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kitkatopinions · 29 days

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When people talk about how "rwde is mad that RWBY subverts expectations" I wonder how much of what's considered subverting expectations is actually ignoring set up, doing things out of nowhere, and actually doing a popular and very much so expected thing.

Like don't get me wrong, I do think sometimes people have ideas for what RWBY should've been and then think that it was more set up then it actually was. Like, people who took Blake saying she grew up outside the kingdoms and had to learn to fight to mean "I am an orphan and spent my whole life on the streets" that then got mad when Blake had pretty big house and parents. I might agree that RWBY perhaps shouldn't have given Blake the privileges they gave her specifically because of how they decided to use her to tell the other Faunus to stop being mean to their oppressors (though I'd sooner throw that part out than get rid of Blake being the daughter of a leader with a big house,) but I don't think it was pulling the rug out from under people the way some people do.

However, then you have things like Adam, where some people in RWDE are saying "he was set up as this interesting character who would be an ideological foil for Blake that cared about the cause and his people, and it felt like he'd be used as a way to talk about the injustice in the world of Remnant and then was reduced to nothing but a girl-obsessed hate sink two dimensional incel" and some anti-rwde people are hitting back with "you're just upset that the edgy bad-boy isn't getting redeemed, you just wanted Adam to be Zuko, but RWBY subverted your expectations by not redeeming him and instead giving Ilia the redemption arc, and giving Blake and Yang the sympathy."

And there's a lot to unpack, there. Including the fact that redemption arcs and sympathy aren't a zero-sum game in fiction and as someone who loves both redemption arcs and when characters get justified sympathy, it's frustrating when people act like there isn't enough redemption to go around as if it's a pie and Adam getting a piece of it means Ilia doesn't get any.

But more to the point, A. I at least have zero interest in Adam being a Zuko, because so much of Zuko's redemption arc hinged on Zuko confronting his and his people's role in oppression. Adam is oppressed. Zuko was scarred by an abusive father and banished from home, Adam was branded like cattle by a supremacist who he was working for as a child laborer. Although both are incredibly sympathetic, they're incredibly different. Whether or not the writers were trying to harken back to Zuko (which I believe they were,) they seemed to completely miss the differences between the two characters, and also deciding to 'subvert expectations' when the circumstances they themselves wrote were so different is a bad look at best. As if they couldn't have 'subverted expectations' with a different character like Cardin or Jacques or even Roman Torchwick, that wasn't a member of their in-universe oppressed minority group.

B. A member of an oppressed people group that's been hurt by the oppressors of the world and yet spends their time committing horrible cruel acts that force the heroes to stand against them is not some never before heard of thing. In fact, it's very common. A revolutionary supposedly fighting for equality that's actually hurting the people he's supposedly fighting for is a pretty regular every day thing. People have literally been criticizing how it's misused and usually racist propaganda (usually written by white people) since long before RWBY was even concepted. Adam isn't a proper subversion of anything, in my opinion, because you can't do the common thing and then say you subverted expectations by not doing the less common thing. Which in this case, the less common thing would actually be to make the oppressed person who had been branded and was shown fighting for the rights of his people to actually be a nuanced and complicated character who does deserve sympathy and could be redeemed.

C. It might just be me, but if you're going to 'subvert expectations' then the thing you write instead of the expectation had better be pretty freaking good. Because sometimes the expectation is there because it just works well. Like in a group of heroes, you expect them to develop a friendship. If people want to subvert expectations by instead having them hate each other, the story better be golden because the reason people tend to expect friendship is that it's usually much easier to connect to character dynamics when they actually like each other. If you're going to write a story where hope is a central theme, but you want to subvert expectations by making a sympathetic and cool character with a personal connection to the mains look like they're gonna get redeemed but then instead make them just the worst person imaginable, then you better do it super well and make him instead a great well-rounded nuanced and fun to hate villain. So not only do we have to pay attention to why the writers shouldn't have gone that route for Adam, we gotta look at the quality of what they did with it, and... Nope. It sucked. Adam was paper thin and horribly voice acted and honestly if he'd never attacked in V6 nothing would've really changed because it had no real consequences that couldn't have been better achieved in a different way, and introducing his branding scar in the same scene he got stabbed was purely for shock value, and nothing came of his character, and idk if Ruby ever even learned his name on screen or Weiss knew anything about him, and it was so badly done. If you're going to 'subvert expectations,' you gotta do it well, or people are always going to want the thing they expected in the beginning instead. Unfortunately, the RWBY writers didn't write Adam well at all. So I for one can't blame anyone for saying 'honestly, I wish they'd gone with the other thing.'

D. Back to 'sometimes when people say subverting expectations, they really mean ignored set up.' With Adam in particular, I do believe that he was always meant to be a bad guy who did bad cruel things from the very first trailer he appeared in, but that doesn't at all mean that set up wasn't ignored. From Blake talking about him as a mentor, to her crediting him with the Grimm masks, to the ideological differences, to Cinder literally having to threaten and coerce him into working with her on screen, the set up indicated that at the very least, this would be a complicated and nuanced 'villain with a point' and that point was going to matter and be addressed. The set up was that Cinder's coercion was going to be addressed and would matter. The set up was that Blake's complicated feelings about Adam and her desire to help her people and her later established care and compassion for Ilia (who may I remind people is at least just as bad as seasons 1-3 Adam in at least attempt if not execution,) would lead somewhere when it came to Adam. The set up was that seeing a child laborer literally branded on the face with the logo of WEISS'S COMPANY would lead to big discussions and some sort of recognition of just how bad the current system is and how bad the SDC itself as always been. And instead Weiss as far as we know never even heard about it and continued on being angry that she wasn't set to be CEO and calling her grandfather a hero and Blake was completely disinterested in attending a rally against Jacques Schnee and teased Weiss about her family owning half of Atlas. Like ???

E. Doing things out of nowhere is also not subverting expectations. In regards to Adam, this looks like randomly making him totally obsessed with Blake enough that he stalks her for weeks when he literally let her go repeatedly before that. Doing things out of nowhere is making Adam not care an ounce about his people in order to do whatever Salem says when we saw him reject Cinder outright and need to be coerced with threats to his people. Those aren't subverting expectations, that's just doing one thing and then retconning the character to do something out of character.

This post turned out to be mostly about Adam, but there's tons of examples of this, like people saying RWDE are mad that the writers 'subverted expectations' by making Ironwood turn evil when we were sitting there like 'the fact that he wasn't evil was subverting expectations in the first place! And they had to throw V3 out the window to get where they were in V8! And it was super badly done!' People just throw around 'subverting expectations' when it comes to RWBY because it sounds a lot better than 'flying by the seats of their pants doing whatever pops into their heads with no care or consideration towards set-up or emotional pay off' but that's it, that's what the RWBY writers seem to do. When I expect something to happen in RWBY, it's because it's the natural thing that makes sense to happen, and in their supposed effort to 'subvert expectations,' the writers instead made a show with no consequences where you can't expect the writers to make anything that happens matter and you can't trust what's in the show because the writers might say sike and retcon it. It's endlessly frustrating to be like 'hey was any of what was in the show going to matter' and then have people say 'you're just mad because RWBY subverted your expectations.' RWBY subverted my expectation that the show would be good, how about that?

You know, if the show actually was interested in subverting expectations, Jaune wouldn't be in the show nearly as much and he'd be more gender-non-conforming and be a support healer role instead of the man now with like twenty years of experience on the mains who always has his trauma get plenty of focus and gets away with screaming in Ruby's face that she's responsible for all bad things while he mourns the three different women that were shoved in the fridge for the sake of his character development. They could've started with making the white straight cis able-bodied not-faunus man actually not be a basic underdog-protagonist turned Michael-Scarn-esque tragic hero that Weiss lusts after, but whoops. Like what am I supposed to think, that they're super interested in subverting expectations for the sake of women when Jaune is right there guzzling up screen time? Nah babes.

(Before someone comes in here talking about Adam-obsessed fan boys, I do not even like Adam, canon Adam is not only gross but far too two-dimensional for me to even enjoy, and my own ideas for rewrites involve me boiling Adam down to a concept and building him up again as if he was a different character as much 'Adam' as Ruby is Red Riding Hood. Nobody accuse me of being an Adam-obsessed dudebro or I will lose it. Because that's another thing that a lot of anti-RWDE people seem to do, is decide that the only reason anyone would ever talk about problems with Adam is because they're an obsessed incel man. And meanwhile I'm over here as a bi-women who dislikes Adam partially because he reminds me of my controlling 'my happiness is your responsibility' ex-boyfriend who we - long story - thought might've stabbed someone with a sword once. So yeah, not an Adam fanboy lol.)

#rwde

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notexactlyrocketscience · 4 months

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Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood: a critically kind review from a femme acespec physicist <3

> scroll to the next section for my review on the physics academia content in this book!

First, a quick romance novel review!

spoiler: it wasn’t my favorite but I gave it a ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75 because being a writer has made me a generally more appreciative reader + I am so starved of woman in physics rep.

the good

It just felt good to read about a woman physicist, who are still incredibly underrepresented in fiction, especially as protagonists. (I’ll go off about that in a minute.)

The romance is so swoony with shoujo manga vibes, I haven’t read straight M/F adult romance novels in a while and I just loved the flutteriness of it.

A couple of chapters were so soft with excellent pillowtalk. There was something about the ambience of the snow, the hypnotic sadness of failure, the prescence of a comforting person.

I enjoyed identifying the relatable parts about physics academia. Hazelwood clearly did a lot of research, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It definitely kept me reading!

the bad

The academia issues are so over-simplified it’s almost juvenile. For an adult novel, even one marketed as a romcom, I expect more nuance, more explanations, more explicit lingering in tight positions.

And then the romance tries to be complex (and has a lot of potential!) but not a lot of conflict really happens.

A fictional physics fued between theorists and experimentalists is a really fun (and actually not far off) concept, but I would have expected some things to be the other way around. (More on that later!)

Okay this is personal but the main couple both have terrible taste in movies. Twilight vs white male rage movies??? There is no lesser evil here

Elsie’s hardships aren’t put in a very serious light. Her diabetes and lack of access to health insurance is used as a plot device to engineer romantic momentum between the characters and/or comic relief.

Just overall, the book tried so hard to remain “light” that I think it fails to garner depth. Because adult lives really aren’t that light all the time, and a book can bring relaxation and joy whilst including real worldly negative experiences.

There were aroace and sapphic side characters, but I wanted so bad for Elsie to be demisexual. It's set up so perfectly only for it to be averted—As a demisexual person myself, Elsie’s feelings about attraction felt acutely familiar to me, and every other reader I've spoken to has agreed that the book took a dissapointing and unexpected turn. I understand Hazelwood may not feel equipped to write queer protagonists but if I were her editor, I would have flagged that and recommended she make it canon. It would have added so much more context and dimension to Elsie, and would’ve put hetero demisexuals on the map. </3

Following up on the above: The smut tries so hard to be meaningful but it ... really is icky, stereotypical, unrealistic allocishetero stuff. Think: the shy inexperienced girl vs the man who knows exactly how to advise her. The characters try to subvert the trope by calling it out, but it feels performative because all is forgotten in the next second. The PiV sex is weirdly conventionally idealistic considering the pairing’s size difference. I’m picky about smut but also forgiving when I do like the dynamic. I just didn’t here.

Following up once again: I was ready to ignore all the repetitive comments about how sexy Jack’s height and muscles were, because sure, I guess Elsie has a type. But the sex scenes solidified the redundancy of it all. I've read this same dynamic in countless smutty heteronormative M/F paperbacks. And I have also been made aware by every Hazelwood reader that all her books focus on this kind of physical build pairing. I just want more diversity, you know?

IDK, I just wanted more physics in here than complaining about teaching, glossed over toxic mentors, and using some quirky physics term in every other sentence. (More on that below!)

I just wanted ... more? It’s not an extremely short novel, but both the plot and the character development fell flat. The ups and downs were too fast and easy, and the placement felt off. I finished the book and wondered, “That’s it? That’s all that happened?” It just wasn’t fulfilling. The side characters aren't expanded upon, and don’t get enough pagetime. My other romance reads this year were Bellefleur's The Fiancee Farce and Mcquiston’s One Last Stop. In both of those novels, the drama was fleshed out with so much care and detail. In comparison, Love, Theoretically may mention similar social difficulties in passing, but failed to really, really show us.

Overall ... the novel was fun for being about physicists but I really don’t see myself picking up another Hazelwood book, especially considering this isn’t even a debut novel. The conventional white steminist vibe and the particular allocishetero M/F dynamic just isn’t my thing.

But perhaps a reader wanting more of a novel and its characters is a good problem to have. Never say never, I guess! I look forward to keeping tabs on what Hazelwood publishes in the future!

Now, onto the physics!

First, most physicists, as good scientists, understand that theory and experimentation are fundamentally linked. It’s true that we each are often biased towards our own methods of research, but it is quite a stretch to imagine full professors so blatantly feud against others solely because of theory vs experimentation. Regardless, I was happy to suspend my disbelief for the sake of the plot that was framed in a genre-specific, lighthearted, humorous way.

Secondly, both theory and experimentation have sources of funding that are motivated in different ways, and Hazelwood's decision to have the theorists struggle with funding cuts due to declining interest in pop culture/the general public is actually quite credible. Experimentation garners a lot more interest from the application and engineering end of society, parts that are easily fueled by capitalism.

However, I think experimentalists in general are far less likely to be mean to theorists than the reverse scenario. Dr Fatima Abdurrahman has a great video essay about that called on her YouTube channel called “Quantum Physics, Feminism, and Objective Reality: What Physicists Don’t Want You to Know About Quantum Mechanics.” Dr Fatima outlines how old white men in physics have maintained this image of unwavering scientific objectivity in the name of rigor, despite studying a field that fundamentally is barely fathomable for humans. In simpler terms: Men, even in theory, pretend to be better, smarter, and more valid as physicists despite being in an infamously iffy field. And I would have liked to see that represented. It was just really hard for me to buy narcissistic grad students mansplaining Elsie about her field, and Elsie’s righteous feminine rage, when the field in question is … physics theory? It just didn’t make sense to me, when all of my personal experiences point to the opposite.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and having a woman theorist in a physics field that’s less popsci-oriented is actually … really cool. And having her love interest be a man in experimentation … sort of subverts gender roles and conventional media expectations.

Let me explain. The reality is that when women are represented in STEM, media prefers to put them in biology, like a nurse to a doctor, a people-oriented nurturer, a mere sidekick to the real “objective” scientist—often a mathematician or an astrophysicist who is always a man. And when women are placed in physics, they are automatically assigned to observational astronomy, which is dismissed as passive and easy. (This is wildly untrue—though styles of research in astronomy has interestingly allowed a somewhat more diverse array of researchers in history. Even today, you’ll see a higher frequency of women and queer people in every astronomy department.)

I think my ideal version of this novel would be retaining Elsie in theory, while also making theorists the overall bad guys in the feud. I would love to have her talk about the unique sexism she faces as a theorist. I would kill for a scene in which Jack gets gobsmacked by how fucking good at math she really is, compared to him (instead of, like, only making fun of it like it’s easy). I would love to read about her getting a tour of his lab, and just more physics content. But maybe I’m the only one saying that, because I’m a physicist. Maybe Hazelwood simplified it all to keep the book appealing to the general masses.

Still, it all read more like a girlpower!!! chant rather than a real commitment to represent a woman in STEM. I savored every moment Elsie or George would go off about physics. I loved Elsie’s conversations with Olive, a different STEM academic. (Monica was more complicated and actually quite interesting, and I wish we could have seen more of her. Heck, I wish we had actually been given any tangible info about Jack’s mom, even.) But I genuinely felt these instances were rare. Elsie referred to being a physicist a lot (and frankly, her mind is more physics-y than any IRL physicist considering the sheer number of physics-inspired figures of speech she uses … but I excused that as silly comic relief, a quirk in Hazelwood’s writing style). But she didn’t tangibly do physics on page. It was disappointing, considering women characters in STEM is what Hazelwood is known for.

And there are physicists who love teaching—even physicists who solely want to teach. Physicists who do pedagogy research. I know the book was mainly trying to criticise the adjunctification and dismissal of physics higher education, and it’s actually quite accurate in representing that most physicists in academia would prefer not to teach. But the excecution also ends up erasing physicists who aren’t in academia just for research. And I say this especially because the validity of teaching physicists as physicists is dismissed in real life. It’s used as justification to further force all physics academics to try to juggle between both research and teaching, whether they want to or not.

Which leads us to bad mentors. I’ve had a bunch of those. As Olive pointed out in an excellent quote, “Academia is so hierarchical, you know? There are all these people who have power over you, who are supposed to guide you and help you become the best possible scientist, but . . . sometimes they don’t know what’s best. Sometimes they don’t care. Sometimes they have their own agenda. […] Sometimes they’re total shitbuckets who deserve to step on a pitchfork and die.” And the thing is, the novel really doesn’t show us any of that (perhaps other than in Monica). We don’t fully get to know what happened to Jack’s mom, or Olive. We are not shown what Dr L’s agenda really was. Their final confrontation was so quick, when in reality shitty mentors are often sticky and entwined with your work, hard to cut off and scarier to talk back to even after you’ve finally realized they’re toxic.

Which isn’t to say the novel is just inadequate about everything. It’s correct in how goofy physics faculty are, and how white man-dominated the field is, how students try to mansplain women profs, how theorists madly work on their computers (as an experimentalist, I could never understand), how publishing is finicky (to put it kindly), and how tenured faculty fail to understand the reality of the job market in academia today. There are certain parts (like the quote above!) where I felt incredibly seen as part of a minoritized identity group in STEM academia. It’s rare to have a book written from this PoV, and as a first I think this novel will always be special for me!

If you’re interested in reading about more fictional women physicists, I would highly recommend skimming through this list I made on GoodReads (and feel free to add more!).

And if you’d like to support memoirs and science communication books by IRL women physicists, then look to further than this other list I’ve also made. (We’re actually currently seeing a boom in these which is inanely exciting to me, so again, contributions are always welcome!)

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phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing · 2 months

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seen quite a bit of negativity about part 2 on tumblr so I wanted to ramble a bit about the things I liked. I like the inter-character dynamics between the five we have, theres a lot of good banter and I *love* the rapport sena and songque have. Calling each other "Grandma Songque" and "Auntie Sena" afs;lff. I cant wait to see the way things develop and how the gang grows as characters, so far the game keeps subverting my expectations in a good way, especially with how dreamseeker is to a large extent their own person with a clear personality. She reminds me of fu hua. Also: screaming about vita. One gripe I had with part 1 combat was it often felt like switching to supports and doing their rotations was a chore I needed to do in order to actually use my dps. The new trio feel like each of them individually is fun and important *and* their combos flow into each other pretty well. Not as well as apho 1, but speaking of apho I always liked its combat style and its good to see parts of it in part 2. The way the resonator marks work is also a pretty fun concept I havent seen before. I was a fan of the arc city arcs and having the central hub be an urban area seems like its got a lot of potential, I like the depth of the worldbuilding theyre doing for mars and. took the various readables we got explaining the calendar and made them into an actual calendar for the current in game year. Lots of fun stuff to crunch on. Okay this is getting long so Imma stop for now but just. Im playing honkai full time for the first time in over a year thanks to part 2 and Im having fun!

Good post! I agree the negativity is a bit of a bummer.... hard to like something too if you start with negative expectations, you'll just be nitpicking instead of having fun

New part of the chapter tomorrow, right? :D

#asks #honkai impact #hi3 #part 2

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lovecanbesostrange · 7 months

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hello! i've been sent here to ask about werewolf hunters, which i'm hoping will hurt me so good

I know who sent you, anon. XD So I'm not even gonna pretend I have no clue what's going on.

Let me take the obligatory deep breath for a scream about how OUaT introduced an actual werewolf hunter in S6. (Okay, yes, it was The Woodcutter, a bounty hunter, who oh so happens to specialize in werewolves. HALLO??) And then, I guess because of scheduling conflicts, had to swap Red for Blue by Snow's side. And I was, no, we were all robbed of that image of Red fighting somebody who would have not just taken the bounty on Snow's head, but gladly taken her hide. What a waste... Heartless is a fun episode, I even like how Snow and Charming accidentally meet without knowing and then end up with this extra fun sleeping curse...

Anyway, yes, well werewolf hunters. Totally a thing that does canonically excist in the EF. Back in Red-Handed Granny just said that a hunting party killed Anita. Which we know was a lie anyway, but makes you wonder how many specialists might be running around. Something OUaT loves are cliches, which I think is very fine. You want some familiarity, so subverting packs a punch. And what could be more cliche than to have one possible story in your head where Red's father is a werewolf hunter? Make him the Romeo to Anita's Juliet. Make it terrible and tragic. Make that a reason why Anita hates humans even more. Because the one dude she fell for was born into a family of hunters, who kill her kind. With righteousness and thinking they are saving lives, not destroying them.

Think about this image of a young Anita falling in love with a raggedy handsome boy. And they just don't know. The father yes, I have named him Roger in the one WIP in my docs running with this concept, ssshhhh is on his own for a bit, away from the family, as is tradition. To learn about the world, witness beauty (he has to protect) and cruelty (he is fighting against).

It's time to ask more about werewolf lore. Is there a difference between made-wolves (Granny) vs born ones (Red)? Does the wolfness fade for everybody? Why would Granny think Red might not have it (possible difference: a human father, unlike Anita)? Tell me more about silver to use against wolves. Did Anita have more extended family? What happened to Granny's husband? (Also omg Granny deserved an ep of her own to untangle that mess how she ended up marrying the guy who killed her brothers... dark much?!)

With the last, make the death of Anita's father hurt. Bring in those hunters. Show me how Granny took Red from Anita and managed to vanish. Leave Anita brokenhearted, bitter, filled with rage. And show me Red's father being a werewolf hunter with some regret and questions, but also consumed by anger in the end. MAKE IT TRAGIC! Show me how a wolf loving a human ends in tragedy and is no option. There's a reason it's funny that Dorothy points her crossbow at Ruby first thing, yesyes. She likes to hunt, too.

Look - werewolf hunters = POSSIBILITIES! Not all huntsman like wolves the way Graham did. A minute of silence for the man, please.

#OUaT #Ruby Lucas #we deserved a better look at werewolves #also rule number one: always ignore the super speed - yes to strength and heightened senses 100% no to super speed #I mean being a bit faster is fine but I bet this is why the writers realized they made a mistake and stepped away from having Ruby around #superspeed is worse than having all your antagonists have the power to teleport (which is often conveniently not used)#and there needed to be another use of silver not just Granny's arrow... ohohohoho more monster episodes!!#anon ask

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wondereads · 9 months

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Weekly Reading Update (07/24/23)

Reviews and thoughts under the cut

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang (10/10)

This book is pretty much perfect. The plot is engaging, the characters are all amazing, the writing style hits hard, and there’s really good social commentary that touches on, honestly, almost every issue out there. Rin has got to be one of my favorite protagonists of all time; she’s the underdog, she’s easy to root for, and our desire for her to succeed almost makes us overlook her glaring flaws. Kuang establishes Rin’s overwhelming need to succeed, to win, to be the last one standing from the very beginning, and it leads to her slow but steady downfall as she must decide how far she is willing to go for the sake of her nation. Rin’s time in Sinegard is an interesting and unique twist on the fantasy school setting, and the tone switch between the time at Sinegard and the time at war is done masterfully. Even the war takes an incredibly dark turn, goes farther than the reader would ever expect, as Kuang draws from real history to write horrors that should’ve been beyond anyone’s imagination. Perhaps the most technically amazing part of this book is that even when she has fallen so far, part of us agrees with Rin; which is the danger of it all, isn’t it?

Neverseen by Shannon Messenger (8/10)

I have now officially reread all of the KotLC books I got through previously. Going into Lodestar will be uncharted territory for me, and wow am I glad I refreshed my memory. I forgot a lot of stuff, so it was almost like I was reading it for the first time. Like I predicted, this was a slower one, mostly filled with finding out more about the Black Swan and the Council, and there was a lot of Sophie and her friends wanting to do things that were "too dangerous." I won't lie, it dragged a bit, but it really picked up once Sophie started attending Exilium. I think the twins are a much-needed addition to the main cast to help shake things up and keep the dynamic from getting too worn out. Also, Calla is a particularly strong side character. While I could predict the broad strokes of the story, the actual method of getting there took me by surprise, and there's a huge twist at the end that totally restructures how the rest of the series is going to look. I'm very excited to start Lodestar!

Half Upon a Time by James Riley (8/10)

I loved this series as a kid, and rereading it was like returning home. It's actually so funny that this book has tons of tropes I love today just in a middle grade format. There's a pretty good level of intricacy to the plot, and the fairy tale elements are tons of fun. There are plenty of familiar characters that each have a unique twist to their story, often intertwining their stories with each other. For example, the Huntsman from Snow White is also the woodcutter/hunter from Little Red Riding Hood. This book also has a fun twist by being from the perspective of the character who guides someone who has fallen into another world. In most other books, May would be the main character, so having Jack tell the story subverts some expectations. The way Jack, May, and Philip interact is a little typical for the genre and time period, though I appreciate that it is heavily implied that Philip has no romantic interest in May. Finally, Jack's mysterious involvement with the Eye and his sword is one of my favorite parts of the book, and it's a pretty fresh concept.

The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent (CR, 20%)

I've barely progressed on this one, but I did make it to the end of the first trial, and I like how it was executed. Despite being a physically-based trial, there's a twist that allows Oraya to succeed through her wits, which makes infinitely more sense when she's up against vampires and demons. It also helps that Raihn is obviously gunning for an alliance with her, so he's more inclined to help her out. About the alliance, why Raihn specifically wants to team with Oraya is a pretty good one and honestly a more logical decision than I expected. However, Oraya turning him down made no sense to me. She's gonna have to team up with someone eventually, and Raihn seems like the lesser evil by far.

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor (CR, 3%)

I've only just barely started this book, but I'm excited! I'm reading it with some friends, and the beginning seems quite interesting. I'll have some more in-depth thoughts next week once I've progressed more.

#books #reading update #the poppy war #r f kuang #neverseen #kotlc #half upon a time #the serpent and the wings of night #strange the dreamer

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briannas-casebook · 1 year

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Storytelling Script To Screen: EVALUATION

For my project, Storytelling: Script to Screen, I was tasked with coming up with a story for an animated short film, pitching a synopsis with concept art to my peers, writing a screenplay/script and creating a 90 second animatic of my story.

I first started by doing research into different philosophies of storytelling and the different types of story structure in order to get a good idea on how to make a well-structured story for a short film. Looking to creators like Andrew Stanton and his rules of storytelling, and Dan Harmon’s story circle – a narrative structure formula created by Harmon loosely paralleling Joseph Campell’s theory of The Hero’s Journey. I analysed several animated short films, taking note of how they fit into or, in some cases, subverted the steps of structures like Harmon’s story wheel, what that said about the types of stories being told, and how I could apply these types of rules to my own story.

With these theories in mind, I brainstormed possible ideas. After collaboratively brainstorming with my classmates and on my own - based on the prompts unrequited love, mysterious portal, obsession, and heist, I eventually came up with two ideas: a short where a bird becomes attached to a snail who she mistakes for one of her own eggs, and a plot where an activist breaks into an animal testing lab and discovers something sinister. After writing a synopsis and artwork for both, I pitched my ideas to my class and received their feedback which was more favorable for the serpent synopsis. I ultimately agreed and chose the second idea, as I felt the story had more potential for interesting visuals and would convey a message I felt more connected to.

I then made a second draft of my synopsis that refined some details and cut down the length significantly. That way it could fit into a shorter runtime for my animatic short film.

After this, I used the synopsis as the basis of a script which I wrote on the script writing website Celtex. I then edited and redrafted the original script and created a final script in which I added more location detail and refined its format.

With this script in hand, I set about drawing some concept art for the two main characters; Sam the activist, and the Uktena serpent Sam frees from the water company lab. I also drew concepts for maps of the film’s locations, such as the interior of the lab, some thumbnail sketches for storyboard shot compositions, and created a Pinterest board to gather reference material for inspiration. I also studied material such as Peter Loomis’s book ‘Figure Drawing for All Its Worth’, as reference for figure drawing and drawing multiple figures in a 3d plain with two-point perspective.

For the animatic, I used the storyboarding program Storyboarder on my laptop whilst using my iPad (connected to my laptop) as a drawing tablet using the app Astropad Studio. The storyboarding process was going well as I drew each shot. But at some point, the program crashed, and I lost a few drawings, even though I was saving frequently, and the program was supposed to save things automatically. So, to prevent these shots being lost, I started screenshotting each shot and saving them to a folder.

Once the animatic was completed, I took all the clips and screenshots and put them all together in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Some clips and frames did not fit into the 16:9 aspect ratio. So I selected the clips, set the frame to fit to scale and the image fit the screen.

I also sought out sound effects on Pixabay (royalty-free sounds/music site) and edited these into my film.

Originally, the animatic was two minutes and twenty-seven seconds in length. But the brief specified the animatic be ninety seconds to a maximum of 120 seconds. So I edited down the footage. Eventually being able to cut down to one minute and fifty-seven seconds, including the opening title and end credits.

After this, I exported the video as an MP4 and uploaded the whole thing onto my Vimeo page.

I also arranged the animatic shots on a PowerPoint in three-by-three rows, much like a professional storyboard. This way, I could put these frames in my visual portfolio.

I’m overall proud of the work I’ve done for this project. I gained a better understanding of the animatic short film production process. I gained valuable experience writing a well-structured narrative through studying theory and other short films, writing a synopsis and a properly formatted screenplay. I learned to use new software tools such as Celtex for script writing and Storyboarder to create my animatic. As well as gain more experience with editing an animatic on Adobe Premiere Pro. All these programs I will use in future creative projects. Most of all, I’m very proud of the film I created through this project, and I feel it’s one of the most high-quality short films I’ve produced so far.

#storytelling script to screen #evaluation #animation

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maddy-ferguson · 1 year

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since we're having ship discourse, i have to say that i disliked joyce and hopper's relationship dynamic in s3. they were so annoyingly portrayed and were always fighting, i am not sure why people are saying mlvn having fights/problems are a special thing that only exists in mlvn's relationship issues. and this sort of 'we give couples problems and then resolve them' writing is a thing that exists in duffers' writing. s3 ships are literally an example of that. and i just don't see joyce and hopper as some sort of a subversion of the trope, hopper wanted to be with her in s3 and then expectedly he was given what he wanted. and yeah yeah, it took time for them to be a truly thing in s4, but is it really some sort of a 'subversion of tropes', if anything it seems more tropy and fits the standards of a relationship. jncy like you said is also an expected relationship. like sorry but a girl breaking up with a jock and getting together with the town's outcast freak is not a subversion... it's literally a textbook from 80's relationship and couple thing. the only relationship subversion is really lumx if we're being real. and if we count dustin and suzie to account, then their relationship is pretty much expected anyway, and no, suzie being a mormon doesn't really change that.

and controversial take but i think we are sometimes going way too reach-y when we say the duffers are great at subversion when they fall to many tropes and stereotypes and expected things in their writing. just bc they sometimes subvert doesnt mean ST is a representation of subversion of tropes.

nooo don't use the d word...

i'm season 3 jpper and s3 hopper's biggest hater. in a season that has russians under a mall he's what i hate the most. and yes, i feel like if you're someone who thinks the duffers are all about subverting tropes and are aware of bsy then surely you must know that jncy is the most cliché trope-fitting relationship they could've possibly come up with?

i feel like there's evidence that they like subverting expectations and tropes (robin being a lesbian when they made you think she was gonna be with steve, the straight person getting rejected by the gay person instead of the other way around, eden and argyle's little "love at first sight" moment that makes fun of the concept, a main character who's had a female love interest for four seasons being in a love triangle where one of the option's a boy) but at the same time the reason why harmful tropes or just boring tropes become tropes over time is just that the people writing the stories...aren't aware of what they're doing necessarily? and the example i'm gonna use isn't a trope per se, but you know how in season 1 lucas is suspicious of el and doesn't like her? they had their ONE black character make the little white girl (who had a blonde wig on when he gets real mad lol) whose story we know and who we're made to empathize with sad. people (adults!) were literally racist to caleb over it. very predictable but they're also white people who didn't see it coming. things like that are why even though jncy is the most expected 80s sci-fi couple ever, i'm like...are they doing it on purpose and are gonna end the show with them broken up or are they just the men who wrote jonathan taking pictures of his future girlfriend taking her shirt off and then used it as a plot point and made us feel bad for jonathan when steve broke his camera over it because he's poor and couldn't afford a new one. like idk. i'm giving them the benefit of the doubt (not saying that if jonathan and nancy end up together i'm gonna throw a fit or anything i'll just be genuinely surprised) but i really just don't know. and jncy being too expected isn't the reason why i started thinking they were breaking them up but if you sent this to me i'm assuming you read my other answer on the subject! it's just kind of the icing on the cake. same with mlvn and bsy i don't think that's anyone's main argument but i just feel like expecting them to subvert bsy and then not expecting them to subvert whatever trope jncy is doesn't make sense. because that trope is like THE trope.

and yeah the fighting is definitely not exclusive to mlvn especially not in season 3, but i guess for joyce and hopper you could say they're fighting because they're not together? which is different from fighting because of their relationship? but yeah. it's just that with mlvn there's a million other things.

#i didn't reread this so i'm sorry if what i'm saying doesn't make sense #'and no suzie being a mormon doesn't change that'😭#i didn't say the magic word i better not see *********** explain why i'm wrong in five minutes #ask

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screamingay · 1 year

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started ranting about doctor who to my gf and realized i actually have a lot of opinions (which start off summarizing hbomberguy's takes from the sherlock video but it was kind of a revelation for me) so if u want to hear them ive copypasted and edited them a bit for u guys under the cut <3

so like to set up how bad steven moffat is he explains why doctor who was so bad when moffat was the showrunner in a way ive been trying to articulate for years

basically he's a decent writer who was good at individual episodes that make reference to the doctors history but when it came to actually writing that history and the big events that would become the doctor's history he sucks so so so badly

like in the empty child he was amazing, he prioritized the story of the episode while giving the doctor an air of mystery and references a long and complicated backstory without compromising any charm or humor

but in the very first episode where he had reins on the entire show and its storylines he resorted to just a monologue from the doctor about how cool and special he is and that trend continued the whole time he was in charge. the entire universe suddenly revolved around the doctor

like. chibnall was clearly trying to subvert that by only using brand new aliens during his first season and having extra companions (three of them jesus christ) but he didn't address the heart of the problem and somehow made it even worse. the charm of the doctor was always that they were just a traveler bouncing around the universe and helping people or having fun or whatever

and of course there was always the tragic backstory and the genocide and being the last of his kind and all that but that always came second to the humans he loved!! the first time the master came back in tennant's run it was martha and her family and jack that saved him!! and chibnall tried to do that with yaz but it just didnt feel as impactful bc of how overpowering the master & timeless child plots were (dont even get me started on the timeless child shit retconning the entire history of the show to make the doctor quite literally the most important being in the universe)

moffat on the other hand went all over the place with it and wrote in intergalactic cults deadset on killing the doctor and when he did try to make companions special and important he completely took away their agency in the process

to me clara was a decent companion and had some great moments for me until she turned out to be not real or a metaphor or forgotten or dead or somehow retconned into existing since the show started in 1963 it was all so WEIRD and misses the point of making a companion important. it made her so important she lost her humanity imo

and then there was bill who also died and was mutilated beyond recognition and it just makes me think about how rtd never did that to companions. they were special not because of time magic or destiny or fucked up deaths but because they were just humans. with families. martha got to go back to her family. donna had to forget but she was happy in the end. rose was supposed to live out her life in the parallel universe with her own mortal doctor, and she did, but moffat STILL found a way to bring her back as a metaphor because his desire to deconstruct female companions into concepts and tragedies was just too strong

that's not even getting into what he did to river. or amy...

none of this is to say rtd is perfect of course, i'm really nervous to see how he deals with everything that's been thrown at the show in the past couple decades but considering he plans on staying for a while i really hope he manages to put a better twist on all of it. honestly the thing im most curious about is the special effects.. the show has been leaving very heavily on cg lately but chibnall did introduce a few decent practical effects and puppets so i hope rtd pushes for more of that. im getting off topic tho

that's all i have for now i hope u enjoyed and if u wanna discuss anything pls feel free although that's all the brainpower i have for today come back tomorrow <3

#the thing about doctor who is that it's still doctor who even when it's bad. which presents a dilemma to every new showrunner #in that they have to find a way to either incorporate the previous canon into their canon or find a way to discard it. in canon #how funny would it be if rtd started and immediately said all the timeless child bs was a fever dream

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tharizdun-03 · 10 months

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Love Live! Sunshine!! Season 1: EP 1-7 Watchthrough

i dunno why i decided 2023 to be my idol year, but anyway, we're on Sunshine!!

#1: "I Want to Shine!!"

okay, so unlike the original, sunshine wants to throw all these characters at us at once, and honestly, nice? i feel like these characters are even more immediately gripping and distinct. also, the show looks even better i think? i am liking.

these two share one braincell

#2: "Catch the Transfer Student!"

sunshine is so good, man

best girl

i'm like way more into this than the original love live already and i'm not quite sure why cause nothing it dramatically better, i just think everything is slightly better and that builds up. it's slightly prettier, it has slightly more interesting characters and dynamics, etc.

also, chika is straight up reading the love live wiki right there

the love live songs i have on my spotify so far btw

i love how when i started the franchise i kept reiterating how the idol style and its songs isn't really for me, and look at me now

i mean, still not an idol fan, but bangers are bangers

#3: "First Step!"

oh my god i love how sunshine subverted it!!

the original love live's corresponding scene always stood out to me as its most emotionally effective one, but I think sunshine did almost just as good here, having chika tear up a bit but then bringing the crescendo back with, an all time favourite trope, THE POWER OF COMMUNITY

there's a definite weird sense when watching this show, cause you're aware that it's a franchise very specifically hand-crafted to appeal to its otaku audience that makes it feel a bit grossly commercialized, but that doesn't mean there's only commercial value and no artistic.

artists still make these shows, and i think they emanate a lot of genuine warmth. i think it's telling that they could've continued milking μ's but instead they allowed them to retire and took the risk of focusing on a new set of girls.

#4: "Two Girls' Feelings"

i love how sunshine!! is using μ's as a direct inspiration for our characters here, and how we've tied very specific characters and why they motivate our new cast specifically (the rin one was especially sweet, cause it was one of the cutest scenes in the OG series)

sunshine!! has just done such a great job. i don't think the original ever really shone when focusing on its side cast they way this episode did, so i'm glad to see this new iteration just improving on the franchise's core strengths

#5: "Yohane Descends"

It is very nice for Yohane to be self aware of her chuunibyo stage and her struggle being trying to grow out of it. It makes for a lot of layered comedy, those two clashing sides, but also makes it even more sweet when the others accept her anyway.

Honestly, you don't need to grow out of it. My advice? Channel that creative spirit into something that fits it the best, where you get the most positive feedback from it and the least negative. You can always put the persona on, but it'll impact your ability to make friends. If your IDOL persona is your outlet instead, then that’s the best of both worlds, right?

#6: "Let's Make a PV"

That's it, right there. Community. What makes your town special is not the town itself nor its locations, it is the people. The relationships you forge with those around you, the support networks you can rely on in need, the way everyone cleans the beach together. That's special.

Also, yes, Sunshine!! is kinda bound by the shackles of its predecessor. I think it's fine so far, cause Sunshine is basically the original concept executed to perfection, but any future series is gonna have to do something a bit different.

#7: "Tokyo"

doesn't say word. does a spinning flip over them to assert dominance. queen.

i love how in the meantime there's this tragic shakespearean drama brewing with the seniors lol

late night talks? they are so in love.

I love You's outfits lol. She went through a dozen this episode, but even just her regular hat has her name on it. Like, imagine if mine just said "Theodor." Granted, her name is You, so it's probably easier to find a hat with that already on.

yohane just casually practicing dark chants in the background always cracks me up

i said it before (or maybe i didn't actually) but i went into sunshine!! with expectations of it surpassing the original love live cause from what i've peeked sunshine!! seems to have the best character designs. so far, i am being proven right.

I'd like for our "antagonists" maybe to sometime also be a full on team, and not just two or three people. i understand why they don't do it, cause it's not a show about the rivalry, but if we ever wanted to do that variation, it'd be down.

ALSO IF WE DON'T GET A MUSE CAMEO IN THE SUNSHINE MOVIE I WILL RIOT

EP 8-13 watchthrough: https://www.tumblr.com/tharizdun-03/721261502412324864/love-live-sunshine-season-1-ep-8-13?source=share

#Love Live! Sunshine!!#Kanan Matsuura #Mari Ohara #Dia Kurosawa #Ruby Kurosawa #Hanamaru Kunikida #Yoshiko Yohane Tsushima #yoshiko tsushima #yohane #You Watanabe #Riko Sakurauchi #Chika Takami #watchthrough #8/10

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consistentsquash · 11 months

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Hi ConsistentSquash, thank you a million times for recommending Pandemic. I finished reading the series at 3 am today. It is the most fantastical, magical, cathartic story I have read in fandom. It captured the essence of the hell years and the world that we have afterwards. Subversive, heartbreaking, towering and ultimately healing.

" The shadowed places in Harry's heart that had known only loneliness gleamed bright as he held in his hands what he had longed for, through four decades of keening want and wish."

"Storge is the love of a man for his family."

"She had an affinity for hawthorn trees and a horse with no name."

"2020, he had believed, would be the year he found the One."

hiya!! sorry this took so long. life is really complicated right now. but yeah! anyway.

Yay!! You found Pandemic from my rec <3 Thanks for telling me! It's so amazing when that happens. Really gives me the motivation to do more reccing.

Yep! Pandemic is incredible. Absolutely love it.

"2020, he had believed, would be the year he found the One."

I feel like a lot of folks had big plans for 2020. Then the world kind of went into suspend mode and we didn't really get back from there.

Also it's got lots of personal meaning for me. The fic that got me motivated to write my first serious rec because I really wanted to read more fics like that but those fics don't exist. I wanted to do something to encourage/celebrate the fics that actually exist.

Diversity in type of fic can be super hard to find in big fandom recs/movie recs/anything big enough because folks just read/rec the same tropes/beats... which means folks are going to write the fic that's going to get read!

Also there is a horns/halo effect. Folks feel better about reccing/reading books/movies/fic/whatever others like. They also feel more comfortable criticizing things others criticize. Sometimes that's got good reasons but a lot of times it's just because something is out of our comfort zone. There's a pretty famous letter by Scorsese abt how it can be hard for things outside the comfort zone to be taken seriously because we are looking for more reasons to criticize it.

It doesn't mean the big recs are bad/anything derogatory. These things are super subjective. Apples and oranges. But when everybody's reccing apples sometimes and you really want an orange you have to do a lot of searching by yourself to get that orange :D Some folks hate oranges. That's ok. Folks are allowed to have totally different tastes.

I love Pandemic. It made me think. It really was pretty different from the endorphin hit I get out of reading good executions of classic tropes I love. It took me outside my comfort zone like crazy. Just that part was different enough compared to what I read before and because of that reason alone worth reccing. Another commenter got the vibe spot on.

Pandemic strikes me as inescapably, painfully, bluntly in-your-face human. Whatever being human means in 2020 and 2021 for us.

The trauma. I mean Harry literally becoming an Obscurial because of depression/loneliness/lack of connection during the lockdown. oof. that fic hurt.

It was my first time reading that type of prose. The technique. Really precise until it kind of explodes into poetry? But then you realize the whole thing was poetry building up.

But more than that. It really really owns cringe. Like it decided to be cringe and owned it.

Because there is this thinking like even inside fandom how cringe means w/o talent/sophistication. We can be sometimes afraid to love something cringe unless others rec it/love it. I am the same ofc! it took me forever to own how much I like dubcon to HEA in fic. But one of the million things I love about Pandemic is how the whole concept of cringe gets turned upside down/deconstructed without getting preachy and also at the same time having one of the best stories I have read in fandom.. Just thinking abt some of the cringe/cringe adjacent things Pandemic subverted

Mary Sue/OC - Delphini Lestrange. I mean. HP fandom is more or less aligned on Cursed Child being pretty mediocre. taking that and changing it into this competent Healer archetype is pretty out there. It works. Idk if you really need to understand the trope to get the point because the first layer of the story is pretty direct.

Songfic - peak FFN baby's first fanfic cringe type thing. Pandemic is pretty intentional about using that genre with respect. A horse with no name (the Narcissa POV) is probably one of the best examples of that. Also the Shelley poetry in the Grindeldore/the jazz in Sugar Plum (the Dumbledore POV) are some of my favorite things ever.

OOC - I mean. This can be pretty gatekeeping and controversial. Sometimes folks don't want to read something they think is out of character which is totally cool. I am pretty picky about Snape characterizations. But also canon Snape is not gay so idk if my fav slash fics are in character or anything. I guess I can justify it as Canon Snape but he's gay or something like that. Anyway what I loved about Pandemic is how it starts out with OOC characterizations and builds to pretty IC characterizations. Another reccer said

Well written set of interlocking fics, with HP characters that are OOC, but have well developed back stories that bring them close to canon behavior by a totally different route

It was really cool because this is definitely the spirit of The Life of Brian/Monty Python the fics took inspiration from. Anyway I love how it did something new without worrying about getting called OOC. It owned that and made it work.

cottagecore - depending on which side of cottagecore discourse you are on folks can be pretty intense on the gatekeeping about what it means. Pandemic is cottagecore with a twist... If your cottage is the sentient Hogwarts Castle which is eating the magic of its Headmasters. But the tropes it uses are peak cottagecore. esp the dark side of cottagecore gatekeeping abt how fluff/slice of life is the only real way to do that style.

Rationality stuff- ofc depending on which side of the fandom you are in you probably know about HPMOR/adjacent type of fic which generally goes for OP/Mary Sue Harry with lots of philosophy quotes and libertarian takes. Pandemic does something pretty wild with that take. It has the philosophy of the characters in their POV keeping it super unreliable and subjective. Also feels pretty reclaiming abt philosophy. Like no its not just a weapon folks use to justify things. It's got some beauty and humans connect to it? YMMV. Idk I don't normally go for this type of thing but this was such an incredible takedown of a lot of modern political stuff and how folks justify their takes.

Modern life/loneliness. I feel like we just accept loneliness as part of modern life a lot of times because it's somehow kind of in our head that it's pretty cringe to accept we are some age and alone. Lots of reasons for that. For me personally mental health is a big one. Anyway this is a pretty incisive fic on that front. It doesn't preach. But it's super gentle and comforting/accepting? Idk I felt super comforted. Pretty different from litfic tropes abt loneliness/alientation. YMMV about realism and things like that but I don't need slashfic for realism :D

I probably got a lot of stuff wrong because the fic doesn't come with meta or serious A/N. So like don't quote me on this. Definitely not an easy read but the thinking the fic made me do is totally worth it for me.

Anyway. Pandemic is the type of fic which probably took a lot of courage to write/put out there. Because the tip of the iceberg is pretty cringe and you really need to sit with it to get the big picture. I mean a pandemic mental health/modern life loneliness fic including Cursed Child Canon and combining with mythology, astronomy and lots of economic theory and adding some of the writing tropes we normally call cringe in fandom is definitely a choice. But it worked for me. It's one of the two fics which made a huge difference in my life. So yeah! <3

#hp #fic recs #hp fic recs #harrymort #pandemic the fic #hp slash fic recs #hp slash #harrymort fic recs #asks #meta #i guess #not meta #but something #sorry im hyperfixating #on reccing #eldritcher fics

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thorne1435 · 1 year

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Heya, Random-Music-Anon here (as you christened me with that name). Just... Gonna drop you some more music and watch as you review em and give recommendations.

Hope you like it, includes a couple more pure EDM and foreign language songs 🧡

The Edge - Panicland

Rome Falls - Panicland

Same Graves - The Ghost Club

Secukupnya - Hindia

Where'd U Go - Illenium

The Edge: Yo, it's like All-American Rejects but, like, with a synth. I'm really fond of how the entire everything changes for the chorus. Like, the chorus and the verses are different songs, and that's cool. I'm not sure what all changed. The tempo, for one. I'm tempted to say the key changes also but actually I'm very bad at judging when a key changes, most of the time. It just makes this song more unique though and I like that. It should be said, that its chorus being significantly slower than the verses does sort of set up and then subvert the idea that the chorus will be significantly faster than the verses. This could be deliberate ("Edging" so to speak) or...they could've just had that chorus written down ages ago and wanted to use it somewhere but then they wrote a verse that was completely different and they just mashed them together because they really wanted both things to get used. I've done similar things before, so it sort of makes sense that it would happen with better composers than me.

Man, you'd fuckin love this band called half alive... Here, listen to this!

Rome Falls: Billie Joe Armstrong is that you?! Oh-- oh that's the joke?! Shit dude, I don't even know what to say. I was gonna do the same joke I did up there and recommend some green day song and then give you the link to something completely different but now I feel like that's lazy, because this is a style parody. But it's a really good style parody. Save for the opening. Green Day would never try to be that ornate, I've never heard a Green Day song with that kind of choral element or that vocal range.

Wouldn't it be so funny if I recommended Green Day anyway? I think it would.

Same Graves: You ever just listen to a song and hear the same basic concept as a country song you heard like 5-8 years ago? And you think "Well, I shouldn't say it, because if I do then everyone will know that I took note of a country song, and that's social faux pas." But you think about it, and like, it sticks with you. And then you think, "Hey, didn't a rap record say this, too?" And then you remember rock icons like Cobain who hated the celebrity worship aspect of music as a modern medium and how they would probably agree with the message, too. And then you think "Huh. I guess no matter how you make it big as an artist, if you manage to in the first place, your social life will become a dichotomous mixture of harsh criticism and blind devotion and you'll never be a person again, and artists probably go into it knowing it'll occur but needing money less than artistic expression." and then you go "Fuck. I hate capitalism. I want the art back. I want our peaceful existence back. I want life to be what it should be." And then you cry about it...

I'm sure that's a universal experience.

Anyway, uh, what were we doing? Music share? Oh, fuck, uh... take...this? I guess?

Secukupnya: Unfortunately, I don't speak Indonesian (or any other Austronesian language). So, I had to look up a translation of the lyrics, which is always sketchy when it comes to small artists and/or languages that have no real western presence like Filipino or, like, Romani or something. From what I can gather, though, this song is about life being fucking depressing. People living paycheck to paycheck, marriages being loveless and weathered beyond repair... but it's not about that alone. They're saying that it's better if we're all sad together (Bersedih bersama-sama) which I think means grieving what could have been as a community instead of as individuals. After all, everyone fails sometime (Kita semua gagal), so we all have something to be sad about. Sharing our problems with each other will make us feel better than just keeping it to ourselves and watching everything collapse in silence. I choose to believe this is a call to action for our communities to start caring about each other like we should: to start being communities. Because that is the based interpretation.

Well, I have sad music in another language also! Granted, it's Molchat Doma which kind of blew up a year or two ago, but...shut up.

Where'd U Go: Ah...EDM. I really liked the lo-fi drum set, about a minute in. But that usually isn't my style. Modern dance music seems to follow an easily-listenable formula and then gets really loud and full, with heavy emphasis on beats and percussion, which is pretty cool but I don't tend to like easily-listenable music, at least not in its modern iterations. I stand by it being valid art, all the same. It's just usually not as memorable to me as shit that I had to listen to a few times to actually understand what it was supposed to be. There's usually nothing to say about EDM. It's just music, specifically for listening. No real meaning outside of the sound itself. That's interesting, and I think it absolutely says something about humanity and "The Human Experience", just by virtue of existing. But it's not good for overanalyzing which is what I love doing to music, so, like...it's not for me. (unless it's really jazzy. if you put your edm on a blues scale i will suddenly pull a 180 and love it unconditionally)

That being said, sometimes I do like to no-thoughts-head-empty while listening to a piece so, uh, here. Take this.

#music share

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absolutebl · 2 years

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Inspired by a recent question...

10 BLs Most Like Their Yaoi Roots

So I’m picking my favorite BLs that are not necessarily yaoi adaptations, but instead reference origin tropes, archetypes, interpersonal dynamics, setting, and filming techniques.

Seven Days (Japan) - OF COURSE IT’S FIRST. Japan’s faithful story adaptation of the original manga of the same name (and possibly my favorite BL of all time), although the 2 movies actually use more yaoi framing and style in their live action than appear in the original manga. It’s the opposite case for the semi/uke dynamic, which is much stronger in the manga. Still, there’s very very little wrong with this adaptation. It’s damn near perfect.

Semantic Error (Korea) - I haven’t read the original webtoon but I can tell you this is a pristinely flawless yaoi brought to life. Every trope is perfectly hit but not stressed, and occasionally subverted. It is the best that Korea can do with this genre in its purest form. Without question.

Color Rush (Korea) - if Semantic Error is perfect uncut primal yaoi, Color Rush is what happens when it gets experimental and discovers complex story structure. There were a few manga’s back in the day that managed this, although it’s definitely the exception not the rule. Story structure and high concept are not yaoi’s strong points and most webtoons have only made this worse. Color Rush figured out how to hit it out of the park short form and using every yaoi filming technique in the book. It’s a masterclass in style and substance (chemistry = not so much, but then, that’s were a lot of sweet yaoi failed back in the day, too.)

Light On Me (Korea) - Korea does high school yaoi in a VERY Korean way but never forgetting the style and color palette of the source material. It’s a beautiful cinematic journey, but while the framing and staging is on point, it’s wardrobe and lighting that carries this show beyond.

Utsukushii Kare AKA My Beautiful Man (Japan) - this is actually what a lot of early yaoi was like to read - rough going, hella kinky, questionably queer, pushing borders of consent and bullying and messing with our minds/hearts because of the ache behind all the fuck ups. I consider the second half of this BL an absolute masterpiece, but I was raised that way.

Cherry Magic AKA 30 Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard AKA 30-sai made Dotei Da to Mahotsukai ni Nareru rashii (Japan) - the one that pulled Thai BL fans back into Japanese BL. This is soft. This is the light side of yaoi that we used to only get from those 1990s innocent high school set short runs, like Desire. You remember those? Anyway, this one took that and informed (I think) by the success of Ossan’s Love set a sweet BL in the office with a magical realism component and two incredibly charismatic leads. Like Ossan it also got a long treatment (for Japanese BL) and we are all extremely grateful.

Cherry Blossoms After Winter (Korea) - everything about this show is monumentally traditionally yaoi from the height difference, to the on screen behavior, to the backstory and emotional journeys of the characters. It touches on old school themes like stepbrothers and cohabitation, uncontrolled urges and irresistible cuteness. The filming style is more atmospheric than framed, but that only adds to the nostalgic feel.

Kieta Hatsukoi AKA Vanishing My First Love AKA My Love Mix Up (Japan) - the cringy cheesy chibi slapstick side of yaoi brought to blatant, lurid, and endearing life. These characters are cartoons of themselves, but so earnest about it. It watches like anime in terms of performance and plot (if not filming style), full of hijinks and very lovable characters.

Cutie Pie - Thailand finally (and very consciously) tackled yaoi. I talk about the fact that Thai BL is, generally, one of the least likely to reference Japanese manga, because Thailand has a different history with the genre. But with Cutie Pie they really went old school - story, style, characters, filming, framing... everything. Some Thai BL stans found this shocking, but if you’ve watched any Japanese BL or read any yaoi, you were probubly pretty delighted with this one rather than surprised. I definitely had a sensation of “finally.” I think it’s the content but also, in large part, the director.

Love Stage!! - The Thai version is a great adaptation, but it is a very Thai interpretation. It doesn’t bother with the staging or filming style, for example. It’s an imposition of Thai BL’s style, aesthetic, modern treatment, and brightness, onto a yaoi manga series that happens to be particularly suited to a synergy. It is interesting to compare it to the Japanese live action version which, IMHO failed in all ways except style. I like Thailands Love Stage!! for what it managed to do: traditional yaoi content in an entirely modern Thai BL way. (But please don’t let Thailand get ahold of Given.)

Others of interest:

Risutato wa tadaima no ato de AKA Restart After Come Back Home

This is filmed in classic Japanese high cinematic style (think more Kurosawa than slapstick) and so it seems to not come from a yaoi at all. Other BLs done this way include His the movie, and Life: Love on the Line. These are all good, but stylishly they are pretty removed from yaoi.

HIStory 3: Trapped

This is the closest Taiwan has ever come to a yaoi manga adaption, it isn’t one, but it makes no case for it. Even the quirks in the hair are there. It reads a lot like a really well done late 90s style yakuza yaoi (without the kink but with the high heat) and the filming style is almost there. Certainly all the tropes are present, and the side couple has a standard seme/uke dynamic.

There is also the documockery Zettai BL ni Naru Sekai VS Zettai BL ni Naritakunai Otoko AKA Absolute BL AKA A Man Who Defies The World of BL parts one and two. It is informed by and doing a pastiche of a lot of the reasons I chose my top 10. And if that sentence sounded meta, it’s because it is.

Can I Get a Do Over?

Love Stage!! has spoiled me.

Given redone by Korea

This was Japan’s BL to lose, and they lost it. It’s not terrible, but it’s not good either. I think Korea should get a crack at it. They have the talent and they have the music industry and they could make this one work real well if they gave it a slightly longer treatment, like Light On Me, and made it an indie Kpop band/thing, like Wish You staring idols.

Silhouette of Your Voice AKA Hidamari ga Kikoeru AKA I Hear the Sunspot redone by Thailand

Almost no one knows that Sunspot got an adaptation. And the live action actually starts out really well. It almost got there but sort of ended prematurely or something? Anygay, it’s a truly GREAT manga series that could really be served by a Thai approach. Longer form, university set. It’s something Thailand doesn’t tackle normally either, broken seme with a disability. It’s almost TinCan esk, this dynamic, although the seme is more depressed and withdrawing from society than just a spoiled rich arse. All that to say, this could be really really good if handed out to a pair that could handle the nuance. So... someone like OhmFluke.

Docchi mo Docchi AKA Same Difference redone by Taiwan

Japan’s most direct and faithful manga adaptation. This 2014 movie is a manga brought to life in every way, it’s practically a storyboard. All they did was cut out the sexy bits which it turned out were... erm THE STORY. This choice drastically effected our understanding of plot is some really weird ways and caused the whole thing to fall apart. Just hand this off to Taiwan. They keep doing office set stuff these days anyway, they would do a GREAT job with an actual story structure to follow.

I also really want MaxNat to do a redo of Cherry Blossoms After Winter just to see more of those two characters and to get a long form adaptation of that series. I think it would suit them (and Thailand) perfectly, and with the possible exception of Lovely Writer, Thailand really hasn’t given us much of the stepbrother trope. I want them to go there.

This post as of April 2022, more may come but Tumblr may not let me update this. So if you have some to add, leave a comment.

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ad-hawkeye · 2 years

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Please continue talking about Artem/MC and the red string of fate. It's really interesting, and I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on it.

omg hi!! this was such a kind message to wake up to!!! i’m genuinely so thrilled you were interested in my other post! i hope you’re ready for an essay that i attempted to break down into bullet points. i have many thoughts on this. siri, play invisible string by taylor swift, we’re gonna be here a while.

- so first of all. the red string of fate. a quick run down for anyone who might not know: it’s an invisible, red string tying two people’s fates together. the imagery for this is usually one red string tied to two people’s pinkies. essentially, it notes one’s “true love” and is similar in nature to that a soulmate... (also red string? hmmm who else has a red color scheme going on in tears of themis...? ;D)

- it originates from chinese mythology and you’ll see it a lot in various japanese works. it’s a common trope. while i like the concept, i’ve found myself souring on it in recent years because i never liked how it was executed. it tends to feel overbearing and forced. like oh, we don’t have to put the effort into this, because we’re soulmates and will end up together no matter what.

- here’s where tears of themis comes in. artem/mc’s relationship DOES make use of the red string trope, but it's subtle, and it subverts the whole “they will always end up together” part of it. which i love. the mere concept of the game alone is an example of this; mc has four equally viable love interests to choose from. artem isn’t guaranteed.

- if artem doesn’t take initiative, nothing will ever happen between them. as such, he’s forced to go completely out of his comfort zone and be proactive. with... a little help from celestine that is, haha.

- going into more detail, entwined fate is the base of all of this. mc pulls the luckiest marriage wishing tag while artem pulls the unluckiest one. mc’s basically told to keep a close eye on those around her (which, imo, can mean the four love interests) while artem is basically told that keeping quiet and taking no action will have consequences.

- if neither of them take action, that is how things will remain.

- however, entwined fate makes a point of the two of them choosing to alter their fates. mc insists on tying her wishing tag to the tree with artem’s so that their luck can “even out”. she also ends up accompanying artem to the shrine so that he can reverse his unlucky fate... (somewhat related, but the evening out of their luck reminds me a lot of the whole “shouldering each other’s burdens” thing they mention all the time).

- this is the most blatant they can get about the two of them having to take action if they want to make this work. this isn’t your typical red string of fate trope where two people don’t have to do anything and then end up together bc, well, soulmates i guess. this is a different version where the string is there, but can only be tightened if they tighten it themselves.

- the concept of the string tightening is mentioned word for word in his fixated on you card when they’re finally able to call each other friends - because progress is being made! due to their mutual efforts! specifically it says: it's as if there's an invisible string, pulling your relationship with artem closer.

- people joke about artem being friendzoned in this card but i disagree, not only was artem the one to mention the word friend in the first place (this is important for him because he doesn’t want to be an idol to her, but a friend), but artem being genuinely happy with this is, imo, a green flag.

- i really like artem’s story bc i like being shown how things progress. he and mc do have that history together from work, so they’re not complete strangers, but their relationship never progressed until artem took the initiative to get to know her better. so we get to see everything: from earlier cards where he still has to work on himself, to them becoming friends, to them becoming mutually interested in each other, to dating, etc. i don’t like being told “bro trust us they’re close”, i like seeing how that comes to be instead.

- like mentioned in my other post, to do this, artem works on himself as a person, while mc primarily works on herself career wise. it’s nice seeing artem learn how to better himself in each of his cards (atmospherics, loving memories, and dreamful melodies all come to mind. it’s most notable with his ssrs), while mc works hard to become a senior attorney who can equally share artem’s burdens at work. interestingly enough though, mc does have a character arc of her own in artem’s route. it’s one of learning how to take him off of a pedestal and see him for who he is, as a person. so there is mutual effort on both sides. this is from what i've seen of the global cards that is. we'll see if more arises in the future. speaking of...

spoilers from here on out!

- there are still a few cards i don't know anything about (xmas partyland, rrg, etc...) but im going to discuss the ones i DO know address the red string.

EDIT: i watched the translation for artem’s revisiting youth card (legit one of my fav cards now sobs)!! so i’m finally able to clear up this section a bit.

- the red string trope subtlety comes back in artem’s newest card in the cn server for the revisiting youth event, specifically in his video call. worth mentioning that they’re dating in this card.

- it seems to focus on the more traditional part of the red string trope. like yes, mutual effort has to be made in tightening the string, but that string still existed all along, quietly connecting them. in the video call for his revisiting youth card, artem talks about how he “finds fate wonderful” and says “we went to the same college, studied the same major, met the same cat... but before you came to themis, we only knew each other by name, but we never really knew each other.” additionally, as someone who is obsessed with his birthday card, i recall a scene in that one where they find out they both sat at the same exact desk in one of the law department’s lecture halls. there's also the bbq place mentioned in his autumn dreams card.

- it’s the cute, tiny things that have been connecting them all along. they just had to discover that was the case by getting to know each other.

#tears of themis #artem wing #meta #anon #im sorry in advance for how long this is but thank you so much for enabling me omg #i hope you enjoyed reading!! and sorry if this is incoherent its kinda brain vomit AAAAAAA #god i originally intended to take a few days to work on this but something terrible overcame me and it all came out at once HAHA JHSHDJ

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fandomshatelgbtqpeople · 4 years

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On why “not like other girls” isn’t a useful criticism anymore (and maybe never was)

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the way people have been talking about femininity in feminist spaces for the past few years really fails gender nonconforming queer and neurodivergent girls.

In particular, I’ve noticed and seen others talk about the tendency to push the ideas that women never enforce gender norms on other women, never punish other women for not conforming to gender norms, and that female bullies essentially don’t exist because girls would never do that to each other. I’ve also noticed how the “face” of internalized misogyny has become the blatantly queercoded, neurodivergent-coded girl who’s Not Like Other Girls. That’s not an accident.

There are feminist circles made up mostly of women who have never had a problem with being accepted by other women, and their ideas about how girls and women treat each other are very influential. The things is that they don’t realize that how other women treat them and how other girls treated them growing up isn’t universal. They’re unaware that they aren’t accepted just because they’re women but because they’re able to check off a number of conditions that signal to other women that they “belong.” One of the more important conditions is being able to do femininity the right way. They’re unaware that there’s a huge difference between women who can do femininity the right way and choose to subvert it for feminist reasons versus women who can’t do it the right way at all, and that difference has a huge impact on how other women treat you. A lot of these women are probably well intentioned, but that doesn’t make it okay that their viewpoints, which erase women who are marginalized in ways they aren’t, have become so mainstream.

This, of course, has a disparate impact on gender nonconforming queer women, who can’t do femininity right because it leads to things like dysphoria and depression, and autistic women, who often can’t do femininity right because of sensory issues with makeup/tight clothing/certain fabrics, because they’re unable to understand the social rules that govern things like fashion trends or matching clothes, or because their special interests aren’t seen by their peers as acceptable things for girls to be interested in.

The problem arises because women in the first group, the influential feminist circles, seem to have decided that the idea of female bullies is a patriarchal trope pushed by men (girls wouldn’t do that to each other) and that only men enforce gender norms on women (girls are so much more accepting of other girls uwu). Gender nonconforming queer and autistic women, who grew up as gender nonconforming girls, know that this idea is frankly bullshit because they were bullied and ostracized by other girls for not being able to do femininity right or enough, but when we try to talk about this, we’re shouted down by the first group of women as just having internalized misogyny. The entire time I was in middle and high school, I only remember having my appearance insulted by a boy once. It was almost exclusively something other girls did. And yet we’re told that our own lived experiences can’t possibly have happened because “bullying is a boy thing, girls are all friends.” You would think that this conversation would at least be happening in queer circles but even there, gnc queer women are the only ones talking about it, while everyone else is all, “It’s so great how lesbians never enforce gender norms against each other. Anyway, here’s my fanart of a canonically butch character wearing a dress.”

So here’s where the girl who’s Not Like Other Girls comes in. The stereotypical girl who’s Not Like Other Girls is blatantly queercoded and blatantly neurodivergent coded, and that’s not an accident. It’s because those are the girls who are disproportionately likely to be rejected by other girls because of their inability to do femininity right, and that’s something that the women who love to talk about the girl who’s Not Like Other Girls have subconsciously picked up on.

Now, I’m not going to try to claim that no one who thinks they’re not like other girls has a sense of superiority about it, but overwhelmingly, the girls who think that aren’t thinking “I’m not like those dumb sluts.” They’re thinking “why am I not like the other girls.” For me (an autistic lesbian), my Not Like Other Girls phase was never about thinking I was better than everyone else. It was an attempt to explain to myself why I was being picked on and excluded by other girls, even the ones who were my friends. I knew I was different from other girls because I was told that by other girls. And the idea that girls who hang out mostly with boys are doing it because they hate other girls is largely false. Lots of teenage gnc queer and autistic girls hang out mostly with boys because they find that there are fewer unspoken social rules between boys, boys are less judgmental about their appearance than other girls, girls their age are starting to develop interests they find alienating, and/or because they’ve just given up on trying to befriend girls after years of rejection. It’s not internalized misogyny, it’s a trauma response.

All this vilification of the girl who’s Not Like Other Girls really accomplishes is making gender nonconforming girls and women into the main perpetrators of internalized misogyny and gender conforming girls into the main victims. It should give us pause that our idea of a stereotypical victim of internalized misogyny is a thin, blond, pretty queen bee-type and our stereotypical perpetrator is a queercoded, neurodivergent-coded girl with no friends, because it’s a blatant example of homophobia and ableism in mainstream feminism. It’s because the women with the loudest voices want to feel like they’re always the victims and never to blame. It should concern us how many posts are dedicated to condemning girls who think they aren’t like other girls when I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a single post condemning girls who bully other girls for not conforming to femininity. That’s an incontrovertible example of internalized misogyny that’s honestly a much more widespread problem, and everyone either wants to pretend it isn’t happening or has decided they’re okay with.

Gender nonconforming queer and autistic women grow up being ostracized for their gender nonconformity and no one can even make a post telling them its okay to be the way they are without having to add about a dozen disclaimers to avoid hurting the feelings of gender conforming women and still having 20 people in the replies reminding them that “some girls like to wear makeup :)” Meanwhile people will make 380 posts about how feminine girls should be celebrated without a single thought to how that contributes to the alienation and exclusion gnc queer and autistic girls are experiencing. Not everyone needs to learn to love pink or whatever. It’s so okay for gnc women to have deep negative feelings towards femininity as a concept when it was the reason for their abuse at the hands of other girls. That’s not internalized misogyny.

Anyway, I remember around the turn of the decade when the idea of the girl who was Not Like Other Girls really took off and I remember being able to picture exactly who it was about, but looking back, I can’t for the life of me remember whether that person was someone who actually existed irl, or whether it was the result of a popular media trope that everyone just assumed was also a problem irl, or whether it’s always just been the most acceptable women with the loudest voices blaming gender nonconforming queer and autistic women for something we weren’t doing.

mod k

tl;dr - Blaming girls who Aren’t Like Other Girls for internalized misogyny is victim-blaming bullshit. Girls thinking they aren’t like other girls is a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.

#internalized misogyny #homophobia #ableism #butchphobia #mod k

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sillysunshinesstuff · 3 years

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The Absolute Fuckery that was 15x20

Ok there were a lot of reasons why the final was bad. Like so many fucking reasons. Even without the queerbaiting,this is some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen and here’s a few reasons why:

Destiel

Yes. Big main reason here. They should not have included a confession and have one of the main plots of season 15 be Castiel’s and Dean’s relationship if they didn’t intend to follow through in any way. It shouldn’t have been introduced because the story became disjointed and thematically unsatisfying due to not being addressed in the final in any sort of way. Also, queerbaiting in 2020? Just to get your views up for the last few episodes because they knew Supernatural had become a shit show of bad ratings? Calculated and cruel toward the LGBTQIA+ community who has supported their careers for years.

Saileen

The absolute least they could have done was see this plot point through but they did not. We do not know if Eileen lives and even if they release information that she did, it’s still bullshit because we don’t get to see any part of her story. She has been reduced to a two dimensional character with no agency or purpose. Another woman just meant to prop up the male lead. Bullshit.

The Empty

What the fuck was the point of everything about this plot line if it would just be trashed half way through? Why did Cas make that deal with Ruby? Why did she beg to get out? Why did the Empty accuse Jack of making it loud? I really thought they were going somewhere with this one but they chickened out. There was so much potential for this; the angels and demons being awakened, balance being restored in heaven and hell, a big final show down between them and God. There were so many things just dropped when it came to this and that is why season 15 is absolutely frustrating because it feels like we just wasted our time with useless world building that didn’t amount to anything.

Kevin

I truly did think they’d address this in some sort of way, but the last time we saw Kevin, he was cursed to wander the earth until he became insane because his soul couldn’t ascend to heaven. I was really excited about this because I thought it meant there was going to be some restructuring of the Supernatural universe. The plot would be how the universe Chuck created wasn’t perfect and it had flaws and it was up to Team Free Will to fix some of these gaping holes. They made a point of calling it unfair. It was a wrong that should have been righted in some sort of way in the final.

Benny

This really isn’t just about Benny, it is about the concept of purgatory. A running theme in the show is that good people don’t deserve what happened to them. We see a lot of “good” monsters throughout the show. Characters who helped, sacrificed, and died for the brothers. At the end, they are sent to monster hell or purgatory. There was an episode this season where Sam and Dean killed a teenage boy who had been turned into a vampire. The teenage boy accepted his death because he knew it was for the best. He was afraid of hurting more people and he accepted that it was unfair. They made sure to emphasize how unjust the rules of this universe were and the emotional toll these universal rules took on the boys. Benny’s demise was spoken about briefly and we see Dean very hurt about his death. But the audience is left with the feeling that this is wrong. That the way the Supernatural universe is structured is wrong. Good people get turned into monsters, die, go to purgatory, and then die the ultimate death there. Is this what’s in store for all the “good monster” characters in the show? Garth? His family? They’re werewolves who fight their monster instincts, do they they still deserve purgatory? Did that teenage boy? A gaping hole that I thought the show was going to address in some way. Maybe offer redemption to those in purgatory or have Jack completely wipe away the concept of monsters in the universe. After all, it was just Chuck’s shitty writing, why couldn’t they wipe it clean and just leave people? “Cure” people of the monster and officially give the boys a way out of hunting? No monsters means no hunting. They’d be truly free. I thought this was direction they were going based off the certain episodes and characters discussed. But nope.

Jack

They reduced Jack’s character to plot food and that’s it. His ending was sloppy because it didn’t take into account any of the growth he’s had over the last three seasons. We predicted his ending from season 12 and that’s bad writing. Just. Awful writing. This character had dreams, motivations, relationships, but that all quite literally dissipated. He was used as a magic button that solved all their problems. 15x19 truly showed the lack of thought put into his character. He should not have been a main character if he didn’t have more influence on the plot than simply being a cop-out for having to write a well thought out solution. He was literally just there to snap his fingers and fix all their problems.

Dean

Oh yeah, Dean’s ending was a big fuck you to any character growth this character has had over the last 15 seasons. There is a line in his final 15 minute goodbye monologue where he says they always knew it would end this way. Which, exactly. We always thought it would end this way because it’s so goddamn predictable. It’s shitty writing because it doesn’t try to subvert this. It quite literally says that any growth Dean has had meant nothing because it didn’t change his end. Dean Winchester was always meant to die a young, bloody death. Everything he’s done, everything he’s bled and sacrificed for meant nothing. His prediction came true. It makes the audience wonder why they stuck around for this long ass journey if they knew the ending all along. It isn’t about what this character deserves. We have always known that the hero deserves happiness, but the ending should say something about why the story matters. Why did we see Dean struggle all his life about accepting himself? Loving himself? Seeing himself as someone who deserves to live? It was yet another theme and plot point throughout season 15. It’s what Castiel proclaimed to him in his confession and it is what Dean finally acknowledged by telling Chuck that’s not who he was. Dean Winchester is not a cold blooded killer. Dean Winchester deserved to live. It was beautiful character growth. A wonderful end to him. But they said fuck that when his last words were that he always knew it would end this way. That he always knew he wasn’t meant to live a long life. The writers wanted tears and they got them. I was crying, not because it was a beautiful satisfying death or ending, but because they tore apart 15 years of development for my beloved character. Dean Winchester has shown consistently that he wanted more than hunting, he wanted more than the life he got stuck with. But they didn’t follow through. They just decided to make an emotional ending because that was the coolest broest bro masculine thing to do.

Castiel

Literally everything. Literally fucking everything. Another character that was reduced to plot food. Castiel, the angel who rebelled against heaven and fell for the man he raised from perdition, was not deemed important enough to be in the final. This was the biggest fuck you of all. His story had become so complicated over the last few seasons and his purpose was kinda everywhere but they finally focused it when they had his happiness be Dean. When he said he found his faith when he found a family. When he became a father to someone who would one day save the universe. Castiel lived for the love he learned he was capable of. His ending just made no sense. I guess we’re supposed to assume Jack saved his from the empty but he wasn’t shown. He was not shown greeting Dean, the man he died for over and over again, his happiness. He was not shown being reunited with Jack, his faith. He was not shown enjoying the life he fell from grace for. He was a book with half its pages ripped out. Castiel didn’t get an ending. He got erased.

Sam

That fucking wig.

This is just some of my rambling thoughts I wanted to share will all of you. I have been a fan of this show for so many years. I invested so much time and love into something I’m going to look back on with bitter disappointment. Some of shittiest writing I have ever seen. Thanks for reading and add some more reasons. I know a missed a shit ton.

#supernatural #destiel #deancas #dean winchester #castiel #sam winchester #jack kline #jack spn #saileen

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