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goat-shoe · 2 months

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ok, i Rant time

ive been reading this fic Knowing itd be a mess and im just... ive had it with this characterization! aimless rant below ^^;;;

tw for bullying, harassment, abuse, homophobia

so a lot of highschool AUs are just..... Bad? like LOL sorry :x but. youre taking away everything interesting about the miraculous holders, And youre trying to make Fully Grown Adults into children. ??????

n e ways, i found this highschool dropout au,,, im Sure you can guess how i feel abt dugout and tiderdrop together, but personal biases aside (its Icky to me and someday ill figure out why)..... lets read this fic.

(to prove i am Not taking things out of context, heres the whole fic)

FIRST of all, youre ognna notice that the prose is Boring, written in long and uninspired runon sentences. i dont wanna just bash on an inexperienced writer, but if youre gonna be this lazy about it.. who is it for :x

second, headcanoning mariquitas name as the Only spanish name you can think of that starts with "mari"? is just uninspired. mariquita wouldnt Choose a hero name so obviously close to her Real Name.. again im not an unmasker, but this headcanon is ridiculous....

finally, and most importantly.... "he sighs wearily". umm, No actually. he Doesnt. you dont even get an insight into dugouts thoughts other than "im nervous about school >m<"

Needless to say, this and his whiny, whimpering demeanor is incredibly infantilizing,. Furthermore in this context, all it does is plays into the ""yaoi"" trope of a big buff bad big boy x boy who says uwaaah! (i hope it goes without saying, this is Not a condemnation of boys who say uwahh, yall are doing gods work and ily)

cramming tigerdrop and dugout into this trope comes off as (and actually is) incredibly homophobic and harmful. need i remind you, these are real people. i wouldnt be surprised if this author was a fujoshi or something too :x

anyways.

im a dugout fan Because hes reserved, but in this fic, thats being watered down to him just being sad and whiny.

its just so insulting to be written shrugging every 3 sentences. dugout im so sorry theyre doing this to you ;;;

guhh. ill give them points for this cute relationship with mariquita...

but again, the prose is just.. clumsy. and again, all dugout does is whine about change. its not even a realistic portrayal of adjustment disorder :x

speaking of disorders Lol,

we Know how i feel abt tigerdrop, but i tend to actually like fanfic portrayals of him.

but this one is just... Confusing...

(also we have mandatory "describe their entire outfit in vapid detail" LOL i should have made this a bingo)

i havent really been talking about the plot, but heres what it took the author two chapters to get through:

dugout it new in town, hes nervous about the changes. (we dont even know why he misses home??? just, make it up i guess, god forbid a fanfiction Make That part up!!!!!!)

tigerdrop has lived in new york all his life, and he appears to be pretty bored with life (ex: pushes pipsqueak over just because he thought itd be funny, no doubt an allusion to the canal street incident last july)

his characterization is actually really confusing and i think its supposed to be like, Alluring??? but its just disconcerting :x

thats It. Two established characters and empty conversations with others (the mariquita mischaracterization especially drives me up the wall ever since i confirmed my kin with her)

they meet in math class when dugout unknowingly sits in tigerdrops seat..... girl, Literally no one in high school acts like this.

at this point, this fic is no better than glee and the millions of other incorrect and careless portrayals of highschoolers. tigerdrop has some weird banter with the faceless teacher (yet Another reason i hate most highschool fics)

:/ i Kinda saw it coming, but....

tigerdrop apologizing and not meaning it? In character. But, hes just acting like a greaser, and its Weird

dugout wouldnt care! he would not look like "a deer in the Headphones."

i Realize the author doesnt have a beta reader but :x that doesnt excuse pawning off lazy work btw, in case anyone was wondering....

last but probably Most important: this is setting up such a toxic dynamic. tigerdrop is actively pushing the message that dugout is taking up too much space and he doesnt belong. its alienating and shitty. and this is a fic Shipping Them :x

but i Clicked on a dropout fic, so.... should i be surprised :/

like i said. dugout is Already afraid of him.. his body is reacting just to the sound of his voice, not unlike trauma in PTSD victims!

like. guh. this is literally so toxic. also..

take a shot every time you see the word "smirks"

lips ghosting his nose And ear? Lol.....

likely The Worst way to incorporate their miraculous personas :x reading this literally made me nauseous.

anyways.... thats all of the fic thats been posted so far. so to summarize: this is just Icky. its even worse, setting this kind of relationship in their high school years :x imagine if someone treated you this way! youre Not gonna grow up and marry them.

i Cant even.

~ ty for reading <3 ~

#mlb irl #gabby gabs #rant #cullykisser #UGH i dare not tag dropout #i dont need that toxicity..#grateful i could get some of this out there <3 #it was nice also to do some literary analysis ^^#maybe i really should be an english major!#;; back to classes now huwhwuwhuwh

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daltonblaine · 1 year

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'ur insane girl. as if it's a completely black & white situation and not a messy ass high school relationship with two fucked up people' !!!! THIS. i hate it when people either 100% blame blaine or 100% blame kurt in their messy situations (and 99% of the time, i see people blame blaine which pisses me off lol) bc they're both dumb and they both make mistakes and they're both just MESSY TEENS

Exactly 😭 apparently this is a hair trigger for me LOL um. some thoughts on this whole situation that no one asked for:

either type of stan/anti makes no sense to me because the fact of the matter is that blaine didn't cheat out of nowhere. was it a warranted/excusable response? absolutely not, but at least it's narratively understandable (which i value more than my fave being constantly morally pure LOL)

people say that cheating was an exceptionally nefarious & extreme response because from "what we've seen" kurt's only ignored 1 call from blaine and even "wasted his time skyping with blaine" (bitterly quoting an anti's post here LOL)

BUT i reject the idea of downplaying what both blaine & we as the audience were clearly meant to feel: a character with established abandonment issues, with no close friends around him anymore, started feeling truly abandoned

we're MEANT to feel conflicted about it because it's not a black and white situation. singularly taking the side of either kurt or blaine in this conflict makes you look ridiculous

i can understand why blaine might've cheated, but i mean. i think everyone agrees it was probably the worst choice he could've made. which, obviously, makes it impossible to take blaine's "side" in this conflict because at the end of the day cheating is cheating

but to immediately one-sidedly villainize blaine and claim kurt was completely guiltless also makes me tilt my head? it's not so cut and dry from here because some people will undoubtedly disagree with me on this, but from how i see it, klaine had already gone through this whole "what if you leave me behind" issue in s3. blaine had admitted his insecurities to kurt, who had acknowledged them and told him that they'd figure it out no matter what. and then what blaine was afraid of in s3 exactly happened once kurt left, with no proper communication from kurt's end

not so simple as "he cheated" on kurt's end, but kurt was unconsciously? doing something that was stretching thin the already-fragile balance they had on the account of blaine's established issues (and kurt faced no narrative consequences for this, i.e. we barely saw any kind of introspective kurt pov of the break up the same way we did with blaine, which i think is one of the biggest reasons why engagement era klaine didn't work out as they planned - that communication issue wasn't resolved even after they got back together)

honestly it's less of a finger-pointing blame game for me than thinking that miscommunication is klaine's biggest demon. i've talked about this before but the dichotomy of kurt & blaine's general reactions to conflict (kurt tending to pull away vs blaine tending to cling) makes communication EXTREMELY important in their relationship ... which i don't know if they really accomplish but hopefully now that they're going to therapy by s6 they got that figured out 😭

final note though - some of the standards people have for ships in fandom feel a bit shallow like if i wanted an unproblematic, conflict-free, safe ship i wouldn't be watching glee ... the morality cat fights people get into esp in regards to ships (but more often characters) have always been something i've never understood LOL i always have things to say about klaine because they're imperfect and complex. glee is an equal opportunity bad romance writer (makes all relationships fucked up on some level) LMAOO #GayRights

#ok so the blogger who keeps make the cheating jokes has serious thoughts on it apparently.#i've thought a lot about this i don't know if you can tell #ask #anonymous #long post #meta

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the-so-called-finchel · 2 years

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Do you have any headcanons for why Finn and Brittany get such bad grades? Do you think it's just that they're not academic or is it that something happened to turn them off of studying? I tend to think Brittany just thinks about things/explains things in a very unique way that her teachers don't understand and she's also just not academic.

I know this is unpopular probably, but I just think Finn and Britt are dumb. And there's nothing wrong with that. Not all characters have to be Rachel Berrys or Mike Changs.

I agree with your headcanon about Britt. I think she views and explains stuff in a unique way, however I also think her explanations and interpretations of the world aren't always correct, so I don't think her unique views means that she's not dumb. I'm not a fan of the hidden genius Brittany plot. She didn't need to be intelligent in order to have worth or in order to deserve to have a good life.

It's also why I like Finn's arc a bit more, because they just kept him being kinda naive and as not the brightest throughout. He does say in S4 that his grades went up to B's (or mostly B's) after joining the Glee club, so I feel like that's a bit more believable than what they did with Brittany and said she was a secret genius all along.

I could rant about Brittany and intelligence forever tbh. Like you have no idea how much it annoyed it me whenever Santana would compliment her by calling her a genius for saying something obvious or saying "when did you get so smart?" This isn't meant to hate on Santana, but I just hate how the writers were so fixated on Brittany's intelligence when it didn't really matter that much to her character arc or to the plot as a whole.

But I digress...

As someone who's had good grades in school, let me tell you that school work and studying is boring af and pointless. I won't get into that that much here, but I can see why there are people in the world who just don't vibe with studying. I personally rarely studied because I would just get things and remember things from class. And let me tell you, that saved me a lot because I had so many Finn Hudson moments where I'd just forget about a quiz or a test and just walk into it without having studied for it.

So what I wanna say is that I don't think Finn and Brittany were interested in the structured learning that schools push on people. It's honestly not interesting at all and it's very hard to stay interested unless you're just aiming for good grades and don't really care about how it makes you feel.

Finn and Brittany seemed to be able to understand and be good at a lot of things outside of book learning, so I just think that the traditional way of learning wasn't for them.

Another thing about school, if you don't understand stuff right away, it's really hard to find anyone to explain it to you and teachers or professors rarely stop to go into details and explain stuff in a way in which everyone can understand. So I think a lot of times Finn and Britt just didn't understand and then they kinda fell through the cracks and ended up falling behind.

I think Finn specifically never saw the need for studying. He wanted to be popular and he chose football in order to become popular. He didn't really care about his grades or his future outside of football. He just wanted to make football work and stick with that for the rest of his life.

Also both the Pierces and Carole didn't really push Britt and Finn, respectively. They weren't that concerned with grades, they were more concerned with their children feeling well and having a good life. They were the opposite of the Changs and Fabrays who pushed their children to be perfect at the expense of their happiness and well-being. Even the Berrys pushed Rachel a bit, but characters like Rachel and Tina were very driven to begin with, so even if their parents were laid back, they would have aspired for perfection themselves.

Finn and Britt aren't really driven either. They're just content with simple things. They don't need to have the best grades as long as they're enjoying themselves. We have seen both of them express the need to be perfect, but while they did say that, they don't really have the same drive for perfection that characters like Rachel or Tina do. And they're way more laid back about academic success.

I love Finn and Britt for being dumb, tbh. I hate the idea that characters need to be geniuses or have good grades in order for them to have any worth. Grades really mean nothing and however successful you are in school only lasts while you are in school. The real world is different and you can get by without being valedictorian or having the best grades in math.

#sohemotional #ask #finn #brittany

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shadowdianne · 3 years

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Fic writer review [Or a fic writer tag game if you prefer]

I was tagged by @naralanis and I can already see her grin all the way from where I am xd Thank you, dear, for the tag, let’s see what are my answers, shall we.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

*bursts out laughing* Adding both pseuds I have… 535 according to the account info but by counting them all I’m reaching 541 so I’m guessing it’s counting some drafts I need to re-find.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

I seriously hated you for this one xd I was going to do it by hand by I decided one-third there that I value my mental stability a little bit more xd according to the stats page back at a03 that number would be 1257884. It may be wrong. I think there should be a few more numbers up there but the majority of my works are one-shots so *shrugs* There’s also the fact that counting my ao3 things only is shaving off like half of it Xd Anyway, can we laugh at the fact that I’m a pain in the ass and that I’ve written a lot? More than I should have, that’s for sure

3. How many fandoms have you written for?

Trick question because I haven’t crossposted everything I wrote back in ffnet and I actually erased some fics from my account back there so the numbers are a little blurry there.

When I had the entirety of my work posted both in ffnet and a03 I had written for: Twilight (Bella/Alice) Glee (Faberry and there were a couple Pezberry and I don’t fucking remember the pairing name for Santana and Quinn), Harry Potter (Hermione/Ginny, Hermione/Narcissa, Hermione/Bellatrix) OUAT (SwanQueen and several oneshots focusing on the mad hatter and the blue fairy solely back at ffnet that were written in Spanish and never translated), I actually had a veeeery old au prompt of Frozen (Elsanna in where I wrote them as non sibilings), Rizzoli and Isles (Rizzles), Dishonored 2 (Emily Kaldwin/Alexi Mayhew), Lara Croft and Wonder Woman, Supergirl (SuperCorp/Supercat) I had a 100 one -or maybe two??- (Clexa), The Shannara Chronicles (Amberle/Eretreia [Or Princess Rover], Rwby [Blake Belladona/Yang], The Worst Witch (Hecate Hardbroom and Pippa Pentangle), The Half of it, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Madam Satan/Zelda Spellman) and… I think that’s it(?) I may be forgetting some but probably nothing important if I’m not remembering it lol.

4. Top 5 fics by kudos?

Ah, we are going to go there, uh? Xd My works are not the kudos and comment getting type Xd So I was quite surprised when I went to check this.

1: Cracked it I wrote this one back in 2017, it was a prompt done by an anon: Lena is nerding with one of her projects at home, mumbling mostly to herself because she’s stuck and Kara casually mentions how to solve the problem like it’s nothing. I really had some fun with this. It was back when some us, SQeeners were fully doing the jump between OUAT and SuperGirl (I mean, there had already been some crossover as for fandom is related but this when the girls were actually getting their conjoined voice within the fandom)

2: Dateless I honestly needed to check what this one was about but I think I can see why this one shot has the amount of kudos it has. It’s a short and sweet idea and responds to the Teachers Au that went SO well with SQ. Everyone thinks they hate each other and try to set them up with other people whilst they, in truth, are dating. I don’t remember if I wrote them as married rather than dating but despite being from 2017 as well is one cheeky enough to be cool Xd I probably would edit some lines now *shudders*

3: After you I truly didn’t expect this one to be top 3. Makes me think of a lot of things, if I’m being honest Xd. After you was a one shot written almost feverishly as an answer to the fabulous drawings that Sejic did of both Lara Croft and Wonder Woman back at 2018 or something. It’s just Lara and Diana being himbos but not at all with each other.

4: How about… How about is one I remember perfectly, it was my answer to the ending of the Half of it film. I had SOME thoughts about it, let’s just stop there Xd I really liked the film itself but I think and I thought at the time that my response to wishing for a final scene at the very end of the credits responds to me being in a different personal moment than the characters. I really wanted to explore my feelings about it and so I wrote about them finding each other again after some time passes. It was also something I wrote after quite the hiatus so I took it as something I could write about without focusing too much on the why.

5: Come to me

Ahh, SuperCorp Xd I remember this one actually. A friend of mine and I were talking about descriptions, and she mentioned quite off-handedly how she wanted a fic in where Kara’s back was described. I complied… more or less.

Fun tidbit, despite the big volume of my work is obviously set in ouat there’s only 1 SQ fic there as you can see, the others are either SuperCorp or the random one shots I created for Wonderwoman/Lara Croft and The half of it. *sighs in deep thought* I’m also not going to look too much into how almost all of the fics were posted and written back in 2017. Nope, not at all.

*Small voice screaming you peaked in 2017 and everything else is garbage jumps back and forth*

5. Do you respond to comments? Why/why not?

I tend to always respond, yup. I truly value comments. I might have gone for spells of time in where I didn’t have the mental capacity to check in old fics because I truly didn’t know what to answer but I treasure every single comment and you all who comment know that I can start to ramble in the answers xd -sorry about that- I really really REALLY love interaction.

6. A fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending:

Ok, Nara, come on, this one is a catch for me. I’ve written angst in far too many fics to remember the angstiest one :P I have the most recent one, though, that is the easy one to think about: Goodbye.Written for @delirious-comfort. I’m just going to say “Kisses with their last dying breath” as an idea of what awaits inside but I’ve written about death and loss and angst quite a lot. There were some I wrote back to SQ with Regina needing to kill Emma during the Dark Swan arc that, to this day, I still love and some others in where Regina is the one that dies, again and again, trapped by magic while Emma watches. I have the loss in mental destruction form and… I REALLY like my angst y’know xd

7. Do you write crossovers?

Not counting Lara and Wonder Woman not really! I think it comes from the fact that I loooove worldbuilding as a whole and some pairings would require all my focus into making the world perfect which in turn would make me self conscious on the OOCness of it all.

8. Ever received hate on a fic?

*snorts* I’ve received hate due to the pairing I’ve written about, how I’ve written about it, the amount I’ve written, how slow or quick I can be, the usage of some tropes, the lack of usage of those same tropes… Let’s just go with: yuuuup.

9. Do you write smut?

I’ve written smut, yeah! But I can already see the pointed looks of some so let’s elaborate Xd I write smut when asked and sometimes when not asked but there’s a part of me I like to call a terrible tease that prefers writing the beginning of a scene, taunt it, focus on what happens before the sex scene per se as I find it more enjoyable to write. The process of escalation is always the best for me to see what can I do it by using both dialogue and descriptors tbh, so I tend to tease more than show.

9. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

A few weeks ago I’d have said: Maybe(?) But trying to follow the trail of some other fics that had been stolen from some friends -I think it was me trying to find more about the page that stole something from your Nara!- I found some pages in where my fics had been reposted. In some it was stated that the person posting the fic wasn’t the author but I had never been contacted in order to see if I’d say yes to such a thing and in some others the page was locked up but I could still see someone was pretending to be the author. I did the thing and got some of those down.

Pointed note: Ask me if you want to post or translate or anything. I will look into you and answer you if you seem honest about the thing. But despite every joke and self-deprecating comment those 500 and then some fics represent MY time so very kindly I say fuck off to those who wish to steal from me and if I catch you… you don’t really want to see me angry, trust me.

10. Ever had a fic translated?

I’ve given permission to some, yeah, but never heard it back from them so I’m guessing it didn’t stick.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic?

I’ve written series alongside other authors as @stregaomega for example. And some others that are unpublished -looking at you @carsonnieve - I’ve also done collabs… but fics co-written in the sense of two authors same chapters I don’t have anything posted I’m afraid :P

13. All-time favourite ship?

*snorts*, I guess the obvious answer is SQ uh? And I do think they were the ones that allowed me to read and write SO much. The one I feel more strongly about, however, is Bering and Wells from Warehouse 13.

14. WIP you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

All of them counts as a valid answer? But if I only could finish one that would be Arcadia. With A forgotten Promise second and the one I did as an Assassins Creed AU third. (I don’t remember the name so there’s no link, sorry xd)

15. Writing strengths?

Uhhhh, you REALLY want me to say that? I don’t fucking know!! To me everything I write is garbage. I always try to go for the feelings so I guess. Dunno xd I’ve been told I’m good at worldbuilding and to be honest is what I enjoy the most.

16. Writing weaknesses?

Everything Xd Pacing? What I hate the most sometimes is dialogue, I would count it as a weakness but I’m always far too focused on description rather than dialogue. I don’t think it’s a bad thing per se but it’s something that I don’t do as much.

17. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

I’m conflicted. Always. Majorly because I think that having bilingual characters in fanfiction is portrayed and expected in a way that I don’t feel it’s honest with how bilingual people -us- talk. So if I go by what I know I do I think it’s not what readers hope to see when it comes to that and if I go for how canonically is hoped to be found I don’t think it’s logical. But that’s me and my overthinking Xd If I have the option I like to do it.

18. First fandom you ever wrote for?

Belice! Or Bella/Alice. Worst first fic ever but oh, well, I’m always saying that :P

19. What’s your fav fic you’ve written so far?

Uhh… Don’t make me do this XD Agh, I don’t know. I’ve always been very vocal about Metallic Ink because I let myself enjoy the process of creating a magic system almost out of zero and that was fun. Despite hating some of the writing process and that I’d do it differently now I think I’m going to stick with that answer. Or anything that had any steampunk-based undertone. To be honest I like more thinking of concepts, I had one in where Emma was a thief and it involved the robbery of a ring that was Regina’s one way ticket to freedom I then later repurposed that I adored thinking about so let’s go with…. Yeah, I love having the option of changing things up a little and focus on how characters would fit in different aesthetics for this one Xd

Annnd… these are four pages, gods. I’m just going to tag @waknatious @carsonnieve @stregaomega here and see what they do- Enjoy the questionnaire ladies :P

#taggie thingie #this was a monster

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love-geeky-fangirl · 3 years

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Ranking every teen drama I've watched

I have gotten really into teen dramas lately, because it's quarantine I can't go out and have fun, but I can still watch other people my age going out and having fun and doing things I don't get to do. Anyway I haven't seen all teen dramas, I was never interested in supernatural ones, so you won't find Vampire Diaries and similar shows on this list.

From worst to best:

The Secret Life of the American Teenager

I will never understand how this show ran for five seasons. It will forever remain a mystery to me. This show is so bad it's good. The writing resembles a wattpad story, Amy's pregnancy is inconsistent (like how was she five months pregnant for like five or six episodes, aren't the episodes supposed to be set a week apart?), the acting is bad (that is not to say that Molly Ringwald or Shailene Woodley are bad actresses, obviously they're not, I'm talking about Amy's sister that has the same facial expression no matter what her mood is supposed to be), some of the views this show expresses are very old-fashioned and damaging (the madonna-whore binary, the fact that they can't even utter the word abortion) and every single male character on this show is a creep and a cheater. I can't believe I watched like thirteen episodes of this. I will never get that time back.

Weirdest moment: "I'm a whore!" "Well, you're my whore." (Was this supposed to be romantic??)

Best moment: none

Glee

This is going to be unpopular and don't get me wrong, I like Glee, but I feel like the writers put much more thought into the musical numbers than the storylines. Again, Quinn's pregnancy is inconsistent (but I'm starting to think TV shows are always inconsistent about pregnancies), the characters don't look like they're in high school at all, the cheerleaders wear their uniforms 24/7 for no reason (Quinn even wore it to her sonogram, like seriously?) the whole celibacy club thing is weird and Mr Schue is a terrible teacher. However, the visuals and the musical numbers are great, Sue Sylvester is iconic (albeit also a terrible teacher) and some of the scenes are really emotional (Kurt singing I Wanna Hold Your Hand made my sister cry) so overall, it's pretty good.

Weirdest moment: Finn praying to grilled cheese (what??)

Best moment: Quinn giving birth to Bohemian Rhapsody, Kurt singing I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Dawson's Creek

I LOVE their 90s' outfits and Joey and Pacey are really otp material, but I just can't stand Dawson! He got mad that Joey didn't tell him about his mother's affair, as if it was her place to get involved. She was 15! It's understandible she didn't want to get tangled into that mess. He also slut-shamed Jen in a really gross way. He literally stopped talking to her for a day when he found out she isn't a virgin. Why are both Joey and Jen into this guy?? This would've been a much better show if it was called Joey's Creek or Pacey's Creek.

Weirdest moment: the way Dawson's mom confessed her affair to her husband. I don't think any irl human would use this choice of words. Also that scene where Dawson's father was teaching him how to kiss while Joey was watching. Cringe.

Best moment: any time Joey and Pacey are bickering. My shipper heart!

Pretty Little Liars

I loved the book version of this, but the TV version seems way too dramatic. First of all, they romanticized Aria and Ezra's relationship (ewww) and made the whole thing seem much more overdramatic. I don't know how to explain it, I mean the books are also dramatic but the TV show somehow took it to a whole new level. None of the girls look like they're in high school, but I love the way they dress and do their makeup. It's almost as though the writers put more thought into their outfits than storylines. I still loved watching it until Netflix took it off, though.

Weirdest moment: Spencer somehow trying to block A's number from her laptop in the middle of a park and then being confused that it didn't work. Weren't you supposed to be the smart one, Spencer?

Best moment: Haleb in the shower, hiding from Hanna's mom.

Skins

This is a classic. Effy is iconic (I somehow heard about her even before watching Skins) and the musical number at the end of season 1 was out of nowhere but still somehow fit perfectly into the story. I also give this show point for being one of the few TV shows where teen characters are actually played by real life teens. They look their age, talk their age (no "I reject reality" or other cringy lines like that) and aren't unrealistically perfect like characters from American teen dramas tend to be. They look like people you might actually meet in high school. However the show loses points for all the continuity errors (are 8 episodes supposed to be the whole school year??) and the number of unneccessary death/tragic accidents. It seemed kind of over-the-top and unneccessarily dark and brutal at times.

Weirdest moment: Chris's graphic death

Best moment: Wild World

Euphoria

The Gen Z American version of Skins, but with better visuals. Much better. I loved the aesthetic, the colors, the lighting and glitter. Zendaya's a great actress and I give this show points for casting an actual trans actress in the role of Jules. However I find it weird that all guys on this show are complete irredeemable assholes (except of Jules's dad and Ethan that is). Are we supposed to just root for the girls and not the guys? Also I find it hard to believe that any of these characters are actually 16/17. They have sex all the time (yeah teenagers have sex sometimes but on this show they treated Kat as some kind of a chaste nun for being a virgin at 16) and have seemingly no rules and no curfew. It would've been much more believable if they were in college.

Weirdest moment: Nate breaking into Tyler's house, beating him up and then taking a shower. The audacity this guy has!

Best moment: "You did this to me!" and Rue having an anxiety attack on the stage in theater class

Gossip Girl

I know this is also an unpopular opinion, because many claim Gossip Girl is the best teen drama ever, but for me it just got way too soapy as the seasons went on. The first two seasons were believable, even though they didn't really look like they were in high school, but after that it was just more and more weird plot points. I will give this show points for the fashion (I mean Blair's headbands and school uniform inspired a fashion line), the acting ("I killed someone"- iconic) and the choice of background music (Nate and Serena kissing to Paparazzi, Thanksgiving with Watcha Say). Despite the wild twists and turns of events, I just had to keep watching because this show had me hooked.

Weirdest moment: Bart Bass somehow flying off the building for no reason (seriously, what he did there had no logical explanation and defied laws of physics), Dan being Gossip Girl, Bart faking his death and returning more evil than before, Serena becoming Gossip Girl, the affidavit, everyone randomly stopping going to college... there are so many but Bart takes the cake I guess

Best moment: the Thanksgiving flashbacks from season 1, Dan placing a plastic crown on Blair's head

Freaks and Geeks

This is one of the few shows where high school is depicted realistically. It's not all glitter and parties and not everyone has sex and does drugs. Okay, I admit, the bullying was over the top and it was weird how no adults cared but other than that, it was pretty spot-on. It was emotional without being too dramatic and far-fetched and also had funny moments. Yes some of the characters may have been stereotypes but at least the show seemed self-aware of that. It's truly a shame we only got 18 episodes of this show, while The Secret Life of the American Teenager somehow got five seasons??? I don't get it.

Weirdest moment: when Cindy suddenly got super mean once she started dating Sam

Best moment: Daniel showing up at Kim's doorstep, Sam breaking down in tears in the end of 'Garage Door'

Gilmore Girls

I'm not sure this one counts as a teen drama, maybe it's more of a dramedy but I'm still including it here. It's funny, the dialogue is witty and full of obscure pop-culture references and the relationships between generations complex. Same as with Freaks and Geeks, the portrayal of high school is pretty realistic. Characters are shown studying and taking tests and not just partying all the time. However the show loses points for getting weirdly soapy in the 7th season. The dialogue wasn't as good and the camera angles were soap opera like and the storylines weren't very good either. You could really tell the show changed show-runners. The earlier seasons are the best. It's hard to explain but something about them feels cozy like a warm blanket and a cup of hot chocolate on a rainy day.

Weirdest moment: Lorelai marrying Chris and then making the whole "you're the man I want to want" speech, Lorelai defending and loving Dean for no reason

Best moment: Rory's graduation speech, Rory yelling at Chris and calling him out for not having been there for her, Then She Appeared, "Yes Emily, you may go first"... there are so many!

#teen dramas #the secret life of the american teenager #glee #dawson's creek #pll #skins #euphoria #gossip girl #freaks and geeks #gilmore girls #i would've included the oc but i havent seen enough of it yet

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spaceorphan18 · 4 years

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1-15 for the writers meme for ‘With Every Broken Bone.’ (I’m in a rereading mood for fanfic and I’m thinking about rereading this). Also you know I love this one!!

Aww thank you dear <3 Now I won’t shut up about process and the ins and outs of writing, lol...

1: What inspired you to write the fic this way?

When season 6 came along, admittedly, I had a really hard time reconciling going from a happy ending in season 5 to broken in season 6. And writing about it kind of was an interesting cross-section of therapy and analysis. While I was figuring out the timeline of events -- I noticed that there were some interesting parallels/juxtapositions going on, and because I thought I may not be writing more Klaine fic after this one (ha) I might as well take my own spin on a few famous portions of Klaine’s story.

2: What scene did you first put down?

I tend to write chronologically, so the opening flashback scene was probably first. I can’t fully remember. I did have a whole outline, though, before writing.

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

Hmmm, I’m not entirely sure, since a lot of the specific narration I don’t remember as much anymore. I do love the entire month of June chapter, though, which is mostly narration. I love that it’s Kurt finally getting what he thought he wanted -- to be alone -- and finding himself through that, but also that even he can experience loneliness when having too much distance from everyone else.

Also early in the story when Kurt goes dancing with a guy and he starts to connect to him -- feeling Blaine through him -- only to realize the dude isn’t Blaine and basically has a panic attack. That moment was always really clear in my head, and I liked writing that one.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

Oh, ha, it’s, like, my favorite line of dialogue ever, cause it’s a delightful metaphor for Klaine’s story at the time (And I’m sure people aren’t really that impressed with what I find clever, and are sick of me quoting myself, but I’m still amused by it)

“You know what it’s like? It’s like I stubbed my toe. And my toe hurt. A lot. And I tried to ignore the pain in my toe, but after a while it got so bad that something had to be done. So, instead of taking care of my toe, I chopped off my foot. Do you know how much worse chopping off your foot feels? Of course it took me four months to figure out how much it fucking hurts. And now I don’t have a foot. Just a bloody stump. I shouldn’t have cut it off. I could have fixed the toe.”

In addition, I also really enjoy some of the convos with Mercedes -- the one where she’s discussing her break up with Sam, and how, in a way, the two break ups are similar. I also love the July flashback with Mercedes -- because it foreshadows a lot of the story, and I thought it was rather clever.

5: What part was hardest to write?

The July chapter! Oh god, I think I had most of the rest of the fic done and kept having to put that on pause. I wanted Kurt to have another romantic interest during the summer - and get a sense of what casual relationships are like, and discover what he’s like in relationships that aren’t with Blaine. And to have to do that, set it up, pay it off, go through the whole thing and have it be meaningful was really hard. It took a long time to figure it out.

Not as difficult, but still I found challenge with, the flash back to the first break up. Trying to figure out how Kurt felt differently, and exploring how it was a different thing in a short amount of time was difficult.

The September flashback was difficult, too, because I needed Blaine to be frustrated without being too needy, or too much a bad guy. I know betas and talking it out helped a lot on that one.

6: What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?

This was my first big fic for Glee, and the first one where I felt like I was a decent writer. It also helped me figure out Kurt and the show in a way that I hadn’t before, and I love the character more from writing it.

7: Where did the title come from?

The lyrics of ‘I Lived’ -- I thought it was a nice touch that it was the last song on the show, and it fit with story I was trying to tell.

8: Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

Yes! A lot of my experiences of New York I wrote into it here and there.

Also the story about thunder being god bowling. I had a cousin who used to tell me that so it didn’t seem so scary.

9: Were there any alternate versions of this fic?

Not really? The only big thing I cut out was an extension of the stuff with June Dalloway in chp 3 (?) -- my betas talked me into cutting that way down, and they were right to do so.

10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?

I mean, well, they’re who I write. The pairing picked the story.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

I really love the story it explores with Kurt in it. I’m proud of how Kurt grows in it, and how I feel it does bridge the two seasons nicely. I really love how it gets deep into Kurt’s psyche -- drawing on canon as much as I could to paint a full picture of who he is. I think he’s a fleshed out and flawed character, and he feels real to me in this one.

I also really love that I was restrained in my use of Blaine -- he’s a ghost that haunts this story, and I was fascinated with the idea. I think it really comes through. Blaine is always there, even when he’s not, even when Kurt’s trying hard to move on. You miss Blaine in the story, but that’s intentional -- because Kurt deeply misses Blaine.

12: What do you like least about this fic?

There are still some parts that feel a little clunky to me. Certain sections that maybe go on too long, or not long enough. I can tell it’s an earlier fic of mine -- I could have worked on better and more concise sentence structure in a lot of places. I could have fleshed a few ideas out. And the October chapter, which is all of season 6, goes on a little too long -- and it feels slightly out of place, but I knew it did even when writing it -- I’m not sure how I’d re do it, but it feels slightly different than the rest of the fic.

I give myself a lot of leeway because it was my first time writing one, but the sex scene was a bit on the simple side. It felt more like an obligation - and I was super scared to write it, and basically my betas had to help me construct it cause I had no idea what I was doing and felt funny writing it.

I also think the Nov. flashback is a little too cheesy, but I was trying to get in all the last minute canon references, so I left it in there.

13: What music did you listen to, if any, to get in the mood for writing this story? Or if you didn’t listen to anything, what do you think readers should listen to to accompany us while reading?

Yeah, I had a whole playlist for this one!!

Chapter 1 (March): Teenage Dream - Darren Criss

Chapter 2 (April): Shake it Out (Acoustic) - Florence and the Machine

Chapter 3 (May): Rockstar - A Great Big World

Chapter 4 (June): I Shall Believe - Sheryl Crow

Chapter 5 (July): Daydream Believer - Mary Beth Maziarz

Chapter 6 (August): Dream City - Free Energy

Chapter 7 (September): Head Over Feet (Acoustic) - Alanis Morissette

Chapter 8 (October): Halo - Beyonce

Chapter 9 (November): I Live - Fate Under Fire

Each of the chapters kind of had a musical aesthetic going on with it! Also intentional were the use of Kurt solos as chapter titles -- those paired along with each chapter purposely.

14: Is there anything you wanted readers to learn from reading this fic?

I have no idea - that’s up to them to get anything out of it.

15: What did you learn from writing this fic?

I did! I learned a lot about writing (which having a few fantastic betas really be strict with my writing helped a lot). I got myself out of some bad habits, and tried to be more introspective than I had been with previous writings. And I just felt like I stepped up when it came to writing. I think this is far from a perfect piece of writing, but I’m proud of how it turned out.

I also learned a lot about Kurt, he became a part of me writing this, and now his story is much more special to me than it had been before. And I learned a lot about Glee -- how it is as a show, and how it works, cause I looked at the structure of canon, and how it was written.

#gorgxoxus #thanks so much! I could talk endlessly about this one! :)#that's how s.o. sees it

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curious-minx · 3 years

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A ranking of four 200 Hundredth Episodes: Bob’s Burgers’ recent victory lap stands above the rest

The Bicentennial. How many among us get to be a part of something that get’s broadcasted for over 200 episodes? In the world of animated sitcoms it is a small, Fox dominated burrow. Bob’s Burgers is the latest series to become bestowed with this particular honor, and is possibly the best of the Fox line-up to do so. Family Guy’s 200th episode, Season 11 - Episode 12, is the only Fox series to be given a full blown on-air anniversary treatment. The episode is a Valentine themed Brian and Stewie lark and like all of the other entries on this list celebrates it’s 200th episode anniversary in a more casual, blithe fashion. Family Guy is the only show Fox has bothered to air an entire half hour special, but months before the actual airing of the 200th episode in Februrary. I am deliberately skipping over Family Guy and South Park’s 200th episodes. In the former’s stead I chose to watch American Dad’s 200th episode, because McFarlane is such a titan in adult animation that deserves recognition. The South Park episode is too exhausting for me to get into. South Park’s 200th episode, Season 14 - Episode 05, is the one that evoked the wraith of a New York based Radical Muslim organization that would soon be “shut down” (i.e. members arrested) a few months after the episode aired on April, 2010. The 200th episodes of South Park and the Simpsons are the only two series to have received Emmy nominations, and in Simpsons case a win, due to their 200th episodes. Here’s hoping for Bob’s Burgers to get a similar recognition, because I think its 200th episode is pretty special and straight to the point.

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1.) Bob’s Burgers - “Bob Belcher and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Kids”

Out of all the 200 episodes is episode the most consciously in conversation with itself. The 200th episode has been treated with a reasonable amount of respect with The A.V. Club bringing their Bob’s Burgers coverage out of retirement and Variety and Salon also got into the mix. Gotta be honest a part of me over at The Curious Minx would prefer if the Bob’s Burgers recap lane was kept on the narrower side, but on the other hand this is a fabulous series that should be written about by as many different publications.

In a recent tired and routine zoom Variety interview (https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/bobs-burgers-remote-recording-200th-episode-1234830796/) BB’s creator Loren Bouchard touches upon how this 200th episode is supposed to serve as something of a pilot. An episode so fully realized that even if you are someone with no active bank of knowledge about the Bob’s Burgers minutiae of the Belcher family dynamics and still enjoy this episode as much as a full blown series fan. The episode is written by Steven Davis, a producer and writer with an extensive amount of episode writing and producing credits on Bob’s Burgers. The quality of a Bob’s Burgers script in the pandemic era is becoming more relevant, because of the diminished role of improv, and this episode definitely feels crafted by a creative team fully in touch and aware of their characters and how to put them in satisfying situations.

Compared to any of the other animated sitcom families, the Belchers are noticeably the more lower middle class. There is a pervading sense of an overall struggle for survival and prosperity that is cooked right into the series pilot debut. Season 1 - Episode 01 “Human Flesh” sets the tone of the series, despite the overall writing and characters being sharper, the stakes have not changed much. Bob’s Burger’s like any American restaurant not under the protective aegis of a Big Franchise is in a state of perpetual turmoil. In the pilot episode the difficulties of running a standard American restaurant are made even more complicated by dysfunctional family hijinks.

The 200th episode differs from the pilot in one dramatic way and that is the presence of the extended Belcher family member Teddy. In the original pilot Teddy is completely absent, whereas in the 200th episode Teddy’s role as surrogate family member is made even most distinct by having Teddy being invested above and beyond in helping save his pal’s Bobby’s restaurant. The return of the ornery and quirky Health Inspectors Ron and Hugo are serving as the most obvious form of echoing of the pilot. I highly recommend rewatching the pilot after viewing this episode, because I had completely forgotten that the Belcher’s saving grace is that Hugo and Linda were once in a relationship together. The pilot is noticably very contained setting wise, focusing exclusively in and around the Belcher family restaurant. Whereas, the 200th episode explores more settings with the Belcher children going across town to find a replacement for Bob’s broken oven part, an oven that they feel they are entirely to blame for destroying. A couple of celebrity guests Stephanie Beatriz and SNL’s Kyle Mooney that true to Bob’s Burgers spirits are usually just playing characters of little to no consequence. Unlike the other Fox family in this list that really leans in on having celebrities playing themselves, the best celebrity guest appearances on Bob’s Burgers tend to be the most anonymous, and Kyle Mooney’s put upon hardware store clerk is a great example of this.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t dwell on the satisfying Linda contribution of the episode. Linda makes the critical set piece that ignites the restaurant fire. Linda’s gnarly mermaid sculpture is a great visual metaphor for the series. Especially when the Mermaid Statue is used to build up a very well constructed song-based gag. The whole episode made me feel really good about the state of the series and especially the Movie (And Loren Bouchard backs this up by giving interviewers the impression that the film’s delay has only improved its quality). As far as 200 episodes of long running animated sitcoms go, you certainly can’t go wrong with this one!

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2. King of the Hill - Hank’s Bully

By all accounts the most unremarkable episode on this list. An episode that also has a trollish spirit that gets a sadistic glee in tormenting the fuddy duddy Hill patriarch. This is the also the 200th episode with the lowest stakes, the least of a spectacle, and most unassuming 200th episode. While trying to research anything of note to include in my review of the episode all I could find was this reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/KingOfTheHill/comments/bpl235/hanks_bully_was_near_impossible_to_watch/) where a user is criticizing the way in which Hank it mistreated. When I was rewatching this episode my partner also found this episode hard to watch and sympathized with Hank’s plight against a Clifford-like malicious imp of a hateful child who’s sole purpose is to make the lives of everyone else around him more difficult.

To me what most stands out about this episode is the fantastic direction by longtime King of the Hill animator, former Bob’s Burgers animator, and current Rick and Morty director, Kyoung Hee Lim. A seemingly badass woman working in a field that is not particularly kind to women or to women of color. I am pretty shocked that no one in all of her years as a director on some pretty important shows has brought her up or did an interview piece on her. Maybe this is something the good folks at The Curious Minx can aspire to? I am definitely going to be taking a further dive into the 22 episodes of King of the Hill that she directed and revisit the 15 episodes of Bob’s Burgers to see if I can discern what makes a Kyoung Hee Lim episode.

One major ploy detail that I noticed in this episode, a detail that is also oddly prevalent on the other two 200th episodes, is the trash talk. And by that I do mean literal trash talk. The B-plot of this episode is what makes the episode pop for me in that the pairing of Dale and Peggy is a really successful one. The episode finds Dale frustrated with the Arlington Waste department and how they won’t take his refrigerator full of dead squirrels and his freeze full of dead crow. Dale then takes advantage of this dead blessing in disguise by getting into the world of competitive taxidermy with Peggy’s creative eye complimenting Dale’s gruesome technical prowess. Both of these characters operate on such an oddly similar wave lengths that watching the two of them embark on a taxidermy journey together was strangely touching and fun to watch. And I am a vegan that feels weird about killing animals in video games, but the ending visual gag of the episode is especially inspired. My one complaint is that the episode is severely lacking in Bobby Hill. Probably because I just recently finished watching Better Things and basically want every show to be the Pamela Adlon show all the time.

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3.) American Dad - “The Two Hundred”

Visually and conceptually this 200th episode really impressed me. As previously mentioned at the start of the post, I am not someone that is particularly warm to the McFarlane brand of comedy, but American Dad really is where he saves his best work for. This 200th episode got the complete opposite treatment of Family Guy. Airing on a Monday night on TBS this episode was pretty much given a shrug, but that does not tamper down any of its ambitions. The whole episode is basically a pastiche of Apocalyptic Dystopian alternative timeline tropes centering around an alone and traumatized by his past Stan. The episode has one of the most clever ongoing visual gags I have seen on a show where flash backs are teed up by Stan’s ridiculous new post apocalyptic tattoos. The core family and ancillary characters of American Dad are all given terrific moments to shine in this heightened post apocalyptic hellscape, and the key to any enduring series success if whether or not you can tell that the creatives involved respect and enjoy the characters that they are writing for. This being a McFarlane project there are a couple of embarrassing lines of dialogue from the show’s respective gay and Black characters and an over indulgence on Rodger based humor, but overall this 200th episode left me with more appreciation for this series as a whole. I will still always make sure to appreciate whenever a long running creative property takes stylistic swings and risks.While there is nothing particularly fresh or novel about a cannibal laden post apocalyptic wasteland this 200th episode managed to find some find fun character beats to subvert tropes or double down on them. The visual of a consistently on the move runaway train that is also mysteriously always on fire was also especially well executed. This episode could easily have been a series finale if the series hadn’t already played around with alternative timelines like in their Christmas specials.

This episode also features more trash talk! One of Stan’s tattooed regrets revolves around Francine failing to get the trash picked up on trash day because Stan had purposely neglected to take it out. This rather odd pattern is about to make a whole lot of sense with the fourth and my least favorite 200th episode by the Simpsons.

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4.) The Simpsons - Trash of the Titans

How many more times can I impress upon you that the 200th episode of your animated sitcom is an an occasion for trash talk? One more time. This 200th episode of The Simpsons is by far the most trash centric 200th episode of them all. The first animated adult sitcom to get over the 200th episode hump, the 200th episode “Trash of the Titans” has some fun real-world trivia attached to it, but other than that this is one of the lesser “Golden Era” Simpsons offerings by a long shot.

My primary source on contention with the episode lies in the direction Homer takes in most of the episode. A 2016 Uproxx (https://uproxx.com/media/simpsons-donald-trump-hillary-clinton/) article gained traction and a Wikipedia citation by comparing Homer’s antics to that of possible former rising Dictator Donald Trump. The episode involves Homer acting at his absolute most abhorrent in an election to boot, and his behavior in this episode is some of the most irredeemable Homer has ever been. The article oddly neglects to make note of the fact that Homer in this episode also makes similar slights against Mexico, referring it to an inherently “dirtier” country. The episode ends on a truly groan inducing aged as fine as old socks in the cheese drawer with a crying Native American gag. Ah 1998 when we could pretend that the Crying Native American commercial was just silly social commentary and not racial minstrelsy.

There is also one other instance that didn’t sit well with me and that’s when Homer is seen physically assaulting a woman working the booth at a U2 concert. I could handle the bullish descent into crooked politician, but watching Homer violently push a woman out of the way felt out of place. A retread of all the growth and development we’ve seen him go through over the course of 200 episodes. Of the other three patriarchs discussed on this list a Homer Simpson centric plot tend to not work as well for me especially if you compare him to the other animated TV fathers.

The episode also features two celebrity guest spots. One made by Steve Martin who does a good job becoming more or less unrecognizable as the original Springfield Sanitation Commissioner Ray Patterson. The other celebrity guest appearance is more of an ill-portent of signs to come with U2 playing themselves. Whenever a celebrity is playing themselves on The Simpsons it usually does not work out. Not everyone can be used to advance a plot as seamlessly as Barry White. Although it is funny, funny in a “oh, we were so much simpler” sort of way that this episode garnered controversy and a ban on UK television over U2 and Mister Burns’ use of the word, “wanker.” Flash forward to 2009 and Bono is once again throwing around his favorite cheeky pejorative this time in reference to fellow earnest bland frontman Chris Martin (https://www.music-news.com/news/UK/24741/Read).

Resting Wanker Face

The other fun factoid about this episode once again is not related to the show, but the show’s influence spilling out into the real world. In the late 80s and throughout the 90s, Adams Mine was an abandoned pit located somewhere in Ontario situated in a term I’m learning for the first time, the “Canadian Shield.” An exactly similar proposal is made by Homer Simpson during his reign of Sanitation Commissioner. This sweeping of trash under the rug does culminate into a satisfying visual gag as a climax that feels like a Garbage Pail Kid/Toxic Avenger version of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. More bizarrely and unfortunate, this episode also aired a week after the passing of Linda McCartney. How messed up is that? Couldn’t they just have waited at the end of the season or at least on an episode that doesn’t involve wallowing in filth?

The episode features another developing bad habit in terms of the inclusion of songs and song parodies. There is virtually no connection to Willy Wonka in this episode other than the fact that both “Candy Man” and “Trash Man” have share a similar pronoun. Unlike the use of songs in Bob’s Burgers where they tend to be unique to the character’s reaction to dramatic consequence, on the Simpsons it’s more often than not a a song for the sake of a song. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but why not go for a joke about parodying real musical trash titans, The Cramps, or even trash up a U2 song? On the episode’s Wikipedia entry in the Production section Matt Groening is quoted to saying that the visual gag of a department store sporting the slogan, “Over a Century Without a Slogan,” wasted a lot of man hours. So much effort and reach for a joke with a fraction of a minimal of pay off is essentially the Simpsons ethos in one visual gag.

Once again, it bears repeating that this episode is also rewarded for an Emmy. If you break down the episode as starting off as a satire of Holiday Commercialism with the creation of the cynical Love Day holiday and ending the episode as a foreboding parable about the very real ecological repercussions of improper waste management. This clearly sounds like classic Simpsons reverse engineering management. Instead this is a classic case of an episode of the Simpsons being more interesting to think about than it is to actually watch. This is also the 200th episode that least honors its central cast of characters. Marge and Lisa are both afforded meager moments of wisdom and decency, but Bart is more or less even more irrelevant to the plot than Bobby Hill was on his 200th episode.

As for today it seems like the only Simpsons anniversary that will likely rouse any more attention it’s way will be the 1,000th episode.. Think how much more trash we as a collective species will have made by the time that milestone roils around!

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In Conclusion:

When you start to make 200 episodes of anything the one feeling that seems to creep up is one of, “taking out the trash,” or you’re making art out of trash. Trash being a metaphor for the entire medium of Television. The TV market is an ever growing landfill, one of America’s Rapiest Dads made a whole cartoon about kids living and learning life lessons in a junk yard. So much of Television is only a means of mass marketing ground up pieces of detritus. Then you’re supposed to be grateful that your detritus gets to be a bumper for advertisements and the occasional merchandising. You’re an adult, you’re not supposed to take cartoons seriously. They are empty calories, brain noise, and at best background noise. Yet they are the only types of shows that can consistently manage to get over well over the 200 episode mark. At least back before the Netflix business model of show’s only deserving 1.5 seasons.

Bob’s Burgers is reaching its 200th episode in an unfathomable media landscape, one that is completely demolished and in the process of being rebuilt from the aftermath of the coronavirus. The 2020s could be a turning point for animation going forward, animation is a severely grueling and technically difficult sector. This newfound interest in the medium may finally be the financial boost and support that it dearly needs in order to properly pay artists for their work. The creators of these series may not think of what they do as art and to keep themselves afloat have to think of the act of bringing an animated sitcom into the world as necessary as taking out the trash. Our trash is a mirror. Inside the landfill we see our own morals and values reflected right back at us. Bringing forth life means a lot of shit. With every year you keep an infant human alive that means (x) amount of disposable diapers piled up. I suggest we make like the Belcher children and try to salvage our trash, put a wig on our trash, put a crop top on our trash, paint some lashes on your trash, because we’re all in the end up going to be put into the ground (beef).

#Bob's Burgers #The Simpsons #American Dad #King Of the Hill #TV #TV Review #TV Series #Animation #Cartoon #Anniversary #200

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sionnables · 4 years

Text

So…

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, you guys.

Let me explain something first: the Broadway musical First Date is my SHOW. I mean, it’s NOT-- I had no part in the creation or performance of it, obviously. But it’s “mine” in the way that people tend to take possession of things they like, you know?

“That’s my song!”

“That’s my precious fictional baby!”

Or, I guess, like that weird thing sports fans do when they insert themselves into their favorite team, like, “we need to box out the endzone and get some points on the board” or whatever.

First Date is mine not only because I loved it, but because it felt like the creators reached into my heart, plucked out all my experiences and emotions, and put them up on stage. I mean, it went to TATTOO LEVELS, so you know it’s both serious and a little ridiculous.

Six years later, I still fucking love that show.

(The intensity has gone down a bit, but that’s probably the best for everyone.)

So when I happened to find out that the book writer of First Date was the creator/writer of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist AND it was a musical, I obviously wanted to check it out. It was delayed slightly by a deep-dive into a Schitt’s Creek hyper-fixation (David and Patrick can have my entire heart and, like, overall existence), but I finally started watching a few days ago.

And it is delightfully First-Date-y.

It’s also a really good “I can’t handle anything too sad or heavy right now due to reality” option. There’s some romantic angst and family tragedy thrown in, but it’s not like This Is Us: The Musical or anything (thank christ-- seriously, how does anyone watch that show? It’s Ugly Cry Central over there).

I’m not going to do the plot summary thing because Google exists. But here’s the thing: yes, there are multiple tropes here that have been done to death (*cough*lovetriangle*cough*), but you know what? The show is cute, the cast is really talented, and the writing’s pretty effing funny. I don’t need groundbreaking television to be entertained. And I’m a sucker for “nice comedy” nowadays, you know? Like, I could never get into Glee because the characters were HORRIBLE to each other. I can’t do a show full of selfish, mean people, it just doesn’t work for me. Give me a well-written ensemble comedy where everyone messes up but they’re ultimately trying their best and growing, and I’m pretty much in.

That all being said, here’s what I need to discuss (spoilers ahead, obviously):

1) Zoey’s definitely got that whole Zooey-Deschanel-adorkable thing going on, but you have to appreciate a show that is like, “STEM Women FTW!” because we need that. Also, maybe it’s Fellow Millennial Empathy, but I appreciate that she has no idea what she’s doing and is still trying so hard to be a functioning and successful adult, WHILE dealing with family tragedy, AND sudden musical powers, AND being a woman in charge of a department full of men (girl, been there done that), AND confusing mushy feelings. It helps that Jane Levy is so talented that I was convinced she was British (she is not).

2) Mo. Is. Everything. More representation of gender-fluidity is wonderful to see, for one thing. But he’s also the smartest character on the show, as well as the most well-balanced and emotionally mature. And his VOICE, okay? I love that it seems like Mo is going to sort of be Zoey’s guide through all of this, and I’m looking forward to seeing their friendship grow.

3) Simon is a gorgeous, gorgeous man. If he was at ALL single, I’d be like, “Zoey, hit that IMMEDIATELY”. But I don’t love the direction that their relationship is going (HE IS ENGAGED, FFS) OR the whole Jessica vs. Zoey thing they’re pulling. I’m willing to give the first part a pass because both of them are grieving and emotional instability can definitely equal bad decisions (we may not like it, but you can’t say it’s unrealistic). But that second part? Simon is way more to blame than Zoey. No more girls hating on girls, okay? Like, I don’t want Jessica and Zoey to necessarily become besties (that whole “it’s always about your dad” comment was way too awful for me to like her THAT much), but you know what I mean. The longer this goes on, the less I like Simon. And it’s such a BUMMER, because I feel like Zoey and Simon could really use each other, platonically.

4) Speaking of not liking people, Zoey’s brother is a dick. Not ONLY because of the shit he pulled with going out to bars instead of being with his PREGNANT WIFE/STRUGGLING MOTHER, but that whole thing about him having to “convince” his wife to have kids when she didn’t want them? YUCK. He’s the one character I do not like at ALL and I hope that Emily leaves him and ends up an awesome single mom with a hot boyfriend. I’m glad Zoey told her what was up. GOOD. WHAT A JERK.

5) Zoey’s mom is amazing and deserves the world. That is all.

6) Full disclosure: I am 100% Team Max. But within that 100%, I’m 50% Zoey Is Clearly Not Ready To Date Him Or Even Process Her Feelings About Him Right Now So He Needs To Just Be Her Friend and 50% Zoey Is Clearly Terrified Of Feelings And Max Might Need To Push Her a Little To Get Her To Get Past That. This is coming from a place of experience, because I was once terrified of feelings and commitment and basically my husband is only my husband because he chose to ignore the many, many times I tried to break up with him and was very persistent with me. Please note that this DOES NOT MEAN that Max needs to be all pissy about “friendzoning” and/or pushing TOO hard, TOO quickly. Which he’s sort of toe-ing the line with, at the moment. I don’t think that Zoey ever really gave him the impression that she was interested in him romantically before the whole “flash mob” debacle (I cringed when Mo said that touching his shoulder and having him come over to watch a movie was leading him on, because please don’t do that, writers, Mo is too smart and progressive for that BS), and the flash mob itself was a really weird, out-of-character move (at least thus far) for him. Look, I get the whole “omg, Max can hear her/no wait, there’s real singing” thing was an unexpected twist, but I’m not a fan of twists over characterization. Max knows Zoey, and I think he’d know that declaring feelings in public while making her the center of attention would not be her thing (but I find public proposals super cringe-y, so maybe that’s just me). I’m sort of not happy with that. What I DO think is appropriate is him asking for some time/space after she asks to just be his friend-- I count that as being respectful of her decision and needing some breathing room to disconnect his romantic feelings towards her. I also don’t blame him for being upset that she knew his feelings way beforehand and didn’t say anything, or for being upset after seeing her sing to Simon. The singing thing is not Zoey’s fault at ALL, but that is some serious emotional whiplash! Nevertheless, I hope these two are endgame and don’t hurt each other too much in the process. That boy will do ANYTHING for her, and I kind of love him for it. Please don’t turn him into a “Nice Guy”! Also, can we all agree that he outsang EVERY SINGLE ONE of the Jonas Brothers with “Sucker”? Goddamn!

7) Tobin is so stupid, but WOW is that character a brilliant representation of every single, straight, young, insecure, emotion-denying, Reddit-using, product of toxic masculinity gamer boy that you’ve ever met in your life. Holy SHIT. They’re nailing it with him. He is 100% the guy that yells a “make me a sandwich” joke in front of his friends and then goes home and cries about not having a girlfriend. I have met 10,000 versions of Tobin in my life and he CRACKS ME UP. Bless him.

8) Leif is Draco Malfoy and I hope that Joan is using him for sex and then ditches him in a humiliating fashion. IF THEY MAKE HER FALL FOR HIM I SWEAR TO GOD. She’s too smart for that. I want Joan and Mo to take over the world together.

9) I don’t want to talk about Zoey’s dad. HE’S FINE. EVERYTHING’S FINE. HE’S TOTALLY GOING TO GET BETTER. THIS IS A HAPPY SHOW.

Okay, I think I got all of my thoughts and feelings out. Until next week, at least.

#zoeys extraordinary playlist #zoeysplaylist #ZEP #this is too long #i apologize #but i mean #we're all stuck at home so at least it wastes some time #mention of a broadway show that i will not tag because reasons

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tellywoodtrash · 4 years

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What is HAPPENING on Sanjeevani, girl?! I saw some clips on my Insta and it had a wild!Gaurav Chopra?! A nervous wreck masquerading as Dr Ishani?? And she's MARRIED to GChops?! Ded!Dr Shashank?? Mysterious son and Dr Anjali in Germany??? What.

Hiiiiiiiiii friend! 😘😘😘

Loooooooong time! How have you beeeeeeeen?! 🤗🤗🤗

Lmao I can’t even beginnnnnnn to describe the clusterfuck that has been Sanjivani since like…. October, but lemme try and break it down in bullet points (if you know all of this already, just skip down to the “three years later” bit!):

Sid who was flirting it up and sexy dancing at a wedding with Ishani till 8 pm, suddenly at 8:01 pm remembers that he has a dead fiancee in his past (plus najaayaz issues) and suddenly starts calling himself a panauti, properly balls-to-the-wall believing in the phenomenon (y’know, as educated, scientifically-minded surgical residents/general medical wunderkinds tend to do! blaming things like their mother’s premarital pregnancy and an older family members’ developmental disorder on themselves!) and being passive-aggressive in trying to ward off Ishani to “protect her” from him.

Passive-aggressive has to be notched up to AGGRESSIVE-AGGRESSIVE coz Ishani’s a dheent who won’t take no for an answer; so he GOES AND MARRIES ISHANI’S BEST FRIEND ASHA, who has gotten knocked up by Aman (who tata-bye-byed outta the whole sitch. Props to him for being the smartest person in this show. He’s probably living an unfulfilled life somewhere, but seemed to come from wealth, so how sad can you really be when you have so much money????)

This whole SidAsha marriage was engineered behind the scenes by Vardhan - who found out that Asha was pregnant and threatened to set her Khap Panchayat from Haryana on her or some shit. He coerced Asha to take advantage of Sid’s “achchaai” by playing on his najaayaz kid feels and take responsibility for her.

Lots of angst and drama as Ishani and Sid struggle with their feels about each other while he’s married to a pregnant Asha, whom he’s pledged his support and name to.

Asha’s pregnancy hormones seem to make her batshit crazy and unable to make any reasonable decisions, and she keeps messing with Sid’s career; drugging him and making him fuck up important surgeries and what not.

All this, again, coz Vardhan. Vardhan wants revenge from Sid. Why? Because dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn, Sid is Shashank’s son! Vardhan wants to ruin Shashank’s life and thinks the best way to do it is by torturing his kids, and thus is fucking with Sid’s career, and is fucking with Anjali (like, literally. 👉🏽👌🏽👉🏽👌🏽👉🏽👌🏽 Coz sis has daddy issues and reallllllll bad judgement when it comes to men.)

But why does Vardhan want revenge from Shashank???? Damned if we (including the writers) know. Something to do with Vardhan’s Dearly Departed Didi, whose photo he keeps staring at while gritting his teeth. I’m guessing Shashank’s stuck his pen in that inkwell too?

Oh btw, Shashank also confessed his feelings for Juhi, who seemed HORRIFIED at the prospect, but like 5 minutes later is cool with it and reciprocates with her own crushy-wushy feelings? Idk man, idk. It’s all very unclear what that whole plot point was exactly, beyond some vague conversations and ambiguous coy smiles.

Daddy Shashank is disappointed in his known/unknown kid(s) for their various missteps in personal/professional lives. Saare milke inhe paagal banaa rahein hai, yeh chutiya bachchein.

Lots of other miscellaneous fuckery is going on between Sid/Ishani which……. honestly, is exhausting and not worth getting into. Anyway, it’s finally found out that Asha is the culprit behind this dhai mahine ka dukh-dard-chutiyaapa.

Ishani takes a bullet for pregnant Asha, and goes into a coma. Guilt-ridden Asha tells Vardhan to fuck off, signs annulment papers, and finally gtfo, but not before giving Sid a clue about who’s really behind all this kaand.

Vardhan is like lmao, I didn’t need her anyway and goes about paying randomass people to frame Sid for medical malpractice. Ishani literally comes out of the coma and hightails it straight to the police station to save her man. (For the record: I wouldn’t even let a man interrupt an afternoon nap of mine.)

Oh btw, by this point Anjali was like bohut ho gaya and fucked off to go play a Naagin on Colors. Good for her. 🐍🐍🐍

Sid and Ishani start working on exposing Vardhan. Coz appropriate R&R after getting up from a goddamn coma, what’s that!?!??!? JUST SHAKE IT OFF!!!!!!!!! PFFFFFFFT, TAKE A CROCIN OR TWO!!!!

Lo and behold, Dr. Shashank is killed in an accident. (We haven’t really seen him for the last………………………………… like 20 episodes or so? So…. do we really care at this point? Not really. Mohnish didn’t even show up to shoot the dead body waale shots. For the longest time I was like PAKKA SHASHANK NAHI HOGA, FACE NAHI DIKHA RAHEIN, KOI AUR HAI YAAR!!!!!!!!!!! But nope, all the characters identify him by face……… So yeah, egg on MY face.)

Sid’s mummy drops the bomb at the cremation that Sid is Shashank’s son and should light the funeral pyre. A very cool fun appropriate time for Anjali AND SID to find that out!!!!!

Sid and Ishani channel their sads into exposing Vardhan. Hallelujah, finally a win for the unluckiest people in this show. FFS even the little child who got impaled on a rod and Nurse Philo’s daughter with terminal brain cancer have had better lives.

Sid proposes to Ishani. He says he’s been accepted into some program in America and wants her to come with to start a new life there. Ishani is like nope, YEH MERA INDIA SANJIVANI, I LOVE MY INDIA SANJIVANI.

Ishani’s Mama/Mami come for rishta talks and catch the two almost making out in an on-call room and are all hawwwwwwwwww cheeeeeeee sanskaaaaaaar, etc. They turn out to dislike Sid coz najaayaz. And are rudeass snobby assholes to him and his family. Sid is understandably quite mad.

INSTEAD OF TALKING THAT SHIT THROUGH WITH HER, HE DITCHES ISHANI AT THE FUCKING MANDAP VIA TEXT AND FLIES OFF TO AMERICA. VIA TEXT. VIA TEXTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. We are all reminded once again, that Tellywood Men Ain’t Shit.

Except for Drs. Rahil and Neil who have categorically maintained their Very Good Boy crowns 👑👑👑👑 throughout the run of this show. Gold stars to them for achieving the impossible. 🌟🌟🌟

Sanjivani is on fire. Like, metaphorically it was always on fire, but this time literally. Unhinged Ishani runs riiiiiiight into the burning building.

3 years later………..

Sanjivani has been rebuilt. By Gaurav Chopra whose name is Navratna Singh, lololololol. An appropriate name because he does seem to be quite thanda thanda cool cool. He reopens and invites all the old staff back to pitch in and restore the place back to its old glory.

Anjali is a guest lecturer in Germany and may or may not come back to Sanjivani soon, depending on her Naagin transformation schedule.

Rishabh now seems to be a semi-decent human being????? Still a bit of a self-obsessed idiot, but definitely seems to be not as much of an asshole.

Rahil is super-serious and also bitter that his best friend just fucked off to America and hasn’t bothered keeping in touch. No one knows where Ishani is.

Ishani is now some kinda nervous wreck who spends her time doing pottery, but not the sexy Ghost kind. Just very sad and jittery and constantly popping anxiety pills (which looked like green Cadbury Gems to me???????) She can’t seem to help a person who sustains a semi-serious injury near her, completely freezing up in the moment.

Mr. Thanda Thanda Cool Cool finds her at the pottery studio, seems quite familiar with her, and tries to gently persuade her to come back to her first love: medicine.

But ofc heterosexuality rears its ugly head and sis can only think of the trash boy that ditched her.

Mr. TTCC brings her to Sanjivani but she behaves exactly like a toddler on the first day of school. There’s having to be coaxed out of the vehicle, reluctant dragging of feet, weeping, the works.

Precap shows her yelling at TTCC and saying he’s the boss of Sanjivani, not her, and kis haq se pakda hai, chodo mera haath!!!!!!!!!! And he gently reminds her of the wedding vows he took, to never let go of her.

Looks like the poor dude may have invested and rebuilt all this just for her and……………… in the end he’s gonna have to let her go to Dr. FuckBoi, mirroring the end of DMG, which……………… *prolonged, defeated sigh*

AND THAT’S WHAT YOU MISSED ON GLEE SANJIVANI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#sanjivani #bullet point recaps #tt answers #theincorrigiblemagpie

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betweengenesisfrogs · 5 years

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Homestuck is My Favorite Sprite Comic

Yes, you read that right.

Homestuck is my favorite sprite comic.

Those of you who remember the earlier days of the internet are probably looking at this post in disbelief right about now. Others of you might be scratching your heads, not knowing what I’m talking about.

But here’s my pitch: Homestuck is the culmination of an entire genre of internet art, and the tools that make it so powerful are the very tools that made that genre once so reviled.

Homestuck is the greatest and most successful sprite comic of all time.

And honestly, I’ve wanted to talk about that for ages, so let’s do it.

WHAT SPRITE COMICS WERE

Many of my readers are probably too young to remember the era of sprite comics. So: what were sprite comics?

Sprite comics were a genre of webcomics made entirely by taking pixel art from video games – especially character art, called “sprites,” but also backgrounds and other images—and placing them into panels to tell a story. They were near-ubiquitous on the internet in the early 2000s, emerging right as webcomics in general were seeking to establish themselves as an art form.

They were not, shall we say, known for their quality. The low bar to access meant that art skill was not an obstacle to starting one. The folks behind the huge swell of them tended to be young people, kids and early teenagers recreating the plots of their favorite video games with new OCs—not the most advanced writers or artists. They were the early 2000s’ quintessential example of ephemeral, childish art. Unfortunately, they look even worse today—blown-up pixels don’t hold up well when displayed on higher-resolution monitors.

Today, they’re mostly forgotten, remembered only as a weird, strange moment in the youth of the internet. Someone who evoked them today, such as a blogger who compared them to one of the most successful webcomics of all time, would be inviting good-natured teasing at the very least.

It would be unfair to dismiss them entirely, though. In this low-stakes environment, comics where the author could bring more skill—engaging writing, legitimately funny jokes, or especially, a real ability to work with pixel art—really stood out. (Unsurprisingly, these authors tended to skew a bit older.)

The obvious one to mention is Bob and George. Bob and George wasn’t the first sprite comic, but it was the most influential. Conceived initially as Mega Man-themed filler for a hand-drawn comic about superheroes, it quickly became a merging of the two concepts, with the original characters made into Mega Man-style sprites, full of running gags, humorous retellings of the Mega Man games, elaborate storylines about time travel, and robots eating ice cream. It was generally agreed, even among sprite comic haters, that Bob and George was a pretty good comic. Worth mentioning also are 8-Bit Theater, which turned the plot of the first Final Fantasy into a spectacular and hilarious farce, and of course Kid Radd, my second favorite sprite comic. (More on that later.)

But even if you weren’t looking for greatness—there was something just damn fun about them. The passion of sprite comic authors was clear, even if their ideas didn’t always cohere. To this day, I think the sprite comic scene has the same appeal pulp art does—it’s crude and rough, full of garbage to sift through, but every so often, something deeply sincere and bizarre shines through, and the culture of its authors is a fascinating object of study in itself.

Okay, full disclosure: I was one of the people who made a sprite comic. I’ve written about my experiences with that in more depth elsewhere, but yeah, I was on the inside of this scene, rather than a disinterested observer, and from the inside, maybe it’s a lot easier to see the appeal.

Still, let me make this claim: even with all their flaws, sprite comics were doing some incredibly interesting things, and Homestuck is heir to their legacy.

TAKE ME DOWN TO RECOLOR CITY

One of the problems people always had with sprite comics was the sprites themselves. They’re the most repetitive thing in the world. You just keep copying and pasting the same images over and over again, maybe with a few tweaks. That’s not really being an artist, is it? It’s so lazy. Re-drawing things from different angles keeps things dynamic, develops your skill, and makes your work better in general. Right?

I’m mostly in agreement. Certainly I think it’s fair to rag on the Control-Alt-Delete guy, along with other early bad webcomics, for copy-pasting their characters while dropping in new expressions and mass-producing tepid strips. And to be fair, digging through bad sprite comics often felt like an exercise in seeing the same slightly-edited recolors of Mega Man characters over and over again. You got really tired of that same body with its blobby feet and hands.

(It should be noted, though, that there were folks in the sprite comic scene who could pixel art the quills off a porcupine. I salute you, brave pixel art masters of 2006. I hope you all got into your chosen art school.)

All this said, I think the repetitive and simplistic nature of sprite comics was often their biggest strength.

THE POWER OF ABSTRACTION

In his classic work Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud makes an observation about cartooning that has stayed with me to this day.

McCloud notes that simple, abstract drawings, like faces that are only few lines and dots on a page, resonate with us more strongly than more detailed drawings. This is because our minds fill in what’s missing on the page. We ascribe human depth to simple gestures and expressions based on our own emotions and experiences – and this makes us feel closer to these characters as readers. Secretly, simple cartoons can be one of the most powerful forms of storytelling. If you want your readers to fall in love with your characters, draw them simply, and let them fill them in.

Video game sprites work very well in this regard. They have that same simplicity that cartoons do. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a huge part of the success of SNES-era RPGs was simple, almost childlike character sprites drawing people in. I think sprites did the same for sprite comics.

Here’s the weird thing: Bob and George worked. Despite four different characters being variations on the same friggin’ Mega Man sprite in different colors, they immediately began to seem like different people with distinct personalities. For me, George’s befuddled, helpless dismay immediately comes to mind whenever I picture his face, while with Mega Man himself it’s usually a wide-eyed, childlike glee. I would never confuse them. This, despite the fact that the only actual difference between their faces is that George is blonde. It’s pretty clear what happened. The personalities the author established for them through dialogue and storytelling shone through, and my brain did the rest.

Sprites, in short, were a canvas upon which the mind could project any story the author wanted to tell. Even the most minute differences in pixel art came to stand, in the best sprite comics, for wide divergences in personality and ideals, once the reader spent enough time with them to adapt to their style of representation.

Wait a minute, haven’t we seen this somewhere before? Character designs that focus on variations on a theme, with subtle differences that nonetheless render them instantly recognizable?

Oh, right.

Look at what greets us on the very first page of Homestuck. An absurdly simple cartoon boy, abstracted to a ridiculous degree—he doesn’t even have arms!—followed a whole bunch of characters that follow suit. Though many other representations of the characters emerge, these little figures never quite go away, do they? Why is that?

Simple: they’re very easy to manipulate. They’re modular—you can give John arms or not, depending on whether it’s useful. You can put him in a whole variety of poses and save them to a template. You can change out his facial expressions with copy and paste. You can give him a new haircut and call him Jake. It’s all very quick and easy.

Sprite comics proliferated because they were very easy to mass-produce. Andrew Hussie’s original conception of Homestuck was very similar: something he could put out very quickly and easily, where even the most elaborate ideas could rely on existing assets to be sped smoothly along. We all know the result: an incredible production machine, churning out unfathomable amounts of content from 2009-2012. I’d say it was a good call.

But it goes way deeper than that. The modular nature of sprites always suggested a kind of modularity to the sprite comic premise. George and Mega Man were different people, true, but also two variations on a theme. Was there something underlying them that they had in common? Perhaps their similarity says something like: We exist in a world which has a certain set of rules? One of my favorite conceits from Bob and George was that when characters visited the past, they were represented by NES-era Mega Man sprites, while in the present, they were SNES sprites, and in the future, the author used elaborate splicing to render them as 32-bit Mega Man 8 sprites or similar.

Suppose there was a skilled cartoonist thinking about his next big project, who wanted to tell a story centered around this kind of modularity, a narrative that was built out of iterative, swappable pieces by its very design. He might very well create a sprite comic named Homestuck.

Homestuck is a story about a game that creates a hyperflexible mythology for its players, where the villains, challenges, and setting change depending upon what players bring to the experience, yet which all share underlying goals and assumptions. What more perfect opportunity to create a modular story as well? Different groups of kids and trolls have motifs that get swapped around to produce new characters, whether that’s through ectobiology, the Scratch, or the eerie parallels between the kids and trolls’ sessions. And yet each character can be analyzed as an individual.

This is an incredible way to build a huge emotional investment from your readers. Not only does this kind of characterization invite analysis, the abstractions draw readers in to generate their own headcanons and interpretations. A deep commitment to pluralism is at the heart of Hussie’s character design. Then, too, it encourages readers to build their own new designs from these models. Kidswaps, bloodswaps, fantrolls—these have long been the heart of Homestuck’s fandom. And what are bloodswaps if not sprite recolors for a new generation? With the added bonus that now a change in color carries narrative weight, evoking new moods and identities for these characters in ways that early sprite comics could only dream of.

In Hussie’s hands, even the dreaded copy-and-paste takes on heroic depth of meaning. Even when Hussie moves away from sprites to his own loose art style, he continues to remix what we’ve previously see. Indeed, Hussie talks about how he would go out of his way to edit his own art into new images even when it would take more time than drawing something new. Why? Because he wanted to evoke that very feeling of having seen this before—the visual callback to go along with the many conceptual and verbal callbacks that echo throughout Homestuck. This is at the heart of what Doc Scratch (speaking for Hussie) called “circumstantial simultaneity:” we are invited to compare two moments or two characters, to see what they have in common, or how they contrast. Everything in Paradox Space is deeply linked with everything else. And Hussie establishes this in our minds using nothing less than the tool sprite comics were so deeply reviled for: the “lazy” repetition of an image.

(It’s fitting that some of the most jaw-droppingly gorgeous images in Homestuck—dream bubble scenery and the like—are the result of Hussie taking things he’s made before and combining them into fantastic dreamscapes.)

But it all started with the hyperflexible, adaptable character images Hussie created at the very beginning of Homestuck.

And if you need more proof that Homestuck is a sprite comic, I think we need look no further than what Hussie, and the rest of the Homestuck community call these images.

We call them sprites.

THE FIRST GENRE-BENDERS

Was Andrew Hussie influenced by sprite comics in the development of Homestuck? It’s hard to say, but as a webcomic artist in the first decade of the 2000s, he was surely aware of them. It’s likely that he quickly realized that his quick, adaptable images served the same purposes as a sprite in a video game or a sprite comic, and chose to call them that.

One purpose I haven’t mentioned up until now: sprites lend themselves very well to animations. In fact, in their original context of video games, that’s exactly what they’re for: frames of art that can be used to show a character running, jumping, posing, moving across a screen. It’s not surprising, then, that sprite comic makers quickly saw the utility in that.

Homestuck was, in fact, not the first webcomic to make Flash animations part of its story. There were experiments with various gifs and such in other comics, but I think sprite comics were among the most successful at becoming the multi-media creations that would come to be known as hypercomics..

Take a look at this animation from Bob and George. It represents a climactic final confrontation against a long-standing villain, using special effects to make everything dramatic, but ultimately, like many a Homestuck animation, leads to kind of a pyscheout. The drama and the humor of the moment are clear, though. This relies in large part on the music—which is taken directly from the game Chrono Trigger. This makes total sense. Interestingly, it also contains voice acting, which is something Homestuck never tried—probably because it would run contrary to its ideals of pluralism. What I find fascinating is that in sprite comics, animations like these served a very similar purpose to Homestuck’s big flashes: elevating a big moment into something larger-than-life. Another good example is this sequence from Crash and Bass. Seriously, it seems like every sprite comic maker wanted to try their hand at Flash animation.

(By the way, it’s a lot harder than it looks!! I envy Hussie his vectorized sprites. Pixel art is a PAIN to work with in the already buggy program that is Flash.)

The result: because of the sprites themselves, sprite comics were among the first works to play around with the border between comics and other media in the way that would come to be thought of as quintessentially Homestuck.

What it also meant was that another genre emerged in parallel with sprite comics: the sprite animation. Frequently these would retell the story of a particular game, offer a spectacular animated battle sequence, parody the source material, or all three. Great examples include this animation for Mega Man Zero, and this frankly preposterous crossover battle sequence. Chris Niosi’s TOME also found its earliest roots as an animation series of this kind. You also found plenty of sprite-based flash games, in which players could manipulate game characters in a way that was totally outside the context of the original works.

The website the vast majority of these games and animations were hosted on?

Newgrounds, best known to Homestuck fans as the website Hussie crashed in 2011 while trying to upload Cascade.

What’s less talked about is that Hussie was friends, or at least on conversational terms with, the owner of the site, hence the idea to host his huge animation there in the first place, and other flashes, like the first Alterniabound, were initially hosted there as well.

It’s hard to believe that Hussie wasn’t at least a little familiar with the Newgrounds scene. I suspect that he largely conceived of Homestuck as part of the world of “Flash animation—” which in 2009 meant the wide variety of things that were hosted on Newgrounds, including sprite animations.

The freedom and fluidity sprite comics had to change into games and animations and back into comics again was one of their most fascinating traits. Homestuck’s commitment to media-bending needs, at this point, no introduction. But what’s less known is that sprite comics were exploring that territory first—that Homestuck, in short, is the kind of thing they wanted to grow up to be.

PUT ME IN THE GAME

I would be a fool not to mention another big thing Homestuck and sprite comics have in common: a character who is literally the author in cartoon form, running around doing goofy things and messing with the story. This was an incredibly common cliché in sprite comics, no doubt because of Bob and George, who did it early on and never looked back. You might have noticed that the animation I linked above concerns a showdown between Bob and George’s author, David Anez—depicted, delightfully, as another Mega Man recolor—and a mysterious alternate author named Helmut—who is like Mega Man plus Sepiroth I think? It’s all very strange. I could ramble for hours about the relationship between Hussie and the alt-author villains of Homestuck and what it all means, but I’m not sure I can nail anything down with certainty for these two. Maybe Bob and George was never quite that metaphysical.

But yes, bringing the author into the story in some form was already a cliché by the time Homestuck started up. Indeed, I think that’s why Hussie’s character refers to it as “a bad idea” to break the fourth wall—he’s recognizing that people will have seen this before, and are already tired of this sort of shit. And then he goes and does it anyway and makes it somehow brilliant, because he’s Andrew Hussie.

Homestuck breathes life into the cliché by taking it in a metaphysical/metafictional direction. I don’t think that was really the motivation for most sprite comic authors, though. Let’s see if we can dig a little deeper.

I think the cliché kept happening because sprite comic authors were writing about a subject that very closely concerned themselves: video games. I’m only kind of joking. The thing about video games is that even though they’re made for everyone, playing through one yourself feels like an intensely personal experience. You develop an emotional relationship to a world, to its characters, that feels distinctly your own. Now, suddenly, thanks to the magic of sprites, you have an opportunity to tell stories about that world for others to read. Of course you’re going to want to put yourself in the story in some form.

When it wasn’t author characters in sprite comics, it was OCs. You know Dr. Wily? Well here’s my own original villain, Dr. Vindictus. You know Mega Man? Here’s my new character, Super Cool Man. He hangs out with Mega Man and they beat the bad guys together. Stuff like that. Most sprite comics retold the story of a game, or multiple games in a big crossover format, with original elements added in. There was quite a lot of “Link and Sonic and Mega Man are all friends with my OC and they hang out at his house.”

What’s interesting, though, is that because these sprite comics were very aware that they were about video games, this was where they sometimes got very meta. It started with humorous observation—hey, isn’t it funny that Link goes around breaking into people’s houses and smashing their pots? But sometimes, it grew into more serious commentary. Is Mega Man trapped in a never-ending cycle, doomed to fight the same fight against the same mad scientist until the end of time? Is it worth it, being a video game hero?

Enter Homestuck. What I’ve been dancing around this whole time is:

Homestuck is a sprite comic…because Homestuck is a video game.

Or more specifically, Homestuck’s a comic about a video game called SBURB, where the lines between the game and the comic about the game blur as characters wrestle with the narratives around them, both those encoded into the game and those encoded into our expectations.

Homestuck presents the fantasy of many a sprite comic maker: I get to go on heroic quests, I get to change the world and become a god. I get to be part of the video game. And then it asks the same question certain sprite comics were beginning to ask:

Is it worth it, to be that hero?

I want to tell you about my second favorite sprite comic, a comic called Kid Radd.

Kid Radd distinguished itself from other sprite comics of the time by being a completely original production. Its sprites looked like they could be from a variety of NES and SNES-era video games, but they were all done from scratch, and the games they purported to represent were all fictional. Kid Radd used animations with original music, and sometimes interactive, clickable games, to tell its story. It also used all sorts of neat programming tricks to make it load faster on the internet of the early 2000s, which was great—unfortunately, these same techniques made it break as web technology evolved, something Homestuck fans in 2019 can definitely relate to. The good news is, fans have maintained a dedicated and reformatted archive where the comics can still be seen and downloaded.

Kid Radd’s premise is that video game characters themselves are conscious and alive—more specifically, their sprites. Sprites developed consciousness as human beings projected personality and identity onto them, remaining aware of their status as video game constructs while also seeking to be something more. The story follows the titular Kid Radd, at first in the context of his own game, commenting on the choices the player controlling him. He must endure every death, every strange decision along the way to save his girlfriend Sheena. Then the story expands into a larger context as Radd, Sheena, and many other video game characters are released onto the internet as data. They try to find their own identities and build a society for themselves, but struggle with the tendency toward violence that games have programmed into them. The story culminates in an honestly moving moment where Radd confronts the all-powerful creators of their reality—human beings.

It’s a very good comic.

The first sprite comic authors wanted to fuse real life with video games. Later sprite comic authors decided to ask: what would that really mean? Would it be painful? Would you suffer? Would you find a way to make your life meaningful all the same? Despite the limitations of sprite comics, these ideas had incredible potential, and in works like Kid Radd, they flourished.

Homestuck is heir to that legacy.

It takes the questions Kid Radd was asking, and asks them in new ways. It tries to understand, on an even deeper level, how the rules of video games shape our own minds and give us ways to understand ourselves.

At its heart, Homestuck is a sprite comic, and it might just be the greatest of them all.

EPILOGUE

I’ve seen a lot of good discussion recently on how Homestuck preserves a certain era of the internet like a time capsule: its culture, its technology, its assumptions, its memes.

I think sprite comics, too, are part of the culture that created Homestuck. Do I think Hussie spent the early 2000s recoloring Mega Man sprites? No, probably not. But what I do know is that sprite comics were part of his world. The first webcomic cartoonists came of age alongside an odd companion, the weird, overly sincere, dorky little sibling that was sprite comics. Like them or hate them, you couldn’t escape them. They were there.

And maybe a certain cartoonist saw a kind of potential in them, in the same way he summoned Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff from the depths of bad gamer culture.

Or maybe he just knew, as some sprite comic authors did, that the time was right for their kind of story.

On a personal level—Homestuck came along right when I needed it.

Around 2009, the bubble that was sprite comics finally burst. People were getting tired of them, or growing out of them, and blown-up sprites no longer looked so good on modern monitors.

I was more than a little heartbroken. I’d enjoyed Bob and George, read my fill of Mega Man generica, and fallen utterly in love with Kid Radd. I’d been working on my own sprite comic for a long time out of a sense that there was huge potential in them that we were only scratching the surface of. I’d dreamed of maybe someday doing something as amazing as the best of them did. But I was watching that world disappear. I had to admit to myself that my work wasn’t going to continue to find an audience. That I could live with. But it was painful to think that the potential I sensed, the feats of storytelling I wanted to see in the world, would never be realized.

And then, in the fall of 2010, a friend linked me to a comic that broke all the rules, that mixed animation, games, music, images and chatlogs. A comic that crafted its own sprites, just as Kid Radd did, and remixed its images into an ever-expanding web of associations and meanings. A comic that took on the idea of living inside a video game with relish and turned it into a gorgeous meditation on escaping the ideas and systems that control us.

That this comic would exist, let alone that it would succeed. That it would become one of the most popular creations of all time, that it would surpass other webcomics and break out into anime conventions and the real world, that it would become such a cultural juggernaut, to the point where it’s impossible to imagine an internet without Homestuck—

I can’t even put into words how happy that makes me. It’s the reason I’m still writing essays about Homestuck nearly eight years after I found it.

And it’s why Homestuck will always be my favorite sprite comic.

-Ari

[Notes: The image of the kids came from the ever-useful MSPA Wiki—please support and aid in their efforts to provide a good source of info about Homestuck! They need more support these days than ever.

For more on Homestuck’s place as a continuation of the zeitgeist of early 2000s experimental webcomics, this article by Sam Keeper at Storming the Ivory Tower is excellent and insightful.

Thanks for reading, y’all.]

#homestuck analysis #homestuck #homestuck's influences #hypercomics #understanding homestuck #sprite comics #internet culture

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thewolfisawake · 4 years

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Critical Role

Favorite character:

In CR1, Percy and Scanlan. And gonna sound so hipster but I did legitimately like Percy prior to the Briarwood arc. I liked his place as the more subdued person that didn’t need fanfare for his support. And then I was scared and intrigued when he was more...forthcoming in that arc since he was quieter before (I think I read this was also because Taliesin was bit shy starting out but got comfortable). And Scanlan, was the man I shed tears for because I kept crying ‘oh god, someone please notice. Someone HELP HIM.’ They both had some serious gut punches and their stories did shift the dynamics (of the story and the party respectively) permanently. They are also great support and yet also had some amazing solos.

In CR2, Caleb and Fjord. I just like me some sad boys apparently. I think Caleb’s bumbling and trying to do right but struggling with doing what’s good for you so painfully relatable. As of writing this, I haven’t caught up yet but I’ve seen him make such leaps and bounds in terms of letting people in and being a support to others. I also think mechanically he’s a show of how the drawbacks like his fear can make for good moments. As for Fjord, he’s just in general how I think a moral compass or herder character can be done without irritating both the player and viewer. I mean morals of this cast is more wonky but in general Fjord seems to put forward a general ‘we all get through this’ and respect towards the team.

Least Favorite character:

In CR1, Keyleth. And no, it’s got nothing to do with Marisha. She’s cool. I honestly felt bad for her because Keyleth had to pick up the moral slack whenever Pike wasn’t there, which was often. Some of her best moments were when she had to draw the hard line. But it was far outweighed with having this moral high horse for some reason even though they promptly do something just as low down as the ones she looked down on. Also, I feel it’s hard to do a character that is naive but also very likable so again, sorry for Marisha.

In CR2, I like so many but I’ll go with Mollymauk. And it was a bit of a shame because he was like the one person I heard so much about. I did like that he was the one that tended to push into some of the best shenanigans I’ve listened to. However, he was just fine. There wasn’t much to push him into love him so much nor much to say I dislike him. I’m a little disappointed of not being able to know what his deal was I guess was what I would choose if I have to say what made him least favorite.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):

Vax’limore - Their interactions just oozed banter and playfulness. There was no intro to how that this happened, it just jumps into their flirtations. And it was that cute banter and the real ‘I’d do anything for you, my friend’ that ended up hurting seeing Gilmore have his heart strings pulled as they did. Like if you love him, let him go. For real. Don’t dangle it in front of him like that.

Pike/Percy - Weird thought but I thought it was pretty clear that Pike liked Percy. Everyone sees her as a stalwart beacon but she still has wants and falls off from time to time. But she tries. And she saw something within Percy that was dark and I don’t think it was necessarily ‘I want to fix him’ but ‘I want to save him.’ And Percy find a light in Pike like many do but also seeing her as just Pike.

Perc’ahlia - I mean, it’s canon. Thing is that I can’t pinpoint a moment when it began. Just that it happened and that felt okay. I think they’re both maniacs in their own right and it’s kind of cute how they indulge each other’s passion/excitement. Gifts feels like Percy’s love language and he shows it so much in how he tinkers for Vex and her glee in what new way she can fuck shit up is enough for him. And also it’s really delicious the parallel with them and the Briarwoods and Laura has stated that if Percy had died died, that it was possible Vex end up the same kind of menace Delilah was.

Vex/Zahra - In some other life, they would have been the femme fatale couple. All of their interactions were enjoyable and they so clearly enjoy each other. Just looking over and it’s the eyes with them.

Widobrave - Partners in crime. I think that their dynamic isn’t simple and that’s what’s so interesting. They see each other as someone to protect and don’t exactly see how the other views them as the one to be protected. And they have ‘without question’ sort of trust in each other and are genuinely awed and so happy when they witness one do something great. It gets sad with more of their backstory. And it gets me that both immediately felt guilty for keeping it a secret from them. Not the entire party, their partner. They both have seen past appearances and see the strength, the zaniness and the brilliance the other possesses and I can’t wait to get to more of their moments.

Character I find most attractive:

CR1: Gilmore. My god he was gorgeous. Vax why did you just walk away from that? Raishan. Look, she was hot and smart and even if she fell eventually, she made the most of when she was there.

CR2: Cali is so frickin’ adorable. Like she’s so cute and hey, if not for the whole cult chasing her thing, it’d be nice to stick around and sightsee. I am also a ‘Jester is really cute’ person.

Character I would marry:

I don’t really think there’s anyone I’d actually--well, I think maybe Pike because stronk lady that can get into mischief with but at the same time just be able to be content with.

No one in this campaign so far.

Character I would be best friends with:

I would LIKE to be friends with Cassandra because everyone continues to ignore how this woman has been tormented and then thrust into very important position. All while harboring guilt for what she had to do to survive. The girl needs a break and I’m here with a blanket and some tea.

I would like to be friends with Nott actually. She’s really cool and I think it’s fun to let her be her zany self.

a random thought:

So who is really credited as the inventor of firearms, Percy, who did technically make it, or Ripley, who is the one that sold the schematics to make them mass-produced?

Is there just an abundance of mysterious magic ladies in Wildemount or what?

An unpopular opinion:

Scanlan deserved his anger and feelings of being unappreciated. Even if he was brought back, it does not lessen that there was uncertainty nor the lack of respect towards his body. Vox Machina had gotten cocky and it drove one of their members away. Vex and Vax were the only ones that took Scanlan’s frustration to heart and did not mess up with Tary for that reason. Also Tary was a parallel of the worst of the party, which is why most of them couldn’t stand him.

The small races are not fucking children. I don’t get why they get called children or thought of like that. They’re just short, goddammit!

My Canon OTP:

CR1: Perc’ahlia for above reasons.

CR2: None to be seen so far?

My Non-canon OTP:

CR1: Because I’m hella fucked up, I am enamored by the thought that Percy had a crush on Ripley. Because she paid attention to him, one of the younger and less interesting of his family. And to him she was brilliant and she took advantage of that, which is how he survived or why they got in. And Percy never forgot or forgave her.

CR2: “And they were roommates” “oh god they were roommates.” * whispers * I kind of liked Fjord and Molly. They felt like foils that were amicable with each other aaaaannndddd actually had nice interactions?

Most Badass Character:

CR1: NO MERCY PERCY

CR2: Shakaste is pretty awesome and Khary Payton is awesome.

Most Epic Villain:

CR1: Raishan. Like I wish she could’ve been a bigger villain but alas the dice were not on her side. I think her arc was the most interesting as she was the true threat in the party’s eyes despite there being a dragon terraforming their home.

CR2: At this point? There hasn’t been a major villain for the party.

Pairing I am not a fan of:

I don’t really have anything I can’t ship in this one.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):

Can’t really say anyone ‘screwed up’ since this is a lot of improv and all that. So I guess miss chances I think would only really be Molly since y’know, he’s dead.

Favourite Friendship:

CR1: Pike & Grog - They’re Best Buddies, y’all. I can’t get over how much they just pal around like that’s just the usual for them. And technically it is. They can go get wasted together and then kick ass after. It’s just the casualness of their relationships and how much respect and lack of reverence that I like. Pike is just Pike to Grog so he finds no reason to hold back or hold her as a light unlike the rest of the party. But he does want to do good by her because she’s his friend and he doesn’t want to disappoint her. And Pike never insults Grog’s intellect and actively works to help him improve and deflects the party’s remarks of how he is.

CR2: Empire Kids - They’ve come a long way from their seats of mistrust and standoff-ishness. I think there was a post that put it best that they’re ‘learning how to human.’ And because they both are at the same point of it, they are struggling together. As a result they’ve come to lean on each other to keep themselves from going to far. They’re not perfect but they’re trying to keep this found family of theirs together.

Character I most identify with:

CR1: Keyleth. Being the one to try to keep people together or on the straight on narrow isn’t easy. It sucks and I’m not usually the person that should do it but here I am.

CR2: Caleb. I am very off-beat and odd but I do want to have friends and the like....just not stellar at showing that...

Character I wish I could be:

I mean, this is D&D where awesome shit goes on all the time. So anyone I guess?

#answered #wolfatrest #shctteredillusions

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ylimehuizenga · 4 years

Text

NO ONE ASKED

WHAT BOOKS ARE ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND?

Understanding Lorrie Moore by Alison Kelly (it is 190 pages and cost $40). Son of the Morning Star by Evan Connell. Billy Collins’ Sailing Alone Around the Room. Oval by Elvia Wilk. Stoner - John Williams. Plus a few more I just finished and a few more I just want close to me right now.

WHAT’S THE LAST GREAT BOOK YOU READ?

American Pastoral. First time I’ve earnestly been inclined to describe something as “a masterpiece.”

DESCRIBE YOUR IDEAL READING EXPERIENCE (WHEN, WHERE, WHAT, HOW).

On vacation. Everyone else is off doing something and it’s far enough into the trip that I don’t feel guilty or FOMO not. Trip residue (sand, wine, ashes) on the book and the preemptive luxurious glee of knowing I’ll forever associate the book with the location!

Second best is when life sucks and the book you’re reading is your only joy/escape, and you get home and eat something dumb and wash your dumb face and brush your dumb teeth and finally get to get into bed and hang out with the only thing in the world you like right now: this book.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE BOOK NO ONE ELSE HAS HEARD OF?

Maybe Hearing from Wayne by Bill Franzen. A collection of bizarre, sweet, sad, funny stories. I listened to one on a podcast one time while driving home from a trip. My boyfriend was sleeping in the passenger seat (we’d been fighting all weekend) and I laughed and cried alone.

WHICH PLAYWRIGHTS AND OTHER WRITERS - NOVELISTS, POETS, CRITICS, JOURNALISTS - WORKING TODAY DO YOU ADMIRE MOST?

I think it’s cliche but Ottessa Moshfegh. She’s one of the few people I’ve read willing to poke holes in modern stereotypes, like the overweight tattooed girl who bosses everyone around and is actually a jerk but is riding high on societal shame for calling her out. Also Lisa Halliday. She listens to baseball games on the radio and drinks Luxardo after long days. She is cool and impresses me.

WHAT BOOK WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO SEE TURNED INTO A MOVIE OR TV SHOW THAT HASN’T ALREADY BEEN ADAPTED?

I was really looking forward to The Goldfinch movie - I thought that would be a no-brainer. But I heard it’s bad and I’ll probably watch it half-hearted and disappointed when it comes out on online.

WHO IS YOUR FAVORITE FICTIONAL HERO OR HEROINE? ANTIHERO OR VILLAIN?

He’s not a hero but Douglas Bridge in the Mr. & Mrs. Bridge books breaks my heart. I have a big crush on him. I always have a crush on funny, megalomaniac, wry boys in books, and they tend to be writers and be named Jake; Jake from The Sun Also Rises, Jake from Under the Net. But all-time favorite heroine is Dominique from Francoise Sagan’s “A Certain Smile.” She is me, but perpetually 20-years-old, and beautiful, and French. You could probably call her an antiheroine too.

WHAT CHARACTER FROM LITERATURE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO PLAY?

Junie B. Jones.

HAS A BOOK EVER BROUGHT YOU CLOSER TO ANOTHER PERSON, OR COME BETWEEN YOU?

It’s nice to love a book your friend also loved and talk about that. It’s not great when someone tells you their favorite book and you’ve read it and you thought it was shitty. As far as admiring the person goes, I can never really recover from that.

WHAT MOVES YOU MOST IN A WORK OF LITERATURE?

A buoyant, efficient, consummately composed sentence. I am an underliner. Certain sentences can be total works of art. I would love to go to an exhibit that’s nothing but framed sentences that resonate out of context. Beyond that, literature that articulates life, like everyone else.

DO YOU PREFER BOOKS THAT REACH OUR EMOTIONALLY, OR INTELLECTUALLY?

Emotionally. I can’t think of a case where something that reached me emotionally wouldn’t then reach me intellectually, though.

WHAT’S THE BEST BOOK YOU’VE EVER BEEN GIVEN AS A GIFT?

That same boyfriend I fought with all weekend gave me a used copy (my preferred type of copy) of Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples for Christmas one year, because he read that Eudora Welty was my then favorite author Alice Munro’s favorite author. I thought and still think that was the most quietly ingenious idea for book-giving I’d ever heard, and if I ever use it I’m not going to give him credit.

HOW DO YOU ORGANIZE YOUR BOOKS?

Fiction vs. nonfiction, then subject/genre, then author by country. Sometimes it’s kind of a feeling, too. The feeling the books give me.

WHAT BOOK MIGHT PEOPLE BE SURPRISED TO FIND ON YOUR SHELVES?

Maybe some modern feminist lit I have.

HAVE YOU EVER CHANGED YOUR OPINION OF A BOOK BASED ON INFORMATION ABOUT THE AUTHOR?

Once I read more about Salinger, I realized he wasn’t ironic and discerning, he was fragile and found life humiliating.

DO YOU COUNT ANY BOOKS AS GUILTY PLEASURES?

I’d put some modern “buzz-y” books in that category. Must-reads with winsome covers that signal wokeness and intellect on social media. Beyond that, Salinger, again. He pulls it off, though. He pulls it off.

WHAT KIND OF READER WERE YOU AS A CHILD? WHICH CHILDHOOD BOOKS AND AUTHORS STICK WITH YOU MOST?

I was consistent and avid. My mom, brother and I would go to the county library every week and check out stacks of children’s books, which Mom would read to us every night. Same deal for kiddie chapter books. I loved Junie B. Jones, Frog and Toad, Amelia Bedilia, and the Amelia’s Notebook series. When I read Anne of Green Gables, I only ate bread with butter and jam for two weeks, except mine wasn’t made from scratch in my adoptive aunt’s kitchen, it was purchased by my mom at County Market and was actually Italian bread and she also used it for garlic bread. My sisters and I were also obsessed with A Child Called It. In hindsight, morbid. And embarrassing.

HOW HAVE YOUR READING TASTES CHANGED OVER TIME?

In middle and high school I read a lot of classics, and I’m proud of and grateful to my younger self for that. I’m not sure I’d have the stamina now, too worn down. So less classics-classics, more Level 2 classics (e.g. Austen and Hemingway then, Roth and Connell now). But I still love the same books I always have. Novels about nothing extraordinary.

HAVE YOU EVER GOTTEN IN TROUBLE FOR READING A BOOK?

No one stopped me from reading The Good Earth at age 11 I think because no one knew what it was. I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble, but someone probably should have raised an eyebrow. Who knows, maybe someone did.

YOU’RE ORGANIZING A LITERARY DINNER PARTY. WHICH THREE WRITERS, DEAD OR ALIVE, DO YOU INVITE?

Roald Dahl, Iris Murdoch, and e.e. cummings. If I could cheat and pick four I’d add Billy Collins - I really want to meet him. This is all purely selfish and short-sighted, though. I would just want writers who are incredibly talented but wouldn’t talk about themselves, and who’d have good stories and drink strong drinks and smoke cigarettes. Cummings would probably talk about himself but he’d also probably hit on me and take me to bed at the end of the night. This is just my honest answer, okay?

DISAPPOINTING, OVERRATED, JUST NOT GOOD: WHAT BOOK DID YOU FEEL AS IF YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LIKE, AND DIDN’T? DO YOU REMEMBER THE LAST BOOK YOU PUT DOWN WITHOUT FINISHING?

The Year of Magical Thinking - didn’t like and did put down. I’ve had multiple people tell me I should or assume I do read Didion, and I dread it. I just want to move on from that conversation, quick. Some books I thought were total flops/clearly blew, like Fleishman is in Trouble or Modern Lovers and definitely Bad Marie, but others loved. No way to talk about it without sounding like an uppity contrarian.

WHOM WOULD YOU WANT TO WRITE YOUR LIFE STORY?

Maybe Sinclair Lewis, because it’d probably have to be a midwesterner to get those parts right. And, well, I like the esoteric grandeur of that choice. But if not him then Roald Dahl because he would make my life seem nostalgic and wonderful (which is true of mine and all lives) and his grandparents were Norwegian so he’d still get the Minnesota stuff.

WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO READ NEXT?

Finish this boring Berlin book about sustainability that doesn’t really apply to me and lower myself into something long and languorous over Christmas. All this talk about not reading classics has me wanting to read a classic.

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romchomp · 4 years

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The Best Romance Tropes According to Me

What are my favorite romance tropes?

The more I thought about this question of what are my favorite romance tropes the more I noticed that my interest in different tropes often depended on whether or not the story was an original story or fan-fiction. This brings me to a trope I have confusing feelings on-

Enemies to lovers

Enemies to lovers? Great in fanfiction. You get to explore what a romantic dynamic would look like between characters that are rivals/enemies in their canon universe. Depending on the writer this could be done brilliantly and even give you a sense that the original material cheated you.

However, how many cases of enemies to lovers done well exist in canon stories? I can’t even think of any at the top of my head. I want to say I like enemies to lovers but how can I when I only like the concept and potential but can’t think of a single example where I liked it?

Rivals to lovers, this trope’s sibling, is another good trope. Probably easier to find, but even this one you’ll mostly see in fanon. Could this have to do with rivals and antagonists often being the same gender of the protagonist? Probably, but there's also a risk of toxicity being associated with any couple that forms out of this trope that I think a lot of writers want to avoid. There's also the fact that in most cases love interests and rivals/enemies are planned and established from the very beginning of a story. Odds are the rival and love interest are separate characters that both interact with the protagonist on a regular basis from the start of the story. Their purposes are different. The only way enemies to lovers will ever happen is if the author planned for that enemy to eventually become a love interest.

Does that mean more authors should consider stories where the rival/enemy eventually becomes the love interest? Maybe? This could also lead to the rivalry being toned down as a result. Bottom line, it's a complicated trope.

Love triangles

Love triangles are interesting to me because they seem to be consistently popular while also being one of the most criticized tropes even outside of the romance genre. Love triangles can be well written, gripping, and generally make a story better...but it’s hard. A good love triangle is hard to pull off and will usually have costs. Getting characters involved in love triangles will in most cases make them less likable. Which is fine. We all love-loving the bad guys. You know, so long as the story knows they’re a bad guy. Don’t try and make the audience sympathize with someone that’s stringing two people around. It. Won’t. Work. That is only one form of love triangles though. Not all of them are made up of this one person who is trying to pick between two people you often see pushed in many teen dramas. Love triangles can also take a form that goes more like A likes B, B likes C, and C likes A. What makes this form of love triangles work so much is that the characters know what they want. There's love triangles where no one involved will admit their feelings because the person they like is the same person that their friend likes. You'll grow impatient at times, but it works wonders for making the characters more empathetic. There's also the love triangles that aren't really love triangles and more of a hectic, love web.

An example of a love triangle I really like would be Toradora. The short lived love triangle in Orange is the New Black was well done. Gilmore Girls did a sort-of good job on the love triangle between Lorelei, Luke, and Christopher mostly just because Lorelei's relationships with the two paralleled and contrasted in interesting ways. Ranma 1/2 and School Rumble would be examples of the love web I described earlier. Glee would also be a contender for good love webs, and would be an exception among teen dramas. I still have issues with most of the love triangles in all of these. Toradora is the only one that gets a complete free pass.

Childhood sweethearts

God I love this one. It has similarities to friends to lovers but I think this trope stands on it’s own as well. Often times these stories will involve a separation of sorts. So really, it’s childhood sweethearts to strangers to lovers. There’s so much character development and character change necessary here and I love it. It has a lot of campy potential despite most of these tending to end rather sadly.

You see this one in love triangles a lot too. In most cases the childhood sweetheart looses. I think this has a lot to do with the childhood sweetheart being framed as "the safe route" and the "safe" love interest never wins. I could get into how much I dislike The Passionate vs The Safe Love Interest trope, but that's a different blog post.

My Girl is kind of the go-to movie for this trope, I think. Though there won’t be a ‘to strangers to lovers' part. There’s Anohana, 5 Centimeters per Second, No. 6, and do you see what I mean about the trope being cursed with sad endings.

Not much to say on this one. It’s a solid trope with not that many exceptions to discuss.

Friends to lovers

A trope that I think is necessary to separate from Childhood Sweethearts or Childhood Friends. Friends to Lovers often has a different pacing and tone compared to childhood sweethearts and it doesn't run into bad endings nearly as often as the prior. What I really like about friends to lovers is that it works really well in both, dramas as well as romances that take themselves less seriously. It works in fanfiction really well (it’s the dream for most ships after all) as well written in canon. It’s an easier trope to do well.

When it comes to examples of Friends to lovers...the thing is that almost anything could technically count. There has to be some degree of friendship or acquaintanceship for romantic feelingss to develop from. I think the key is specifying long term friends to lovers.

Ron and Hermione. Easy. Toradora is here once again. Toradora is kind of perfect for a blog post like this since it's layered with romance tropes and still manages to be amazing because it holds substance and that's [I'm about to go on a mini tangent but I think it's worth keeping in here] what I think is most important when it comes to tropes: does the story carrying the trope have any substance? It's not the tropes or cliches that make a story bad. It's how they are used and if there is anything there besides them. However, I firmly believe that it is easier to command substance from some tropes more than others [End of tangent]. Lorelei and Luke could fit here too. There's also one of my favorite manwhas to date, 'Our Relationship is...'. In Our Relationship the trope is the very core of the story unlike the other examples I've given. Please read 'Our Relationship Is...' it's so good.

Fake Relationships

I’m just gonna come out and say it. I love fake dating stories. For one, they technically skip all the steps a usual romance takes since the chase takes a unique form. Here, the love interests are being thrown at each other’s friends and family right off the bat. They’re normally introduced to each others flaws and insecurities earlier than usual romances and if done well, do it without feeling out of place. It’s a pace I can get behind. There’s also guaranteed humor somewhere in there, which is nice.

The best part is that it’s just as entertaining to see in fanfiction as it is in canon material.

Bonus: if one of them tells their friends they’re “dating” s/o and the friends are like finally lmao, leaving the one involved having to internally question what do you mean finally we’re not even actually dating.

I just talked this trope up so much and the only good example I can think of is The Proposal. I don’t care what the ratings say, that movie is amazing. While You Were Sleeping, another Sandra Bullock movie, while I’m not the biggest fan of it personally, the movie fits the trope pretty well. There’s also...Nisekoi....I’m really not making a good argument for this trope

Return to Hometown

This isn’t a trope that only belongs to romances but man, if there isn’t something romantic about the concept. Something I really like about this one is that it puts the reader/viewer in the shoes of the main character. This trope can also be pretty broad. Do they meet a new person that moved into their small hometown while they were away and as a result, allow the main character to see the place in a new way? Are they forced to run into an old lover from their hometown, causing them to remember the things they loved but also hated about it? You can do so much with this one.

It’s campy. It’s nostalgic. It’s probably, definitely set in the fall or winter...which is the kind of atmosphere I can get into.

The only example of the trope going through my head right now is Kanon, which is a wonderful example please watch it if you haven’t. I looked up ‘return to hometown romance movies’ on google to see if something would spark my memory and the first search result was ‘hallmark movies’ so maybe there’s something in that pile of content I'm fine with avoiding for now.

Childhood Friends to Lovers

Ah. Last but not least, my absolute favorite trope, childhood friends to lovers. The best thing about childhood friends to lovers is that it can fit into almost every other trope that I've already mentioned at the same time. I know I've been saying this word a lot but I'm going to say it again: It's campy. The campy potential is so strong. This trope is also just kind of guaranteed to be a slow burn, and I love my slow burns.

The characters have a deep understanding of each other, but often realize as they get older that there were things they might of misjudged about the other because kids aren't exactly the best at empathy or understanding other people's circumstances. There's more opportunities to see character development. It shares a lot of strengths that childhood sweethearts has, the main difference being the romance comes later in this one.

Our Relationship is... fits here as well! Please read it! I'll mention Kanon once again too. Ron and Hermione...again. Okay um. Let's go with saying something I'd like to see in this genre more often: make it gay please.

That's all I got for this one guys.

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Thank you!

#romancejunkie #tropes #enemies to lovers #love triangles #childhood sweethearts #fake dating #friends to lovers #return to hometown #childhood friends to lovers #toradora #something about us #kanon #me?? actually writing something?? i'm surprised too

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punainenpuolukka · 5 years

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Oh, the Thing with the Ghosts, the Boys, and the Car?

This is a weird one, a confession of sorts. A confession that I might come to regret come tomorrow (when I'll probably be watching the new episode). This time I truly can’t explain.

Part 3. I sort of like Bucklemming and I’m sorry about that

Look, I know that the overall consensus in this fandom, which is so divided and gets up on arms with the drop of a hat, is that Bucklemming is the worst. Even I think, say, and joke how Bucklemming is the worst. Repeatedly. Before and after a Bucklemming episode I think “Eh, it’s Bucklemming”. Recently, when season 12 reruns aired on TV here, around 2 am or so with double episodes to boot, I remember thinking that there was something deeply wrong with the episode and I couldn’t understand why it was so awkward and painful to watch, until I checked who wrote it, it was Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Lemming of course, and suddenly it all made so much more sense. People are reminded to lower their expectations before their episodes just so that there would be minimum amount of (collective) disappointment. We all know the drill pretty well, don’t you think?

The thing is, I don’t hate Bucklemming episodes. In fact, I quite like some of them.

No, don’t get me wrong, quite a few of Bucklemming episodes are bad, just flat out bad, there’s no excuse, but I still don’t hate any of them. They tend to be a bit thin on the subtext, they are funny but the humour is based on awkward situations and stereotypes stretched to extremes. A lot of things happen in a short amount of time both to their detriment as well as their advantage, as sometimes the story doesn’t have time to breath but at least it keeps the audience at the edge of their seat. Also, the revelations in their episodes are liked dropped anvils and so exceptionally blunt there is very little room for interpretation, which I occasionally appreciate since I’m dumb. Just so dumb. Quite like many Bucklemming episodes. In addition, even the episodes that I would consider to be poor in quality for them (and Supernatural as whole) tend to have at least one good thing, even if it sometimes is just the premise, which admittedly might not be their doing. Nonetheless, the overall quality of Bucklemming episodes I’ll watch them gladly, maybe with a little less attention than normal, but regardless for me my love for the whole show overrides cringe of their episodes any day.

And Bucklemming episodes are plenty cringey. Like the bad kind of cringe that makes me wonder that even if the they wrote the episode, there were several people taking part of making the episode that went “I guess it’s okay”, and still nobody mentioned that maybe this is actually the worst idea (I’m referring to 8.15 Man’s Best Friend with Benefits, as in the one with witches and their familiars, which writing-wise is not the worst, plotwise pretty solid if I recall, but the final product is just, um, calling it highly questionable is far too kind). Sometimes Bucklemming in combination with some directors (yes, I’m especially talking about Robert Singer, we all know why) somehow conjure up a legitimately bad episode of Supernatural consisting of multiple minor things that alone are not that bothersome but together ruin everything. You know, like killing a beloved character in a way that is not only remarkably horrific and cruel but also unnecessary, which leads to the question am I talking about Kevin, Charlie, or maybe Eileen? These episodes are the ones that make me ask “why, just why”, but I also tend to forget the truly terrible stuff pretty much by the end of the episode. It’s generally not important, or more accurately, the execution of it is not important, so I just don’t think about it unless someone mentions it. However the truly terrible stuff is discussed a lot. Of course it should be, critiquing is very important part of media consumption, but even then, sometimes it’s better to just let go. Just forget and move on.

Now that I’ve discussed why Bucklemming is bad, which, let’s be honest, was not necessary at all since we all know and didn’t even touch their creepy, rapey stuff, but I’m very insecure and felt I needed to agree with the consensus before I bring up my positive outlook on things and insist that not only Buckner and Ross-Lemming are capable writers, some of their episodes are not only very enjoyable but also actually quite good. Of course enjoyability is subjective, so there’s no guarantee that others think the same. Unfortunately, there is no time to go through all Bucklemming episodes, and not all of them are worth going through at all, since most of them are just ‘meh’, but regardless, I’d like to present some of my favourites.

8.03 Heartache

This is the episode of Supernatural I actively spend thinking the most. And it’s a lot. It highlights the tragedy of immortality and how you cannot really create connections with others because eventually they will wither away and die but you remain the same. Of course in this case the immortal Mayan athlete also had to sacrifice human hearts in exchange for his immortality, which his wife knew and seemed to accept so that they could be together, which raises the question of how she could close her eyes for so long to the atrocities her husband committed just so they could be together since she didn’t seem malicious at all, nor was she resentful of her husband taking his own life so suddenly. She seemed almost relieved that she didn’t have to worry for him anymore, and when her time comes she could rest in peace. Curiously, her husband was not really allowed to rest as the people who had gotten the organ transplants from him sort of continued his life and wanted to be immortal like him and get all the other benefits he had. It’s so tragic and twisted that what is the greatest gift you can give to a stranger corrupts them and what was supposed to save their lives eventually ruins them. The whole episode is a surprisingly original take on the immortal lover trope, and it doesn’t hurt that it does the patented Supernatural trick of mirroring single episode characters with the main ones, this time connecting the immortal athlete who died and Cas, also sort of immortal who “died” recently.

10.16 Paint it Black

This episode is a very curious episode as whole. In a sense, it’s sort of average MoW episode with relatively strong plot but it has the sort of escalation that I appreciate greatly. I mean we’ve had so many vengeful ghosts that target the same kind of demographic, but there is something in this episode that tickles my fancy just right. Also, I cannot really describe the weird joyous horror when the ghost nun in the past cuts her finger so that her blood and bone can be ground up and used in her portrait. She seemed to do it with such glee that it’s a wonder that the painter didn’t see all the red flags in her behaviour (though he was an Italian man, an artist and full of himself, maybe girls cut off their body parts of for him nonstop). It was such a delight. In addition, Dean, who at the time had the Mark of Cain and was once again spiralling deeper into depression and desperation, visits confession and reveals that now that he is about to die (yeah, that doesn’t seem to stick, but I digress) he regrets not experiencing things perhaps for the first time. And we still don’t know what those things are.

An honorary mention goes to episode 1.13 Route 666, which is not really one of my favourites, but I also remember very little of it, other than the general description of it, which amuses me to no end: It’s the racist truck episode. It sounds so dumb, and it was, of course, but I have a fond memories of it regardless. Or maybe fond feelings since barely remember what happens in it.

So, I like Bucklemming, sort of and on occasion, and I don’t think everything the dreadful duo writes is worth the derision they get. I’ve learnt to live with them, maybe it would help if others tried to live with them too, and accommodate their expectations and try to find the good things in the episodes instead of focusing on the bad ones. And if the Bucklemming episodes are a disappointment then they are. Move on. Life is already a disappointment, 40 minutes of disappointment won’t make it worse. Also, I really like the word ‘Bucklemming’, so that’s a plus, and a reason why repeat it constantly. Though I still wish that Bucklemming would just stop with the creeps.

#spn #supernatural #supernatural season 15 #spn s15 #bucklemming

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shadowdianne · 5 years

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Ok people. Time has come. Let’s be ominous and extra on main

So the order for me posting all my WIPS at once will probably be.... the order in where I finish doing all the editing. I’m currently in my last prompts. I’ll still answer the ones I recieve by the end of the week if there is anyone feeling like sending me some.

Aside from that ...

A few months ago I posted a really rambling text about me leaving the SQ fandom writer wise after the SuperNova was over. In the way it’s over once we all put the fics where they will, later on, be revealed. The full explanation of why I’m doing this is even more rambly than the one I gave and is full of nuances that I’ve talked about a little bit with a few of you.

However, I want to say something about it either way. Because words are the way I communicate the most with. And that’s something that I guess is obvious about myself in a myriad of different ways; not only with my fics.

As I’ve said a few times before, SwanQueen was not my first fandom. If I need to pin it to the moment when I actively began to search for fandom-related things, of how I first stumbled into fics and what that entailed…

Going really back in time my first fandom experience was with Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura. Yup, that. I was really into anime back in the day and, don’t ask me how, I stumbled into a website that no longer exists that had these pages upon pages on something people called “fics”.

It was around the same time I was building my own sexual identity so you can imagine the mess; I devoured those fics. Most of them were not even good. Most of them had some questionable themes thrown around. Most of them had language on them that I needed a few years until I realized that was hurtful. But some others taught me what “angst” meant, what “hurt/comfort” was, why “fluff” was about or why “smut” at my tender age of 12/13 was something I wasn’t entirely grasping.

Again, I devoured those fics, I searched for more, I found livejournal and ffnet. By the time I started fully diving into fanfiction livejournal was slightly abandoned so at the end I focused entirely on ffnet and from there… Pretty Cure (another anime) Strawberry Panic and the even more dubious Kannazuki no Miko followed. I found some amazing writers I still follow today and whose stuff I will forever adore on MaiHime/MaiOtome and, eventually, Kim Possible. I still didn’t write though. Probably because my English at the time wasn’t the best, my writing voice in Spanish was barely a murmur and while I had always been the “weird kid who likes to write poetry and if you ask her nicely she will write you a story on the spot” I had never truly considered… writing and posting on the internet.

Funny thing is that this kind of things are like that and those who are content creators will probably understand that: You NEED to create. So, eventually, slightly older, and full on the whole Twilight era, I wrote a very… cringey fic. And then another. And another. And another.

At first I didn’t know shit about editing. My actual first review told me I was horrible at writing, that I was a mess, that I should stop. But my second review told me: “Hey, if you do this and that on the editing process it will help you and this will be more readable.” And I followed that comment. I eventually became friends with that second reviewer but, as life tends to be, I lost contact with her years ago. I still hope she is doing ok though.

Eventually, I started working, if working is something that one can say about writing a chapter in 20 minutes and throw it every Wednesday while your mother is at work, not monitoring what you are doing and you have the internet for yourself back when the internet went through the phone, in a multichaptered story. It is in Spanish, it is awful, characterization is horrible… but it also made me meet the person that became a very important person. And still will be for that younger version of me.

From twilight and the occasional writing on the HP fandom with the Hermione/Ginny pairing [Yeah, I wonder what younger me would think of my current main pairing on that fandom] I “graduated” to Glee. Lots and lots of Glee.

And then I stopped. Completely. Not a peep from me. Not a word, not a line. For over a year.

I was a fan and a shipper, however, of this little show called Once Upon a Time. I started watching in the pilot, in a very shoddy link a friend sent me over gmail. I fell in love with the characters but while I loved them I couldn’t… or wouldn’t really, put myself into writing. At the time my English was slightly better but my confidence levels were even lower than currently are. And the ones who have talked to me can safely say how horrible I am at taking compliments.

Yet, I had a very meaningful conversation, one I don’t know if she remembers still, in where I was told: Writing is you. If you want to write… like you did when we first met, why don’t you do it? I tried with a wip that is still there, buried beneath other stories now, that I never fully took off. And then I said fuck it and wrote several others, badly written, even worse characterized, but ones that helped me say… why not.

Disney World Family Business (in case there’s even someone here who read that mess) comes from there. Interview with the (Evil) Queen does too. Dancing Ring (who I’ve seen people roasting me over it and it’s fine because it was awful) was too. Texts on the cloud was there too, Coffee Black News… Eventually, I wrote a fic I’ve erased since then called The Holiday. Over 2k per chapter every day. I did it under a month.

It was… interesting. It was exhilarating. It was magical in many ways. And I had my favorite writers of course. Those who I followed religiously. Who I absolutely admired. And who I, to this day, still admire. And I even get to call them friends now which my younger self would probably be having a meltdown about now xD

I had opened my tumblr account way before that but I had never truly used it. I didn’t know how. Eventually, though, I dusted it off. I put some cringey theme there and I posted, after being sent a couple of random prompts here and there over ffnet pm’s the first “prompts anyone?” post I ever did.

It’s funny because now I’m a tease but the first time I asked for prompts I did it asking for words that I promised I’d make a smut ficlet out of them.

Words of Desire was born. Is, to this day, the one I feel cheekier about. Even if the writing is awful xd I even got my ffnet account in the line of “am I going to get deleted?” after I posted a story called “Lips”

Why I’m writing all of this you guys probably don’t care about? Because that post led to another. And another. And another.

Point is. I felt drunk on the sudden realization I could still tell stories. And so I kept doing it. At some point I opened my a03 account. Don’t remember exactly when in this story but I was crossposting some of my stuff at some point bother in ffnet and a03 so… who knows really. And then I kept asking for prompts. Or I got them asked. And so I did.

And I met other writers, and other content creators. And I loved it. I absolutely loved watching OUAT and then shit on the show and then create fix it fics at 3am on a Sunday. And I learnt about the narrative process outside class. How fanfiction truly is its own genre. I started developing my own ideas. I started looking at books, at people, at places around me with a critical eye I later on developed further to be able to specialize myself in literature. Because, at the end, that’s what I minored in.

I had roleplayed, I had written conjoined narratives. But fic writing at the scale SwanQueen was during the OUAT was still airing was something else. It still is in a way, but different now. And I think those who were around during the fucking show that basically did us a lot of bad in many ways was a different approach that currently is.

During those years not everything was good of course. I hit several walls, I didn’t have the ability to create the stories I wanted. It is not the reason why I’m leaving, I’ve spoken about the reasons -plural- with some of you. So I won’t bother you all more than I’m already doing.

I still love these ladies. I still don’t know how I will open a doc and not write their names. Maybe I relapse from time to time, who knows. Yet, the constant feeling of not being enough, of not being good enough, has devoured pretty much all my creative juices.

I was talking a few months ago with a writer I absolutely adore and I can’t tell her this enough and we were talking about writer’s block. And she said something that is devastatingly true. “You don’t have a creative block now. You’ve had it for a long time now.”

And I didn’t even hesitate when I answered “Yes. I know.”

How do you have a block when you keep posting? Well. By choosing safer options, options you know you will do on autopilot, without emotion even if you know you should be feeling it. And while writing is part of who I am and a huge part of my own emotional stability the fact that I simply cried when I saw the numbers and the stats while being bombarded with anons that I deleted most of them the second I got them… well. It’s far too much I guess.

I love SwanQueen. And to those of you who I’ve created a friendship over the years with I’m not leaving tumblr and I’m not walking out on you. I’m remaining here. You guys are going to need to do more than this to get rid of me Xd

But I do need that. Otherwise I will keep picking safer options, options that I know will take me shorter and shorter time for me to write. And that’s not quality. And not what I want to write. Because while I love writing about them the pressure and the fear and the rejection and the many other little details have outweighed the good.

Regina is a stubborn woman. No matter what fic you guys are reading or writing. I’m a little bit like her in that department Xd

I’ve finished my wips and I gave myself a few months after that first post so I could create closure and, you know, give you all the best I could do. I felt more relaxed at having a date set. I still feel dread at losing my ability to write now that, probably, the number of prompts will be smaller. But I hope I will still get news from you all. And don’t be mistaken. Me not writing doesn’t mean me not reading. I’ll be actually able to read more so expect lots and lots of fic recs on my side and comments on those fics. So hey, everyone wins.

To those anons, those gatekeepers.

I hope you all wake up one day and realize you are alone in the pit you’ve created for yourselves.

To fellow content creators: There’s always this game I play, on trying to find those headcanons that are truly yours, the ones that repeat themselves on every fic. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a headcanon per se. It can be a word, a special mannerism. I treasure those. I often link you to those in my mind when I’m thinking about you all. Thanks for creating. And thanks for being you.

To everyone really: It has been a few amazing years. Thank you all.

VIVA LA SWAN QUEEN

-Dianne out.

#swan queen #SwanQueen #swen

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