allowed to be her own (wonderful!!!) person. still, viewer be mindful.

Kino no Tabi (the first series is my preferred, the second is shinier but lacks emotional impact- in my onion.) -Pros: mostly episodic, very unique series that can be gritty where it counts and kind where it matters. -Cons: some scenes or themes might be disturbing. finding it's not easy, either, and unfortunately, i don't think the novels are being translated right now, either.

Spice and Wolf-Pros: it's mostly about economics. there are shenanigans, a harvest god, and a slowly burgeoning romance, sure, but it's still mostly about economics. -Cons: there are moments of cheesecake and comedy, and moments that may cause distress to the viewer. it may or may not be to your taste.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica-Cons: yeah i know, it's moeblobs. -Pros: you're gonna watch 'em die, though, in case that may interest you. it's quite a good subversion of the magical girl genre overall. somehow volks hasn't made an MDD of anyone from the series and i will never understand how that didn't happen.

Wolf Children: Ame to Yuki-Pros: watch a family grow together as a newly-single mother does her best to raise her twin children after the tragic loss of their father. -Cons: keep tissues handy. certain scenes or themes may be uncomfortable.

Lupin III (Red Jacket, Ghibli, and the new 3D animation are all A+) pros: heist comedy elevated to an art form before half (or more!) of the people reading this were born. the english dubbed series that used to air on adult swim is a treat. cons: this franchise started in THE SIXTIES, so naturally, some shit has not aged well. certain series (fujiko mine) are darker than others in themes and material. the 3d movie that released recently is an excellent starting point.

Samurai Champloo-Pros: breakdancing samurai, a fascinating roster of characters, and a superb soundtrack by the tragically passed Nujabes. -Cons: it was made in the weird era of the transition from analog to digital animation and so the /series master/ was animated at a painfully low resolution, so even if there's a bluray out there (I haven't looked,) it will be an upscale, which doesn't always look the best. as well, there are scenes and themes that may make the viewer uncomfortable here and there.

The Works of Studio Ghibli Oh, I'm sorry, Ponyo too suffused with childhood wonder for you? My Neighbor Totoro not depressing enough? In addition to the infamous Grave of the Fireflies, Studio Ghibli has made a wealth of movies that aren't aimed squarely at the kodomo (children's) sector. -Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind: climate change existential dread, the movie -Castle in the Sky: government obsession with obtaining weapons of mass destruction destroys everything beautiful, the movie -Pom Poko: human-caused deforestation and urbanization is destroying the natural world and all that live in it, the movie -Princess Mononoke: industrialization will be the death of everything beautiful in the world, the movie, with a side of sometimes everyone (and no one) is the villain when everyone is simply trying to survive -Howl's Moving Castle: The Physical Manifestation of Depression is a Liquid Ooze, the Movie, also War Is Bad It's not all depressing, but let it never be said that Hayao Miyazaki was subtle. Whisper of the Heart is a good coming-of-age story, Kiki's Delivery Service is a classic, Tales from Earthsea is divisive among fans of Ursula K. Le Guin but I personally liked it. From one studio alone there is a wealth of opportunities.

And that's really the point. These are just some from the top of my head. There are so very many options outside of the cute-girls-doing-cute-things genre that I couldn't list them all if I was here for a week. Or as Madoka Magica so ruthlessly showcases, even series that appear a certain way on the surface might not be what you bargained for once you look into them! These are all (I think) mostly older, mainstream-appeal series that should be easy to track down, too -- there are all kinds of singular animations like The Diary of Tortov Roddle, crowdfunded experiments like KICK-HEART, Masterpiece World Theatre renditions of classic (western) novels that never get talked about, films like A Silent Voice that confront social issues- and of course, series like Rozen Maiden that helped popularize this very hobby!

There is literally an ocean of content to explore from Japanese creators alone, and it opens up even more if you look into works from other parts of Asia- just look at how popular manwha have become, or Chinese animations like Leafie, a Hen Into the Wild! It's a genre unto itself, with all the breadth of content and inter-industry problems that come with it, and without any of the respect that similar art forms have been granted over the years. The way an entire culture's art form is often disparaged, disregarded, and belittled- and by extension, the way most of Asia's animated endeavors are often rolled up into that reductive dismissal along with anime and manga- is honestly Not Great, and there is absolutely a thread of xenophobia that runs through it. The industry has so very many problems (low wages, poor training, overwork of everyone ever, archaic financial modules, the exclusivity and breadth of merchandising necessary to turn a profit and how it leads to consumer burnout and disconnection over time, and yes, the way minors are portrayed not just in anime, but in Japanese media in general- and how much of that is actually bad (some of it is indeed,) and how much if it is cultural difference (I've heard people call the scene where the family in Totoro bathe together problematic because of the nudity, but I've also only heard people say that from the West)

-- none of the actual problems affecting the people who produce this medium are gonna improve when the general response to "animators frequently have to live at home to survive" is "that's what happens when you're a weeb." It's 5am and I'm gonna point out the problems in the narrative around how we discuss this genre of entertainment because it's important, damn you! Regardless, thank you for coming to my unasked for and overlong TED talk about animation on a doll collecting drama blog, feel free to call me a pathetic weeb etcetera on your way out- but while you do so, might I suggest you also go watch a choice animated series! My current go-to is Bofuri, which is a cute-girls-doing-cute-things moefied isekai series that I refuse to apologize for watching. Be free. (The battle scenes are great and it captures the feeling of learning to play a new MMO with your friends better than most video-game-based anime I've seen in a long, long time. does anyone even still remember .hack? how about serial experiments lain...?)

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #BJD Confessions #TrueBJDConfessions #Anime

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haikyuul-kid · 3 years

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itadori and megumi soft headcanon

after episode 23, i knew i had to write something about these two. i’ve had this idea for a soft headcanon for a couple days, but ep. 23 pushed me to do it. again, i’m sorry it’s been so long. college is fucking hard. but i hope you enjoy and HERE WE GO

- megumi wasn’t exactly confident. all his life, he’s always seen himself as second best and never really figured he could ever be anything more than that. over and over, others surpassed him, like gojo and idatori had. he didn’t think there was a reason why he should push beyond. he did fine as he was. sure, he wasn’t the strongest sorcerer around, but he could hold his own. the thing that bothered him the most was the comments. people telling him he’s wasted potential and that he can do so much more. he just didn’t see how he could do that.

- it wasn’t until he found out that itadori was alive that things started to change. before he died, itadori was a naturally open person with a lot of things. praise wasn’t really one of them. but after he came back, megumi noticed how he was far more liberal with his praise, especially with him. after the school exchange, when they would spar, work together, or anything, it seemed to megumi, itadori somehow found something of megumi’s to praise and compliment. when he would lose to megumi in a spar, which wasn’t often, itadori was sure to compliment and tell him how much he’d improved since he last saw him. if they were working on a case, itadori would tell him that he was brilliant and they were lucky to have him. even on a normal day, itadori would make comments like “you’re really cool, fushigoro” or “i’m lucky we met, fushigoro” and megumi didn’t understand where this was coming from.

- one day, after weeks of what seemed like constant praise from him, megumi finally decided that he needed to ask. he was a logical thinker. he needed to know what caused this change. so, he knocked on itadori’s door on one of their off days. he could hear shuffling from the inside. the door swung open, revealing a slightly dishevaled itadori, which megumi couldn’t help but think was something he missed. in the months he was ‘dead’, itadori was on megumi’s mind an unhealthy amount, at least he thought. he didn’t know why, it wasn’t like he was the one who ripped out his heart, he didn’t kill him. yet, he felt regret when he thought of itadori while he was gone, like he’d missed out on something more, something better. megumi’s heart sometimes would ache for him. he’s never experienced that for anyone, not even his own family. he should’ve known that itadori was special, ever since he wanted to save him when he first met him. he should’ve known he was attached.

- “hey fushigoro, what’s up?” itadori’s voice was heavy with sleep, megumi felt a little bad for waking him up, but his need to know pushed him forward. “itadori, i,” he hesitated for a moment, “i wanted to ask you something.” itadori tilted his head in question, but moved over so megumi could enter the room. as he entered the room, he could tell it hadn’t changed much since the last time he’s seen it; before itadori was killed. itadori shuffled over and sat on his bed, confusion obvious in his face and posture as his head was still tilted, his eyebrows twisted in concern and him knees tucked into his arms. megumi knew he only did that when he was nervous. “what did you want... to ask me?” itadori asked.

- megumi has been thinking about this conversation for the better part of the last two weeks and he was still lost on how to start. “what happened?” he said after a few moments. “while you were-” megumi lost focus for a second when he thought of what he was about to say. “while you were dead. or, gone.” he clarified. “since you’ve gotten back, you seem different. obviously you’re much more skilled, and you’ve improved immensely since before. but you’re also so much more liberal with people. you’ve been praising people more than they deserve, especially me. i haven’t done anything different or special in the time that you’ve been back, yet you still somehow find a way to compliment me, praise me. i just don’t understand where this came from. sure, you were open before, but you didn’t praise people like you do now.” megumi knew he was rambling, but he needed to get all of his thoughts out before he got an answer. “other people may deserve the praise, but i don’t. i’m not as talented as everyone else, my skills are average at best, and i’m the same as i was before.” megumi shook his head. “i’m not special, i’m not better in any way so why?”

- itadori took a moment to look at megumi. then, his eyes dropped to his hands as he let out a soft sigh. it was a few minutes later, as megumi was growing impatient that itadori finally answered. “while i was gone,” he began. “i met someone who reminded me a lot of you. he is...” itadori paused. “he was... quiet, thoughtful, too smart for his own good. he never thought of himself as anything. he was told all his life that he wasn’t enough, that he would never be anything. he was bullied, he didn’t have the support that he needed. so,” itadori took a breath, megumi noticed he was trying to steady himself. “when someone actually acknowledged him and gave him what he was missing, he followed them to the ends of the earth. literally.” itadori’s voice was shaking as he said, “he died because he thought the only way to feel worthy was to follow someone’s order, to meet someone else’s standards, because he never felt like he was enough. and,” megumi could see the tears running down itadori’s cheeks.

- “i don’t want that to happen to you. i know... i know you wouldn’t but i worry a lot. i can see how you don’t think highly of yourself. you don’t see yourself going far, or doing anything worthwhile.” itadori was growing in volume. “you are such a good jujustu sorcerer, you so powerful and you have so much potential. and you don’t see it.” the intensity was rising as itadori continued. “you just put yourself down and i hate seeing it because i know what coud happen. and i don’t want that to happen to you. i can’t lose you, you’re too important to me.” itadori was breathing heavy as he finished. “i just want you to know that you matter, that you’re important, especially to me.”

- “i... i didn’t know you thought that.” megumi could feel the blush rising. “i didn’t really think i was important enough to try and get better. i didn’t think i could ever be like you, or gojo, or nabara, or anyone here. i just don’t have the potential-” “you do!” itadori interrupts. “i want to support you and help you grow. i know praise is a way to encourage and help people grow and so i thought that i would do that for you, to help you because you can be so powerful. and... i don’t want to lose you.” “you won’t. i appreciate it, i just didn’t realize it. i-i can’t tell you how much that means to me.” megumi commented softly “i’ll always be here for you,” itadori hugs megumi. “fushigoro, i need you. you have to be by my side until i go. i can’t be alone, i can’t let you die before i do.” “you won’t, you mean too much to me for that to happen.” megumi said, gripping him harder. “you’ll always have me.”

to be continued...

i think i’m going to keep going with this. i want to keep developing this story and their relationship. i think it could be very interesting and cool to write. please leave feedback and what you would want to see. see you in the next one.

#jujustu kaisen #jujustu kaisen headcanons #fushiguro megumi #itadori yuuji #itafushi #they need each other #support #blb #theyre pining ok

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starberry-cupcake · 3 years

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hey, I don't know if I'm gonna word this right but I remembered you talking about historical accuracies criticisms for Disney movies should take into account the era it was produced in (something to that effect?), I wonder if you have talked more about it? Just suddenly reminded of it and it's interesting to see a different take than the ones on YouTube I've seen

Sorry it took me a while to get to this and thank you for your interest in my often inconsequential rambles ♥ I'll edit on "read more" because of length, if tumblr allows it to work this time.

Yes, I was talking about costumes in that post, I believe, about how there are so many critical videos on "historically accurate corrections" for outfits in Disney films that I feel miss a huge opportunity to discuss how animators are inspired by much more than that.

Because, not only it's rather pointless to try to trace a time and place for a fairy tale, when most of the Disney-adapted ones can be tracked to a compiler or adapter but not an "origin" per se, but also the time in which the movie was produced has a super interesting influence in character design, not only in clothing but also in depiction, as well as other important animation-specific decisions (such as color, movement, personality, etc.).

A very very long time ago, when Disney did some messed up redesigns for the princesses, I searched for fashion magazines, patterns, runways and photoshoots of outfits from the year each movie was released in, to compare with their design and the redesign, and see if there was relevance in the fashion of the time rather than just history or character. Even if the post is very old, it got some interesting results.

Of course that taking this into consideration can showcase the positives and the negatives, how a character or an archetype is viewed and perceived in a specific moment in history. They can let you see amazing conceptual choices but they can also show how prejudice, problematic or outright bigoted notions of "the other" bleed into a certain time period. This is also useful to see how things have changed (or not) in those depictions.

Accuracy is important, in my opinion, in cultural depiction rather than a "historical" basis. This is a good intersection to observe, especially comparing movies in which there is a white American depiction of a culture (like in Aladdin, for example, and the use of certain clothes or items just for their problematic western appeal) versus movies later on in which they had a group of specialists from the culture and place to make corrections (in Moana this happened a lot, for example when the Trust suggested changing her clothes' design, which was historically accurate, to one that would be more appropriate for sailing, even if less detailed).

Narratively-wise, we can observe a similar thing. Disney films tend to be hated by most fairy tale and children's lit focused academia because, they say, they "sugarcoat" the stories they tell, or they modify them too much. These people forget not only that times change and stories change as well, but also that whether they like the movies or not, there have been several generations growing up with them already. Pretending they don't exist makes them miss a huge opportunity for analysis of what's become the prime access to fairy tales that children get.

The way in which each time period decided to adapt stories, or create new ones from existing folklore, doesn't only speak of the medium it's adapting to but also what is important and relevant in each time period for an audience. Again, not only in what is successful, but also in where it fails. This is a good indicator of what has changed in the perception of certain topics, archetypes or plots with time. In one of the workshops I taught, I picked some fairy tales and then Disney adaptations and worked through some of those changes in narrative.

Naming examples of this would take entirely too long but, to give just one: the characterization of the Beast in Villeneuve's story versus Beaumont's story versus Jean Cocteau's version versus the Disney 1991 version were developed with entirely different narrative needs from an audience at different times. The live action ruined the progress, but I digress.

Again, there are successes and there are failures, but when something doesn't work or isn't enough, it's important to note why. Focusing more on Pixar, for example, Brave did amazingly in its first half to depict a mother-daughter relationship in a much more complex way than fairy tales, both traditionally and within Disney, had done before. But then, they took the movie away from Brenda Chapman and changed the focus of the film. That is a whole field to discuss and to understand the effects of storytelling and depiction, rather than just focusing solely on what would be historically accurate for the movie to do with Merida's marriage or if you like the movie or not just on the surface.

At the same time, when it comes to criticism, sometimes people in general tend to evaluate all Disney films as if they were being released today, and that criticism also misses a lot of opportunities for growth. People are discussing the depiction of consent in Snow White from the late 30s in the year of 2021, as if the movie had been released today. They also fail to compare how, even if problematic, Disney's Snow White had a lot more agency that the one from the Grimms, which is the one they were adapting. It's not about overlooking issues that were always there, but of using them to understand how we should grow narratively to accompany the growth we aim at in the perception of the world. Especially when it is for kids.

When I made my post, I was ranting about those videos that I find lazy and uninspired and I'd rather talk about how many different inspirations animators had to design a character, or concept artists developed for the production design. But, also, when it comes to narrative, it can also hinder any worthwhile analysis of the stories. Just like we can study fairy tales to understand the time and place in which they were adapted and compiled (or, sometimes, created), we can do the same with Disney films, which have become the way we have received fairy tales most often for the past 80+ years.

#ask #anon #anonymous #long post when expanded #luly rambles #disney #fairy tales

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sinterblackwell · 3 years

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kaylina’s top ten books of 2020 🖤

update 01/13/21: i stupidly forgot about a book that upended my life and made me fall in love with historical fiction, and so thus,,,everything has changed 😔

what that means is that a few of the original titles listed here have either been moved around or removed; i apologize to myself for the inconvenience. i do recommend reading through a bit of this again if you already read it the first time as i also revised my thoughts on one book mentioned here, so just something.

one of the things i wish for the most in 2021 is that i get to share more about my love for reading, so here’s the first post of many to satisfy that wish.

throughout 2020, i wrote some posts on a complete whim about the stories i was reading and they just kept piling on and on because i was so caught up in the euphoria of having something to turn to when school was dragging me down. i found myself to really enjoy talking about these books while i was on here so i felt it would be a worthwhile conclusion to give a good wrap-up of the top ten books that made 2020 more bearable among all of the bad.

this post is very long so if you’re curious to see what ten books stood out to me this year to make it to this list, you can keep reading in the cut below. it’s all sort of a ranking so it’ll explain why the list is backwards, and i’ll also link more information on the titles in case any of you are interested :’)

first things first, here are three honorable mentions that didn’t quite make the cut but are still important to me one way or another.

3. circe by madeline miller

i have to give thanks to scylla for being one of the main reasons i considered this book as one of my top favorites, a nymph-turned- monster that circe has to face more than once in this story.

also, miller herself building this book upon a figure who was barely considered in the odyssey is like a big slap to all the scholars out there who didn’t consider circe anything else but a jealous madwoman who used sorcery as her vengeance for all the sailors who came across her island.

cheers to the author for having actual critical thinking skills 🥂

2. the invisible life of addie larue by v.e. schwab

i did write a review for this book that i don’t find nearly as coherent as any other review i’ve written in 2020 but here it is if any of you are interested.

the fantastical elements of this story, along with some of the portrayal of certain characters such as luc and those that passed addie by made me fall in love with what v.e. schwab had to offer.

however, i can’t help but think that there’s s a lack of depth regarding minorities in this historical fantasy also set in the modern day. there were bits and pieces of this story that made me pause and feel like something was missing, aspects to it that left something to be desired. thinking back to it now, and after seeing a reviewer’s update on their review of this story, i‘ve come to understand that it could be because i knew this book could’ve been so much stronger if the mc was BIPOC or there were more characters of color who could give their own piece to the story as well.

there’s so much more i can say about it, but that’s a post entirely of its own to be made in future, i hope.

1. the year of the witching by alexis henderson

probably the best reading experience i ever had in 2020. here’s a review that goes into a bit more detail :’)

and here we go!!

10. clown in a cornfield by adam cesare

this book was so fun. i didn’t realize how much of a good time with this story i had until i was thinking about it last night. i mention in my review that i’m not a big horror reader but you can genuinely tell how much the author themself was a big fan of the genre and poured so much of their love into this book. it’s because of that love that i’m grateful for how much i enjoyed this story as a reader who typically is drawn more towards fantasy and contemporary fiction.

i didn’t have much of an attachment to the characters but they did make me laugh and smile despite this being a slasher horror, and because of that, this has become a pretty memorable book for me.

9. sex with shakespeare by jillian keenan

sex, to me, has always felt like a taboo topic, not just because i don’t have experience in it but because it all seems so complicated to me so just talking about it feels like i’m way out of my depth. what made this such an enlightening read for me was seeing how the author was discovering her sexuality through the influence of shakespeare’s works. keenan is very open and considerate of what readers may think going in learning about her fetish but she holds her own when it comes to her personal experience and how much more complicated one’s sexuality really is.

i highly recommend reading this article she wrote for the new york times here for more insight about her sexuality before this book came to be.

in this compelling memoir, the author literally brought shakespeare’s own characters to life and made them feel real, connecting them to her journey throughout her life. this to me, was something i could completely relate to because there are fictional characters i envision in moments of my life where i need them most and seeing the author herself explore that felt so real and imaginative to me.

this book was funny, light-hearted in some parts but incredibly vulnerable overall. i found the insightful analyses she’s made with shakespeare’s works so smart and well-written, i couldn’t give this book anything less than a five-star.

8. blood water paint by joy mccullough

written in verse, this historical fiction took me a while to get through but only because it was just one of those weeks where reading wasn’t that easy for me. once i finally got back into the stick of things, i completely devoured the rest of this story in less than a day.

the main character’s love for art was written with so much vision and spilled out in all these bright colors as depicted on the cover. what i particularly loved about this story were the interludes, little pieces inbetween chapters where the main character reflects on her deceased mother’s stories that were told to her when she was young. these characters that the mother envisioned in her storytelling became a source of light for the main character in her real life, where she then is raped by a popular artist in her village that was a mentor to her for a brief time. the aftermath of this assault culminated into a trial that got quite bloody, particularly involving self-afflicted torture in a matter of dignity.

the title makes sense once we’re in the aftermath of this trial, but how the characters from her mother’s storytelling come to life in the moments when she feels vulnerable are something i was completely enraptured in. this was because it wasn’t just their stories being told, but it was also the main character’s. seeing fiction and reality converge in such a time where women were used and borrowed felt like a vindication of sorts, very telling in how the arts works wonders upon a world that prioritizes logic over matter.

7. everything i never told you by celeste ng

this is a story about a family who’s dealing with the grief of the middle child, who’s assumed to have committed suicide. having the story reflect on each family member before and after lydia’s death, each of them dealing with grief in their own ways, impacted me just the same as how i saw how much they were grieving even before everything was torn down to pieces, all to the point where there was no way to go back. family sagas in literary fiction are always something i find myself to really connect with, and this one was no exception.

i’d also recommend listening to “ven” by cami, if not because you yourself might understand my feelings about this story a bit better then just because it’s a really good song that i discovered as i was reading this book.

6. darius the great is not okay by adib khorram

there’s one particular post i made regarding this story that i’d love to share here. through that post, i share a bit about my connection to darius as our narrator in this first book and then going on to the second book, “darius the great deserves better”, review for that sequel here.

just as darius felt a disconnect to not just his persian side of the family, but also from his entire family as a whole, i felt the same when it came to my dominican heritage. reading his journey throughout this first book in his own voice meant a lot to me then and it means a lot to me now.

seeing him grow and create bonds with characters like sohrab, his depression not being put off to the side but not beholding itself as the center of the story, and then just the persian culture all in itself when darius and his family travel to iran due to personal circumstances--all of it, makes this story something so incredibly special to me.

i learned a lot from this book, and seeing family at the forefront throughout all this was everything.

5. autoboyography by christina lauren

lo and behold my 2020 comfort book of the year + one of my favorite books of all-time. it’s the same feeling i had with “verona comics”, except even stronger because i came into this book thinking it’d be a nice and light read but it was so much more than that.

not only did this story center around two teenage boys in love but it also took into account of the relationships that they both had with other characters in this story. the portrayal of both tanner and sebastian’s families moved me beyond belief, for entirely different reasons, but seeing their story play out along with these two characters made this story hit even harder than i would expect. the location of this story and the significance of that plays such a huge role when it came to how tanner’s bisexuality was represented throughout, and how sebastian’s own grapple with his sexuality affected parts of the story. the author’s note at the end was just about anything i could ever want when it comes to understanding the purpose of one specific story, except i already learned so much from it that reading that note made the characters feel even more real.

may i suggest listening to “someone” by michael schulte because the lyrics of this song and the singer’s voice itself remind me strongly of tanner and sebastian’s relationship? which thus led it to becoming a big comfort song for me? so much so that it was my 2020 song of the year on spotify? no? yes? cool :’)

4. clap when you land by elizabeth acevedo

this was my first acevedo book, “the poet x” being her most popular work, but “clap when you land” for me too important a read that i didn’t want to miss as i was first going into acevedo’s writing. you can say that it’s because of how much this book means to me that it motivated me to read her sophomore novel “with the fire on high” and motivates me to finally read her debut “the poet x”.

i’ve talked to myself a lot about the personal connection i have with this book, but i’ll just say here that the context behind how these two main characters weren’t aware of each other’s existence and what it meant as they were also dealing with the fact that their now-dead father was still there for them despite having them in two different places,,,,,it’s just too monumental for me to put into words here. this author being afro-latina just like me and having written this story about a flight destined to dominican republic that never actually made it, and with so much heart above it all, i connected with it a lot.

as a dominican who feels both connected and disconnected to her heritage, this story breathed so much life into me. i wish you can know just how much.

3. lobizona by romina garber

the fact that i thought everyone would talk about this 2020 release with so much fervor and yet here i am holding the weight of this story with both shoulders,,,,unbelievable. i always feel insecure when it comes to recommending a book because the fact that i thought this one was incredible but not a lot people have talked about it, it makes me wonder why that is.

i really loved this book because as fast of a read as it was, there was so much to take in that you can tell how much effort the author put into it. as a fantasy, it’s connection to our reality is so grounded that it makes you wonder if it actually exists, and the background of our main character raises the stakes of a story like this where one’s identity matters too much to simply be blurred into the background. i loved seeing how there was animosity between these characters that we meet and the main character because despite having ties between each other, that doesn’t ignore how much labels in our society and the connotations that come with it carry its weight. seeing the sacrifices that were made and the discoveries coming at our main character with such a force, there was something so exciting that came from reading this book but it was very solemn overall.

the reason why this story isn’t at the #1 spot is because of technicalities, as i do admit that the ending did feel a bit rushed. but!! it made me more excited to see what’s to come in the second book of this series, “cazadora” (set to release in august 2021) so there we have it.

2. black sun by rebecca roanhorse

inspired by the pre-Columbia Americas, this story and its different narrators enraptured me in each and every page, my love for naranpa and serapio as characters soaring beyond the pages. all these different narrators appeared to have started this story as if they had no ties to each other but really, these web of characters are so interwoven with each other that there’s no telling what their destinies reveal. seeing how naranpa and serapio’s fates were tied together (not romantic, just a note in case i made it seem as such) put me on edge because there was so much political conflict and then here was a prophecy that put so many lives at stake, it was hard to know what could possibly happen. because of this, the ending of this first book in the “between earth and sky” series absolutely bowled me over and i cannot wait to see what could possibly happen next.

let me also just show my appreciation for one of the narrators, xiala, who for some reason made me think for a brief moment that her part in the story was over but really, that could not be further from the truth, i have to believe in that.

here is a review written by one of my favorite book bloggers about this story, listing five reasons as to why reading “black sun” could be an absolutely brilliant reading experience for you. it’s much more detailed and brings so much justice to this story than i ever could so if you’re interested, i highly recommend you check it out.

1. “lovely war” by julie berry

a mythic historical fiction that explored ww1 spanning a circle of characters, including the greek gods themselves—it was bound to catch my attention.

the beginning of this story immediately solidified my interest in the plot, the gods and aphrodite herself regaling the tale of mortals caught in the brink of a war that not only came with death and terror but music and bonds formed under strenuous circumstances.

watching as this journey didn’t exclude the gods themselves and how they were affected in what’s ultimately a love story, but not exclusively a romantic one, made this book become something so close to my heart, i’ll never let it go. i highly recommend.

and we’re done!! thank you to those who’ve read this far, this was actually a lot of work with a lot of links but i hope there’s something that you guys got out of it in the end. i’m really proud that i did this but i’m more proud of myself for having read so much in 2020 to have even been able to make this post.

thank you to all the new characters i met who will stay in my heart forever but most importantly, my thanks go to the authors who worked so incredibly hard to get their books out there, some with debuts and others with a beginning of a new series; you guys have done so much among all the trials of 2020 and i, along with so many other readers, will continue working to get your stories out there this year and the years ahead, that’s for sure.

happy new year to all of you and stay safe, everyone.

#❣️#this is a lot ik but i tried :’)#booklr

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girlobsessed21 · 4 years

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Thoughts on The 100 7x01

Before I get into the episode, I felt the absence of Bellamy and Octavia, they are my favorites and a very core part of this show. I was worried about the lack of Bellamy in all the promotional material, but Jason explained in an article that he needed some time off and they gave that to him, but he still plays a vital role and we will see him again. At the end of the day, we don’t know what happened, but the mystery around his disappearance into anomaly is quite intriguing.

For now, I’m holding out hope that he will return to my screen in full force, until proven wrong I’m going to be positive. Despite that, I enjoyed it. It wasn’t my favorite first episode, still a strong start spreading optimism for the rest of the season. Lots of surprises that made it worthwhile.

The anomaly colony

Hope wakes up with memory loss while Gabriel examines her tattoos. She runs away and finds a note to herself that says, ‘Trust Bellamy’. Bellamy, not Octavia, who she clearly knows, which seems like Hope wasn’t aware she would find Octavia in Sanctum.

Now, why would Hope want to trust Bellamy and stab Octavia? Perhaps she needed his help finding her in return for Diyoza? This seems like a logical conclusion given that ‘He’ has her mother. The Blakes certainly hold some key to the anomaly, everything points me in that direction.

I can’t say all that much about Hope, due to the amnesia she has no personality yet, but it’s clear she’s smart and capable.

Gabriel being an anomaly-dork. Gosh, I love him too bits. The acting in the scene where they try to figure out what happened to Octavia and Bellamy is a little cringy, but I turned a blind eye and focused on the dialogue.

I’m getting to the good stuff…

Roan coming back to haunt Echo is probably my favorite part of the episode, I’ve missed the king so damn much. He asks her who she is without Bellamy or her queen. I’m so glad they’re delving into the subject. If you read my previous blogs, you’ll know I asked this question many times. She’s such a bad ass spy, she needs a purpose and story apart from him. Nonetheless, I like Echo and I would love to see her gain some of her own identity and build her own life. Being distanced by time and space could really do that for her. Scroll down for the shipping part of this story…

The more important thing is that there are people who control the anomaly and know exactly who they are. Like Echo predicted because of the bad shots they were sent to capture and not kill them except for Hope. I assume it’s because she knows how the anomaly works. Who are they and what do they want? My guess, Bellamy and Octavia. Perhaps Clarke as well?

Loved the three of them entering together because a few second difference could mean months. That means Diyoza and Octavia could have been months, maybe even years, apart.

Rising from and burning to ashes in one afternoon

This new beautiful house with the dysfunctional family and Madi with Picasso is certainly heart-warming in a show that continues to push the bounds of darkness. How great is that little picnic in the yard? Now I’m curious, they drink to Abby, but have they forgotten Kane?

Also, good to see Raven and Clarke on better terms. They really spoiled her character in season 6 but it seems like she’s back on par. It’s clear that good things happen when they’re working towards the same goal, as family. That dynamic has been broken since season 2 and if there’s one lesson that can be learned from season 1 it’s that they’re outstanding on the same team.

At first, I wondered why they weren’t questioning Octavia, Bellamy and Echo’s absence but then I realized they probably saved them a room like they did for Jordan and assumed they were exploring the anomaly. It’s still the same day as 6x13 since they were having lunch. Episode 6x13 ended at dawn and 7x01 starts at lunchtime.

I know Murphy did a lot of obscure things in season 6 but he’s not to blame for Abby’s death. Emori’s right, Russel killed her.

Why did Clarke choose the master suite, though? It seems a little out of character for her to do something so selfish.

On to other things, I must point out Indra’s line: “Someone needs to speak for the commander and I’m hungry.” She’s magnificent, hard and sharp, as always. Pair that with Miller being a dutiful, abiding shoulder and you have greatness.

Raven makes a comment about mothers and daughters and Clarke says she’s fine. Later, Madi also asks her to open up about it, and she still claims to be fine. When I heard this the first time, I was instantly worried because they heap one set of PTSD on top of the other and never deal with it. The woman just lost her mother, how the hell can she be fine. The answer: She can’t.

And I’m really glad they expanded on that to show how utterly necessary it is to deal with your grief and trauma. Sure, Clarke is a powerhouse of a woman, but she’s human and clearly hurt, she can’t compartmentalize and continue on like nothing has happened – I hope she finds a way to actually deal with it instead of following in Jasper’s footsteps. She was already suicidal, give the damn woman a break.

Is civility an ability?

Faith is a powerful and dangerous thing. Interesting topic. While I don’t completely believe that faith is dangerous, when it comes to the point of blindly following charlatan’s into harms way, yes it becomes dangerous. My biggest thoughts on this narrative is whether peace can indeed exist in a world where different factions exist with various beliefs and opinions. I’d like to quote John Lennon:

Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people living life in peace, you

Keyword being ‘Imagine’, this song is written about an unattainable Utopia which is still a reality several hundred years into the future.

“Too many people”

“Good thing ALIE’s not around.”

The humor is all around outstanding this episode even Clarke cracks a joke.

We’re introduced to a few new characters and not much too say about them since we didn’t see much of them. I like Nelson, he is firm in his stance, logical and pragmatic. Trey is just annoying with his faith in the divinity of the primes. The only thing I got from Nikki is that she’s compulsive and lethal while Hatch has this Southern charm and charisma. He reminds me of Sawyer from Lost.

Next, Jordan goes to check on Russel. I appreciate the way they build around the morality we saw withing Russel at the beginning of season 6. JR Bourne is a fantastic actor with the depth he plays into the grief and guilt of losing his family.

Also, the softness of Monty and Harper still shining through Jordan. I’m glad he’s not adjusted and simply trying to keep the peace. Not sure if that’ll change. Curious to know why they saw the anomaly in their visions…

I just need to add that Murphy sitting at a bar is perfect!! Another amazing episode for him and Emori. He questions himself with his own varied degrees of morality while Emori continues to grow by reading Kay Lee Prime’s journal. I guess the believers must be blind to continue following their orders, but hey, props to Raven for exploiting the opportunity and Murphy and Emori did an entertaining job with it. Emori has come such a long way and the ‘We are one’ line felt personal in the sense that she had also established herself as part of the family.

Losing my religion

Can you truly lose your religion? What is a fleimkeepa without a flame, what is Sanctum without the primes and what is Echo without Bellamy? Sometimes faith is stronger than truth. Bad thing, no! Because what is the truth really? Interesting subject to explore but I don’t have an answer on this. I’d rather focus on the fact that I’m glad we’ll get to explore these characters on new paths.

Clarke’s composure vanishes. Boy oh boy, Eliza’s acting. When you compare s6 and 7 to s1, it just shows you the value of experience. The way that switch flipped when Russel handed her Abby’s clothes and wedding band. I looked at the fighting and her explosive rage in detail and I cannot help but compliment her on that perfect portrayal of the result of passive aggression.

Now, I don’t understand how Sheidheda uploaded himself into Russel’s mind drive when it was made clear that two consciousness cannot exist in the same mind. When Clarke killed Josephine in the mind-space, she came back to life within seconds. Will this be another Clarke/Josephine battle and are the other commanders still subdued?

If he is going to be one of the main villains of the season, I would like to get under his skin. I’m not interested in a one-dimensional pure evil villain. I’m hoping JR Bourne will make something remarkable of him.

Shipwreck

There’s a friendship blooming between Clarke and Gaia and I’m all for it. Could they be setting them up romantically? It’s a possibility and I’d take it as a consolation prize for Bellarke if it’s well-built. Focus on the well-built. If Clarke finds out that Bellamy is missing and goes through hell and beyond to save him, I will interpret that as Clarke still loves Bellamy. If they want me to fall in love with Claia, they should make me fall in love with Claia.

Although I’d always prefer Bellarke. From a storytelling or writing viewpoint, all loose ends should be tied with the conclusion. Bellarke is a complete loose shard. If romance is not their destiny, I hope they at least address the topic in full, because it has been building for seven years. If you haven’t read my post on Bellarke, please do so. I explain in the romantic elements of their story in detail.

As for Echo’s vision of Roan. He questions her devotion to Bellamy and says she will even betray the man she now claims to love. I interpreted that as him referring to Mount Weather as well as secrets she’s obviously hidden from Bellamy. For example, her real name. This could go two ways in my opinion. One, they’re trying to set Echo apart from Bellamy, separating them by time and space to break them up or they are trying to teach her how to be her own person as well as the other half of their relationship.

I’m not quite invested in their relationship, and they would have to rip one bigass hare out of the hat to get my attention. Love their characters individually, but season 6 showed me Bellamy still loves Clarke. If Becho’s relationship was built to last, the writers would have written it that way. When you compare it to Murphy and Emori or Monty and Harper, it’s clearly questionable.

That’s it, let me know if I got something wrong, if you agree or disagree, love to hear your opinions.

#the 100 #the 100 season 7 #the 100 7x01 #the 100 season seven #The100 #clarke griffin #bellarke #bellamy blake #octavia blake #john murphy #emori #echo kom azgeda #gabriel #indra kom trikru #gaia #raven reyes #russel lightbourne #jordan green

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julianwolski · 4 years

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Issue #22 - Why should you watch Boca a Boca?

A lot of the problems in the world can find their root in one thing: we, at one point, missed an important addition to our lives. And that something we lacked messed up with our ability to think, to be, and to accept. That also impaired our ability to relate and to understand. We live in a crossroads right now, where we don’t know if we’re getting the amount that we need of that anymore.

Love.

It might sound mushy, or just eye-rolling, but love is such a powerful emotion, and it can make everything change. Love can transform, can create and inspire growth, and its absence can cause pain and loss.

And this is not just about love from someone else, the love that makes us kiss on the lips and become one with another person. This is love in its purest form, of friends holding hands, of quiet, whispered words in our ears, of parents taking care of their children and siblings leaning onto one another when the bad times come.

This is the love we’re missing, and at its core, Boca a Boca, or Kissing Game, is all about lost love, and how it can hurt or save someone.

In the countryside of Brazil, a small town is the setting behind this story. We have an agricultural school in a conservative community catering to kids of different backgrounds, the adults trying to grow their business running cattle while following customs that had been ingrained into them, the rule of religion dictating their lives, as others chase the allure of the unknown.

And in this world, we have a nomadic troupe coming to town to shake from its foundations.

A party is what attracts the kids yearning for something different, and from their freedom of being, there’s a virus that gets transmitted through direct contact of the lips. It couldn’t come at a more appropriate time, as this virus starts to make the rounds following this one night of debauchery, disrupting the quiet environment of the town and causing relationships that were already in shambles to completely break.

There are a lot of characters in the story, but the main trio is Alex, Fran, and Chico. They are friends and become even closer in order to investigate the origins of this illness that has been spreading ever since the night of the party. The mystery is a very interesting part of the show, as if the eerie atmosphere surrounding this town, but the main reason why I wanted to talk about this series could be summarized into two topics: the character of Chico and his unashamed queerness, and the importance of parents loving their kids.

Chico called to my attention in the story not because he shows his true colors and his sexual orientation on his sleeves--as there are other characters in the story who are the same. Fran, for example, is also central to the story, and she’s an amazing character. But Chico comes into this as a boy dumped into this town to live with a religious parent and a younger brother, trying to make the family not fall apart while he chases after his desires.

He meets a man called Maurílio, a worker at a nearby farm, and the two of them develop a relationship that borders on dangerous, revealing their natures and the pain they carry, but also highlighting the power of this emotion that can overcome barriers.

They have a hard time getting together, having to fight so many things at once, but they manage to overcome those differences because what exists between them is stronger than what’s trying to separate them. And in the middle of their growing bond, they also come across the possibility for Chico’s family to come together again, even if it’s more because of the pain inflicted on Chico than because of their love, per se.

On the other half of this story, beyond its characters, we have a very interesting critique of the world of cattle-farming, and the danger behind the ambition of men, in general. A lot of times, the hunger for power and money turns them into animals, worse than the ones they create--and in this series, you’re in for a treat with the monsters they grow in those farms.

Also interesting to note is that there’s a lot of issues being brought up, and, more often than not, they stay unresolved and open for interpretation, but the one that definitely gets center stage by the end is the connection between parents and kids, and how that can literally save lives.

It’s not that common to see such a visceral reaction to the connection between these two generations being brought up and becoming a weapon to fight the danger, and in an interesting twist, it also saves lives. And to me, it felt like a powerful allegory to the destruction of the ‘traditional family’, which feels like a loaded topic, but in this series, we see it through the scope of the lack of acceptance from the parents, and how it can be a deal-breaker when it comes to maintaining a relationship between them and their child.

If you’re interested in horror, queer characters, good cinematography, and many, many neon colors, this is the perfect series for you. Although the ending might be a bit ambiguous, and some scenes are graphic and triggering, it feels complete enough to be enjoyable.

And of course, I’d never promise queer love and underdeliver, so you definitely look for that.

The series can be watched in one afternoon, and it will hold your interest from start to finish. There’s so much nuance in the characters, so many colors to see on the screen and different stories crashing and burning, or flowering right before our eyes, that it feels like a worthwhile endeavor.

Even when it’s bleak, it’s still beautiful.

You should watch Boca a Boca.

#rec #boca a boca #kissing game

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andmaybegayer · 4 years

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Watched Rebuild of Evangelion 3 now so hoo boy what the hell was that.

Alright I’m writing this before reading anything anyone else wrote about the Rebuilds so that I don’t copy anyone because I have had a Moment thinking about this.

It’s not... good? on it’s own? these movies don’t stand on their own. Well, the first one does but that’s because it’s a retelling of the first few episodes of the original series cut down for time and with a bigger budget. But the other two, just, aren’t anything.

When I was trying to think of how to write this I thought “these movies are not intended to be viewed alone, but in comparison to the original series” and I think that’s true but it also sounds like the thing an insane person would say so I didn’t WANT to say it but it’s true.

2.22 is just Evangelion minus any of the interesting parts. it’s Evangelion written by this guy.

Like, if you read this post, I didn’t really mention the story. I spoke about the sensory quality of the show, the music, the animation, the new character who exists. That’s because there isn’t anything else to talk about in 2.22.

Nothing... happens... in it? Like, you get this new character, Mari Illustrious, but I don’t think you ever hear her name other than her answering her phone, and that is a tiny moment. You never see her meet any other characters and as far as I can tell her entire personality is “good at robots, guns, and throwing things to asuka when she needs them”, I don’t think she’s ever even tangentially involved in any personal conflicts. Given how deeply the original series cares about the motivations of each individual character, it’s weird to bring in this weird new girl who appears to exists solely to give the anime character model makers another statue to produce.

Asuka and Rei both have a crush on Shinji, which is out of nowhere and doesn’t go anywhere. It happens and then the story goes elsewhere and it’s basically never explored again. There’s none of the usual post-fight dialogue and bargaining that all the characters have with each other, just, here’s some cool robot fights. Have fun. You like that, right?

Asuka’s character starts off promising! She’s an overachiever prodigy who likes to throw her weight around and who thinks she doesn’t need anyone else, except then she finds out she likes having friends! Except this also doesn’t go anywhere. It just kinda gets disregarded because she’s swapped in for Suzuhara during the test that goes bad so she’s injured and offscreen for the rest of the movie. Her role is filled by Mari who once again does almost nothing other than Being Good At Robots.

The movie spends just, so much time on random shit. There’s a 10 minute sequence where they go to an aquarium and it’s just worldbuilding! Evangelion was never about worldbuilding and this worldbuilding doesn’t pay off in any way! It’s just, like, oh yeah, all ocean life is dead, we brought some back, but they have to stay here. The ocean used to be blue. Isn’t that interesting, to you, person watching? Same with the fights. Long fight sequences were always a part of Evangelion that was fun to watch but they were not actually important.

I think... this is supposed to be like, what would happen if all the people who complained about the end of the series, and who think that evangelion is too impenetrable, got what they wanted. It’s just a boring ordinary anime, with big action scenes and cute girls who have crushes on the shitty main dude.

I don’t remember it for certain but I think that Evangelion was about two things: 1) depression, and 2) opposing generic anime tropes. Getting in the big robot doesn’t solve your problems, it’s just running away from them. Asuka is a tsundere, but you shouldn’t be trying to date that girl, she needs serious help. Rei isn’t a beautiful blank slate for you to mould however you want, she’s got shit she needs to work through and trying to date her isn’t going to help either of you.

It seems like 2.22 is just Evangelion if it leaned into the trope that fights are cool and girls are there for you to fuck, hence the brief love triangle around Shinji/Rei/Asuka. It would also explain Mari, who appears to be from an entirely different universe where 14 year olds actually like piloting giant robots with the weight of the world on their backs. You need the context of the original show to understand why this is so weird. It lacks any of the meat that would make watching this alone worthwhile.

And then you get to 3.33. Look. I get that some people probably liked 3.33. I understand. But 3.33 is like, three different things simultaneously and I don’t know which part you liked because they aren’t all good.

Now, there are good parts. But I think they only make sense in the context of the original show. Everyone is constantly telling Shijni what to do: pilot the evangelion! don’t pilot the evangelion! Like this is the whole thrust of the series. Do you do the big thing that lets you run from your problems, or do you do the small hard work that is actually becoming a better person. The first one is very appealing if you’re afraid of the hard work of becoming a better person, so you have to grow up before you can do it, you have to accept that sometimes you have to do hard things to get what you want. But if you’ve only seen the Rebuilds, then you have no context for what the hard thing looks like. Everyone has done nothing but take the easy route of flying around in big robots shooting at aliens. You have to compare it to the end of the series, where Shinji thinks long and hard about what he needs to do to actually be happy in this world, and decides that he actually can improve himself for the better.

You spend 10 minutes at the beginning with Asuka recovering a McGuffin from space while backed up by Mari who appears to communicate entirely in sassy quips. Then we watch for another 10 minutes as they make a flying boat. The only really important narrative information conveyed in these 20 minutes is that it’s 14 years later, and that Shinji has been stuck in space all this time. Almost none of your points of reference survive this time skip, so we now have to establish a whole new pecking order and set of characters for this movie.

In 3.33, he does none of that. He instead bullheadedly fixates on piloting the Evangelion as the way to solve all his problems, and as a result causes an even greater disaster. This is Shinji if he didn’t learn anything from his experiences. This is about what happens when you don’t improve yourself. It seems to suddenly snap back around to the message of the original series, that you need to connect with other people and sort yourself out, not hide away and perform great feats to appear to progress, but it’s framed so weirdly that I can’t figure out /why/ you would go through all of this just to tell this story.

I’m not sure what the message is. It’s not sufficiently different from the original to claim a new message, but it doesn’t seem to have any message if you disregard the original.

I’m just baffled by it. It’s not the same, it’s not telling the same story. This feels cautionary, this is what not to do, but it’s also not different. The story is not distinct from the series. It still relies on the series to give it meaning. This is a series for people who watched evangelion, but I’m not sure why you would watch it. Is it for people who watched evangelion, and didn’t like it? Is it supposed to be like, what would happen if the entire series was made in the style of The End of Evangelion? I’m not sure. I’m going to go read some other people’s writing on this now, and hopefully that will clarify it.

#nge #neon genesis evangelion #rebuild of evangelion

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wonkyreads · 3 years

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The Grace Year

Kim Liggett

3.5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

All told, this book is dark at times and as rough around the edges as you’d expect, but there’s a bravery to it and to Tierney that speaks of a future where women aren’t things or pitted against each other, though in the narrative it still seems a long time coming.

There’s a brutally heavy handed quality to the first parts of this book. Imagine The Handmaid’s Tale mixed up with The Lord of the Flies and then take away a generous portion of subtlety. It made it so easy to know exactly where the book was headed and while the ending isn’t exactly what I’d expected (or honestly even something I’m sure I understand), a lot of the expected puzzle pieces showed up right when I knew to look for them. A lot of writing is formulaic, so it’s not like I’m totally upset about it. More than anything the lack of subtlety made me want to set the book down very early on for fear of the rest of the book being TOO easy to read. It got better, though, and by the end I’d almost forgotten.

The writing was clearly very well done technically, the characters were varied enough to make reading them worthwhile (Personality-wise, I mean. It could have done with some actual diversity! I can’t remember anyone being described as something other than “pale” or “ivory” which got on the nerves a bit.), and I thoroughly enjoyed the last quarter of the book.

There were a lot of little things I found annoying that cleared themselves up by the time I reached the end and there was also a ton of pacing issues. Somehow a book that is primarily action managed to slog at times; it felt like everything was moving at a snail’s pace for most of the book. I ended up skipping and having to go back to re-read huge chunks of exposition and thought, not because it was bad but because it felt like an interruption or lasted far too long to continue holding my attention. Other than that, there were a few trope-y things that weren’t great like Tierney was the only tomboy out of 33 girls, the only girl to suggest working together, and just sometimes felt a little too close to Mary Sue perfect. The mid-book romance/love thing bothered me. Sometimes things just felt too easy because they had to happen narrative-wise. Small things that add up to a larger annoyance.

Now, just a thought:

The book might have been more efficient had the beginning been a little more subtle. As it is, seeing where the plot was going was not hard, it was just a matter of what specifics would happen along the way. I think it would have been terrifying if Tierney hadn’t been convinced that the county’s ways were wrong and she hadn’t been against them from the beginning. That slow decent, that journey through madness to truth would have been utterly horrifying if she hadn’t started off already condemning the county’s ways. Letting the reader go on that journey with her would have made this book phenomenal. It wouldn’t necessarily have fixed the pacing, but it also wouldn’t have left me feeling like I should DNF the book within the first 50-100 pages.

Lastly, that ending? What?

Time for some spoilers!

First of all, the ending. I know it’s up in the air whether Tierney lives or dies but that bothers me. It changes the message one way or the other. If she lives she raises her daughter to truly be the one to take down the grace year and coaches Michael in their direction (not that he needs the help, but the man has nothing specific to go on). If she dies, it’s the end of a cycle that is symbolic in a way that is so very depressing but continues to drive home the message. If she dies, Grace grows up hearing of her wild soul and rebels for her or however Grace’s story then goes because in Tierney’s death, Grace’s future feels much less steadfast. As beautiful as Tierney’s dying at the end might be, I wanted so, so fucking badly to see her sneak into the outskirts to find Ryker’s mother (like, please, girl, my soul is begging).

Which brings me to Ryker. Boy howdy, did I have some feelings on that whole plot point. First of all, the second he spared her the first time I said to myself, “If he becomes a love interest here, I’m done.” The second time he saves her I thought, “This is just too unfulfilling.” The third time, when he pulls her from the ice and, understandably annoyed, heals her with the patience of a goddamn saint I knew that I loved him so freaking much as a character even if I still hated him as a love interest. Admittedly, as fast and insincere as their romance felt, they truly spent months cooped up together talking it out and it was easy to understand how they’d come by their emotions. The reader just wasn’t given that time (which is good because the pacing was already wrecked). By the end, I understood why he was made a love interest and I didn’t resent it. I didn’t resent him having to die. I just resent that it felt so hollow the whole time.

I think this is the last thing bugging me, though a week from now I might snap my fingers and remember something else: why the hell wouldn’t Tierney tell Michael about the grace year? Why make that the unbreakable vow out of so many? He’s kept ALL of her secrets up to that point, put himself on the line, proved over and over again to be a good man worth trusting who wants the same things Tierney does... he’s going out of his way to make a different basically blind. If she’d just tell him about the grace year truly and what it all meant, then maybe they wouldn’t have to wait for Grace the baby to grow up and do it all herself. If not he Tierney and Michael were on the same page, I can’t even imagine how much smoother life would have been.

I think what I’m truly mourning here is that while so many plot threads got their neat little bows (despite such an ambiguous end) Tierney and Michael truly don’t get theirs. It ends with “maybe they could be great” and “maybe they fall in love” and with Michael panicking out in the hall not knowing a damn thing. He was misguided in the beginning, giving Tierney her veil and not being forthright with his feelings (though he was right in the end for it, how lucky), but he truly cared for her and for change and all the girls and women being held hostage by the county. I want to see that change in him, not be told in a passing paragraph. I know this book is feminist to the core and it’s not about the men here, but more than anything I want to see that small change ripple out. I want to see Michael in charge making subtle differences with Tierney at his side, dammit!

Oof, I think I’m all ranted out now, so I’ll leave you with the part that nearly made me cry:

All of the pent up emotions caused by Tierney’s journey came to a head, for me at least, when she disrobed in the square and they revolted against her. It wasn’t when Michael stood up for her. It was when Gertrude did. And then Kiersten did. And then all of these women in the square who she’d been looking at all her life, but never truly seeing, revealed that small flower - a bloom of hope. The solidarity and meaning in that moment after so much had happened nearly broke me. It was such a beautifully orchestrated moment that it almost makes up for all of the small annoyances that built up over the pages.

“Your eyes are wide open, but you see nothing.”

Here’s to finally seeing when it matters most.

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mbti-notes · 4 years

Text

Anonymous asked:

Hello. How to be a well-known and well-liked person at work?

Why do you want to know? What is your underlying motivation? When you approach personal learning and development without a clear or authentic intention, you are liable to stumble badly and get unpleasant results. Your question includes a lot of confused thinking, which is a major part of the problem.

I used to think that knowledge and working hard are the only things necessary for success at work. I haven't had a career yet. but I hear from others that other factors and office politics are also involved. Good comunication and social skills, being liked by coworkers and bosses for example. There are people who join a workplace/college and after a short time, they know almost everyone and everyone knows them, trusts and loves them. Bosses like and respect them, don't want replace them, etc.

You seem to “think” a lot of things. And to what end exactly? Do you enjoy “thinking” yourself into a pit of worry? You don’t possess any meaningful experience, yet you still claim to “know” things based only on some imaginings and secondhand information. This kind of speculation is problematic, a bad cognitive habit that should be stopped, because it is counter-productive to learning and growth. You are misinterpreting the few facts that you’re hearing. Yes, it is a fact that some people are good at socializing, but what does that mean for YOU? Does it mean that you have to be just like them? Yes, good social skills are required to succeed in some work environments? But all of them? Don’t jump to conclusions so quickly. You can’t seem to tell the difference between a fact and your own faulty interpretations of the fact.

Do you believe that you can become a good footballer by listening to people talk about how to play or describe their impressions of a few matches they watched? Secondhand information is subjective and anecdotal. You take the few facts that were presented and then you stitch together an elaborate narrative of some abstract “workplace” that you believe represents ultimate reality. This is very poor reasoning. In the end, you construct a very distorted view of the world and become blinded by faulty or oversimplified beliefs about how the world works. All this before having even stepped out the door, so to speak.

While I like to have that, I don't have the energy or skills for that as an introvert. I don't know how to start a good conversation or get people to like me, trust me and open up to me. I would naturally want to get the job done and go home. I'm not really interested in people's lives. meeting with more than seven people or going somewhere crowded gives me social anxiety and sensory overload. and Idk what is ok to say/ask in convos. Idk if I should be friendly or professional with bosses, supervisors and coworkers. or what behavior is ok or too much.

If you want to learn, then learn. There are lots of resources available out there. If you don't want to learn, then don't. It's your choice to make, as it's your life to live. DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT WANT TO LEARN? I can’t help you if you are stuck in contradiction and talking out of both sides of your mouth, saying that you both want but don’t want (i.e. unaware of who you really are or what you really want). How are you ever going to get motivated when you can’t commit to any particular desire/goal/direction?

If you suffer from severe social anxiety, get professional help for it. Social skills can be learned, just like learning how to play football by actually playing it though hours of practice. If you want to learn any worthwhile skill, you must put in time and effort to study and practice repeatedly, to get better gradually - it is certainly tiring - no pain, no gain. Is feeling “tired” the end of the world? You seem to believe that it is for some strange reason, which means that you’re not willing to put in the work? If you’re not willing to work hard, that is the end of the story.

So I just stay safe, overly formal, independent and polite. I prefer to be alone. During long hours of college or socializing, I stay quiet and anxious, get headaches and feel dizzy/confused. And I'm not on any social media because I don't care about the pictures people post about family, pets, celebs. I'm also not assertive and I'm afraid of drama or ppl hurting/using me.

"Stay safe" is the key phrase. Generally speaking, an excessive desire for safety is rooted in emotional problems, often stemming from painful memories and/or traumatic experiences. Until you resolve the emotional problems that keep you stuck and resistant against venturing outside your comfort zone, you won’t be able to grow as a person. The heavier the emotional baggage you’re unconsciously dragging around, the more “tiring” the learning process is, because there are too many self-inflicted psychological obstacles holding you back.

Instead of facing up to your emotional problems, you’d rather entertain useless speculation about imaginary workplaces and people you haven’t met yet, making yourself more and more scared (in order to justify isolation)? It’s quite easy to speculate and imagine all the possible threats out there in the world. It’s hard to examine the reality of how much you fear being hurt and how the fear twists your perception of reality. You keep taking the easy road and then wonder why you never get anywhere. DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT WANT TO CHANGE? Once again, I can’t help you if you are stuck in contradiction and talking out of both sides of your mouth, saying that you both like and don’t like how you are (i.e. unaware of who you really are or what you really want). I only help people who are fully committed to change.

I already know the consequences of being the way I am.

I’d argue that you don't understand - another example of thinking that you “know” when you really don’t. You've emphasized that you prefer to be alone, which means that you LIKE the consequences - your feelings tell the true story. You don't perceive the consequences as being negative, so why would you change your behavior? If you like isolation, isolate. Why not just “be yourself” and live the life that you want? Who says that you have to be anything but what you are? Why do you even care about any of this “social” stuff (that you also claim to not care about)? Why pressure yourself to be something that you’re not? If you put the pressure on yourself, then you take it off at any time.

But “being yourself”, if you’re doing it properly, won’t lead you into an unhealthy tertiary loop, so you’re not doing it properly, are you? If you’re not ready to leave your loop, don’t. Keep pretending that you’re “staying true” to your antisocial self, keep enjoying the safety of isolation, until you can’t live in denial anymore. That’s how most people have to play out their tertiary loop.

One day, when you’ve had enough, you may realize that your desire for isolation isn’t actually “staying true” to who you are and what you want. One day, you may realize that “staying true to yourself” was just an excuse, that you don’t really know yourself at all, and that your self-image has been nothing but a twisted little ball of fear all along. In other words, right now, your idea of “being yourself” is actually just being a scared little puppy that hides from every loud noise - is this what you really are and want to be? Is there nothing more to you than fear? Do you want to spend your entire life under the spell of the irrational fears you have conjured up to protect your comfort zone?

I need your help. How can I develop interest in people? How can I have more energy to socialize? How can I gain social skills and get people to like me, trust me, open up with me and let me in? (without being fake or pushy?).

Very simple: You have to care about more than just yourself and your own safety and comfort. But this is impossible if you leave your fear unaddressed and it continues to hijack your whole mindset. When you live in fear, you are all too willing to believe that people are bad and the world is terrible (based on selective evidence gathering), only looking out for yourself and your own feelings, which, in the end, amounts to starting every relationship in an extreme state of defensiveness and self-centeredness. A person needs to know you to like you, and how would they know you when you are emotionally closed-off and obviously hostile to their advances, when all you show them is coldness? A positive relationship should be built through the connection of two open and trusting hearts. Cynicism about people or society is merely a convenient cover that allows fearful or helpless people to feel safe/superior, but only in their own mind. Living in a coffin, worrying or complaining about the outside world without ever venturing out, is surely safe emotionally. But nothing ever happens there, does it? You’ve put yourself in there because you’re scared, which means that it’s up to you to own your fear and step out anyway.

How can I maintain relationships?

By putting in the time and effort to build your social skills and learn through firsthand relationship experiences. By taking the time to care about something other than yourself. Even psychopaths manage to care about the people closest to them. Is the problem that you can’t care or that you won’t care? If it’s a problem of won’t, why won’t you?

Relationship skills aren’t something that can be summarized in one paragraph, especially if you have a lot of dysfunctional relationship habits to unlearn. I've already recommended many relevant books on the resources list. Are you a good learner? From what you’ve said, I suspect that you have trouble learning or accepting advice because you always think that you know better and/or have an excuse ready to rebut good advice? If you’re serious about learning, then devote yourself fully to studying and practicing.

How can I learn office politics? How can I make my bosses like/trust me without seeming fake?

"Office politics" is not what you believe it is - dismantle your faulty fearful beliefs. Every workplace is just a group of people, made up of various individuals, some of them not too different from you. The quality of a group depends on the quality of the individuals and what they contribute to it collectively, and this varies quite widely from group to group and the size of it. If you contribute negativity, you influence others to be negative. If you contribute positivity, you influence others to be positive. But you don’t care about how you affect others because you don’t even recognize that you have any power to affect anything due to your fear, passivity, and helplessness. All you care about is whether you get paid? Work has no other benefit or purpose besides monetary compensation?

Some of the surest signs of having poor social skills include:

mindreading: presuming to know what people think/feel with little to no evidence; grossly misinterpreting people’s intentions/behavior due to fear, insecurity, anxiety, or overactive imagination

prejudice: making blanket/overgeneralized judgments about individuals, groups, or society based on very selective “facts” or superficial characteristics; unable to treat people as individuals to be dealt with in an adaptable case-by-case basis

self-centeredness: compulsively resorting to inauthentic and/or defensive behavior to manipulate social situations for personal reward/comfort; unable to understand situations from other people’s point of view

You suffer all three problems. You are quick to assume that people have ill-intentions. You like to divide people up into these or those “kinds” of people. You only care about people in terms of whether they make you feel good/bad and inexplicably refuse to care about their perspective.

A healthy relationship should be mutually satisfying in order to establish a sense of connectedness. A healthy relationship should be mutually beneficial in order to establish a sense of equality. A healthy relationship should include mutual caring and sharing in order to establish intimacy. Why would anyone want to enter a relationship with you if you make them feel uneasy, unsatisfied, and uncared for? Would you want to enter a relationship with you? If you’re a terrible friend, you’ll feel undeserving of friendship, because, deep down, you believe that you don’t deserve any kindness for never giving any kindness to anyone. If you want good friendships, you must first be a good friend. If you’re not willing to open up emotionally to care for people, that is the end of the story.

How can I make sure people don't see me as a good target to hurt, use or gossip about?

What is the source of your paranoia? Why is your first stance towards the social world one of negativity, fear, mistrust, suspicion, attack-and-defense? If you’ve been hurt before and that’s why you’re scared, then address that problem. Serious questions: Have you ever known LOVE? Have you ever known a caring, supportive, empathetic, and intimate relationship with someone? If you haven’t, for whatever reason, then you have a lot to learn about relationships. But going around pretending that you already know how people are (out to get you) and how the social world works (to victimize you) is not going to help you learn. You won’t learn if you already presume to know.

I haven't had a job yet. but I'm honestly afraid of having a career for these reasons.

You can’t prepare for every situation in life. No amount of mental preparation is going to eliminate your fear when the fear itself is always left unaddressed. Go out into the world, live your life, learn from your experiences. That's how life goes. But you don't want to live in real life, do you? You prefer living in your own imagination, pretending to know what the world is like without proper breadth of experience?

"Afraid" is the key word. Are you really ready to confront your fear? I don't think you are yet because you are still talking about how nice it is to be safely protected by tertiary loop. No one can force you to let go of your faulty beliefs when you depend on them so much for safety. You overthink and overanalyze, speculate and imagine, turn human beings into abstractions, convince yourself that you “know” when you really don’t... all for what? It is all a defense mechanism that keeps you trapped within yourself, ruminating in circles. It's all just meant to hide the fact that you are afraid, helpless, and willfully ignorant (in twisting the facts). The solution to fear is to actively confront it. The solution to helplessness is mastering the appropriate social and emotional skills. The solution to willful ignorance is humility: let go of what you think you know so that you can finally start to learn fresh.

#social skills #people skills #social anxiety #ti loop #friendship #career #past #baggage #emotional intelligence #ask

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nny11writes · 4 years

Note

For the fic writer ask game: What’s a trope that you’d like to never hear about as long as you live, let alone write? (Feel free to rant :) )

Hahahaha, sorry were you looking for one trope?

I’m usually so positive so now you’ve done it. You’ve unlocked me complaining about random shit that doesn’t usually matter. Because the damn busted wide the fuck open! Okay, so I’m going to approach this as outside of smut fics with intense kinks I can’t stand (vore, foot fetish, scat play, etc), because that’s me getting squicked and/or triggered and not just tropes that I wish would die in a fire.

My only disclaimer up front is that if you love most of these (hopefully it’ll be obvious which ones I will not forgive/excuse you from), that’s awesome! Go for it! Read it, write it, print it out to loving re-read and paste on the walls! Fandom is, in large part, about finding your niche and enjoying what you enjoy pretty much shamelessly. So I’m not passing judgement on anyone who enjoys reading or writing (most of) these.

CW: rape, sexual assault Also I’ve had a shit few days, so if you don’t want to read someone just being negative and bitching this is probably not the post for you friend. But it all below a cut so people can avoid!

Crossover Fics/Rule 50

My main gripe with this is that without fail a series I love get crossed over with a fandom I either don’t care about or hate. Every time I’ve tried to force myself to read one it’s never worked out for me. Sometimes fics aren’t properly tagged and I’m getting into the setting only for other characters from another fandom to suddenly show up and literally I instantly loose interest. The closest I got to writing a crossover fic, was on FF.net where I had all the characters I wrote for “talking to me” when I hit a big wall of writer’s block in the hopes that writing something so different and strange for me would help. It didn’t. It was interesting for 0.2 seconds to wonder how characters would interact, but then I instantly lost interest because I end up leaning so heavily of character tropes to make it work which, for me, isn’t fun to read or write.

Like, just write fusion! I like fusion! I’m currently writing a SPOP-SW fusion! It allows me to play with characters in a fun world that I already understand, but without the frustration of characters becoming more 2D or very OOC (or both) to force them to interact with one another. Rage Fics

Honestly? If you write and post rage fics, fuck you. Full stop. Fuck you.

I’m about to tangent, but I swear it’s related. This is the equivalent of someone tagging a character or ship or fandom they hate in a post bashing them or blasting them to hell and back. Fucking beyond rude and obnoxious. That’s what rage fics are cranked up to 11. You are 100% allowed to hate on fandom/character/ship/trope/whatever the fuck, but when you do that shit you are forcing people who enjoy the media to see/interact with your BS because you fucking tagged it to show up where we are. A great example here in SPOP is Catra. I love her! I understand why some people don’t, and they’re 100% allowed to hate her and resent that so many people like her. Recently I went to the Catra tag to find art and fic, maybe some of the top notch meta this fandom puts out if I was lucky, and got stuck seeing post after post after meta post comparing her to another character in the show to explain why she’s an awful person, badly written character, and anyone who likes her (but didn’t like the poster’s fave) was an idiot/asshole/troll/bitch/dumbass and you know what? I went from having a decent time decompressing after a shitty day at work to getting fucking sent around the sun with stress. Like, bro, I’m here to ENJOY myself thanks, and when you tag things I go to for fun and fluff when I’m out of spoons and ready to snap to ranting about hating it, you make me want to scream.

Y’all don’t know how many people are lucky that I write up responses in word so I can get it out of my system and then just DELETE the whole fucking thing. Rage fic is that same fucking set up, but instead of being a relatively quick post (where I can block the poster here on tumblr), it’s a fanfic that people are going to continue to click into over and over and over again for fun only to get body slammed. There’s no way to warn people on AO3 if something is a rage fic beyond not leaving a kudos and dropping a comment. I don’t know a lot of people who read comments first so it doesn’t always work.

If you post rage fics, grow up. Stop that shit. Fuck you. Instead, try not purposefully interacting with fandom that makes you so mad that you think doing this is an appropriate reaction. Block tags, block users, regulate comments, go whole fucking hog. You should be able to enjoy fandom too! But if you can’t do that without tearing down other people in fandom then you make me want to beat you over the head until you self-isolate to play by yourself in a different sandbox. Seriously. Fuck you if you do this.

Troll Fics

Did you think I came on strong for rage fics? This is worse.

If you do this? Fuck you. You get NOTHING but my pure rage and if I find this shit I will report you however I can and then shout from the rooftops about it. And I’m sure if you do write troll fics because you enjoy being purposefully offensive and triggering then you’re probably delighted that my reaction to just thinking about this is wishing I had the power to fuck up your life.

Like, the ONLY thing I can say for rage fic is that at least typically the person writing it actually enjoys some aspect of the fandom or fandom in general.

Troll fics are just meant to be offensive on purpose and if you write and post that you’re a bad person. No exceptions. You can make different choices and work to become a better person or a good person, but right now, right this second as you do it? You’re a bad person. You should probably figure out why you get so much joy out of posting things with the sole purpose of hurting/triggering/being cruel to others. And you might need help to do that. I legit think you should reach out to people with different opinions from your own to try and break out of it. Get a therapist. Do fucking something worthwhile, because posting troll fics is not worth anyone’s while. Fuck you. Rape as a Backstory

I hope I don’t have to fucking explain why this makes me want to literally explode. I’m purposefully not writing that as R*pe so that people with rape tagged don’t see this.

If you think that rape is the only way to push your story forward or is a great way to give a character “free and easy trauma”, literally stop. Just. Fucking. Stop. There are other ways. Really look at your work, really think about /why/ it’s so important to you that the character /has/ to be raped. Most of the time the real answer is you don’t have a reason you just chose it because you either don’t care, think it’s not a big deal, or never considered other possibilities. There are stories where rape does need to be included, stories that address the topic kindly and/or tag appropriately for it. I’ve read some of these that were really amazing, both short (<1k) and long (>100k) because the author actually took a hot second to address the topic in an intelligent way. Whether that was to dive into how it’s harmful, address their own trauma, or (honestly) even for the smut porn of it but with all the proper tags on it. If you have it to be purely enjoyed by yourself and/or others with dubcon or noncon kinks, cool, good for you, TAG IT APPROPRIATELY. Fucking bless writers who still use “Dead Dove/Do Not Eat” tags y’all are doing great work. But the vast majority using this trope?

They aren’t that, they aren’t anything like that at all, they aren’t always tagged correctly or at all and that’s by design, it’s often for shock value or a quick ‘well that’s why they’re anti-social’, it’s sometimes used as an excuse for one character to swear off sex until the “right person” comes along to “cure them”, and they shouldn’t have ever been posted.

Redemption Equals Sex/Sexual Karma

I know this is spring boarding a bit, but please stop writing these two tropes.

I’m exhausted y’all. And not just because I’m asexual. This trope is disgusting and usually comes with heaps of sexism, racism, and homophobia. If you want to write smut please just write the fucking smut. I’m literally posting smut fic and am planning to work on another one tonight! JUST WRITE SMUT WITHOUT MAKING IT DISGUSTINGLY ANTI-MINORITY GROUPS AND PLAYING INTO HARMFUL STEREOTYPES. If bad guys become good(ish) guys because a woman saw past their barriers, took care of them, are a surrogate mother, and then had wild and kinky sex with them then it’s a bad fic. Likewise, if a character is punished for having sex, or is sexually assaulted to show that they’re now bad then it’s a bad fic.

If a character’s suffering is rewarded with sex to “cure” them and “make them better” then it’s a bad fic.

There are so many ways that this shit becomes a seriously harmful fic.

Please. Please, stop doing this. I am on my knees. Stop!

I am sick of ‘Draco’s in Leather Pants’ (can’t fucking believe I’m whipping that term out again holy shit what year is it) getting redeemed because they slept with someone and now found a reason to care. Sex leading someone on the path towards redemption is so EXTREMELY rarely handled in a way that’s well done. Just. Don’t. Be an unapologetic villain lover, slap them in an AU where they aren’t a pure villain, but don’t do this. Like I wrote above, I’m also just sick of (usually, but not always) dudes who put rape in to punish (usually, but not always) female characters or to punish weak/pushover characters (usually, but not always males). And equally tired of traumatized characters “casting off their shackles” to enjoy wild and kinky sex because someone with a magic dick/strap/fingers/tongue “showed them it’s okay” and “made it all better”.

Just, don’t. Be a fucking decent human being and don’t.

Character/Reader Fics

I...I really just don’t get this? It’s very uncomfortable to me and I’m assuming that’s due to me being aroace, I can’t read them and if I try to I either become so uncomfortable I stop or so rage filled I stop.

I don’t mind 2nd person stories, but most of the ones I see are character/reader fics and it’s...like, it’s just bad. Not “cringe” just enjoyable for me. I can’t explain why I hate this so much considering I do enjoy some 2nd person fics. Idk, I really don’t have the words to explain why these bother me so much. :\

I ain’t got an alternative, if you like these you like them, and if you don’t you just don’t. Thank you for tagging so I can avoid. Have fun on your own! Song Fics and/or Audio/Sound Cue Fics

Sorry guys, I just hate it. I can’t really read a fic and listen to music at the same time, it becomes background noise 100% and detracts from both for audio cue fics.

Fuck, just realized I don’t know if people know what those are. Audio/Sound cue fics are fics where you’re reading along and all the sudden there’s a link or URL that you’re supposed to follow to help set up the next scene/enhance it. Hate it. Hate, hate, hate. It detracts from your story and makes it weaker while being annoying and breaking me the reader out of my enjoyment of your story. Hate! Telling me in the A/N that this (or these) are the song(s) you listened to while writing, song(s) you based the story on, or even that you think they’re good songs to get you in the mood for the story is totally okay! I’ll probably ignore it unless I went head over heels for it, in which case I WILL go back and listen to all of them. (Why hello Rhythm and Blues, you punched me in the face and I now listen to every song even vaguely mentioned in the story or A/N, you’re that good, it’s so fucking good guys, I can’t stop talking about this fucking series it’s just so good?????????) Song fics are also typically in this boat for me. And I want to be really clear, not fics where a character is singing in the fic with lyrics written out. That doesn’t bother me, that song is now effectively part of the story and draws me in. But if it’s paragraphs of description before suddenly cutting it’s annoying. Why, oh why, do I put up with this misery? Still looking for a reason For now it is a mystery to me Why, oh why, do I put up with this misery? Still looking for a reason But for now it's ancient history to me

So yeah I’m making an example to complain about the example.

But question.

Was that needed?

All I did was make overly explicit my feelings in this text that was already there in what I’d written. Song fics feel to me like writers who aren’t confident that their writing is good/understandable/relatable and so they are desperately throwing someone else’s creation into their own in the hopes the reader will get it. Friend, I promise you, we’ll get it without the song! The song lyrics detract when they’re just floating out there, and have taken goods fics and made them frustrating. Either that or you think you’re so amazing that your shit don’t stink and the rest of us idiots can choke because of your brilliance. I’ve found several song fics that if I copy and paste them into a word document and delete the song out, I really enjoyed the fic itself on it’s own merits in a way I literally couldn’t with the lyrics in there. Again, if you are weaving music into your fic, weave it in. Have characters sing, write the lyrics out as a character is listening to the music, quote the song in your fic (preferably without it being super obvious. I’m not saying my take on that was the best, but I did write a Catradora fic on giftly request based on a song and I 100% used lyrics from it in my prose and built my whole plot around it without breaking out to quote the song explicitly), just do something that’s not, like, punching me in the face because “clearly I couldn’t get it” or from a fear that “they won’t understand”. At best you seem insecure and unsure about your story, which is fantastic without the song. At worst it seems like you’re saying your fic is so beyond the average reader that we would never understand your vision without someone else’s original content in it.

#cw: rape #tw: rape #negativity #fandom #fandom negativity #me actually complaining about shit explicitly #and I still edited it a lot to make it not rage ranty #my anxiety won't let me live if I don't #about the author #tag game #writing game #writer game #fic game #fanfiction game #oh my god Imma post now otherwise I'm going to dive back in and scream A LOT MORE BECAUSE MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM #bobkitten

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