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peppersonironi · 3 years

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Sambucky Fic Recs #2

Part One |

Today's Theme: Soulmate Au's

Welcome to this today's theme! I happen to really enjoy these types of fics and thankfully there's a decent selection in the sambucky tag! Here are Ten fics for your enjoyment! (more under the cut)

1. A Touch of Pain by TowardTheStars

Sam had just turned seven when his world first exploded into pain.

Or, Sam feels his soulmate's pain and wishes to save them from their torment.

Quick warning before we get into things: This is currently a WIP. But I'm finding it great so far! This fic is more Sam-focused with great angst. Also some past Sam/Riley, which I'm always a sucker for!

2. Bright Colors Of Love by Yoursaltness_and_TheMemeQueen

The first time soulmates had skin to skin touch you’d be able to see the colors, that whenever you touched you’d be able to see the world in color, and that the first kiss made colors permanent.

When Sam Wilson is 20 he meets Riley, he falls in love. He takes a risk and holds his hand, the world stays black and white, and he thinks he understands why his aunt says that you don’t need a soulmate to be happy. When Riley dies, there is a bitter part of him that thanks the universe for not making them soulmates. - The first time James “Bucky” Barnes heard about soulmates was through the TV.

He reaches out to hold Steves hand and wonders if the universe can make mistakes.

He decides at about 17 that maybe soulmates are overrated, that the universe is too mysterious to trust. As he’s falling and hears Steve’s cry, he decided the universe is a bitch that knows too much and probably hates his guts. - Flash forward, Bucky knows they're soulmates, Sam doesn't.

Secret Santa Gift for Max!!

This has just the right amount of angst, and I was amazed by how well written it was! I love this fic so much!

3. Reach Out and Hold the Sun by Aluxra

When you touch your soulmate skin to skin, you leave a colour unique to you on them. 106 years and Bucky never received a mark.

Until Now.

Oh my gosh the mutual pining! The uncertainty! The fear of rejection! The utter relief and love that comes at the end! I was grinning ear to ear the whole time reading this!

4. redefining in every way what love is by lovelypenguins1717

On the non-dominant wrist of every person lays a soulmark. A unique mark that appears whenever their soulmate is born. It is the true north to their other half.

Bucky never had a mark and now he’ll never know.

Sam had found his, but the soulmark is meaningless now that Riley’s dead.

But sometimes soulmates are chosen.

*COMPLETE*

Now this is an interesting twist on soulmate aus! I usually love the ones where the people are destined for each other, but I have to admit that I really enjoyed the idea of choosing each other. It was so sweet!

5. Exactly What You're Looking For by @snarky-drabbles

When you lose something, it might appear beside your soulmate in the morning.

Sam never found anything from his soulmate until after Bucky Barnes dragged Steve from the Potomac.

Bucky grew up never finding a thing either, but after he finally gets free from Hydra, he starts finding things beside him the morning.

This is the story of them coming together.

now with a chapter of outtakes and alternate ending

I'll be honest, this fic is hilarious!! The romance aspect and yearning is great, but that ending is just on another level!

More Fics Under the Cut

6. I keep closing my eyes (but I can't blink you out) by @lesbianhozier

Bucky avoids eye contact as much as possible. He can hold a conversation without so much as looking at your face, the only exception to this being Steve. Sam definitely knows why and has seen it a few times before; soulmates. A brief moment of eye contact can change your entire life if it’s with the right person; your soulmate.

canon divergence in Civil War fic. I'll be honest this isn't necessarily my favorite, and it feels a touch weird near the end, but I still enjoyed it! The premise was fascinating and the writing was pretty good.

7. adored by @capnwinghead

The marks were legend - your soulmate's name on one wrist and your enemy's on the other. Most people spent their lives trying to decipher them. Bucky Barnes spent most of his life avoiding them.

Oh the angst in this one!!! So good!!

8. gunmetal grey by Someone_aka_Me

Soulmates wear the same mask, and only your soulmate can remove it.

Sam isn't expecting to find his mask in a history book, worn by a man who's been dead for decades.

I literally cannot sing the praises of this fic enough!!! Holy crap it's so good!!!! It takes place in ca:tws and continues afterwards, but it ignores AoU/ca:cw. I don't read to many fics from this era (working on more of them, though! I got a request for some fic recs, and my research is so much fun!), but I'm honestly adoring this so much. And the writing is so good too! And the whole premise of soulmate masks was fascinating to me! I've never read a fic like this before. BUT I LOVED IT SO MUCH!!!!

9. there is a sweetness in you by Someone_aka_Me

AU: Your soulmate is the only person who cannot hurt you.

Sam gets kicked off a helicarrier — yet he can't help but notice the boot to the chest doesn't hurt like it should.

Yeah, yet another of this kind of au. They seem to be semi-popular for sambucky (Kinda? there aren't too many soulmate au fics though). But I'm a sucker for them, alright? And this one is so cute too! :-D

10. Fortune Tellers And Falling & Fortune Tellers And Falling: Part 2 by @jeffersonshattricks

Prompt: During a “game” Sam is told that is soulmate will be the next person to do “X” to him and it happens to be Bucky. Sam is in denial but destiny cannot be stopped.

The is Bucky's POV for the first part of this. It explains how he knew they were soul mates, and shows a bit of what he went through while waiting for Sam to catch up.

A Two-Parter right here, guys! So fun! I love fics that show both POV's, they just add a new dimension, alright? Also, the pining and uncertainty in these are super good!

And that's it for today folks! I really hope you enjoy these! Once again, feel free to hop into my asks and request any trope or theme you'd like! I already got one that I'm currently working on, so that'll be fun! I also have a coupole other themes that I'm working on right now too, and I'm really excited about them!

Also, let me know if you want to be tagged for these!

#sambucky #fic recs #sambucky fanfiction #sam wilson x bucky barnes #tfatws #caatws #bucky barnes x sam wilson #soulmate au #sambucky fic recs #sam wilson #bucky barnes #captain america #the winter solider #fanfic reccomendation

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wholesomemendes · 4 years

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Your Teddy Bear

Mendes Triplet Au (Peter Mendes)

Summary: No one could’ve guessed you would have ended up with Peter, but the two of you give each other a love neither of you ever thought you’d be lucky enough to experience.

Author’s Note: This is my first time writing with the Mendes Triplet concept by @thotmendes and I’m honestly so excited about it. Also, shout out to @fallinallincurls for talking concepts with me the other night that inspired me to write this and @princecharmingmendes for telling me too write it along with a ton of other people that got me to finish this (such as @itrocksmysocks who sent me a bunch of Peter pictures that were absolutely adorable). So I hope you guys enjoy this! It’s literally 4.6k of just pure fluff and more fluff after that. As always please tell me what you think!

Warnings: Mild Swearing (like literally only one or two words)

No one knew how Peter Mendes ended up with you. Hell, Peter didn’t even know how he ended up with someone like you, but somehow almost every night he fell asleep with his head on your chest, your hands brushing through his mess of fluffy curls. You commanded the room any time you walked in it, confidence radiating off you in every aspect as you strode past everyone with your shoulders pushed back and chin held high. Known to be the life of the party, you were the one people could rely on to flirt your way past the guy at the liquor store to bring the best booze to all of the frat parties, and your name was well ingrained into the minds of almost every student at your wide campus.

Peter, on the other hand, was only known by a handful of students and for a completely different set of reasons. Typically when one thought of Peter they first thought of Raul, the oldest of the Mendes triplets that was known for partying and hooking up with girls, or Shawn, the captain of the hockey team that could easily get any girl he wanted just by looking them in the eyes and serenading them with his singing and guitar. If by some miracle they knew Peter for another reason, it’d probably be because he happened to be one of the smartest students in every single one of his classes and often was asked for tutoring or help with homework. When you thought of Peter Mendes you thought of the smart Mendes, which was exactly why it just didn’t seem right that the two of you were together.

It wasn’t like you were unintelligent by any means, you got As and Bs in all of your classes, but you weren’t even close to the level of Peter’s smarts. Most students would say Raul would be your type, you both had dominating, cocky almost personalities on the outside and loved to party, a seemingly perfect fit. Or even Shawn, who had a smooth, laid back persona would be a great match for you if he didn’t already have a girlfriend to love.

But you knew how you ended up with Peter. It was just 6 months ago when that curly headed boy walked into your life, flipping it completely upside down in the best way possible. You remember it clear as day; you had just gone into the kitchen of the frat house to get another drink when you spotted a cuddly giant leaning against the counter looking completely out of place, swirling his drink inside of his solo cup. You excused yourself, reaching behind him to grab some pop causing him to look at you with wide eyes, apologizing profusely for being in your way. Giggling at his reaction you reassured the startled boy that there was nothing to worry about, before properly introducing yourself.

“I’m Y/n by the way.”

“I know,” he responded, cheeks heating up after realizing what he had said. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t completely infatuated by you, how could he not be? You were absolutely gorgeous and the definition of perfection in his eyes, and something about your mysterious aura left him wanting to know everything about you. Yet here he was, completely embarrassing himself in front of the girl he was secretly crushing on. “I’m sorry that was so weird, um, I’m Peter,” he stuck his hand out for you to shake it, a laugh escaping your lips as you took it firmly in your own. His heart was beating out of his chest at the fact that not only were you engaging in a conversation with him, but you had just shaken his hand, which he was now realizing was not a common thing for teenagers to do and was probably screwing up any chance he had of getting to know you.

“So what’s in the cup?” you asked, motioning to the drink that was pretty much still filled to the brim, a clear sign that its contents were not appealing to him.

“Oh, um, it’s beer, but I’m not really that much of a drinker, especially in large crowds.” His cheeks burned bright red under your stare and he wondered how much deeper of a hole he was going to dig himself into with all of this information he was giving out. Surely someone like you would find him boring soon, it was only a matter of time before you left him to talk to someone hotter and much more interesting.

But to his surprise you moved closer, leaning against the counter next to him as you brought your cup to your lips. “Want to know a secret?” you whispered, Peter nodding frantically like a little boy about to get a new toy, “I’m not that into drinking either. I only really do it at parties and even then I usually keep it to a minimum. I’ve been here for three hours and all I’ve had is half a white claws I ended up giving to my friend. This is Pepsi.” You took another sip from your cup, watching as his jaw dropped at the information causing a smirk to form on your face, “You know I’ve never actually told anyone that, but I have a feeling you’re not gonna go around telling everyone what I tell you.”

“No, no, I won't, I promise.”

“Good, now what do you say we find somewhere quieter to get away from all of this. I’ve had a long day and I have a feeling you love parties just as much as you love drinking.” Peter thought he had never smiled so wide as you took his hand and pulled him into an empty room, one you just happened to know wouldn’t be used tonight. The two of you talked for hours, about how he was dragged there and then abandoned by his two identical brothers, to the research he was doing for astronomy class. You listened intently to everything he said, even adding some of your own input about topics he never thought you would be interested in, and he truly thought in that moment that he had never felt more seen, more appreciated and thought of as someone other than the unknown Mendes brother. You parted ways when it got too late for the both of you, exchanging numbers with a promise to see the other again soon, Peter’s heart racing at the thought of seeing you once more. You never told him, but he had your heart that first night you met him, finally having someone who wanted to know more about you than how to get in your pants.

So even though it shocked the entire school to see Peter’s arm wrapped around your shoulders two weeks later, the two of you felt perfectly content and at peace with one another, your personalities balancing each other out, fitting in like the missing pieces to your own individual puzzles. If you ever had a bad day, you knew that the moment you saw your cuddly giant of a boyfriend looking as comfy as ever in his softest sweatshirts, glasses adorning his beautiful face, your mood would instantly be lightened and everything would be alright. And that’s exactly what you needed right now, a cuddly Peter to turn your day around.

So there you were, headed to the triplets apartment off campus to see your man. Raul, Peter, and Shawn had all bought a four-bedroom apartment only a couple minutes off campus after their sophomore year, and you were around so much that they trusted you with the code and your very own key. You fit right in with the boys easily; you had seen Raul and Shawn at a couple parties before you met Peter, but you never spoke more than a few words to one another. Now that you were dating Peter though, you were practically treated as their sister, blending right into the dynamics of their tight knit family. If there was one thing the Mendes brothers were, it was close and you never quite understood how deep their connections were with one another until you were around them so much. Peter was never known to be a player, always wanting to just be in a serious relationship, so it had been years since he had brought a girl home around his brothers. For that very reason, Shawn and Raul were extremely protective over him, but you easily passed the test they gave you right off the bat. They loved you, not to mention they could tell that Peter was head over heels for you long before he told you 3 months into your relationship. He had been laying on your chest, breathing starting to become heavy as you lured him to sleep with your head massages.

“I love you,” he mumbled into your shirt almost incoherently, an innocent slip of the tongue in his sleepy state. You froze, hand pausing in his hair for a second as he whined from the lack of your touch, not even processing what he just said. You hadn’t ever told one of your boyfriends that you loved them, the thought always seeming too permanent and constricting. But Peter was different and you knew that from the start. He made you feel things that you worried in the dead of night you might never experience and even though it was early in your relationship, Peter felt emotions so deeply and openly that your heart was completely owned by him.

“I love you too, Pete.” He hummed in confusion at your words, suddenly a lot more awake as he sat up to look you in the eyes.

“What?”

“You told me you loved me and I said I love you too.”

“You do?” he asked, eyes wide, happy tears prickling in the corners of them.

“I don’t know how I couldn’t bubs,” and with that he surged forward, connecting your lips to his with as much passion as he could possibly muster.

After he woke up, Peter immediately told his brothers about the night’s events, the two of them filled with joy that someone could make their brother as happy as he was. A month later he gave his virginity to you and the praise (and teasing) he got from his brothers was never ending. You weren’t forgotten either for later that day when you showed up, Shawn immediately began wiggling his eyebrows at you as Raul started cracking sexual jokes, Peter looking sheepish in the background. You had rolled your eyes, feigning annoyance, though you could never be truly mad at Peter for sharing your relationship with his brothers. You learned very quickly that there was little to no privacy with the three of them and anything you did was fair game in their conversations. You didn’t mind, you loved how close they were, not to mention how supportive they were of one another, and you definitely didn’t complain when you had two extremely buff guys protecting you from drunk creeps at parties that didn’t seem to grasp the concept that you were in a relationship.

But being close to the brothers also meant they were used to your random appearances when you typically showed up unannounced even to Peter, who never complained about getting to spend more time with you. Which happened to be the case today, when you stormed in, muttering a quick hello to Raul who was spread out on the couch as you headed towards Peter’s room.

“Peter?” you asked, knocking twice before entering at his request, not even greeting him and instead landing face down on his mattress with a huff.

Your boyfriend closed his laptop, saving his work and sitting up to give you his full attention, running his fingers over your back, “What’s wrong, angel?”

“She’s such a bitch!” you complained, rolling over onto your back to stare at the ceiling.

“Who?” This is how it usually went if you were having a bad day, he’d ask you generic questions, allowing you to let out all of your pent up frustration until you were ready to be cuddled for the rest of the night.

“Marissa! You won’t believe this. This guy comes up to me after class today and tries to give me his number and I’m obviously like no, sorry, I’ve already got the greatest man in the world, I don’t have any interest or need for anyone else. But guess what?!”

It didn’t even phase Peter at this point that a guy tried to get your number, it happened so often that he was partially immune to the doubts and jealousy that came with it. In the beginning it was hard for him, constantly feeling like he wasn’t enough and didn’t deserve you, but you proved to him time after time again that you were completely gone for him and that he was more than you could ever dream of. And he would never, ever question your loyalty to him, if there was one thing you weren’t it was a cheater. “What?”

“Turns out this dude had a girlfriend, Marissa, and so of course she was pissed that he was trying to get my number, which is understandable. But guess who she blames it on?”

“You?”

“Me! Like are you KIDDING me?! I’m not the one with loyalty issues here, sweetie, yet here you are accusing me of trying to get with your man. Why would I even want his number? Even if I was a cheater, which ugh I want to throw up just thinking about it, you’re a hundred times hotter and better than him in every way so it doesn’t make sense. So no, it wasn’t me, sorry your boyfriend’s a manwhore, Marissa.” A chuckle escaped Peter’s lips, head tilting back against the headboard as he laughed. You turned your head at the beautiful sound, meeting his eyes a few seconds later for the first time that night. And just like that. Mood completely better. The sight of him, hair a fluffy mess basically asking to be played with, adorable glasses being pushed up by the scrunch in his nose, and comfy pink sweatshirt on his frame making him look as soft as ever.

“Hi bubs.”

Peter smiled his loving smile he reserved for you, laughing to himself at how quick your mood could change around him, “Hi angel. Feeling better?”

You nodded, crawling up the bed into his open arms, sliding underneath the covers next to him as you rested your head on his chest, “I love you.”

“I love you so much.” He adjusted in the bed to better lay down with you laying on top of him, stroking your hair before placing gentle kisses on the top of your head, “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, bubs,” you snuggled further into his chest, cheek squishing against the fabric of his sweatshirt, “Just wanna cuddle you all night long.”

“I can do that,” Peter whispered, voice soft against your ear, “You doing anything for the rest of the night? I heard Raul saying there’s a huge frat party he’s going to later.”

“Yeah I heard about that,” you admitted, “But I don’t think I’m gonna go. Rather just lay here with you. If you want to, that is.”

Peter’s heart swelled three sizes at your words, nodding his head as he traced I love you onto your back like he always did when he was given the chance. It was true that ever since you started dating Peter you weren’t found at parties as often as you used to be. You still enjoyed going to them, you even managed to bring Peter to a couple of them and he found them much more enjoyable with you by his side, but more often you found yourself just wanting to stay in with your man rather than being surrounded by a bunch of people you hardly knew. “I’d love that,” he spoke against your ear, still leaving butterfly kisses in your hair, “Why don’t we have a movie night? I bought your favorite cookie dough, I could go pop them in the oven if you wanted.”

Your head perked up at his words, a smile gracing your face, “Mrs. Field’s Chocolate Chip?”

“Mhm,” he hummed in response, a squeal leaving your mouth as you jumped off the bed pulling him with you.

“Come on, come on, cookies, Pete!” He laughed, grabbing your hand in his and letting you drag him to the kitchen. He loved how different you were with him, how you were so carefree and loving compared to the confident, I don’t care vibe you gave off to everyone. It was like a secret only he got to see and as long as you kept showing it to him, he was gonna soak in every second of it.

Upon arriving in the kitchen, you jumped to sit onto the counter while Peter rummaged through the fridge in search of the mouth-watering cookie dough. You leaned over to wash your hands in the sink next to him before rolling the dough into large balls to get the biggest cookies possible. The first time you made cookies with Peter he was shocked at how much dough you were rolling for one cookie, claiming that they weren’t going to turn out well if they weren’t perfectly symmetrical to the suggested sizing on the side of the packaging. But once he tasted the big cookies he had no complaints, and neither did the rest of the triplets. Once the package was finished and you had two sheets of cookies in the oven, you watched as Peter set the timer on the oven, little tongue sticking out in concentration.

“Come here, big guy,” you motioned him closer to you, wrapping your legs around his waist once he stood in the middle of them, hands on your thighs. You placed your hands on his shoulders, one hand making its way to play with the curls on the back of his neck. He stared up at you with doe like eyes, hands frozen on your thighs no matter how much he wanted to move them. Even if you had been dating for over half a year now, Peter was still shy and nervous about touching you, so even having him put his hands there in the first place without you telling him it was ok was a big deal. “You can move your hands if you want,” you whispered, eyes holding his soft gaze, feeling his thumbs start to slowly rub circles against the fabric of your jeans, “You’re so handsome, did you know that?”

He blushed at your words, head ducking down to look at the ground, “‘M not handsome, you just have to say that cause I’m your boyfriend.” You knew Peter always had trouble with having self confidence, years of believing that his brothers were better than him really took a toll on his heart. But even if he was a part of three identical triplets, every time you looked at him all you saw was the cutest, most handsome man alive. Maybe he didn’t have endless tattoos like Raul, or piercings like Shawn, but he was Peter, your Peter, and you would do anything to convince him that he was more than enough for anyone, especially himself.

“Pete, look at me.” You lifted his chin up with your finger, other hand smoothing along his shoulder, “I would never tell you something that wasn’t true. I don’t tell you you’re handsome because I feel I have some weird requirement as your girlfriend to do so, I do it because every time I look at you I get butterflies in my stomach over how gorgeous you are. No one has ever made me feel like you do, bubs, and I just wish you could see what I see when I look at you.” With that you brought his lips to yours, tasting the sweet vanilla of his chapstick as he moved in sync with you. You squeezed your legs tighter around him, one hand deep in his unruly curls as you pulled him closer to you, his hands moving up to find purchase on your hips. He squeezed your hips lightly three times, a silent I love you as you kissed, causing a smile to form on your face at the soft boy in your arms.

“You better not be fucking over there!” Raul’s voice tore through the moment, the two of you breaking away from each other in order to turn around towards the couch where he was staring back at you with eyebrows raised. You rolled your eyes at his antics, turning around to find Peter with red stained cheeks and bashful eyes before calling back to the older triplet, “Don’t worry, Raul, we’re not stealing your job!”

A sincere laugh escaped Raul’s lips as you lightly pushed your boyfriend away so you could hop off the counter, earning a small whine from him in response, “Come on, bubs, let’s check on these cookies.” A couple minutes later you had a fresh batch of cookies sitting on top of the oven, the smell filling the entire apartment quick enough to have Raul next to the two of you in minutes with an already burnt tongue because he refused to wait for them to cool down. Just as you and Peter had bit into your first cookie, Shawn had come stumbling into the house with his hockey gear, a wide smile on his face, “Do I smell cookies?”

“Only the best. Want one?” you asked, handing him the plate, while Raul complained from next to you that he was just about to grab another.

“Is that even a question?” he asked, practically moaning when the taste hit his mouth, “And this is why I love having you around.”

“You say that like I’m the one that buys and makes the cookies. Peter’s the one that does all the work.”

“Yeah, but Peter only makes them for you. We only had oven baked cookies once or twice a year before you came.”

“Hey! I make dinner for you guys almost every night,” Peter countered, a slight furrow to his brows, “Not my fault the both of you can’t make your way around the kitchen without burning it.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Raul said, snatching one last cookie before heading off to his room.

“Come on, bubs,” you ushered your boyfriend forward, grabbing his hand as he picked up the plate of cookies, “Let’s go watch Netflix.”

“But I only got one cookie!” Shawn whined from behind the two of you.

“You can get them once we’re done,” you called out before shutting Peter’s door, “if there’s any left.” Peter laughed from behind you, loving the relationship you had with his brothers. Honestly, he didn’t know what he would do if you didn’t get along with them, his brothers were his world and their opinion mattered to him more than anyone else’s. But now that you were so prominently in his life, he could easily say that your opinion was on that same level, if not higher than that of his brothers.

“Hey angel?” he asked nervously, playing with the strings on the hood of his sweatshirt.

“Yeah, bubs?”

“Are you doing anything tomorrow morning?”

“I don’t think so, why?”

“Do you maybe want to stay the night?” You had stayed the night a handful of times, probably more than you should for the length of your relationship, and everytime the two of you woke up with the most content smiles on your faces, wanting nothing more than to just stay that way for the rest of the day.

“Of course, Pete, as long as I get to steal one of your sweatshirts to sleep in,” you told him, walking over to him and replacing his hands with yours on his hoodie strings. His hands found their way to your hips, rubbing in gentle circles to calm the racing heart he always had around you.

“I’ll give you all of my sweatshirts, you look better in them anyways.”

“Shut up,” you mumbled, giving him a soft kiss, “I’ve never met a man that looks more cuddly in a sweatshirt than you do. You’re my teddy bear, bubs.” A wide smile formed on Peter’s face and he leaned in to kiss your lips one more time before he was opening the drawer to his sweatshirts. He handed you the one he knew was always your favorite, grabbing his own set of flannel pants and a shirt to sleep in. He turned around to let you change in privacy while he did the same, even though the two of you had seen each other in much more intimate situations prior to this. No matter how many times you told him he didn’t have to turn around, he always claimed he just wanted to respect you and didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable in any way, shape, or form.

“All done, bubs, come cuddle.” You opened your arms to him from where you were laying in his bed and a large smile found its way to his face as he launched himself into your arms. Giggling at your adorable boyfriend, you adjusted so he could lay under the covers with his arms wrapped around your body. You turned the tv on, scrolling through random romcoms on Netflix while Peter munched on a cookie beside you. One of the things you loved about Peter was how much he loved romcoms, always falling in love with the romantic content as much as you.

Halfway through the movie and you swore the two of you had eaten enough cookies to keep you full for a week, while saving one for Shawn of course. Somewhere in the midst of things, Peter’s head found its way to its beloved spot on your chest and your fingers immediately began massaging through the curls on his head. “You smell different, Pete. Did you change shampoo or cologne or something?” You couldn’t put your finger on it, but the more kisses you left on his curls, the more you felt something was different. He dug his head into your (his) sweatshirt, mumbling something incoherent while trying to hide his rosy red cheeks. “What are you trying to say? I can’t hear you while you’re eating my sweatshirt,” you teased, watching as his red face lifted up to meet yours.

“It’s yours,” he mumbled again, shoving his face back into your chest. You leaned down again, taking a sniff of his hair and finding it to resemble your typical scent right away.

“Why are you using my shampoo, bubs?”

He sighed, turning his head so you could hear him better, “Cause you left one of your bottles here last time you used it and I don’t know, just missed you a lot and you always smell so good.”

“Oh yeah, what do I smell like?”

“Home.” He answered with such sincerity that you knew this was something he had thought about for a long time. Your heart burst, love pouring out of you in such ways that you almost felt like crying happy tears right there on the spot.

“I, um, I have a candle that I keep next to my bed because I think it smells like your cologne. And it calms me down when I’ve had a bad day and I can’t come see you,” you confessed, hands coming back to his hair.

“You can always come see me, angel. Love having you around.”

You smiled to yourself when you heard his speech becoming more slurred, sleep overcoming him, “I love you, Pete.”

“I love you too, angel. My beautiful, beautiful angel.” He left feather-like kisses over your sweatshirt-clad chest, snuggling deeper into your warmth as his breathing began to even out. You reached over to turn off the tv, feeling safer than you’ve ever felt with your big, cuddly teddy bear in your arms.

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time-to-write-and-suffer · 3 years

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I wouldn't mind that post on VNs!

So I was gonna write three different lists, but then after writing the first part I realized this is very long and takes a while to write and nobody cares anyway so I’ll just post my recommended list only. Well, I mean, you asked, but I doubt you wanted all this lol. Thank you for giving me an excuse to talk about this stuff, though. Hope you enjoy my ramblings!

An explanation for what this list is: Sometimes I know a game isn't perfect in many aspects but I still had a genuinely good time playing it, hence why I'm recommending it. Also I should mention that I could talk for hours about some of these games so if anyone’s curious about more of my thoughts, let me know.

Alright, now that that's out of the way ...

How to Take Off Your Mask / How to Fool a Liar King / How to Sing to Open Your Heart (f/m): This is a trilogy of smaller, single-RO games where you can take one of two routes depending on how you act, and they’re all interconnected where you get to meet and interact with the previous games’ characters in the sequel games. I went into this expecting very little but what I got blew me away with how funny, charming and cute the games were. They don’t take themselves too seriously, at one point an angsty male character monologues deeply about some shit, and another one just slides into frame and starts mocking him. It was so fucking funny, holy shit. Also, a central theme is literally racism against catgirls? Which is monumentally stupid, and probably the games’ main flaw, especially in the final game where it pairs up a catgirl with a catgirl racist, but that one still ends with a literal bisexual queen literally making a man her malewife because she fell in love with his cooking, so like ... It speaks for itself. My favorite game of the three is the second one, where you get to play a punchy fake catgirl and romance a pink-haired prince. And honestly, all the female protags in these games are lovely and a breath of fresh air, and the male characters are fun and not abusive assholes either. There’s full Japanese voice acting, and two out of three female protags are literal catgirls who pepper in “nya” and “mya” into their dialogue, and it’s just treated as a quirk of their catgirl race. I AM NOT KIDDING. Yet somehow it never comes off as cringe, because it doesn’t take it self too seriously. These games are just cozy. That’s the only way I can describe them. Cozy and hilarious. Play them yesterday. Dream Daddy (m/m): Man tumblr did this game dirty. This is just a cute, wholesome daddy dating simulator with gorgeous art. Coming out on Top (m/m): So you know Dream Daddy? What if it was EXTREMELY, MAJORLY NSFW? Though I realize how bad the comparison really is, the only thing these games have in common is that they’re gay dating sims and don’t have an anime art style and oh, yeah, they’re both really well-written. Or at least, extremely funny. COOT (heh) is DDADDS’ horny older cousin, and I first encountered the game on a lesbian letsplayer’s YouTube channel. Yes I watched a lesbian play a gay porn game and it was GOOD. I was there for the cringe and fun and got surprised by how genuinely funny and sometimes actually touching the game was. I can’t give it my universal endorsement because it’s not a game for everyone, as I said, it’s extremely NSFW and the menu theme literally includes the singers screaming “SEX SEX” at the top of their lungs. There’s more to this game than the porn, but there’s just so much porn. It can be censored in the settings but it’s unavoidable. However, I still think it’s worth a look just because of how funny it is and how charming the characters are. If you don’t want to play it yourself, at least watch Anima’s playthrough of it. It hasn’t aged super well in some spots but I still go back to it every now and then. Akash: Path of the Five (f/m): This game markets itself as a more “professionally produced” western dating sim, and that’s accurate in some superficial aspects. The game is pretty poorly written, but it’s absolutely gorgeous and has really good English voice acting by actual professional voice actors. The premise is quite self-indulgent, but I genuinely respect that about it. You play as the only female elemental in a village with only men, and all five of your classmates want a piece of you. It’s clear the writers have put some thought into the lore and worldbuilding of this world, but barely any of it comes through in the actual writing and plot, which is basically just a vehicle for you to get together with your boy of choice. The ROs aren’t very well-developed either, and the plot is the same in every route with only minor variations depending on which guy you pick, up to the point where the protag has the same voice lines in some parts regardless of which guy she’s talking about. It also has one extra half-route that’s so bad and pointless I genuinely wonder why they wasted resources on making it instead of spending a bit more on the writing/adding some variations to the main plot. So why am I recommending this game? Well, it’s pretty, and it sounds nice. This game is a himbo, gorgeous but dumb as rocks. Enjoy it for what it is. I know I did. Get it when it’s on sale, I think if I hadn’t gotten it at half-price I would’ve felt a bit more cranky about it. Also Rocco is bae. Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons (f/m): Yes that’s the full title, no I don’t know what it means either. You may have noticed how most of the games so far I’ve enjoyed because they don’t take themselves too seriously? Well, this one does. It takes itself SO FUCKING SERIOUSLY. Like, way too seriously. It’s a little embarrassing at points because baby, you’re an urban fantasy dating sim. Calm down. But the game has gorgeous art and 3 out of 5 routes are very good. The last route, the one with your teacher, is both the most problematic yet somehow the one that breaks down the very concept of a dating sim within its own narrative (yes, this shit gets fucking META) and it got so wild at the end that 1) I still listen to the soundtrack for that route and 2) I still remember it to this day despite finishing it ages ago. My favorite route is Shou, he’s a sweetheart, but the mindfuck route is so buckwild that I think the game is worth playing just for that. There’s also a route that’s like a neo-noir mystery? I Do Not Know. This game is many, many things and it does them so sincerely and tries so hard, you can’t help but respect it. It doesn’t always stick the landing but man, just let this thing take your hand and wax poetic at you for a bit. Also get this one at a sale because it’s very expensive to get the full version. I got it for 9 bucks on itch.io and I felt that was a fair enough price, I’d say I wouldn’t have minded paying more for it because there’s a lot of content to enjoy and/or be baffled by. Arcade Spirits: This one’s a bit more weird from what I recall, and I honestly couldn’t tell you much about it, but I remember having a very good time with it and recommending it to a friend when she was going through some tough times and she said it made her feel better. I remember it making me feel better, as well. This is a VN about an arcade and the ROs are wonderfully diverse, with very real human conflicts that get explored in each of their routes. It can get quite existential and heavy at times, but in the end it’s a kindhearted game that I think everyone can enjoy. The main character was also, how you say, mood. It’s a game about getting possessed by a video game and then learning self-love. Ebon Light (f/m): This one’s free/name your own price on itch.io so go play it. It’s a weird plot where you play as a girl who ate an elven relic? And then the elves kidnap you because you’re the relic now. All the ROs are extremely pasty (like, literally white, as in literally the color white) dark-haired elves, except for one, who’s an extremely pasty blond elf, so ... diversity? I honestly don’t know what this game is aside from unique. I used to be a bit put off by the art style but now I think it contributes to the general atmosphere. It’s a weird game that technically doesn’t do anything groundbreaking but still left an impression of “huh. weird” in my mind and I think more people should play it. The ROs are all pretty generic dating sim archetypes but done well, with bonus points to Duliae who’s just a massive creep and I love him, and also Vadeyn who’s the only bitch in this house I respect. The worldbuilding is honestly a bit buckwild and I can’t give enough credit for how unique the elves’ culture is in this game. Definitely give it a go. Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds / Hakuoki: Edo Blossoms (f/m): These two are newer releases of an older Japanese visual novel. I wouldn’t call it a dating sim, it’s ... it’s more of a super depressing historical fantasy epic with some minor romance aspects awkwardly wedged in. It’s seriously some of the heaviest and most grimdark shit I’ve ever played in a VN/otome. I don’t understand why it’s a dating sim, it doesn’t read like one, it’s just historical fantasy based on real world events with characters based on real people, and they kill and they die and they grieve and they suffer. The games are literally about the downfall of the Shinsengumi, there’s no way of avoiding everything going to shit and you get to watch and be in the middle of it all as they struggle to stay alive and relevant in a world that doesn’t need them anymore. And there’s the protag in the middle of it all, being useless and submissive and bland just the way the usual otome protag is. I don’t think these games are necessarily fun, and the romance is certainly a lot more downplayed and deeply problematic just based on the age differences alone with some of the men, but the sheer amount of horror and sadness in these games make them stand out above its peers. It’s like watching a war movie. Since most of the characters are based on real people, they feel like real people instead of the usual otome archetypes, and they are so, SO flawed, it’s interesting to just watch them deal with the shit the world throws at them. It’s an Experience, and if you’re up for it, I think it’s worth the time. Cinderella Phenomenon (f/m): This game is free on Steam so go get it. You play as a really, genuinely shitty princess who gets cursed to be poor and forgotten and she has to help one of the ROs break his fairy tale curse so that she can learn about being a good person herself and return to her normal life. This game doesn’t look like much, but it has a genuinely well-written main character who’s actually at the center of each of the stories and in the overarching plot instead of just being around to make eyes at the real protagonists, aka the love interests. Aside from the main character, my favorite part of this game’s writing is how each route slowly but very smoothly expands upon the overarching intrigue. If you play them in a certain order, you get more and more info revealed to you that you didn’t see in other routes, gaps are filled in as you find out more about what actually happened and why, but every route also stands on its own as a full experience and none is more canon than the rest. There’s also some really heavy emotional parental abuse explored, which I found quite potent at times. The romances themselves were alright, I think Karma and Waltz were my faves.

#eff plays

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terramythos · 3 years

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TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 17 of 26

Title: The Other Wind (Earthsea Cycle #6) (2001)

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Third-Person, Female Protagonist (Kinda)

Rating: 5/10

Date Began: 7/8/2021

Date Finished: 7/12/2021

The sorcerer Alder is haunted by a recurring dream. Every night he stands at the border of the afterlife, and the dead call to him from the other side, begging him to free them. Fearing that he may unleash evil upon the world, Alder seeks out Ged, a living man who once escaped the land of the dead. Alder finds himself central to a vast mystery; the origin of the afterlife and how it relates to mankind’s ancient connection to the dragons.

“I think,” Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, “That when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all I didn’t do. All that I might have been and couldn’t be. All the choices I didn’t make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven’t been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed."

Content warnings and spoilers below the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Death, suicidal ideation, references to child abuse, reference to misogyny, mentioned animal death, mention of slavery.

Man oh man do I wish I enjoyed this book more. It’s not horrible, and there’s stuff I liked, but I found it really hard to get through at times. The Other Wind feels different than anything else in the Earthsea series— to its detriment. There are three main issues I have with the book, all of which I’ll get into. But ultimately I consider it a mediocre conclusion to an otherwise great series.

First, this book has unusual pacing. The Earthsea books are generally slow, with a gradual buildup and gratifying conclusion that ties the themes of the story together. The Other Wind is more like a reverse bell curve; it has a great beginning and finale, but the middle meanders and stalls. The novel is split into five chapters, roughly the same length, and the middle three are a slog. There’s the barest whisper of an interesting plot, but not a lot happens— and what does happen isn’t very compelling.

The closest thing to a story in the middle is a subplot involving Seserakh, a Kargish princess. She’s sent to King Lebannen’s court with the expectation he’ll marry her to secure an alliance. A stock idea to be sure, but I can see how it might provide political intrigue. But it’s just aggravating. Tenar is in this storyline for some reason, and she feels contradictory and out of character. She wants to live a simple life and leave palace politics behind— but she also wants to push the literal king into a marriage he doesn’t want. Lebannen gets framed as The Absolute Worst because he (1) doesn’t want to get married to a woman he’s never met, and (2) is distracted by other stuff. There’s an implication that the match is a great choice, yet Seserakh and Lebannen don’t have a conversation until near the end. Of course Lebannen falls madly in love with her the moment they talk. No need to… develop their relationship? Normally I can gloss over a weak subplot, but since so little happens in the middle, that’s impossible here. It’s irrelevant to the main story, so it’s a shame Le Guin spent so much time on it.

There’s a lot of talking in this book, but little action. Dialogue-heavy characterization isn’t necessarily bad. Le Guin is usually great at that kind of writing. But here, it emphasizes my second problem with the book: there’s too many major characters. Previous books focused on 1 or 2 people, allowing for intimate connection and character growth. LeGuin clearly tries for that here, but there’s so many people and relationships that everyone is underdeveloped. Perhaps this would come off better with a single perspective character, but Le Guin instead chose a shifting POV between 5+ characters. An alternating POV isn’t inherently bad, but it wasn’t a good fit for such a short book. I found myself wishing for focus on Alder (the protagonist!), who’s a genuinely compelling character. Alas.

My third problem with The Other Wind is exposition. This book resolves several plot threads from previous entries. Obviously, there needs to be some context from the series to tie everything together. But the sheer amount of recap is unreal. So many scenes boil down to a character explaining something that happened to them in a previous book, then connecting it to the current plot. It’s not subtle and sometimes happens with the same event multiple times. It genuinely feels like Le Guin didn’t trust the reader to infer ANYTHING on their own. Having just read the rest of the series, this was especially irritating. I can cut a little slack here; this series began in 1968, and perhaps some returning 2001 readers wouldn’t recall key events. But regardless, The Other Wind is one of the most over-explained things I’ve read in a long time. It’s especially odd because the previous books aren’t like this.

There are things I genuinely like about The Other Wind. On a prose level, Le Guin's a great writer. Even the plotless parts of the book are full of interesting writing choices and philosophical observations. One nice thing about Earthsea is the characters age over the course of the series. Ged started A Wizard of Earthsea as a young boy, but as of The Other Wind is a seventy-year-old man. It’s cool to sit back and see just how much each character developed over time. Earthsea itself changed with them; each book’s events have serious repercussions for the world as a whole. And this book has the most significant change of all.

When the The Other Wind’s plot is relevant, it’s one of the most interesting in the series. I think it’s a fascinating way to tie up two disparate plot threads. As much as I love The Farthest Shore, it does present a glaring conundrum regarding Earthsea’s core themes. True immortality is only obtained through death— not because of an afterlife, but because the dead become one with the rest of the world. So why does the Archipelago have an afterlife at all? Why is it so bleak and depressing? Why are there no plants, animals, or dragons there? Speaking of, there’s the revelation that dragons and humans were once the same species. Tehanu introduced this idea with various folktales, and the eventual reveal that Tehanu/Therru is a dragon. This idea is newer to the series and thus more malleable, but I like the idea of an entity being two creatures at once, and the mystery behind that.

I think the integration of these two ideas is interesting. Dragons and humans were once the same, but decided to split into two species to pursue different goals. They formed an ancient bargain to rule different aspects of the world. Fire and air represent the dragons’ realm, freedom— and water and earth represent the humans’ realm, ownership. But some humans learned magic and broke that covenant, binding everything to its true name. This established a form of freedom— immortality via one’s name. The afterlife is a result of that; it shouldn’t exist, which is why it feels wrong. Everything links back to the desire for immortality without change as introduced in The Farthest Shore. On a meta level it’s weird that none of this came up in that book; the explanation that dragons suddenly remembered this great wrong is a little retcon-y. But I understand Le Guin probably never intended to expand on these ideas, and it’s nice to see the contradiction of Earthsea’s afterlife resolved in the end. I went into this book expecting the titular “other wind” to be the other side of Earthsea, not another plane of existence; and I think that surprise is pretty cool! I like the metaphysical aspect of this other realm and how it connects to the dragons.

Even though I didn’t love the book, I do think it works as a series conclusion more than Tehanu did. Tehanu drops such a huge, unresolved bombshell in its ending that I’m surprised Le Guin intended it to be the final book of the series. The Other Wind does create some open-ended mysteries, but they’re the kind that don’t need a resolution.

Despite that, I find myself wondering if this book was necessary. The Other Wind ties together some threads, but I wasn’t a fan of the execution overall. If the dragon and afterlife plot was a heavier focus, maybe I’d like the book more. Instead there’s a bunch of filler and extraneous detail. The book feels forced, like a novella stretched into a full novel— yet also like something’s missing. Perhaps The Other Wind works better on a reread, but I’m inclined to skip it in the future.

#5/10 #taylor reads #2021 reading challenge

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maharewatch · 3 years

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Main Discussion Post - Episode 1

Skipping over the recap aspects, as we all know the story--some of the storytelling decision this first episode makes are fascinating to me. For example:

We start off with....Bharat? (no, not that one.) It’s not even that he has little to do with the meat of the story--I mean, the Adi Parva also starts generations later. But the Adi Parva, after setting up its frame story, starts with the bloody history of Kurukshetra before jumping back to the Churning of the Ocean. Bharat and his mom’s story is actually sandwiched as a flashback in between Kunti/Madri/etc’s marriages and Drona/Kripa’s backstories! Which is to say it’s very interesting that of all stories, they picked this one.

Also that this features Shakuntala so prominently where the original doesn’t. She’s clearly the leading lady of the court (Bharat’s wife is...maybe that nice lady to the side? Who doesn’t have a single word of dialogue.), which is a huge step from being a technically impoverished single mother. Good for her.

And also that this is a rare look of what happens after the happily ever after for fairy tale heroines: apparently, live your best life as super rich Queen Mother. I love it.

...I love how excited the narrator is about Bharat, Father of Democracy, but uh, AFAIK that’s not canon in the actual text.

Also not in the text: Bhumanyu being adopted. Actually, the story goes that Bharat had 9 sons, but when he realized they were unworthy, their mothers murdered their own children, after which Bharat had a sacrifice/fathered Bhumanyu with his wife from Kashi. Which is rather more horrifying than the version here.

Cut to: Shantanu. Bit abrupt, that.

Seriously, why does no one incorporate the tragic tale of Shantanu and his brothers? /whine. Thematically, though, it makes an interesting contrast to have brothers who don’t all want the same throne.

YOU GUYS. Since the first time I watched this version, I have never understood how this Shantanu didn’t cotton on that the woman he meets by the river was well...the goddess Ganga! She makes mysterious proclamations! She walks in and out of the water in front of him! She INTRODUCES HERSELF AS “GANGA.”

The “supernatural wife gives mortal man one promise to keep; he can’t do it” theme is so prevalent throughout cultures. It, uh, really doesn’t say good things about storytellers’ opinions on men’s capacity to do simple things like follow directions.

Prime Minister: *says ominous things about how the King should just chill and not pay attention to governing* *says even more ominous things about how the King’s joy will be gone the second he has an heir* *disappears and never delves into what the meaning of any of that was*

No, seriously, was there some weird subplot about the Prime Minister trying to make a power grab that never was followed up on?

Another reason why Shantanu might have cottoned on earlier: Ganga, literal minutes after birth, is able to get up and stroll down to the river to drown her newborn. Geez.

Also interesting: most of the people being judgey about Ganga’s choices are men. Our friend the Prime Minister makes creepy comments about “murder” and “murderers deserving the death penalty.” (Clearly planning to get the King to sentence his wife to death, then descend into depression so that he can make a power grab--again, the only thing that makes sense with this dude.)

It’s all the more reason why I secretly cheer for the narrative ultimately upholding Ganga’s choices (but more on that next episode.)

....And we end on the death of Baby 5? Or maybe 4. Either way, what a random stopping point.

What other thoughts and comments do you have about the episode? Anyone else inspired to write “5 times, in retrospect, Shantanu ought to have figured out his wife was a goddess” (#3: she mentions that her drink of choice is amrit.)? Or other creations ft. Shakuntala living her best life?

#mahabharata #maharewatch #episode 1 #mahabharata serial

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smokeybrandreviews · 3 years

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Smokey brand Movie Reviews: Drawn That Way

Tom and Jerry was awful, man. I don’t like Tom and Jerry in general, never a fan of the cartoons or anything, but this movie that just got released was the absolute worst. There are A LOT of reasons why this was such a hard watch, and i went over several in my reviews of that sh*tshow, but my biggest issue was the fact that the integration of animation and live action never meshed. Its not like there weren’t films that totally nailed this aesthetic that they couldn’t pull from. Off the top of my head, Space Jam, Cool World, and Mary Poppins all immediately come to mind but the best to ever do it, and one of my all-time favorite films, is definitely Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I made a reference to this flick in my Tom and Jerry review because the comparison is kind of hard not to make but i wanted to make sure that contrast was fair. Was i fondly looking back on Roger Rabbit through the rose tinted, perspective killing, lenses of nostalgia or was it truly as excellent as i remember? I had to know so i rifled through my old collection of DVDs and found my Collector’s edition of a movie i watched so much as a kid, my mom had to but three copies of it on VHS because i literally played them to death.

The Outstanding

These characters are outstanding. I started to list them individually but, b the time i was finished, all of the principal cast had made it in this section so i opted to just make this one entry instead. Roger, Jessica, Eddie, Herman, Benny, Judge Doom, the Weasels; All of these characters are timeless and fantastic editions to the American cinematic zeitgeist.

The live action and animation integration is the best I've ever seen on film. There is a weight to the interaction of the actors and the cartoons that you rarely see in films like this. The artists in post made that extra effort to fill the void in missed cues or weird physics gaffs, adding to the reality of this world. It was incredibly effective and made for a more authentic watch. Stuff never felt as meticulous or curated, like, the real people were real people and the Toons were Toons and it felt “real” in the sense that they would interact with the world in completely different ways. Nothing the Toons interacted with really felt floaty or the real people interacting with toon stuff felt fake or pantomimed. The technical aspects of this film are absolutely brilliant and lacking in films of it’s kin, that came after.

The Great

I spoke about the characters previously but they’re nothing without exceptional performances to bring them to life. You have to match the energy of a rubber faced, carton rabbit or the sultry, curvy, man-eating, redhead and these this cast does an exceptional job of that. Charles Fleischer was perfectly cast as Roger Rabbit, Benny the Cab, and Greasy, and Psycho. Dude really was the workhorse of this film, man. Lou Hirsch was hilarious as Herman the baby while Kathleen Turner killed it as Jessica Rabbit, though she went uncredited the role, and i have a particular fondness for David Lander‘s Smartass. Dude was my favorite character when i was kid and Lander’s performance went a long way to making that happen. I also have to mention the immortal Bob Hoskins as well. Even though he wasn’t a cartoon, his Eddie Valiant was the perfect foil to Roger’s madcap antics. None of this would have worked if Hoskins didn't have the wherewithal to play Eddie as straight as he did. That said, my absolute favorite performance belongs to...

Christopher Lloyd as Judge f*cking Doom. Holy sh*t, was this dude terrifying to me as a kid! Up to this point, Christopher Lloyd, for me, was Doc Brown. He was this goofy, weirdly voiced, lovable scamp of an older dude. The second i realized he was Judge Doom my perception of his ability changed considerably. Everything that Doc Brown is, Doom ain’t. This cat is sinister, sadistic, cruel, and absolutely out of his f*cking mind; A reality that Lloyd hone to a focused point which he used to stab at my young emotions. Dude was a straight up terror, delighting in the slow, tortuous, death of Toons in the dip, only to go full nutbag after getting steam-rolled. Bro, that scene? That scene f*cked me up for years! It was pure trauma for five-year-old me and, even today, makes me grimace a little bit. One of the best and most underrated antagonist performances I've ever seen on film.

The writing is completely on point. It had to be. There were quotas on time for every cartoon cameo i this thing and they needed to be worked into the script organically. That, alone, is enough to earned recondition but, beyond that, this film was a solid showing in it’s own right. It’s a great murder mystery with enough intrigued and gaff to enthrall kids while simultaneously, engaging adults. Roger Rabbit was based on a book so there was an established narrative to pull from but the adapted screenplay is truly brilliant, not only on a narrative level with it’s simplicity, but on a technical one with the character complexity.

A dope script can only go so far without a proper eye to guide the action and Robert Zemeckis did a fantastic job in the big chair with this one. The Eighties and Nineties found Zemeckis at the height of his powers but Roger Rabbit is one his best showings, hands down. To visualize all of these Toons interacting with real actors, to box out those scenes properly in order to get the necessary performances our of his actors with nothing there, is a true testament to how clearly this cat could see his narrative. Dude has fallen by the wayside in recent years, that Witches remake was decent but nowhere near as awesome as Back to the Future and Forrest Gump, but Roger Rabbit shows what he can do when he’s firing on all cylinders.

The world of Roger rabbit is so goddamn lush and full of rich characters that i immediately fell in love with it. That unique perspective from the book, vividly brought to life onscreen, was incredible to see, especially for the young version of me. Going back, now, as an adult, and i still feel the same way. Zemeckis really pulled off something special with this film, especially considering it still stand up to this day, some three decades later.

The Verdict

I love Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It’s required viewing for any movie buff. It is, literally, the best of a genre. It’s the Godfather of these animation/live action hybrids and really proves itself upon repeated viewing. You always catch little tidbits that you missed before and it just lends itself to the level of detail Zemeckis put into his direction. Outside of that, as a film, it’s exceptionally entertaining with a accessible plot to tie in all of these cameos and technical wizardry. The performances are completely on point, with particularly great showings from Haskins, Lloyd, and Fleischer, giving a real authenticity to a movie about cartoons living with people, provably didn’t deserve. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is an outstanding film that deserves all of the accolades and love. It’s a great film for kids, a fun watch for their parents, and true classic of American cinema.

#Smokey brand Movie Reviews #Who Framed Roger Rabbit

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dillydedalus · 3 years

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october reading

i finished my masters thesis this month (yay!) so while i still read quite a lot for escapism i was also operating on no more than 2 braincells at any time, and one of those braincells was just. continuously screaming. so any incoherence or whatever here is. because of that.

i am sovereign, nicola barker a fantastically weird & enjoyable novella about a house-viewing gone wrong that eventually blows up the novella form. i don’t want to give away the meta aspect too much, even tho it’s not entirely unpredictable, but it is so very entertaining and delightful to read. had such a fun time with this. also has a great cover. 4/5

the lifted veil, george eliot i’ve only read middlemarch by eliot, so a 75-page novella about the supernatural sure was... different. it’s fine, but nothing special imo. i enjoyed the first chapter, which sets up latimer, a soft young man with the gift of foresight/telepathy and his fascination with his brother’s fiancee, whose mind remains opaque to him (....twilight???), but the second half is pretty meh. 2/5

the notebooks of malte laurids brigge, rainer maria rilke (read the german obvi) loved the beginning of this, where morbid, too-intense, death-obsessed author-insert malte laurids brigge walks around paris, seeing everyone carry their death with them, which then makes him think of the deaths he has witnessed in his childhood. the parts about his childhood in a danish noble family were also good, but it really lost me with the overtly poetic, weird historical/religious stuff?? feel like this might have been a victim of termin master’s thesis like maybe that’s not the time for poetic, fragmentary, modernist-ish novels. 3/5

wie der soldat das grammofon repariert, saša stanišić (read in german, english translation by anthea bell) i really enjoyed stanišić‘s memoir herkunft last year so i went back to his 2006 classic, about a kid called aleksandar growing up in yugoslavia and eventually fleeing to germany as a refugee during the war. it’s very similar to herkunft in story, although the presentation is very different. honestly overall i found it a bit Too Much, too long & too stylised in its structure. but like, i can see why it’s so popular. 2.5/5

i capture the castle, dodie smith i really liked this! cassandra mortmain is a very strong narrator, the atmosphere of the dilapidated castle and the dysfunctional family are great, & i was surprised by the crushing poverty of the family in the beginning - cassandra obviously attempts to cover this up both in her own head & in her journal, but for much of the first half or so i was genuinely really worried for the kids - and this makes rose so much more sympathetic in her resolution to escape poverty. i was less convinced by the whole love quadrangle this book got going on, but on the whole this was very charming, but often very melancholy in a far deeper way than i expected. 4/5

the death of vivek oji, akwaeke emezi my second emezi this year, altho sadly neither of them have lived up to the glory of freshwater. this one is about (gender) identity, grief, trauma, love, and solidarity/community based on otherness, which are similar thematically to freshwater, but in a novel that is, i would say, both more stylistically conventional and more hopeful/uplifting (altho it is still very depressing in parts). i enjoyed this on the whole, but it just doesn’t grab you by the throat the way freshwater does, and the reveal/central mystery just feels a bit lacking. 3/5

gott wohnt im wedding, regina scheer listen, this book is probably more competent & historically interesting than literarily great BUT it’s literally (literally) set around the corner from where i live, i know pretty much every single place & business mentioned in it & the house troubles are extremely relatable, if a lot worse than what i am currently experiencing. anyway. this novel is centered around a house in berlin-wedding & the people who live in it & it's about the holocaust & the porajmos, current discrimination against sinti&roma, the history of the wedding, gentrification, familial trauma & all that. it’s very interesting historically, slow but still very readable, and like.... i just really love the wedding! it’s kinda shitty & depressing but i love it!!! 4/5 the only good indians, stephen graham jones note: the elk in this book is not what you, a european, think of as an elk. that’s a moose. anyway, this is a horror novel about four native american men who hunt for elk when, where and how they shouldn’t have and ten years later find themselves pursued by a vengeful elk spirit. i enjoyed this! the scenes where shit goes down were certainly very horrible & gruesome & very sad as well. 3.5/5

solutions & other problems, allie brosh this book really is out there & exists. anyway hyperbole & a half was like, one of my formative internet things and i still love it a lot. this book is second only to the winds of winter in eternally getting pushed back and back and back, so this even getting published was def a pleasant surprise. it’s still really funny, and the weird ugly drawings are still amazingly effective, but this one is. very sad. some really bad shit happened to brosh inbetween and it’s kinda a downer (i mean the first one had the depression saga but this one... is darker). 3.5/5

a supposedly fun thing i’ll never do again, david foster wallace .....i might have to stan dfw, just a little bit. like, i read infinite jest when i was way too young to appreciate it (still traumatised by the uh. creative use of brooms tho) & i have NO intentions of ever rereading it BUT this essay collection was so good that i may just have to read a lot of his other stuff. particular highlights are the title essay, about a cruise journey, and an essay about the illinois state fair, two things that feel particularly fascinating and offputting in equal measure in this year of plague, where even the idea of being in enclosed spaces with many people freaks you out. but i also really appreciated his essays on david lynch & television & fiction, even if i don’t agree with all of his takes. he just has such a good voice! funny, smart, precisely observed but always with a strange spin. 4/5, minus points for too much tennis, but oh well

gruppenbild mit dame, heinrich böll (group portrait with lady) marcel reich-ranicki criticised this book for being, essentially, a sloppy mess and that’s kind of accurate - it’s definitely too long & a bit draggy & böll (and the narrator/“author”) go on tangents and into details with indulgence & abandon, but it’s also... kind of brilliant? the way the “author” collects material and testimony on leni (the lady), her family, coming-of-age and the love affair with a soviet forced labourer that made her an outcast, constructing a documented history of her while leni herself remains ever elusive, the focus on structure, architecture, construction, the endless loops of self-justification (pelzer’s insistance that he is not inhuman, the real estate tycoon’s insistence that they just want what’s best for leni & that her resistance to profit-logic is abnormal)... there’s so much in here, and a lot of it doesn’t need to be there, but a lot of it does. 3.5/5

sweet fruit, sour land, rebecca ley very lyrical, quiet, feminist climate dystopia. it’s good, well-written, very evocative of hunger and loss, a dystopia but really more about grief and identity, and i read it during the last few days of my master’s thesis and thus have absolutely nothing to say about it. 3.5/5

i also & this will be a shock, dnf’d burning down the haus: punk rock, revolution & the fall of the berlin wall, a book about the east-berlin/german punk subculture. it just felt like a longform essay artificially extended into a 400-page book & the writing was pretty basic in a music bro tries to be deep and like, subversive and shit kinda way.

#the books i read #long post

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homespork-review · 5 years

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Homespork Act 1: The Note Dawdling Tension Plays (Part 1)

A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, 2009, is this young man's birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!

CHEL: Here we see the first page, and are introduced to our protagonist, ZOOSMELL POOPLORD! Sorry, I mean John Egbert. The joke names used as a running gag, and also the actual names which end up applied to the characters, were the suggestions of the players of the original forum game.

BRIGHT: Homestuck does start out strongly in several ways. It immediately establishes the protagonist and location. It sets the tone it will use, one based heavily on a text adventure computer game. It introduces the reader to the inventory system...

And here the first feature of Homestuck becomes apparent: although a hugely popular and widely known webcomic, it is very slow to get going. The new reader who arrives on the recommendation of others ends up scratching their head and wondering if they’re in the right place.

TIER: In ancient times (so somewhere in 2014/15) I actually attempted to read Homestuck to see what the occasional weird noises the name caused were going on about. I'm very certain that I didn't even make it to meeting any of the other kids I was so bored.

CHEL: Same here. It took me two or three attempts to get to that point. The problem is that the intro is left over from its days as a forum game, in which no one was expecting it to lead into the epic story it became. It worked great for that format, but less well now. And here we start on our first counts.

GET ON WITH IT!: 1 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 2

How Not to Write a Novel lists multiple errors which could be said to apply here:

The Waiting Room - wherein the story is too long delayed Here the writer churns out endless scenes establishing background information with no main story in sight. On chapter 3, the reader still has no idea why it’s important to know about [the background info, in this case how badly John fails at using technology]. By chapter 7, the reader would be having strong suspicions that it isn’t important, were a reader ever to make it as far as chapter 7. Zeno’s Manuscript - in which irrelevant detail delays narrative momentum Any scene can be killed by description of every meaningless component of whatever action the character undertakes. As in Zeno’s Paradox, in which an arrow never reaches its target because it must always travel half the remaining distance, the reader begins to feel as if the end is further and further away.

A comic about a kid failing to master a video game inventory system is mildly amusing once, but not when it drags on this long, and it’s not particularly fitting for an epic adventure involving the fate of universes. Well, that’s not quite fair; introduction to mundane life and slow revelation of the magical goings-on works fine for books like the Harry Potter series. But, to take Philosopher’s Stone as an example, multiple different odd things happen over the course of Uncle Vernon’s regular boring day, increasing in scale until it’s very clear something strange is going on, and establishing multiple aspects of the wizarding world, e.g. owls, their fashion, the existence and disappearance of a mysterious villain, the fact that the wizarding world is supposed to be secret.

John fucking about with his sylladex and putting up movie posters for page after page doesn’t tell us anything new. Failing to use the sylladex once would be enough to get the point that magical video game inventories are a thing in this world and John’s not very good at using them across, and then we really ought to move on, and we can already see the posters on his walls so we don’t need to see him hanging more. Possibly we could have needed the latter in a purely text format where we couldn’t see the walls, or in a comic without text description at the bottom where attention would need to be drawn to them on-panel. Admittedly, it does establish him picking up the hammer, which becomes relevant, but we don’t need a full page each for both the action of him picking up the hammer and the action of him hanging the poster.

… Who hangs a poster with nails, anyway? His walls must be in a hell of a state.

For that matter, that’s another HNTWAN entry or two:

The Second Argument in the Laundromat - a scene which occurs twice NEVER use two scenes to establish the same thing. We do not, under any circumstances, want a series of scenes in which the hero goes to job interviews but fails to get the job, or has a series of unsuccessful dates to illustrate bad luck in love. This works in the movies, where three scenes can pass in thirty seconds, but not in a novel. The Redundant Tautology - wherein the author repeats himself If you have made a point in one way, resist the temptation to reinforce it by making it again. Do not reexpress it in more flowery terms, and do not have the character reaffirm it in dialogue […] This point is worth repeating; don’t reiterate. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 4

Additionally, people with a lower tolerance for “lovable clumsy dork” characters are going to come to hate John before the comic’s even started, though it’s probably best that people who are going to hate the main character learn that quickly so they can leave. I can understand not wanting to lose the forum game which originally spawned the comic, the other people involved would probably not be pleased, but perhaps it would be better saved as a side story and trimmed down when the comic proper was released. At least they could be compressed down by showing multiple failures and multiple poster-hanging actions on single pages.

One other minor gripe might be the neologisms, such as “sylladex” meaning inventory. I found it fairly easy to pick up and it does make the tone and narration nicely distinctive, but it’s a level of extra complication. How Not to Write a Novel has a couple points on excessively baroque wordplay - do you guys think it’s worth giving it a point for that?

BRIGHT: Possibly not in this case - wordplay is a feature of HS and this one is at least made fairly clear. There are plenty of offenders later on as I recall though...

CHEL: Okay, seems fair. In this case it is more of a feature than a bug. It does establish the narrative voice and add to the video game theme. However, the movie posters also bring up an addition to our third count.

Plus, a black president? Now you’ve seen everything! WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 1

A reference to the song “White Suburb Impressionism”, by IAMX…

"IAMX - 'White Suburb Impressionism" (Watch on YouTube)

… this count goes up whenever characters behave in a way which suggests they’re, well, white and suburban (or wealthier), despite any attempts to present them otherwise. This would have passed without comment, but Hussie later tried to claim he’d always intended the kids to be “aracial”, so any reader could project themselves or their preferred headcanons onto the kids. As we’ll show you, we don’t believe him, or at least don’t believe he succeeded. That would probably be difficult to pull off, anyway. Race affects a lot more than features on a stylised sprite.

FAILURE ARTIST: Now, I can’t quite put my finger on it but John’s and Dave’s opinion on black presidents in movies (that it’s a gimmick ruined by Obama’s election) feels like something that would only come out of a white mouth i.e. Andrew Hussie’s. Not the most egregious case of implied whiteness but still worth noting.

CHEL: The point of the joke here is not 100% clear, and that’ll be a thing which comes up later as well. See, I agree that’s Dave’s opinion, but I thought the point was that John genuinely didn’t know there was a black president at the time of writing because he’s already been established to be not exactly a genius and so far he’s been focused on movies and video games instead of real life. Maybe I’m underestimating him, though, since admittedly not very much of him has been shown at this point and it’s been a while since I read the whole thing. I’m not going to start using the ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY count here, though, because here Hussie clearly was trying to be funny. It just isn’t clear to me what about it was supposed to be funny. That’s probably my autism talking, though. Jokes are hard. I agree that it sounds like a white kid’s opinion either way - even the dimmest black American kid would know Obama existed, and so most likely would non-black people of colour.

Anyway! Things pick up a bit when John, under the username ectoBiologist, starts chatting to the second character to be introduced, currently known as turntechGodhead, though the second topic of conversation is a reference to a 1989 movie which, as time goes on, will be familiar to fewer and fewer readers. Luckily, the writer realises this, and the content of the conversation makes the reference sufficiently clear without falling into As You Know dialogue.

FAILURE ARTIST: Namely, their conversation is about a scene where - pardon me for being gross but it’s in the comic - a character accidentally ingests urine instead of apple juice. John and TG are surprised the character knew it was urine but I find it weird that someone with working smell would not know what it is. Urine has a distinct odor.

CHEL: Well, be fair. According to the drawings, the characters in question don’t have noses!

FAILURE ARTIST: On a more pertinent note, this conversation is an edited version of one Hussie and a friend had. Perhaps Hussie was TG? TG is practically an Author Avatar for Hussie. Sure, Hussie literally appears in the comic later, but TG seems to fit his true personality better. We’ll see how that affects things for better or for worse.

BRIGHT: This is also the reader’s introduction to the Pesterlog. This is one of those things that seems like it should be out of place in a webcomic - it’s just a page of two people talking to each other in chatlog format, with no other information - but the Pesterlogs actually work surprisingly well.

FAILURE ARTIST: When I first read Homestuck, I didn’t know you had to click on the Pesterlog to open it. I just sat around wondering what amazing conversations they were having. I’m not the only one I think who made that mistake.

CHEL: Yeah, I think I briefly had the same problem, but I don’t remember for sure. Possibly more attention could be drawn to the button.

TIER: I would've probably ended up in the same boat if the friends that recommended I read Homestuck didn't specifically tell me not to accidentally overlook them!

CHEL: That’s not exactly a writing error, so I’m not sure it falls under our jurisdiction, but it’s a point that ought to be brought up. The Pesterlogs do work well once the reader actually sees them, anyway. It’s actually pretty interesting to see how much information can be conveyed in a conversation without falling into As You Know Bob. Let’s check what points are introduced in this first one, for example:

- John really loves what he got for his birthday, a Little Monsters poster. From this we know he’s not spoiled (this is how you do it, Meyer) and easily entertained, and likely has a good home life, as he’s so happy and grateful about a gift from his dad.

-turntechGodhead has apple juice in his closet. This establishes his odd home life, and gets explained in more detail later.

- Some things about the personalities of both kids. John is enthusiastic and a joker, TG is mellower, sarcastic, rambles a bit, and at least plays at being cool.

- John really wants to play the SBURB Beta, a game mentioned earlier which is late being released. TG is less keen, again trying to be cool about it.

- Said game got “slammed” by critics, despite the fact that we learned earlier from John’s SBURB-logo calendar that this game has been hyped to hell and back and must be popular, with merchandise and reviews being released before even the beta version of the game is out. Something weird is going on; someone really wants a lot of people to play this game.

Not bad considering a total lack of body language reference or narration. Das Sporking’s seen authors using traditional narration do worse!

FAILURE ARTIST: The (adult) critics of Game Bro get into shenanigans that prevent them from playing the game they reviewed. Perhaps there’s something in the game that prevents itself from being played by adults, just like how adults can’t pilot Evangelions in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.

CHEL: Not sure. Doesn’t one of Dad’s online friends play it, or at least get caught up in it, later on? Though that part’s obviously supposed to be a joke… Maybe instead it’s a built-in way to stop anyone who might be listened to warning others what it does?

As established earlier, said beta is late; this is a reference to the originally planned launch date of the comic, three days before it actually ended up being released. Also, there’s a pun you may have missed in the background. The programming files on John’s desktop include the phrase “^CAKE”. The ^ symbol is called a carot. Get used to noticing those. It’s pretty amazing how many references, self-references, puns, and recurring themes are worked in, and people such as revolutionaryduelist have made semi-careers picking them all out. We won’t bother with all of them or we’ll be here all century, but we’ll pick up on any obvious ones.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie majored in computer science so there’s lot of computer science in-jokes in the beginning.

BRIGHT: Something I just noticed: One of the other files on John’s desktop is ‘TYPHEUS’. It even has a Denizen icon! Probably something that has been brought up plenty of times before, but still nifty on a reread.

CHEL: Typheus and Denizens will come up later in the comic.

TIER: When he feels like it, Hussie is immensely good at foreshadowing later events in pretty subtle but solid ways. It's stuff like this that makes times when he does fumble look worse than they probably are in comparison.

#homestuck #review #let's read #reread #literary critique #sporking #homespork #homestuck meta

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shyvioletcat · 5 years

Text

Kingdom of Ash Tour Sydney

Oh my gosh, I’m sorry this took so long. My notes were much more extensive than I thought and then just a lot of poor time management. Anyway, here it is.

A few choice bits of information/quotes:

“Being a dork pays off you guys. Who knew?”

Says Melbourne like a local

Loves our coffee. Says she’s moving here because of it.

Advice to aspiring writers: find someone to share your work with. Giving and getting feedback teaches you so much. Gives you a form of community.

Got into writing because it’s what she loves and it makes her come alive like nothing else does.

Music plays a Huge part in her creative process

Daily writing schedule. Plays with Taran then about 930/10 she starts. Gets admin stuff done first 9-8 job.

Nothing compares to sitting down and writing a scene she’s wanted to write for years and years. Describes it as time stopping and the closest thing to magic, at least for her.

Had a question about her creative circle for bouncing ideas around and talking about her stories. Sarah didn’t talk to her family about her stories at all when she was younger. Doesn’t like her parents reading her books. She referred back to writing ACOTAR and she asked the audience “do you know what it’s like to write an on the page sex scene knowing my father was going to read this?” Said it took her about three glasses of wine to deal with it.

About her dad reading said scenes: He said “I just skip those scenes.” Sarah’s reply “I’ll do you one better. I’ll just rip those pages out.” Then she talked how it was much worse when ACOMAF came out the next year.

Josh has become her creative sounding board over the last few years. He reads the early drafts of Crescent City and lets Sarah ramble to him for hours. She thinks it’s really cute they get to do that.

He thinks he’s every love interest in all her books. At events people ask if he’s what Rhys was modelled from. Josh will say yes. Sarah was very adamantly said it was a no.

Fellow writers help her from looking like a complete idiot. In particular Lynette Noni. Calls her a secret Disney Princess. Has become her can’t live without critique partner.

She said don’t listen to the people who say writing is a dumb dream. But said it’s a long long road to getting published but not impossible. “Don’t ever listen to the haters man.”

Her parents were always incredibly supportive. Her mum would leave snacks outside her door so she wouldn’t disturb her while she wrote

When her parents told her that she needed a job to support herself Sarah didn’t want to listen. But she said they were ultimately right because there are no guarantees in publishing. One of her favourite moments is when she became a New York Times best seller and she got to call and tell her parents. The first thing her mum said was she regretted telling Sarah to be realistic about the expectations of yourself. But Sarah was adamant they were right.

She thanked us and got quite emotional. Thanked us for supporting her books, she was walking around Sydney harbour and thought to herself how lucky I am to do this for a living.

Someone from the audience screamed “I love you” she said “I love you too, I love you all so much” (insert my hysterical tears). She couldn’t express how much she appreciates everything we all have done for her and her family, the fact we have allowed her to live out her dreams. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this being the loveliest group of people I’ve ever had the honour to meet”. SHE LOVES US.

Crescent city

Doesn’t think her parents can read a single page of crescent city. Joking, it’s every other page. Started as excess creative energy, a real passion project.

Describes it as taking the ToG/ACOTAR worlds and jumping ahead over 3000 years to where they have modern technologies and comforts. Magical creatures living together in complex hierarchies. Feels different because of the modern setting but has familiar aspects, e.g. snarky sassy heroines and brooding sexy muscled men. Says there are so many. So many.

Josh: “why are there so many attractive men in this book?” Sarah “because it’s a fantasy. FAN-TA-SY.”

No real defined plot yet.

Knew it was the story she wanted to tell because of an experience on a plane. Sarah was listening to a piece of music and saw a scene play out and she burst into tears. She didn’t know the characters or how they got there. The scene will be in the first book and is like THE MAJOR BIG SCENE. Kept thinking of that moment of creation and how much it overwhelmed her and that was the deciding factor that that was the next story she needed to tell.

World of Throne of Glass

World of Throne of Glass. Started off as an encyclopaedia. It will be a chronicle that exists in world and Sarah describes it like going into the library of Orynth and pulling it off the shelf. The premise of the book is that Aelin has hired this cranky old scholar to travel around all the kingdoms/continents and includes the travel logs, transcripts from interviews with the characters, insight into how they felt, letters between characters. The book itself is like the the Terrasen courts private copy so it has letters between characters. Glimpses into the future.

BUT THIS MEANS IT WILL COME OUT LATER

ALSO SAID THERE ARE POCKETS OF HISTORY SHE REALLY WANTS TO FILL IN AND THERE’S ALSO LOTS OF STORIES THAT MAYBE ONE DAY SHE MIGHT WANT TO TELL SHE JUST NEEDS TIME TO THINK ABOUT IT. SORRY I’M JUST REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THIS.

Throne of Glass/ACOTAR

The idea of Throne of Glass came to her when she was 15/16 years old. Gripped her like no other story had. Throne of glass has a special place in her heart because it’s what started her on this journey.

Sarah was changing Kingdom of Ash right up the very last minute.

Mystery questions from the lobby:

What would happen if all your villains met?

The thought of Maeve and Amarantha gave her chills to think about. Would they rip each other to shreds or form and unholy alliance? Undecided.

Did you cry during the writing of the final book? If so which moments?

Number one scene. The Thirteen.

Gave lots of details about when Manon first appeared, a piece of music from the Fright Night remake was playing and she saw the cottage scene play out. She saw Manon disembowel the farmers and how her teeth and claws came out and just thought “I love you”.

Loved witches since she was little because she realised witches were often women with power when women weren’t allowed to have power.

Sarah went to the mat for Manon. She hadn’t sold the rest of the books, only up to Heir of Fire. Writing about Manon gave Sarah her courage and came into her life when she needed her attitude. She said “Over my dead effing body” when editor said to cut Manon.

Sarah listened to a song from the original star wars and that was when she saw the sacrifice of the Thirteen. She needed to have Manon start where she did in Heir of Fire so when we all got to the scene in Kingdom of Ash is would really hit us strongly as it had hit Sarah for the first time. Sarah was sobbing at her desk when she saw them making their final run. She saw then Manon screaming and begging them to to stop because she realised she had a heart and loved them.

Sarah said she needed to lie down afterwards, she considered a happy ending for a moment, but then she thought about how the ladies never get to make the big heroic sacrifice and she really wanted the Thirteen to make the badass sacrifice and she wanted to make that moment when their exploding with light and not darkness absolutely destroyed Sarah.

Happier scene is the last goodbye between the main three, sobbing so hard. Really ugly crying not Frodo crying nicely at the end of The Return of the King, but bodily fluids spraying everywhere. So many tears.

Sarah would also get super amped up. Example: When Elide saves Lorcan she got so amped up she literally straddled her chair like she was riding a horse. (She re-enacted it on stage too). Then it was just more ladies were doing their badass thing like:

as Aelin flies down on the bird and explodes and destroys the wave and then Rowan is like that steam is going to boil every one like lobsters, got to get rid of that.

When Aelin makes her run and Lorcan sees her and he’s crying, you know if Lorcan’s crying some intense shit is going down

Then when Aelin is trying to get the mask off. That hit Sarah hit her so hard, didn’t expect it. Felt physically ill writing it. It was one of the few times Aelin was unhinged and in a panic. Seeing Aelin in a panic out Sarah in a panic.

Aelin has been like a person to Sarah and has carried Sarah through a lot of hard stuff. Sarah has said to herself “my name is Sarah J Maas and I will not be afraid”

Would say “What would Aelin do?” to give herself that swagger. Any time Aelin is in pain Sarah was in pain and would be like “My baby my baby! Let me help you”.

Such a joy to write. Aelin was telling her and showing Sarah where to go.

ABOUT THE ENDING OF KINGDOM OF ASH: Travelling in Costa Rico to a rainforest exists at cloud level. (Side note from Sarah: Vote for the environment! Do it for the golden toad). One of the most beautiful places she has ever been. Sitting in the backseat listening to music from John Carter of Mars. Sun broke through the clouds and lit up the mountains and Sarah heard the last line of Kingdom of Ash about the kingsflame blooming and she knew what the last line was and that’s what she wanted to get to. She starting crying (surprise surprise) didn’t want to tell her travelling companions so she lied and said she was crying because the view was so beautiful. Writing with Aelin at the helm guaranteed her nothing. Aelin did it though, she stuck to Sarah’s plans and Sarah got the ending she wanted.

Call out from the audience about Gavriel. Uproar from the audience. “Why did you do that!?” “Why would I do that? Because I’m a horrible person.” Any time a hot guy full of muscles dies it’s a sad day. Poor Aedion. “It would have been so hot! Not in a weird way! The two of them hanging out, the lion and the wolf and oh my heart... you mean I have no heart, that’s what you’re thinking.” Evil cackle.

Who of all your characters do you see sitting in a rocking chair and knitting and telling their grandchildren the wildest stories in their old age?

Throne of Glass. Dorian. Don’t know why.

ACOTAR world would 1000% be Cassian. Nessian book will come out after Crescent City. She started it just for fun, hadn’t planned to write last ACOWAR. Sarah was out to lunch with her editor and got a little drunk and pitched her other books, but then forgot. Agent called a few weeks later telling her the editor wants to buy these books.

She literally doesn’t have the time to get all the stories she wants out of her. Wishes she had Hermione’s time turner.

So that’s it. Again, sorry it took me so long. Sarah was so lovely and I still can’t believe I got to see her in person. There’s a lot I took away from her talk for myself, mainly just how adamant she was about being yourself is the way to go. We’re better off when we’re true to ourselves and love the tings we love without feeling bad for it.

#kingdom of ash tour #kingdom of ash tour sydney

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irinapaleolog · 4 years

Link

While JJ Abrams has said relatively little in the wake of the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, writer Chris Terrio can’t seem to stop talking about it. In a number of interviews, including this latest one from GQ, he talks about writing Rise of Skywalker and why various things came to be the way they are in the film. And while transparency is nice, I don’t think many of his answers are going to satisfy folks who have issues with the film.

Terrio seems like a bit of an odd pick for Star Wars, given that he’s coming off of Justice League and Batman V. Superman, two not-amazing features while this is a Star Wars movie ending a nine film, forty year saga. Terrio has been locked in endless debates about how those DC movies turned out (where’s the Snyder cut?!), and now he’s having to defend Rise of Skywalker in a similar way (where’s the Abrams cut?!).

I’m going to pull a few of the more…head-scratching quotes from this interview, all of which leads me to believe that maybe sometimes, less is more when it comes to explanations of certain decisions. At least that’s proving to be true in this case. Again, I recommend you read the full GQ interview here, which ends rather oddly and abruptly.

Terrio explaining how they approached the final film: “So when J.J. came to me to come and write with him the... "series finale," was how we thought of it, of this amazing television show that's been on for 42 years.”

Given how rare it is to see a well-executed series finale for most beloved TV shows (Dexter, Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother will scar people forever), this seems like a weird way to approach a final film, even if I sort of get what he’s saying.

Then Terrio gets asked about the hard left turn about Rey’s origins (spoilers follow).

“Well, we weren't convinced that it had been cleared up, because there's still this highly troubling vision that Rey had in Episode VII, which is the shop with her parents leaving the planet. Also, the events of The Last Jedi are literally just after the events of Episode VII—within 48 hours, Ray has had a force-back to her parents and then the very next day is told "your parents were no one and they were junk traders. None of that matters." And we thought in a way that would be too easy because of the idea that Rey had been longing for her parents for so many years. We just felt like there was something more going on.”

This explanation does little to change my opinion about how this came off in the film, like JJ and the writers were upset that Rian Johnson threw away their set-up for Rey’s origins (back in Force Awakens, it seemed likely she’d be a secret Skywalker or Kenobi), so they had to adjust on the fly by throwing out his idea that she was no one, and they’re dismissing it as a trick by the dark side. Then we’re stuck with a situation that makes little to no sense, that Rey’s parents did love her, and their way of protecting her was…selling her to an abusive junk trader on a desolate planet. This is opposed to say, Obi-Wan protecting Luke by giving him to relatives and staying close by, or Leia, by making her quite literally a princess. It’s bizarre, and this explanation does nothing to fix that.

“Rian sort of set up a challenge not only for the filmmakers, but for the characters. At the end, everyone is left with almost nothing. So as a storyteller, you have to start using all your tools because you're left with a lot of questions and not a whole of answers. So we had to recommit to a few aspects of the story and perhaps be a bit more inventive about what was going on in the galaxy.”

This is how he dodges the question of when the Palpatine stuff entered the “plan,” when the answer is very clearly that it was never the plan and they had to pull the idea out of an old comic book to try and salvage (in their eyes) what Rian had left them by killing Snoke and Luke and erasing Rey’s origin mystery.

And finally:

“We think of Star Wars as a fairytale. Two twins: One is sent off to be a farmer and one is sent off to be a princess. Rey is kind of both.”

Hard to find the words for this one. Just going to end with a Geralt “Hmm.”

No more interviews man, we’re good. Let’s just move on to Clone Wars season 7 and Mando season 2.

#the rise of skywalker

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oldbluethings · 5 years

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Oh, hey! It’s extended author’s note time again. For Children of the Old Moon, my rarepair, omegaverse, coffee-shop AU! Okay, so it only actually has three of those four strikes against it. That's enough.

First, I gotta say, Stephen King, I feel you, man. Endings suck. Writing endings sucks worse. All those critics who give you grief over your endings just don't get it. Not like I get it. Let's never write an ending again and be happy forever.

And, now, onto the rambling. TW for discussion of non-con. Not in depth, though.

So, yeah... this story happened.

What can I say? I make no apologies for what comes out of my brain. I just write it down. And, actually, I have no idea where the idea for this fic originally came from. I think I was writing Parallel and the idea of these alternate universes just hit me. Like, that's literally any fanfic trope you want with an in-universe explanation. Wouldn't that be cool 😃

And I'm not at all into coffee shop AUs—just drinking coffee—so that left omegaverse. Pretty much... I think it might have made sense at the time.

The AU aspect allowed me to just go hog wild and shoehorn in a pairing that really makes no sense. I just really like Sam/Stephen. Can't explain why—they've never even met in the MCU. I think I just like putting two snarky, intelligent people together. But they are also very different guys. Their dynamic seems like it would be interesting to me. And Sam doesn't get enough fandom love. Also, coming right after Spark and Fade, I wanted to get Stephen away from Mordo for a while, so he would be in a different place when they met again. Just writing, “and two years passed,” in the fic didn't seem right. Stephen needed to grow and change before he could move on.

So, why omegaverse?

You know, I thought of inventing a world from scratch. Maybe one where sorcerers were persecuted or something. But I actually really like playing with fanfic tropes when I'm writing fanfic. I got to change things around enough to satisfy my craving for world-building. And I liked the idea of Stephen finding himself in a world that sucks for him. But in a very familiar way that maybe sucks for some people in our own world, right now. How would his life be different there? He isn't a hotshot surgeon because he can't be. He lives in a crappy, small apartment because they pay him less. He doesn't even have a driver’s license. But he also has a family. Christine didn't break up with him. They're together in a weird, alternate universe way. He didn't crash his car.

And this Stephen might be even stronger than our Stephen because he's survived so much and just kept going. I have a lot of thoughts about him, mostly because I had to think about all the ways he might be different from our Stephen. I think he's just as clever and resourceful, but also more resilient. He's not as much of a sarcastic bastard because he's learned to keep his mouth shut when he has to. He's more careful. People like him more because he needs them to like him.

I think our Stephen feels bad for basically hijacking this poor guy’s life and taking his body for a spin without his permission. Including getting some action. I admit it: that's basically non-con. The implications of that disturb me, so they disturb our Stephen, too. I hope that comes across in the story. It was probably my biggest worry when writing this.

Sam is a good guy. And alternate universe Sam and Stephen actually end up happy. Our Stephen didn't fuck anything up. In fact, he might have made life better for them. And that is about as close to fluff as I'll get 😘

I thought this would be a short little side adventure for Stephen, but it ended up being the longest single story I've written. I'm pretty happy with the first three-quarters of it. That ending, though... I always feel like my stories lose steam as I approach the conclusion. Like there should be one more act in there somewhere. Another twist, or something. I'm still new to writing in the mystery genre. It's tough, guys. And I'm not quite there yet. As usual, my characters don't actually figure anything out. Or do much detecting. They probably could've just fucked the whole time because the killer just comes to them. Yay, ending!

Final thoughts: Man, that doubles fight was hard to keep track of!

Thanks for reading ❤️

#my writing #Stephen Strange #sam wilson #MCU fanfiction

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hollenius · 5 years

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I'm so so sorry but I have to: Werner for the character meme (and/or Chuck McGill, if you can't think of anything!)

What the hell, I'm gonna do Werner AND Chuck

Werner

Fav thingabout him: He is so sweet; if I had a German uncle or grandpa or something, I'dwant him to be mine. He obviously takes his work very seriously too. He(initially) seems like a very cautious, careful sort of guy...unfortunatelythis attitude does not extend to all aspects of his life.

Least favthing: He's too sweet, dammit. His naivete and trusting nature made megenuinely angry, because I couldn't believe anyone could be so stupid aboutanything when he seemed fairly smart about everything else. I don't think youhave to be "street-smart" to understand that breaking out of an enclosedcompound without permission isn't the sort of thing you'd be allowed to getaway with. I was annoyed at how he felt like a plot device at the endthere--that he just existed to force Mike to have to kill him. It's a fault ofthe writing more than the character. Everyone could see the end coming from amile away, which is (as far as I can remember) unprecedented in the series.Even things that were heavily telegraphed and seemed obvious usually carriedsome sort of unforeseen twist, i.e. everyone thinking the lantern was going tobe involved in Chuck's death, but not knowing it was going to be a suicide. Thesecond they showed Mike building up a relationship with Werner, everyone knewexactly where it was headed. Also, this is a weird pet peeve, but I hate how healways called Mike "Michael". Bro, you've been working with him formonths, you are the only one who calls him that.

Fav line:(agh, unfortunately I can't recall any because I don't have any way ofrewatching season 4 at the moment. I love that he was courteous enough totranslate into English that he felt like he was going to throw up in the bumpyvan ride.)

brOTP: Him& Mike as cute old man drinking buddies.

OTP: Werner& his unseen wife, I guess. (That phone call before his death was so sad. I hope nothing happens to her, but this is the Breaking Bad Cinematic Universe, so bad things often happen to innocent people.)

nOTP: idk,Werner/Kai? I haven't really seen him shipped with anybody so I can't say Ihave any strong opinions on the matter.

randomheadcanon: (again, I need to rewatch all of season 4, because I remember thestory arcs, but not enough of the little details in dialogue and stuff.)

unpopularopinion: I have to admit, I don't know enough of what the popular opinions onWerner are to know what an unpopular opinion would be. I liked him, I just wishhis character arc felt less contrived and that he was treated like less of adevice. I also have seen some people in some places comparing him to Walt,which doesn't really make sense to me, because personality-wise they're justtoo far removed from each other. (Then again, people were even comparing dopeyPryce to Walter White, which was also a stretch!)

song Iassociate w/ him: I...I have no idea! Sorry. (So long, farewell, aufwiedersehen, goodbye?)

fav picture: the cute little drawings @callmcgills did of him! (Also, ugh, the shot where he is, uh, shot...is beautiful. Depressing, but cinematically beautiful. I’m not posting that here though.)

Chuck

Fav thingabout him: Honestly, as a fellow cowardly, anxiety-ridden, socially maladroit, perfectionistolder child, aspects of him are extremely relatable, frightening as that may beto admit. (My younger brother is of the slacker/moocher variety, rather thanthe con man variety, though.) I don't agree with everything he does, but I understandwhy he does it. (This is actually pretty similar to my attitude towardsSkyler's actions in Breaking Bad--I don't necessarily agree with her decisions,but I mostly understand why she acts the way she does.)

Least favthing: I think he should've been willing to at least put Jimmy on some sort ofprobationary path to HHM after he landed Sandpiper. HHM was under no obligationto hire Jimmy after he passed the bar (a lot of fandom seems to feel otherwise,which makes no sense! I don't think any other firm would've wanted to hireJimmy either!) Jimmy probably would've still managed to screw something up, butat least then if Chuck wanted to officially bar him from working for HHM forgood, Jimmy would know why, and what it was that he had done to cause that. Itdoes no good to punish someone if he doesn't even understand he's beingpunished, which is what the whole issue is in the first place with Chuck goingbehind Jimmy's back and using Howard as the perpetual bearer of bad news.

Fav line:"Because if there's one thing kids love, it's local printjournalism."

brOTP: lmao Chuck is bros with nobody except his space blanket, and his ol'sipping-scotch-and-chortling companion Howard, before that relationship gotdestroyed...

OTP: ...althoughI must also confess a SHAMEFUL desire to ship Chuck/Howard, because it's gotsuch a messed up power dynamic, because they've known each other for at least18 years, because Howard's clearly still so much in awe of Chuck (which Chuckprobably enjoys), and because neither of them seems to have any other friendsor close relationships. (Are we ever going to learn what's up with Howard'swedding ring? Even my mom thinks Howard is gay at this point! And what's upwith papa Hamlin? Did he die? Retire?) Canon-wise, I'm actually really curiousabout Chuck & Rebecca's relationship, because I have to wonder what it washe did that caused her to divorce him, but not bear any particular grudge oranimus towards him afterwards. He was clearly really upset about the divorce,but doesn't bear any ill-will towards her either. She doesn't appear to enteredinto any new relationship after the divorce either. It's all very mysterious.

nOTP: I can'ttell if this person was serious or not, but I swear I remember seeing someonepropose some theory that Kim had fucked Chuck at some point, and that's gonnaget a BIG NO from me.

randomheadcanon: oh god I've got like five hundred of them at this point. Themassive infodump that was Chuck's obituary in the season 4 premiere contributedto a lot of them, I think. I imagine Chuck's freshman year of college, at age14, was absolute hell for him. He was so proud to get accepted to an Ivy Leagueschool, but had been upset it wasn't a more prestigious one, like Harvard,Yale, or Princeton. (He had applied to them and had a few interviews, but unbeknownstto him, he had been heavily penalized in their byzantine admissions proceduresbecause, despite his sterling academic record, they didn’t find him outgoing or athleticenough.) His parents put him on the train to Philadelphia by himself, with afew suitcases, a map, and $50. He had no problems getting to the university,but was pretty overwhelmed right off the bat by the fact that everyone else wasolder and wealthier than him; he had dealt with this to some extent in high school, butnot to this degree (I headcanon his fictional alma mater, Francis Xavier HighSchool, as a typical Jesuit all-boys preparatory school that draws heavily fromupper-middle-class suburban families). Here he was, a literal child, thrustinto the adult world, and the world of the elites, at that. He probably feltself-conscious about things he hadn't even realized he could feelself-conscious about before, and spent at least a couple nights sobbing intohis pillow, and praying that his roommate couldn't hear him. He made a coupledesperate attempts to fit in, with a relatively low level of success (e.g. goingto a party and trying to impress people there by playing piano, only to get abeer spilled on him instead), before deciding it wasn't worth it and he wouldthrow himself singlemindedly into his classes and extracurriculars. He had hisfirst-ever panic attack sometime during his first semester, and wound up at thecampus doctor's office because he had convinced himself he was having a heart attack.On being told he was physically fine, he was indignant, but all the same, henever told his family about the incident, or anyone else either. Somewherearound this time, he also gets a letter from his parents, telling him he'sgoing to be a big brother in a few months, and won't this be exciting for him?(He wants to tell them his life is too exciting for him as it is, but saysnothing, instead writing back that he is sure having a younger sibling to helplook after will be the greatest experience of his life. He almost convinceshimself that he means it.)

unpopularopinion: I DON'T HATE CHUCK. (The most unpopular opinion of all!) He's myfavorite character on the show, with the obvious disclaimer that saying acharacter is my favorite doesn't mean I approve of all the character's actions,etc. Also, I know he's just a fictional character, but I'm still pissed offabout people celebrating that he killed himself & saying they hope it waspainful & stuff like that. Like, how much of an asshole do you have to be?What a horrible thing to say.

song Iassociate w/ him: Burning Down The House j/k, probably Faure's Sicilienne,because I too, cannot play it on piano without screwing up

fav picture: Not a picture, but I can’t resist.

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thelastspeecher · 6 years

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Stanford “Unable to Make a Proper Field Journal” Pines, PhD

*checks watch* Yep it’s about time for my regular “Ford does not know how to do field work” rant.

If you’re wondering “who are YOU to tell Stanford Filbrick Pines that he doesn’t know how to make a field journal”, well, don’t worry, I know what I’m talking about. I have a bachelor’s degree in biology (double emphasis in microbiology and environmental biology) and geology, both of which involved maintaining a field journal as part of the lab requirement. I’ve made far too many field journals. I know what a good one looks like. And yes, I have pictures of one of those field journals. (I apologize in advance; I misplaced my biology field journals, so all of my pictures are from one of my geology field journals.)

Here’s a taste:

Look, Ford is great. I love the man. I relate to him to an almost unnerving degree, probably due to the fact that I myself am a scientist. But damn, I seriously question whether any of Ford’s ten PhD’s was in a field that involved field work. Because if I turned in a field journal that looked like any of Ford’s journals, my teachers would have given me a big, fat F. Why? A lot of reasons, but arguably the biggest one: complete lack of context.

Context is crucial in research. Not just even context like “this is why my research is relevant”, but context like “this is where I saw the thing, this is what the weather was like when I saw the thing, this is what was around me when I saw the thing”. I wasn’t able to locate my biology field journals, sadly, but I remember what was required on each entry. Some of the requirements:

Date

Arrival time

Departure time

Location (e.g. “Riparian zone to the south of 1st National Bank in Rockford”)

Slope (not just “there is a slope here”, literally measuring the angle and direction of slope)

Weather

Biome type (e.g. “conifer forest”, “grassland prairie”)

Dominant vegetation

And all of that’s before the actual notes on the location! Because they provide context. Date – time of year will influence vegetation and animals. Arrival and departure times – different species are active during different times of day. Location – some species might only live in one incredibly specific location. Slope – influences vegetation, temperature, and humidity. Weather – some species only come out during certain types of weather (think worms that come up when it rains). Biome type – self-explanatory. Dominant vegetation – influences animals, since some species only consume specific plants. These are all incredibly crucial things to note at a location that you are studying. You need the context of all those factors if you want to repeat your results.

And in science, the key is to have reproduceable results. If you have a species that is only present in a coniferous forest, you won’t be able to reproduce your results in a deciduous forest. But if you never wrote down that you saw that species in a coniferous forest, you might never find them again. And no, you won’t remember. Trust me. It’s a saying in scientific fields. “Write it down. You won’t remember.”

Now, Stanford Pines. He studies magical animals. All of the things I said apply to normal animals. Magical animals are gonna be 1000% more difficult! Ford needs to be writing down what phase the moon is in, what direction he’s facing, maybe even what he ate for breakfast. But he’s not writing down any of it! The scientific world is NEVER going to believe him unless they themselves can reproduce his results. And without the context his research so desperately needs, that’s never going to happen.

Oh, another aspect of context that he’s missing: none of his sketches have scale. If you draw something, you need scale. If you take a picture of something, you put something in that picture for scale. Otherwise, we don’t know how big something actually is. Another thing needed, if the drawing is of a sufficiently big object, say, the mysterious cliffs in Gravity Falls that are due to a UFO crash, you also need N/S, E/W. Drawing that cliff amounts to drawing a topographic profile. And you need context when drawing a topographic profile. Case in point:

Actually, while we’re talking about the cliffs: we need more information on those. Those are a geologic feature. If you’re going to describe a geologic feature, you need to include the pertinent geologic information. That means rock type, dominant minerals, strike and dip, and anything else a geologist might note.

Also, before jumping to the conclusion of “these cliffs are CLEARLY due to a UFO crash”, maybe ask a geologist how you might get a cliff like that to form. Okay, yeah, in this case, the conclusion was right. But generally speaking in science, you only resort to “aliens did it” once you’ve exhausted every single option. Which we have no indication of Ford doing.

“But Ford isn’t a geologist, he wouldn’t know how to find those things.” Well, then he shouldn’t be describing a geologic feature. He should be taking a picture to send to a geologist, or better yet, bringing a geologist along. If you see something that you don’t know how to describe, in science you don’t just do your best. You find someone who does know.

So, now that I’ve mostly covered the context that Ford is missing, let’s talk organization and neatness. It’s not organized enough and it’s too neat. No, those aren’t contradictory.

By organization, I mean breaking up the journal into different sections based on date and trip. Making separate entries. See this note from one of my professors on my field journal:

It says “Include trip title at beginning of notes”. Ford doesn’t do that. Well, he does that sometimes. But he doesn’t do it consistently. And you need that. Especially if you have the context I talked about at the beginning. You need to separate which context goes with which entry. Because, and I’m gonna say it again, research needs context.

Most field journals and lab books also have numbered pages and a table of contents at the beginning, which you can fill out yourself. That’s optional, not required, but if you have a lot of research and you want to find something quickly, it’s very useful.

Now the handwriting. It’s too neat. Too nice. No, this is a thing. It really is. I’ve gotten docked points for my handwriting being too neat and organized in my field journal before. Not because they were upset they could read my handwriting, but because the neatness was evidence that I erased my original notes. Which you should not do. I took pictures of my notes so that I could copy them down word for word, just more neatly, but that doesn’t matter. Because my teachers didn’t have proof that they were my original notes. And if they weren’t my original notes, then they are probably inaccurate. Remember: “Write it down. You won’t remember.” And as proof that there’s no way Ford was actually writing all this out in the field, here’s a sample of my handwriting:

It’s very neat and nice, isn’t it? This is how I write when I’m careful and take my time. Versus this:

This is how I write when I’m out in the field. Because you aren’t sitting nice in the field. You’re standing awkwardly or squatting awkwardly or leaning against something or using non-flat surfaces as writing surfaces. Google pictures of field research and you’ll see what I mean. You cannot write nice out in the field. It’s impossible. I feel confident in saying that, not only because I’ve written while out in the field, but also because every single professor I’ve ever had could tell what in my field journal was originally written in the field and what wasn’t.

Stanford Pines’ notes weren’t written out in the field. They were written from the comfort of a writing desk. So they aren’t trustworthy.

And my last point about why Ford clearly does not know how to make a field journal: he has zero consistency as to what he puts in it.

It’s got plenty of field stuff in it. Plenty of information on the various weird shit in Gravity Falls. Well, not plenty. Some of his entries could use more information on the critters. Some of them could use a lot more information on the critters. And other entries…honestly, why the hell are they even in there? Did Ford really need to include an entire entry on himself? On the history of Gravity Falls? On his own (reasonable) paranoia after finding out Bill’s true intentions? Uh, no. In these areas, it very clearly ceases to be a field journal, and serves as Ford’s personal journal. There’s nothing wrong with having a personal journal, naturally. The problem is when it is masqueraded as scientific research.

…And that’s all I’ve got. At least, right now. I very well might think of other things that prove Ford doesn’t know how to make a field journal.

I sincerely hope that Ford eventually takes at least one (1) class in which he learns how field journals actually work.

#gravity falls #stanford pines #sorry that the pictures aren't more interesting #field journals aren't meant to be fancy and cool looking #they're just meant to have research and data in them #look. they will get mud and all sorts of other stains.#you don't wanna sink a bunch of effort into making something look all nice #only to drop it in a puddle the next day #speecher sciences #rant #speecher speaks #my stuff

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mortalgabby · 5 years

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The Best Monsters

Monsters are a key part of storytelling particularly in films, games and books. Here are my personal favourite monsters that I've seen (excluding games).

1.Hyde

Hyde is from the novel ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde’ and is an alternate side of Jekyll which is created using a potion that was created to separate man’s two sides into good and evil. The potion however does not work as expected and instead Hyde is contained within the same body as Jekyll and is described as ‘pure evil’ unlike Jekyll who still contains both qualities.

Hyde is one of my favourite monsters for many reasons - for one his appearance in the novella is somewhat ambiguous which leaves it up to your imagination as Stevenson writes ‘I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why’ and ‘there is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing’. Throughout the book the only real description of his face is that it is horrible but for unknown reasons, which I think is really effective as it forces the reader to imagine him in a way which would make them feel scared.

I also like how Hyde is part of Jekyll and is also somewhat relatable as he is a personification of all the things humans can’t do because of the societal impact or fear of being caught. We can sympathise with Jekyll’s reason for creating him.

However, his control over Jekyll’s body grows more throughout the story like a parasite slowly destroying its host - which is tragic as we know there is nothing he can do as they’re one being. He starts off as being simply Jekyll’s mind with a different body, but as it progresses, he morphs into his own being, causing Jekyll a lot of grief as he has to try and undo the actions which he both is and isn’t responsible for. Overall,I really like the concept of the villain sharing the same body as the human as it makes the story a lot more interesting - the monster can never truly be defeated without a great sacrifice - killing them both.

2.Venom

Venom is another monster I really like for a variety of reasons. The main one being that he’s not truly evil unlike his appearance would suggest - his goal isn’t set in stone and he just does what he wants - whether it benefits the rest of his race or not. This quality is very relatable and almost human of him which I think is cool.

I really like his black and white design as I think the contrast makes him a lot more eye-catching - and especially the way his limbs behave (for example when he helps Eddie knock out the villains and keeps him on the motorcycle). Another aspect of his visual appearance I really like is how he looks intimidating - due to his height, almost hulk like stature, and extremely large number of teeth.

On top of this, I like how Venom has a sense of humour- especially one which contrasts his monster-like voice as it instantly makes him more likeable.

Venom’s partnership with Eddie is also another reason he’s such an appealing monster - he starts off using Eddie as a host in order to take over the planet but as he befriends him, he realises that he would rather stay with Eddie instead of helping his planet to take over - even saving the world by killing the symbiote leader. His impulsive behaviour and sudden change of heart is not what you’d expect from his character. I also like how he only kills bad people towards the end of the movie- rather than just killing for fun. It’s a nice surprise to like the character who you’d typically expect to be an unstoppable killing machine.

3.Bill Cipher

Bill Cipher is the main antagonist from the animated TV series Gravity Falls. He is definitely one of my favourite monster characters - for one his appearance is very unconventional for a ‘villain’ character. upon a first glance he doesn’t look threatening and could easily be mistaken for a sidekick of the hero or magical creature - but also kind of resembles the common iconography for the Illuminati, which I think is interesting. His shape-shifting abilities also add to this - he takes many different forms throughout the show, including this one during the finale:

His character in the show is very cryptic and mysterious - he is foreshadowed in the title sequence, talks backwards, and even foreshadows events that haven’t happened in the show yet by showing them on his face (for example Stanford’s existence which only comes into the show many episodes after).

His personality is also very enjoyable to watch as he’s very immature and crazy - but at the same time makes very serious threats (ones that would be unexpected from a children’s cartoon). His strange and creative actions can only be described as ‘weird’ for example when he removes all the teeth from a deer’s mouth to give to Gideon, which is unusually creepy - and another reason he’s such an amusing character. However, while his actions are somewhat funny, he also threatens the kids, saying he’ll ‘make them into corpses’ and disassemble their molecules. He also stabs forks into his arms and exclaims that ‘pain is hilarious’ during points in the show- thus displaying the more non serious and childlike side of his personality. His voice is also really unique and high pitched- but also changes to a much deeper and villainous voice when he’s angry which is a really nice detail in my opinion.

Unlike Venom, Bill has no morals or care for anything but himself- using people and animals as his literal puppets.

His entrances in the show are also really cool - during one scene the moon is revealed to actually be his eye, which his triangular body then forms around. He also appears from a variety of triangle shaped objects such as Dipper’s window.

Why do we need monsters culturally?

Monsters are present in all kinds of media including films, games and books, and are often an embodiment of our fears in some way shape or form. Hyde, for example is a monster who is the embodiment of the Victorian anxiety that people had a hidden side to them. I think there are many different reasons why we like having monsters in our literature and stories.

One of the reasons that monsters are created is so that people feel they have ‘an explanation’ for the things that happen to them- since we feel the need to know why things happen - and when we don’t know, we start to theorise. Furthering this, we want something that we can hate - so creating a monster is the perfect way to achieve this as it collectively unites humans.

I think that people create monsters also as they want to believe that there are more things in the world that are yet to be discovered. It makes the world a lot more interesting if you believe in conspiracy theories about Moth-man or Bigfoot.

Also, we like being scared - we like reading about monsters because they terrify but also really intrigue us, and are a lot more interesting than anything else going on in our lives. Reading about a monster in a book horrifies you but in a fascinating way- in that you don’t want to put the book down and instead want to know the grim fate of Dracula’s victim, for example.

Monsters also make stories a lot more interesting- without them there is no challenge or goal, or quest for the hero to defeat.

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