#frankly I think many of the critiques of my own work are valid

[young-astro]

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

#science fiction #fantasy #xenogenesis #earthseed #the broken earth #frankly I think many of the critiques of my own work are valid #but when I see the same criticisms applied to authors who fundamentally changed the genre #I’m like #hold up

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

I just read a post in the LOTR tag titled “You don’t hate Amazon you hate the Silmarillion,” and then it went on to say this:

Here’s my point though, almost every (valid) critique I see of this show [Rings of Power] isn’t a problem with decisions the creative team made, it’s an inherent problem in any adaptation of the Silmarillion (and associated works but I’m just going to refer to the Silmarillion for brevity’s sake). The Silmarillion, as full and detailed as it is, is a shit story.

First things first. If you say things like this, it’s you who hates the Silmarillion. That last sentence tells me everything I need to know. Frankly, that one line invalidates every other thing this person says, but I’m going to explain why they’re wrong anyway. I’m making my own post about it because I don’t want to give the original post more notes.

Other than calling the Silmarillion shit, the main point of the post seems to be that the Silmarillion is unadaptable, therefore it should be understood that the creative team behind ROP had to use some leeway in translating the story to screen. The post finishes by saying:

Basically my point is that before you go and say “well this is weird or I didn’t like this choice” think about what the creative team had to create to make an interesting show out of a story not designed to be told. Sometimes they didn’t make the perfect decision, but if you were tasked with adapting something unadaptable do you think you would do it perfectly?

It’s true that adapting the stories of the Silmarillion is a difficult task, especially when it comes to the Second Age, which is probably the least detailed part of the histories. It’s true that many characters and events are sketched out and that many details (not to mention dialogue) would need to be invented for any screen adaptation to work. It’s also true that no adaptation can satisfy everyone. But this in no way excuses the sloppy way in which ROP adapted the source material.

If the ROP creative team wanted to write a story that was solely focused on their original characters but set in Middle-earth during the Second Age, they could have done that. But when they brought in characters like Galadriel and Isildur and Sauron and totally changed the plot, that’s where they messed up—not to mention compressing the timeline.

I personally do not believe the Silmarillion is unadaptable. If you believe it is unadaptable, that’s fine, we can agree to disagree. But it’s very odd to argue that any bad decision the ROP creative team made is the fault of the source material.

No. It’s their fault for being bad writers. And for biting off more than they can chew. And for having the hubris to say they want to write “the novel Tolkien never wrote.”

if you were tasked with adapting something unadaptable do you think you would do it perfectly?

To tell you the truth, I think I’d do a hell of a lot better than ROP. And I would start by actually understanding the source material, which the ROP creative team did not do. But if I ultimately decided that the story of the Second Age was unfilmable... then I would simply not film it.

As a final point, I think you will find that people who love the Silmarillion do not consider it a “shit story.”

#seriously what the fuck #anti rings of power #my writing

[emotionalcadaver]

You know what? I've gone out of my way to be nice. I've acknowledged that mob mentality and manipulation were at work. I've reached out to some of the people who were direct victims of Mr. McCreepy and his actions to check in on them and to extended my well wishes. I have made an effort not to victim blame or question anyone's experiences over what has happened.

But I do not appreciate my own experiences being questioned and belittled. No, he did not hurt me nearly as directly as he did many of you. But that does not change that he created an extremely hostile, unwelcoming, and anxiety inducing environment for myself, and many other people, simply because we happened to like a character that he didn't.

Many of you are missing the point. It was not simply because he disliked Grace that so many were turned off or upset by his behavior. It was because he went out of his way to comment on posts--like gifsets or textposts--spouting nasty things about her, purposefully picking fights with her fans, and openly bullying people for liking her or for trying to defend themselves when he burst onto their lovely gifs or other content they'd created spewing hated. That was the problem. And that's not even going into the issue that a lot of his posts on Grace crossed the line from simple character critique into full blown misogyny.

And so many of his fans engaged with that behavior and contributed to it. And by continuing to belittle and minimize the experiences of those who have tried to discuss this aspect of his public behavior and how it affected them and the fandom, you are proving that you never cared that he was hurting others. It was only when he hurt you personally that you started to give a damn.

I'm not even looking for an apology from anyone who engaged in the bullying. But I don't think that it's too much to ask that, after everything that has been revealed about this man, that you would stop trying to argue that his public behavior was acceptable. I am frankly flabbergasted to see so many people who are victims of him going out of their way to still defend him when it comes to this aspect of what he did.

This is a way that he has hurt and affected myself and others in the fandom, even when we chose not to directly engage with him. And it is just as valid as the other ways he hurt people on here. I am sorry if that makes you feel bad, because you happened to contribute to the bullying that created such an unwelcoming environment and quite likely drove some people out of the fandom entirely. But those of us who were impacted in this way have just as much right to express it as the rest of you.

#i am sorry to bring this topic up again when we are all trying to move past it #i don't mean to beat a dead horse but #some things have been brought to my attention today and i am livid #prepared to get blasted so hard for this but i don't even care anymore #mrkdvidal1989 #laur babbles

[aeide-thea]

thinking abt like. there's so much fiction out there that makes me feel bad! sometimes really deeply bad! and like, in many many cases i could present a whole argument abt how it makes me feel bad bc it's pressing on bruises inflicted by some systemic prejudice that has deeply wounded my psyche—and that argument would be true!—and still i don't want that fiction erased from existence, or modified to suit my taste, or anything else that enacts my will on it, rather than the artist's and the artist's alone; i don't even want the artist erasing it because my argument ultimately convinces them it's Bad! produce a revised edition of it, fine; stick an asterisk or other warning on it, fine; but i still want the original to be available somewhere, because i don't want to be responsible for blotting creation out of existence. even when it's a creation i hate, i don't think that should be my place (or indeed anyone's).

mind you, i absolutely do want to feel that i've got somewhere i can analyze/vent about fiction like that, and people who will take my analysis/venting both seriously and sympathetically;

and i want fiction to exist that doesn't make me feel bad;

and i definitely shouldn't have to put up with discussions around fiction in which fellow discussants further express a prejudice towards me, or justify it, or whatever;

but it just seems so obvious to me that a world where framing yr discomfort with a work of fiction in sufficiently sympathetic (victimized) terms leads to its deletion [not that i think this is what all leftists who complain abt offensive fiction are looking to have happen! but i do get the impression that at least some of them might be?] is a frightening world—

a world where, to choose a sufficiently sympathetic (victimized) example, authors who have themselves been harmed by prejudice become unable to explore the workings of that prejudice in their fiction, unless they're doing it in a way that's unambiguously, didactically condemnatory—isabel fall is the obvious example here, but i'm thinking also of all the women and transmasc authors who write fic that, quite frankly, eroticizes misogyny and abuse of power, and how sometimes i think stories like that are hot and sometimes i don't feel particularly strongly about them one way or the other and sometimes they leave me furious or fucked up or both! but like. even when i hate it, even when it offends me not as a matter of abstract principle or allyship but right in my own personal gut—i still do feel that people have to be allowed to write, and to publish, fiction that strikes me personally as being in bad taste!

because the minute you let anyone's taste dictate what's allowable to express, even if it's leftist taste, you're going down a bad road; it's like saying monarchy can be a good system as long as the monarch is a good person. no! because (a) no system that relies on good actors to be good is a good system; and also because (b) no one who's happy to have power over others is actually a good person! [that's an awfully strong statement and i'm open to the idea that it may have some asterisks, but like. as a general rule: cincinnatus or bust.]

and similarly i feel like. if you personally want not just to critique other people's fiction—valid and good and i do it all the time—but to crush it out of existence because it expresses an ideology you may not (i may not!) like? i don't trust you. i think you're trying to substitute pain for principles, and like. i have huge sympathy for pain! i live with a lot of my own! but pain doesn't actually, in itself, necessarily constitute good moral guidance—it can lead you towards valuable sensitivity that helps people we should care about, but it can also lead you towards impatient reactivity that harms people we should care about; and ultimately it's thinking abt our pain, imo, not the pain itself, that steers us towards the former outcome and away from the latter.

#this is SO fucking long and still not really a coherent position statement lmao #if only i'd written essays in the tumblr post editor‚ back when i had them to write #i never would've struggled to meet the required word count #but like. lotta issues tangled up here and i just think it's like. SO easy to be steered one way by yr gut on this stuff #and then think abt it for a bit and realize yr gut has left zero room for a lot of positionalities you actually find sympathetic #while providing potential fodder for stances you fucking hate #(like—frankly i'm astonished no fundie students have started arguing universities should provide content warnings for queer content) #(i obviously am not opposed to content warnings and use them on this blog all the time but. tools can be picked up by anyone) #and like. it's really easy‚ i think‚ to say that and have it come across as not caring abt other ppl's genuine pain #but like. i care a lot abt ppl's pain! i just think pain is not‚ in itself‚ necessarily a great basis for policy #anyway. Just Some Nightblogging; happy 2 entertain non-ad-hominem discussion but also this isn't‚ like‚ a polished position paper

[churchofthewired]

Age of Reason - A Response

I appreciate and respect Paine's openness and freedom to let those believe as they will as the divine is and should be a personal experience, unique to its nature. He sees the church as inventors and scoffs at the incredulity of the christian mythos. A typical frame of intellectual unbelievers, and necessary as I myself inhabited such a purview before becoming more redolent with the Lord as I discovered him out of church and in the book on my own terms. Its funny as Paine does believe in a God but one resembling the Demiurge of the Gnostic church, one who, is weak and foolish and a subject to heap upon all of humanities hypocrisies and shortcomings. Paine calls the stories ridiculous and they certainly are, the only difference being I take them in their ridiculousness, as living long enough to see how our world truly works stories of talking snakes and magic tricks are more believable than the hypocrisy and malice that actually thrives in our political system and by extension culture. I take these stories as if new, where metaphors suffice for due explanation than literal incredulity - as the Lord said to Peter he speaks in themes so that they who listen will understand the message but not the details. Paine talks, as many proud smart men (my past self included) do about things they have made their mind up upon and look for further validation rather than genuine investigation, which frankly is something I feel I should excuse (I should not deprive a man of his indulgence so long he carries a fair awareness of its costs and alternatives) after all my revelation with the Lord has been a personal journey and boon and I have made unto myself and find it impossible to share to others in the exact same quiddity. My counter to Paine's critique(which seems oddly modern) is the simplicity of Kierkegaard’s Leap of Faith, and if I must, even Pascal will do. Which brings me to a conflict of my own thoughts, should I chastise those frankly unintellectual souls who leap all too freely unto Christ, who’s hearts are bigger than their minds? My journey was arduous and cyclical as I arrived back to the simple salvation of the book and while I share that ideal with these folk I find we are estranged from one another, which is perhaps just the nature of things. Changing someone's belief is like melting lead with a toothbrush, and better left alone, as I already said it is a personal sojourn and I can only ask that everyone intellectual or not that anyone come to Christ in the way that feels right in their hearts and minds and I not impose my own path. Perhaps the reader is rallying in their head how I came from a position like Paine's to the bible and I will try in summary to say practicality first, literary investigation second, and frank textual authority third - as the price of the protestant reformation has been the gross openness of ANY person to interpret the word, which I think is still better than having it used as occult moral mace used by charlatans in a gradually corrupted universal church of the late medieval era - we traded an intentional malicious evil for an unintentional stupid one. On practicality the philosophy, morals, and history of the text stand on their own not to mention the unique and (so far?) uncopyable style of the text which has served as inspiration from Dante to Dostoevsky, any writer worth their pay must've at some point partially read THE book, if anything out of sheer layman curiosity. Perhaps the difference between my past self (Paine) and my believing self now is my recognition of coincidences and their direct causations, and the maddening complexity of the human world/nature and its functions, its as if one must swim out of the crowded shallow pool we grew up in and walk along its outskirts, looking down on the childish masses. For there is the only spot we can begin to see the deep end, and if willing, dive into the deep to find the heavy truth, reserved for those strong enough for it.

#The Age of Reason #Thomas Paine

[takaraphoenix]

Ship game!! What about Nico and Will?? It’s pretty popular, but I don’t think I’ve seen you write much of it…

That's an interesting one in that I have vocalized my reasons for disliking it way back when it first became popular but instead of just linking that, it has been years so I think it's time for an updated version.

Firstly: This post is gonna be properly tagged and not crosstagged so if any shipper comes across it and feels the need to bitch about it, just don't; your lack of curating your own tumblr experience is not my problem! ;D

Now, there are three key factors that play into my dislike of this ship: How it was written, what it represents, how the fandom around it acts.

1. It’s rushed and uncomfortable

In BoO, it was incredibly rushed. They had literally five sentences of interactions before they walked into the literal sunset together. Five. It was just entirely born from Riordan's Noah's Ark Complex, where he just can't let people be single. The series was ending and he needed Nico to have an endgame so he rushed into some random romance with zero build-up.

The way their interactions went down was also severely uncomfortable for me. Will was acting so offended by Nico not wanting to go to camp and be friends in an entitled way that he had no right to be, he downright guilt-tripped Nico about how he had wanted to be friends. Nico has been just so severely traumatized at such a young age and his coping mechanism, as unhealthy as it was, was to run away and hide. Will acted like Nico not wanting to form attachments to people who could potentially leave him again was somehow just an Edgy Emo Decision and not a direct reaction to his trauma. His entire approach to Nico was basically all these hippie posts of "Don't have depression!! Just go out into the sun and stop being depressed!", which is already a bad take with non-medical people but he's supposed to be a doctor (and let's not get into the shadiness of him technically being Nico's doctor).

There is also an inherent "I can fix him" angle to this ship and to me, only few ship dynamics are more uncomfortable than that. If you want to fundamentally change a person's behavior and personality, you... don't actually want to be with this person.

Now, here's where my points overlap, because the following parts of their writing that bothers me also stand for what this ship fundamentally represents.

2. Solangelo is a queer ship written by and for straights

I'm a queer woman and as a queer woman, I want queer wish-fulfillment, not what straights want out of queerness. I'm kind of tired of that, I've been sitting through it for enough decades now. That's, of course, not to say that no straight writer can give proper queer representation, but far too often do straight writers - even the most well-meaning ones - project straight desires of queerness into their queer representation.

Let me explain that closer through this ship.

Nico's been in love with Percy for years and I'm going to do my best to not hijack this post with some Percico agenda; that's not what this his about, this isn't some "my ship is better than your ship" ship-war nonsense. It's simply a canonical fact that Nico has had romantic feelings for another character for years.

A character who, in this medium, is heterosexual. And if you're queer, you've been there. In love with your straight best friend. It's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason.

We have also all been well-meaningly rejected by said straight friend.

And here's the straight desires for you: The queer person who was in love with a straight person just immediately stops having those feelings and will then as quickly as possible fall in love with the next queer person they meet to be happy and no longer uncomfortably in love with a straight person, because that thought makes the straights uncomfortable.

Queer wish-fulfillment would be for Percy to return those feelings, for the queer character to get his first love, to not be rejected. That thing queer teens always dreamed about for themselves.

Aside from the wish-fulfillment angle, the pacing is another problem. Let me repeat, Nico was in love for years. But a five sentence conversation with Will once causes a crush on Will and we see him physically turn away from Percy and toward Will just immediately to rebound and actually fall out of love with Percy and in love with Will. Anyone who's ever been unlucky in love will attest to just how unrealistic and ridiculous the pacing here is.

It's also straight queerness in another respect; Nico has been the first ever queer character we meet in that world. He loves a straight guy - and to get over that, we introduce the second queer character. Because heaven forbid there are multiple queers to pick from. No, in straight-written queer romances, there is always that one main queer and then they introduce a second one and the two just immediately hit it off and develop a romance like all a queer person needs to form attraction to someone is the confirmation that the other person shares your sexuality.

Also the notable gay guy on gay guy ship here, whereas the more queer-wish-fulfillment option would have also included more nuance to the queer experience, because Percy doesn't have to be heterosexual just because he has only been with girls so far. It's a very old-fashioned - think 90s and early 2000s - kind of straight-written queerness that there are only exactly two homosexuals and that those two homosexuals then pair up.

And, listen, I'm not immune to these outdated straight-written queers entirely, I have many such ships that I grew up with that I am still fond of because they were groundbreaking at that time and they weren't outdated yet back when they happened in said 90s and early 2000s. I am however a grown woman now and just like I have grown, so has queer rep so I am not as easily baited into falling onto my knees in gratitude for canon rep. You have to go with the times. And this ship, by all that is given to us, is just entirely outdated straight-written rep.

Which, I mention earlier that even straight-written rep can be good. If the author tries. Riordan doesn't really try though; he does the bare minimum when he writes any of his rep - and there have been many, many more qualified voices being very vocal about his depiction of people of color and, as a woman, I've been vocal about his depiction of women. I don't want to derail this post with all of that, but I do think that it bears mentioning that Riordan doing rep but only doing a bare minimum and not putting in the necessary work to deepen the representation he wants to give is a repeating pattern that has been pointed out many times by now.

(I’d also like to point out that no, it is not just the ship and not just the listed instances that make it straight-written rep for straights. It’s Nico’s entire queer arc, starting with his forced coming out. A severely traumatizing event that is completely brushed over because the straight author doesn’t understand the impact this has on queer people. Not to mention the framework; Nico’s coming out isn’t Nico’s story, it happens in Jason’s POV, it is given to us through the POV of the straight bystander who gets to be Best Ally by assuring Nico that being gay is okay. This kind of coming out is not a queer wish-fulfillment, it’s a straight wish-fulfillment of getting to be the straight savior, the ally to show the gay the light of acceptance. And, additional to the ridiculous pacing of how fast Nico gets over his love for Percy, Nico also gets over years of internalized homophobia just because of, I don’t know, Jason’s few encouraging words and the fact that Will paid attention to him? For a gay kid who was in the closet all his life, the nonchalant way in which he publicly confessed his crush to Percy at the end made absolutely no sense and was written as basically a joke, finished off with Nico literally high-fiving Percy’s girlfriend despite those two never having seen eye to eye before but this is straight wish-fulfillment so all straights are Super Allies, because that’s the way straights want to see themselves, even though Annabeth has shown before just how jealous she can be and she most definitely wouldn’t go around high-fiving people who confess to her boyfriend. Nothing about Nico’s queer arc in HoO felt natural or queer or satisfying.)

Sure, Solangelo on a surface level is big because it's a canon queer couple in a YA book-series and kudos for that and yay for the kids who get to grow up seeing queers in YA books, but I actually do think that kids growing up with books written in the 2010s shouldn't grow up with 1990s levels of representation, because the 2010s overall are actually at a far more nuanced and better level of representation when it comes to queerness. And I do reserve the right to quit on too straight-written and too outdated queer rep in a landscape where I can get more satisfying representation elsewhere; we don’t live in times anymore where you necessarily have to love every bit of rep because it’s the only one you get.

Now that we've gone through my first two gripes, let's wrap this up with the final point, because it also directly ties into this.

3. The new wave of antis hiding behind this ship

A huge part of the fandom is so busy kissing Riordan's ass solely for giving them queer rep at all they think that both the author and the ship are beyond flawless and that kind of attitude is not good. Just because an author includes rep doesn't make either perfect. Absolutely no one is beyond critique - especially not when said critique comes from the very people the author is representing. And even beyond any "valid" critique on the ship, quite frankly, someone should also be allowed to just not like it, without any reasons given at all.

But there is a certain... protective obsessiveness about this ship that doesn't allow a not liking. Very similar to how PJO bore this mindset around Perc/abeth already. It's okay to have OTPs, even OTPs that you have a blindspot for and just don't want to see any flaws in. It is however not okay to then go around attacking people who don't like the thing and mind their own business.

Solangelo's bred a new generation of antis in this fandom. And, particularly with the fact that this post too receives an "anti" tag, I feel like there needs to be a clarification (because tumblr likes to forget what actually makes an anti). Not liking something doesn't make you an anti, venting in properly tagged posts doesn't either; it's the people who harass others, who seek out the content they dislike to then complain that it even exists and who actively try to make others stop creating for it - those are antis.

And with Solangelo's popularity, there was a high rise in Percico antis, who sought it out, were unnecessarily nasty about it, harrassed creators and tried to enforce some kind of "Solangelo supremacy" that won't allow other ships for the characters.

I've been in fandom long enough to be perfectly aware that not all Solangelo shippers count into this category and that there are completely normal and nice Solangelo shippers, but this is a Venn diagram where the overlap between Solangelo shippers and antis is too large to not widely associate the nasty people with the ship itself. (I've been there myself, shipping the very ship behind which a fandom's antis all hid. The second-hand embarrassment of having these people give the ship a bad name is horrendous and I do feel bad for all the normal Solangelo shippers.)

The more often I encountered these people, who made Percico bad (sometimes in wildly ridiculous manners that bent and deliberately misinterpreted canon) and who in the same breath praised Solangelo high, the more tired I grew of that ship. It's a simple game of association, really. You see that linked to the gross and nasty behavior and you start associating the ship itself with that gross and nasty behavior - and with all the things I said before that already weighed into my dislike of the ship, this just was the final tipping point, really.

And that's it. That sums up why I dislike Solangelo. It was hastily rushed, uncomfortable in its execution, it is outdated rep that very much feels as straight-written as it factually is and it does not feel aimed at me as a queer person but rather at the straight audience and it has gathered a cult following of quite uncomfortable people who on their own would be reason enough to avoid it so you can avoid them.

Send me a ship and I will explain why I do or don't ship it

#Anti Solangelo #PJOverse #Riordan Critical #Shipping #Ship Ask Game #send me asks #it IS both a positive AND negative game #and I gotta admit #it is nice to put these things #into proper words #every once in a while

[sirfrogsworth]

Yes, Elon is an Engineer.

There is a common trope that Elon just hires talented engineers to build his rockets and wasn't an engineer himself. Many believe his "Chief Engineer" status at SpaceX is not legitimate.

To be clear, I thought this too.

A lot of people think this.

If I'm being honest, I think I held on to that notion without verifying it for a long time because I kinda wanted it to be true.

So if you thought this, I am not shaming you or anything. But I would like to set the record straight so we can have accurate critiques of this awful manchild and not spread misinformation that could torpedo otherwise valid arguments against him and his practices.

The "he just pays people" thing is probably accurate when it comes to Tesla. Or it is these days. He has lost interest in everything except going to Mars and all of his side hustles are him trying to raise as much capital as possible so he can get to Mars as fast as possible. He is quite obsessed. If you look into his Las Vegas tunnel, he is literally scamming cities to raise money for rocket shit.

But when I went looking for evidence to prove he is just paying engineers to build his rockets and that his "Chief Engineer" title at SpaceX was ceremonial, I was surprised to find out it was not.

While there are some valid criticisms against the merits of reusable rockets & their value as well as valid criticisms with the operational decisions of SpaceX—Elon is very much the chief engineer and talented at that role. No, he doesn't do the grunt work of programming and CAD drawings, but reliable sources have said he is fully capable of that kind of work. Though, lead engineers rarely do that anyway.

So maybe some of his design *decisions* are flawed, but he is a proper rocket engineer regardless.

I am happy to criticize Elon because I think he is a shit person and treats his workforce poorly and he hoards wealth to the degree of supervillainy. But saying he isn't a talented rocket engineer would just not be true.

And frankly, I don't think I need it to be true to make an argument showing he is a shite person.

A few weeks ago I wanted to confirm what I and many others believed... that Elon was just paying top engineers to make his rockets like Bezos and Branson do. I wanted more ammunition to prove he wasn't a real-life Tony Stark.

And, I *was* right about that.

He's not Tony Stark.

Even if they did make this dumbass movie to fluff his ego.

He is not a once-in-a-generation mind. He is not the next Einstein. He isn't even all that innovative.

His rockets are mostly taking everything already known and applying modern technology to make things more up-to-date. If JPL or even another company were subsidized like SpaceX, they'd probably be designing rockets of similar or better quality.

So he's basically our generation's Thomas Edison. (Which is ironic considering the name of his electric car company.)

Taking other peoples' work, using his vast resources to take the next logical design steps to improve upon it, and then selling it as his own amazing invention. Elon isn't going to make the next breakthrough in space propulsion. He is only able to iterate, not innovate.

So, how did a computer programmer become a rocket engineer without a proper rocket-based education? It seems Elon has an eidetic memory and is able to memorize rocket textbooks in a very short period of time. He taught himself rocket science/engineering. Some may scoff at that, but there are plenty of self-taught folks in advanced fields. Hell, I would put my Photoshop knowledge against a lot of people who took graphic design in college. Not that Photoshop is an advanced field—I'm just saying there are other ways to learn complicated things.

From my research, I have every indication that Elon's Chief Engineer status is legit. Several of the rock stars of rocketry have said so. I found this very well-sourced Reddit post with quotes and references and links and I was unable to find anything refuting that information.

While Reddit bros love to praise their Elongated Muskrat as a God and it makes me a little barfy, the actual information in that post seems accurate. I would be happy to be proven wrong. But I was only able to find people saying he occasionally makes some silly design decisions and not that he is incapable of designing rockets.

I also watched Elon give a tour of SpaceX and some of it was just him going on endlessly about SpaceX minutia, but it seems clear he has an advanced understanding of pretty much every aspect of making rockets that goes into space.

To summarize, acclaimed experts have said he is as knowledgeable or even more knowledgeable about the design of rockets as they are. He is heavily involved in the design of SpaceX rockets and makes most of the final decisions. And, by all accounts, he makes the best and most affordable rockets available right now.

But it's kind of like the best-reviewed mop on Amazon. There are other mops that are almost as good. There are other people that can make good mops. And someone may make a better mop at some point. But the best-reviewed mop isn't hugely different from other mops. And it would not be the best-reviewed mop if people years ago had not innovated that mop technology.

Elon is not a special genius. He will not be innovating a warp drive. He just learned everything he needed to know that was already established and put that knowledge to use at SpaceX.

So, talented... not special.

Intelligence is hard to quantify and IQ tests are only useful in the extremes. A good memory does not make one a "genius" but it can often give people the false impression that a person is a genius. I think Elon has a narrow intelligence and is able to apply his good memory to certain things.

He is missing the artistry that is needed for genius.

Many people have higher IQs than Einstein. Many people can do the math that Einstein did. But being able to dream up the concepts and ideas that led to that math in the first place—that is where genius lies. The ability to start from scratch and make something new. That is what would make a Tony Stark.

STEAM over STEM.

The bottom line is... him being a talented rocket designer does not change any of the problems I have with him. Honestly, believing that was more of a cherry on top of all of my arguments.

But I don't want to spread inaccurate information. Misinformation might be the biggest problem we face right now. It is impeding us from solving all of the problems next in line. It's why we are unable to vaccinate the population. It's why we stagnate with Climate Change. It's why Trump was able to rise to power. People were told bad information, they believed it, and he was able to fan the flames of that misinformation into a detrimental 4 years.

While this information isn't nearly as dangerous, I would still prefer not to let it continue on.

I would like us to move forward using the truth to expose Elon.

Because the truth is all we need.

#Youtube #long post

[cto10121]

I normally like to write published fanfic from classics because I like new takes in stories or different POVs... But god I detest how Wide Sargasso Sea has completely fucked with people's perspective of Jane Eyre and make it all about how Betha was the misunderstood Woke Queen and that Bronte was apparently racist. I remember thinking the same when the discourse was harder a couple of years ago and then I went around writing my own Byronic heroes and thought: Nah, Rochester was fine.

I tried reading that book but I got bored of it after a couple of chapters, it felt so slow and never ending. Ironically, the original Jane Eyre... Wrote nearly 200 years ago, felt more modern than the prose of that book.

It was assigned reading for my Modernist Fiction course, which was frankly laughable since the whole novel is completely unintelligible without reading or at least knowing what happens in Jane Eyre, which was not assigned (fortunately I had read Jane Eyre by then, but I still cringe in pity for the other students). It was a forgettable experience of essentially bad writing—two-dimensional characters, no development, piss-poor voice (Rochester’s POV was indistinguishable from Antoinette/Bertha’s), a poetic style without the substance, no proper realization of its themes (colonialism, women’s autonomy, etc.) the works. Even the connection with Jane Eyre was weak; I’ve read fanfics more true to the canon and lore of the original works than WSS. And yes, Charlotte Brontë’s prose was much better and more accessible than Rhys. (I’ve also heard that Brontë-is-racist thing—something about Bertha’s description in the attic? I really haven’t read the book in a long while, so I can’t say if the criticism is valid).

But I won’t lie, I personally have many, many problems with Jane Eyre—the way the narrative can’t decide whether it wanted to be a Bildungsroman or a Beauty-and-the-Beast modern retelling and ended up being half and half, the heavily Christian morality that just drags Jane’s character down, Jane overall awful seesawing between meek little 19th century proper young lady and “I am no bird; no net ensnares me” proto feminism, Rochester beginning as one of the few believable characters in this thing and yet doing weird OOC shit like disguising himself as a gypsy (?) to find out whether Jane likes him, and of course the whole Bertha debacle. But Rochester’s treatment of Bertha ain’t it—actually, he was more than generous with her, even risking his own life to try and save her (!!!) and the fact that he raised Adèle even though he was not entirely sure he was hers is commendation enough. Yes, it is a little pat, Brontë making sure that the love interest’s dick behavior is justified, but I have no problem with the writing on that regard. Guy is fundamentally fine, he just has awful social graces.

My problem actually lies in Jane leaving Rochester. I haven’t even heard anyone critique that plot point, but to me it’s always been such an awful, conventional decision; it drags the rest of the book down into milquetoast Gothic melodrama. Especially since Jane just acted so rashly, without even planning her departure, and almost lost her life because of it. I honestly don’t see why she couldn’t have just accepted being Rochester’s mistress. She would have been in the same position as if she were really married and she could have helped Rochester with Bertha. If she were so worried about her reputation or Rochester growing tired and casting her off, then marriage would have been far worse, because that was practically forever. It’s pure 19th century chopped logic, and it ruins the realistic Dickens-esque social realism of the first half and even in the Rochester section. And that awful Jane-hears-Rochester’s-voice-conveniently-as-St.-John-proposes magic realism never fails to make me laugh/stew in bitter frustration. Homegirl had no problem leaving Rochester on a dime and only now she hears his voice??? Twilight did it better, even freakin’ Shadow and Bone set up the tether thing better. Also, way to undo Jane’s supposedly feminist/strong principled decision of leaving Rochester and being true to her ideals/honor/independence blah blah blah. If you’re just going to have her end up with the guy, then what was the point of the whole Diana and St. John plotline? (Oh, yeah, that’s right, the secret windfall by the dead uncle so now Jane is rich and also Diana et al. are her cousins!!! Smh).

So yeah. Jane Eyre. It’s readable, and it does have its strong points—the Beauty and the Beast elements of the love story are done well and the first half with a feral young Jane is great in its gritty social realism, but I can’t really take it seriously. Wide Sargasso Sea is stale try-hard lit fic for the critical theory crowd, though, and should not have been canonized to begin with.

#ambitious-witch #ask #jane eyre #wide sargasso sea #goes to show that even when a work is flawed the derivatives and adaptations don’t necessarily fix what is wrong #and yes i’m aware wss is meant to be a standalone work with the jane eyre connection as a hook #but oh god is the hook bad and there are just some things that don’t make sense if you haven’t read jane eyre #you would have no idea the author was writing with rochester’s locking bertha in the attic in mind #sorry for this novel you accidentally unlocked my salty jane eyre opinions ha

[jinruihokankeikaku]

summary bulletpoint review of Shin Eva

[obligatory disclaimer that this is all, just, like, my opinion, man<3]

POSITIVE

Shinji's instrumentality scene with Gendo

Ryoji Kaji the Younger and Misato's development as an actual mother was great, deeply moving and deeply painful (as Eva should be.)

the entire first act of the film, honestly

more characterization for Asuka Shikinami and Ayanami/Rei 3, perhaps the best in all of the Rebuilds

it's a beautiful film, the animation in magnificent (even the CG, if you ask me), and the setpieces and action scenes all worked really well and didn't seem to have a disproportionate presence relative to other parts of the film

cannot emphasize enough how good the first act is. If the entire film had carried on that tone, atmosphere, and theming, I think my overall impression of it would have been much more favorable.

i liked the music, especially the callback to "The Passage of Emptiness" around 0:20:00 (I'm sure there are other score callbacks that I didn't catch, too)

many of my issues with / questions about 3.0/Q were resolved in a serious, focused way

the third act was nothing short of stunning visually and narratively, despite my thematic objections

I had fun with it. It was an enjoyable film, and still a cut above a lot of both recent anime and recent Western scifi blockbusters I've seen. For all my issues with the film, I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it on both of my viewings so far, and I've no doubt I'll come back to it. I would unequivocally recommend Shin Eva to both fans and non-fans, despite....everything I'm about to say.

NEUTRAL / MIXED

everything about the Book of Life (whatever that is) and the non-resolution given to the question of whether or not the Rebuilds constitute a sequel or a separate continuity. It'll doubtless be a subject of debate for years to come.

by extension, everything to do with Kaworu, frankly. I thought he was great in Q, and because of that, my feelings on his presence in 3.0+1.0 amount to something along the lines of "he was great, insofar as he was there, but I wish we'd more of him."

the resolution of Gendo and Yui's relationship. I know it was pretty polarizing, and while I understand both the "perfect narrative resolution" and "misogynistic and deeply unsatisfying" takes, I'm not sure I'd entirely agree with either of them. It's well-executed for what it is, but still fundamentally unbalanced and not quite on par with the way it was handled in The End of Evangelion, imo.

the resolution of Shinji and Kaworu's relationship. I almost put this in the negative section, but to be frank, I never expected them to end up together, and as much as I love Kawoshin, I understand that that's not the direction the Rebuilds were ever going to take, nor is it a direction I think Shin Eva should've taken. Furthermore, I think the way the concept of the Time Loop was handled about as well as it could have been - an excellent balance between Nonetheless, I think the Kaworu section of the Instrumentality sequence was weak and overly dismissive towards the validity of Kaworu's feelings, his actions, and (if you'll pardon the irony) his humanity.

the balance of action / atmosphere / characterisation. It's not perfect, but it's better than any of the other Rebuilds, with (as previously stated) the first act carrying most of my favorite atmospheric/character moments, and the second act containing the best action sequences.

the general tone of the film. It started off very strong, with a feeling reminiscent to that which The End of Evangelion left me with, and maintained a suitably dark-yet-hopeful tone for most of the second act as well. However, it fell apart entirely for me in the third act, and especially in the final scene (which I'll comment on further later).

Rei 3 / Ayanami. I adored her. For exactly that reason, I think it's a damn shame she had to LCL-splode less than halfway through the film.

Ryoji Kaji the Elder. Everything we saw of him was magnificent! So I sure wish there was more of it! Given the scope of Shin Eva's content, I guess that's more of an objection to 3.0, but...I guess I just dearly hope we get more material covering the 14-year timeskip, WILLE's revolt, Kaji's sacrifice, and everything leading up to it. It feels like a missed opportunity (unique to the Rebuilds) for character development Kaji might've received. But on the whole, that's a minor quibble relative to how fond of his and Misato's relationship in the Rebuilds were handled in 3.0+1.0.

NEGATIVE

Mari / "Mary Iscariot". Enough has been said about Mari's "enigmatic" character, so I'll not harp on this too much, but....as someone who loved Mari's presence in 2.0 and was basically okay with her role in the Rebuilds as a whole, there was still a remarkable dearth of character development for her, which left me disappointed on the whole, especially considering...

...the final scene. That final scene. Oh man. I don't want to devalue the personal meaning it has for Anno, or the sense of satisfaction some of my fellow Eva fans got from it. But the more I think about it, the more it doesn't work for me. After the credits started rolling on my first viewing, I remember writing in my notes app - "How am I supposed to feel about this?". After my second viewing, I was left with.....exactly the same feeling. The scene is framed as unambiguously positive, and yet....it simply doesn't come across that way, upon further contemplation. Even setting aside my abiding love for KawoShin and AsuShin, I think even from a ship-neutral perspective the scene doesn't quite carry across the message of Hope what it seems to intend to.

The film's themes. For all its narrative and visual strengths, the film left me feeling confused, empty, and....fucking confused. And not in the same way EoTV or EoE did - my confusion was not to do with the actual events of the film, but with the emotional and psychosocial messages conveyed. I won't presume to know Anno (or his co-directors') intentions, but....it's hard for me to not feel like I'm being told to set aside the past and hope for a deus-ex-machina to fix my life. This is also something about which a lot of ink has already been spilled, so I'll keep my thoughts on this front short (especially since I can't tell if I'm giving the filmmakers too much credit, or not giving them enough), but....the plain fact that Shin Eva seems, at least superficially, to present itself as a thematic antithesis to The End of Evangelion is enough to leave me upset or at least unsettled. That's more of an emotional reaction on my part than an actual critique of the film, I know, but....I'd be remiss in not including it in my review.

Ritsuko - specifically, the fact that she was reduced to a side-character at best, with arguably less of a presence than even Fuyutsuki, and perhaps even comparable to the minor roles of the rest of the Bridge Crew. She was so very compelling in Neon Genesis Evangelion and even in her brief screentime in The End of Evangelion, and while I can hardly say I was expecting her to play a key role in Shin Eva after her diminished presence in the previous Rebuild installments, I can't say I wasn't hoping for that, either. Ritsuko deserved better, but like a few other things I've mentioned, that was more of an issue with Rebuild of Evangelion as a whole than it was an issue with Shin Eva.

Asuka Shikinami. She had her moments, but fell short of the intensity and depth of character Asuka Soryu was given. There's much more to be said here, but frankly it merits its own post, cos this one is getting long already.

And finally, I'll just say again that more than anything else this film left me confused. It left me questioning the value of the Rebuilds as a whole, the messages of NGE and EoE, and my own character as a person. Maybe that was the point. After my first viewing, I said out loud something to the effect of "So this must be what so many people felt after seeing The End of Evangelion. Now I get it!". Perhaps that speaks to the power of the film - it certainly speaks to Anno's enduring talent as a writer/director - but, for a film that was meant to be a spiritual successor to The End of Evangelion, it's impossible for me to say that it didn't fail to carry on that film's message of Hope despite everything, Hope in the face of despair, Hope against the hopelessness of the human condition, and the abiding power of the human person to persist beyond both the indignities it suffers at the hands of others and the indignities it inflicts upon others. It failed in that regard, to my view, and for all that I loved about Shin Eva, that's one failing I'm afraid I might never be able to get past.

TL;DR

I loved Shin Eva. I hated Shin Eva. I respect it for what it is, but I can't bring myself to put it on the level with Neon Genesis Evangelion or The End of Evangelion. Watch it. Definitely watch it, if you haven't already (and if you haven't, why are you reading this?!). The film leaves you with a closing sequence that demands that you draw your own conclusions, and ultimately, I think that's all you can do with a work that carries with it such personal weight (for both the creators and the viewers) and such heavy expectations.

#shin eva #neon genesis evangelion #evangelion spoilers #evangelion 3.0+1.0 #shin evangelion #3.0+1.0

[convoy914]

Believe me, I’m capable of critiquing the things I love. IDW1 Megatron’s arc? Not perfect even if it worked overall for me. By necessesity it was the way it was, but I’d do a few things differently in my own hypothetical take. Plus there’s the idea of someone like THAT getting a reformation arc at all, and that’s…complicated. Everyone’s valid there I feel, is the point. It’s a thing

RWBY? Great Actually as I’ve made clear but I can point out a few deficiencies: The White Fang arc overall culminating in the death of Sienna Khan, the execution of Penny Polendina‘s (second) death at the end of Volume 8, Volumes 1-2 overall quite frankly. But I’m not going to be fucking stupid about it like some often are

So many so-called “critics” just utterly lack any critical thinking skills, and just go into something looking for things to hate. Now sure, in a couple cases that’s justified, if a work is just…overly offensive then tear it apart, but for the vast majority that engage in this SPECIFIC form of “critique“, it’s just pretentious idiots trying to pretend that they’re smart. By all means, people are allowed to just not like things, but they don’t need to justify it by being Like That. I know most aren't really, but the loud ones tend to skew that way and it’s…not great, no

The point being, it IS possible to enjoy something while recognizing its flaws, but so often you have wannabe “critics” trying to pretend that they’re smart by hating on things no matter how much the work itself actually reflects their “critiques”, and as a result...it’s a fucking mess, isn’t it? That got kinda ramble-y, huh? Hope the general ideas made it through alright. I’m very tired

#Transformers #RWBY #Fandom Stuff #READ BIO I HAVE A BIO FOR A GODDAMN REASON PLEASE READ IT OKAY THANKS

[kytcordell]

Why Do I Create?

Compulsion

I cannot stop creating.

In fact, I’ve tried--multiple times. There have been so many occasions on which the frustration and self-loathing associated with creative pursuits was psychologically crippling to the point where I did try and stop. But I never stopped inventing stories in my mind. I never stopped creating characters. I never stopped following artists I liked, basking in distant envy at the skills I believed I could never attain.

It has taken me a lifetime to really distill the true reason behind why I create. As much I would like to say that I’ve “always just loved drawing and expressing myself,” this simply wouldn’t be true nor an accurate representation of the relationship I have with art. At this point, I’m not sure if the word “passion” or “love” quite captures why I create. I would describe it more as a feverish need--a compulsion. I actually don’t even quite see myself as the “owner” of my works or ideas, but rather, as the vessel which serves them. Every ounce effort I put toward creative endeavors is a means of honing myself into a more suitable vehicle for delivering ideas into being.

For most of my life, I had an extremely pathological and maladaptive sense of self that resulted from nearly 26 years of physical and psychological abuse. It took me a long time to even recognize that what happened to me was in fact abuse. I used to shy away from the word because it seemed too self-pitying and dramatic. It still sometimes feels that way, despite the fact I objectively know that if anyone (let alone a parent) ever pulled a knife on me now, I would call the police without a second thought.

I won’t go too much into the details of what happened because it isn’t really worth delving into. But I was essentially raised as if I were an investment fund and not a person. My entire purpose was to be useful so my mother could stop having responsibilities of any kind. I was not raised with own personal well-being and future stability in mind. This meant that a non-lucrative career was unacceptable. My art was ever only appreciated in the context of bragging rights or winning awards. This of course, manifested in my relationship with creative pursuits.

Narcissism

My adolescent motivations for drawing were fueled mostly by pure, unadulterated narcissism.

I drew semi-seriously throughout high school. By that, I mean I quickly figured out what kinds of skills were considered impressive for that age group and did well at shows and competitions. I wanted to feel superior and adored at any cost, and while I embodied the external talking points of “being humble, always learning, etc.” deep down, I clung to the idea that I was better than everyone else. I couldn’t handle critique emotionally, despite acting receptive. I was completely consumed by the idea of being some kind of perfect, “talented” golden child.

I managed to get very good at copying photos and rendering, while neglecting all the skills that contribute to being able to design characters or draw from imagination. I didn’t really pursue art with any real level of personalized focus. I just liked feeling like I was better than people and knew more than the other kids. Honestly, every single aspect of my life revolved around this mentality.

I held onto the idea of “being good” as a trophy because that was the only mode of thought that my psyche could accept. It was easier to embrace narcissism and even just accept being a shallow social climber than to face the far more harrowing truth:

That I was afraid I’d never have the skills to manifest my ideas.

In fact, I talked myself into believing for ages that I didn’t care that much about my ideas. They would never amount to anything. And having self-indulgent, non-utilitarian attachments to my stories and OCs felt like a weakness. I needed to rationalize my own shortcomings with a guise of indifference.

Revererence

I stopped drawing for about seven years after high school. And even during high school, I didn’t do anything that remotely resembles the kind of ‘grind’ that I’ve put myself through the last 2.5 years. Frankly, I’m amazed I got as far as I did even with being a human copy machine that produced lifeless 1:1 images of candles. With each year I passed, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the fact I always knew deep down--I just wasn’t that good. I mean, I was pretty good for a guy in high school. But my holistic sense of composition, invention, and execution was near non-existent. I went through a few attempts of returning to art, only to be so overwhelmed with my own incompetence that I would just go back to the “I don’t care that much about art” script I had gotten so good at conning myself into.

It was not until I had a complete mental breakdown due to my psychotic cunt of a mother threatening my safety and sanity that my long-con finally broke. I had a moment where I just accepted that I had no fundamentals, my skills were trash, and most of all--I was not okay with them being trash. From that point, I started desperately seeking out resources and practicing to improve. Receiving criticism (while I really appreciated it objectively) was psychologically devastating to me. Every single imperfection was a reminder of “lost time” and the years I had spent lying to myself.

It wasn’t until I discovered Loomis, Hampton, Draw-a-Box, Proko, and many other reputable art resources that I managed to start hitting the pavement and making the kind of gains I wanted. I drew sometimes for 12-16 hours a day even while I was homeless and living on a friend’s couch due to having to flee my home at the time.  Through all of this, I shed all my notions of “being talented” or needing to delude myself into feeling like I was good. No, I was dogshit and I needed to do something about. I think the biggest hurdle people face when trying to get good at anything is accepting that they are bad. You cannot improve until you fully and wholeheartedly accept that you have problems that need fixing.

I went from approaching things from a place of narcissism to a place of reverence. A lot of what instilled this change in me was observing people that I admire. Those that are highly competent (in any craft) tend to be realistic and humble about their shortcomings. The very process of attaining mastery forces you to realize that there is an infinite scale of improvement. This isn’t to say that people who are good can’t also get full of themselves. But at least among the individuals I gravitate towards, there is a general sense of reverence and genuine modesty. On the other hand, people who are mediocre frequently have very large egos. Unfortunately, there is a lot egotistical, irrational, whiny-bitch anti-progress behavior that is prevalent in art circles. I realized just how cancerous conceit and ego could be. It had destroyed my progress for years and I was watching complete hacks insist they were gods atop mount stupid. It was truly the Dunning-Krueger effect in action.

Many of the people I encountered in the art community early on were pretty mediocre and had a terrible sense of fundamentals. Again, this would be fine if they didn’t insist on acting like experts on the topic. (Plenty of people draw for fun and don’t care about being good and there is nothing wrong with purely pursuing something for leisure.) However, I unfortunately ran into quite a few extremely petty people had no idea of how to actually get good at anything, and were annoyed at the fact I had prioritized working on fundamentals. People that I engaged in good faith soon attempted to derail conversations and questions I had about technique and improvement. Crabs in a bucket bullshit, really.

Anyone knows me also knows that I have no tolerance for bullshit or “UwU bitches” making “it’s my style” excuses for being technically incompetent. (Which isn’t to say accuracy is always more important than style, but using “style” or “aesthetic” as an excuse for a lack of skill or competence is extremely common among mediocre artists). Likewise, I also encountered people who manifested narcissism in the opposite direction. The opposite of the “it’s muh style” camp were people who endlessly liked to talk about theoretical technical knowledge. Sometimes they were good at one skillset or another, but generally lack any kind of concept or actual artistic vision. It was like they had lost sight of expression goals in favor of shit talking and dropping advanced art vocabulary.

I realized that no amount of shit-talk, posturing, or external validation was going to make me good at art. I always knew that, but watching people descend into the abyss of self-sabotage just reminded me what was at stake. I would rather never “feel” like I was superior than run the risk of delusional overconfidence. Likewise, I broke out of the trap of thinking technical skill could somehow compensate for a lack of good ideas or artistic vision. Nothing matters more than the clarity of expression, and skill is but a conduit for said expression. I would rather feel eternally small and striving for a forlorn dream than run the risk of being 10 years down the road cranking out trashy, vapid content while thinking I’m some kind of omnipotent art god.

I draw because I cannot stop. It’s like being touched by fire that you cannot quell or erase. I work to improve because I want to depict my stories and characters with the finesse, nuance, and artistry that I admire in so many others. I truly feel there is no point in pursuing art seriously if you do not have a voice, a “vision” for why you create. Looking back, the motivation that kept me going through the hardest struggles was the desire to succeed in communicating my stories and concepts. I am but an acolyte eternally striving for even a brief glimpse of an ephemeral muse.

#Art #Art Philosophy #Why I Draw #Personal

[aqvarius]

What are your top 5 worst voltage routes?

oh damn this is a tough one haha. i’ve definitely played routes that i find average/forgettable but it’s hard to think of 5 routes that i thought were actually bad. except for one which i’m sure anyone who has followed me for a few years knows about lmao

i was just gonna give brief reasons but then as i was typing this out i couldn’t stop my loudass brain from rambling so... sorry for all the commentary lol. i do want to preface this by saying that these are more critiques of the writing than the characters (except shinobu haha i despise him). i love many of these characters and have enjoyed their epilogues/sequels/substories. my main gripe with most of these is just underdeveloped, jarring or flimsy character and relationship development, which to me makes the process of falling in mutual love unconvincing. that’s why all of these are main stories because they are about the critical moments of falling in love (rather than future developments such as tackling conflicts together) which i think are the foundation to any further growth. so please don’t take any of this personally if any of the guys i’ve mentioned here are characters that you love!

5. main story: takane momochi - destind: mr almost right

so this is more a case of “love the guy, don’t love the route”. i have to admit that i really wasn’t big on takane at first and then i got to the end of the route and realised that i actually didn’t love the mc. i actually quite like the destind mc in rei and araya’s routes but omg takane’s route is weird. i have no problem with takane kind of being a jerk and i actually really like him but i have a couple of issues with this route. the first is that i don’t really understand nor buy into the reason that they keep seeing each other. the mc learns about takane’s true nature and finds him kind of despicable but then decides that she’s definitely gonna make him fall in love with her, which as a plot point on its own i’m fine with but the way thy go into that discussion is really weird because it arises from the mc being appalled that takane had an affair with some teacher when he was a teenager and somehow leads into that discussion. basically i don’t think that the whole “i’m gonna make you fall in love with me” vs “i’m gonna make you sleep with me” challenge is set up particularly organically. 

it also occurs about halfway through the route which i don’t really think works in term of the pacing because within the shape of the narrative i would call it the end of act 1. act 2 would be them genuinely getting closer and then act 3 would be the conflict that develops between them which results in their breakup. with the structure of takane’s route, acts 2 and 3 essentially become crammed into the remaining half of the chapters, which makes the conflict in act 3 feel confusing and abrupt. i think it would have been more effective if they had set up the personality reveal earlier on in the route and then spent more time developing the budding incompatibilities which lead to the breakup-inducing argument.

the second issue that i have with this route is the mc’s lack of development/not addressing the actual mistakes that she makes with regards to how she sees takane. the mc suffers from idolising syndrome because she’s built takane up into this perfect prince in her mind (i guess kind of like with hiroki from mlfk) even though he’s a regular old (substantially) flawed dude who struggles with the pressure of external expectations bc people don’t see the ~real him~. this is all well and good and is set up to allow the mc to accept his flaws and see him as a real human being but instead she’s just like “your flaws aren’t really flaws, they’re just another example of why you’re perfect bc you engage with them!” SIS. he’s not a character that needs validation in that way bc everyone already thinks he’s perfect. he needs someone who can see that he’s FAULTY and help him through it, not just pass off his flaws and the way he deals with them as another point of admiration. destind mc isn’t even like old school perma-optimistic voltage mcs either, she’s a little more prone to judgement so i wish she (and the writing) engaged a little more with takane’s flaws and accepting them rather than just jumping straight to YOU’RE MY HERO. 

as a character i actually prefer him to araya but the fact that i was more convinced to love araya aka mr possessive liar himself is saying something about the story. 

4. main story: genji higashiyama - in your arms tonight

i don’t have much to say in detail because it’s been like 6+ years since i played his route and frankly i don’t remember the details, but i just remember that he was kind of a jackass and i expected better. i love ex-boyfriend/hatsukoi love interests but just didn’t really like his route. 

to quote from an old comment i once made: 

“omg i thought genji had so much potential bc hot exboyf soccer player hellooooo but he was just such a jerk, he really p-ed me off :<” 

“i kind of don’t like genji because he is a bit of a doucheypants and like really arrogant and a bit of a bully :/”

i remember the mc slapped him once after they made out which i don’t remember the context for but he probably deserved it. i was extra sad because i actually really liked him in soji’s route but he’s the team B guy in that one so......... thanks voltage. also he was a dick to everyone’s sweetheart aiba. i actually like him way more after his ms lol? conceptually i love him but his main story made me sad. 

3. main story: satoru kamagiri - 10 days with my devil

i mean this one was bad but i’m weirdly fond of satoru? i have no issues with sadists and i kind of like him (after having read substories). but this route was weird and the pacing felt a bit off to me. basically i have no idea what made him fall in love with the mc?

because i guess he starts being nice to you when he has to nurse you when you get sick and he genuinely feels bad and cares about you but do you really expect me to believe he was already in love with you when he made a date with you but decided to go hang out with other women leaving you standing in the rain for 6 hours? nah fam.

i also don’t remember what the climax of the story even is because i’m still hung up on being left waiting for him in the rain for 6 hours while he goes other women so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2. main story: seiji goto - my sweet bodyguard

i’ve talked a lot about the issues i have with this route (including a couple thousand words of review here) but i’ll just summarise. this is definitely another case of love the guy, don’t love the route. in the GREE version, you meet him from the first time at the beginning of his route and gradually learn about his past, but in the standalone app version, you basically get thrown into the route with no exposition, meaning that you have to already have prior knowledge of goto and his backstory. i had known about it so it wasn’t as confusing as it could have been, but you really just get tossed into the mix expecting to already know about kazuki (goto’s dead ex). plus he’s already nice to you from the start because you’ve known each other for a while so there’s less of the actual seeing his behaviour change bit (which is my favourite part of all main stories - in case you couldn’t tell because all of my criticisms about routes are about lack of proper relationship development). kazuki and goto’s relationship is basically the thing that underpins the entire narrative of the route which is why i find it an issue that you don’t get much insight into it going into the route blind. 

it’s difficult to feel like goto and the mc are actually gradually getting closer in the route because it doesn’t feel like there’s one narrative line that’s building throughout the entire route as much as separate events, more or less. she just... looks after goto a lot? also basically goto is interested in you because you remind him of kazuki and when he starts to like you, it’s not actually very evident in his actions - you find this out because kurosawa basically tells you lmao. 

i actually wanted to leave him and date subaru because honestly subaru in goto’s route especially reads like a much healthier relationship option, but then goto runs in and interrupts a date with subaru and drags you straight off to kazuki’s tombstone and then... it’s a happy ending? his confession feels like it comes out of nowhere because his behaviour towards you doesn’t explicitly change but you just have to believe he likes you now as he confesses in front of his ex-gf’s grave and tells her he’ll see her soon. come on bruv you can do better than this lol. 

1. main story: shinobu narita - serendipity next door

this guy fucking sucks, dude. i can’t think of even one single redeeming quality he has. he’s the reason i stopped playing voltage games for like years and went on hiatus and more or less abandoned my blog until i discovered scm. i know there was a lot of controversy about whether or not he could be considered abusive and i threw that word around a lot back in the day when i liveblogged his route but DAMN at the very least he is just the WORST. the mc wakes up in his bed after getting wasted at a rooftop party and he convinces her that they had sex when she was drunk and then blackmails her into being his girlfriend by threatening to tell the entire apartment block that they slept together. he proceeds to snoop around in all her business, maliciously making fun of her and her work at every single chance he gets (he literally RIFLES THROUGH HER BAG to find her work and mock her about it) and then she looks at one document or picture of his and he gets all uppity about it because he’s a big ol hypocrite. basically he hates the mc because she’s so pure and he’s jaded because one time he confessed to someone and she ghosted him? so he deliberately acts nice to her sometimes so she’ll let her guard down and then follows it up with a common or action so malicious i wanted to choke him. all i’m saying is that there are a number of relationships that i never got closure on and it’s never made me want to blackmail a drunk person into dating me so i can mess them up emotionally  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the thing is, i have played other guys who are a bag of suck at first and then get so much better because of character development. and this is what is totally lacking in shinobu’s route. the mc falls in love with him bc of stockholm syndrome... and basically bc omg he’s so sad and damaged and she wants to heal him i guess? it sucks. they literally have no bonding moments where they genuinely connect except for the times when he’s super mean and manipulative to her and and she’s like omg but he’s so saaaaaad uwu. throughout the route, there is absolutely no character development on shinobu’s part, he’s just the same sadistic bastard who enjoys seeing his mc being hurt the whole way through lol but SUDDENLY you guys are in love? but literally at the end the mc tries to escape from him by moving out and instead of letting her go because he’s the worst, he chases her moving truck down? also he’s weirdly possessive even by voltage standards. 

btw this isn’t even just sadists not being my type - you know i adore kaga and eduardo and even people who take ages to warm up (cough shinonome). and you know i love men who tease and manipulate you a bit (because they’re doing it out of a d o r a t i o n not spite) . i also have no problem with outright assholes as long as we see them change, develop and genuinely fall in love. my biggest issue with this route is that i don’t think pity is the same thing as love, or that someone with his personality can get his happy ending without genuinely changing and redeeming himself in some way. i’m not a fan of romanticising guys who are mean to you because they’re so dAmAgEd and want to take it out on you. (the reason i love people like hue is because even though they’re riddled with grief and trauma, they’re mature enough to handle their emotions and you don’t need to fix them!!!) i genuinely think voltage bombed it with this route lol. it almost makes me want to go back and replay it just to see if it was really as bad as i remember but (1) i never transferred it to love 365 (2) it was on my old iphone and i use android now (3) i don’t want to spend money repurchasing a route that i’m 85% sure i’ll feel is a waste of money (4) i spent £2.49 on the route back in the day when voltage was cheaper and i don’t want to spend almost double that now lol. 

also the last time i read his route i abandoned this blog and stopped playing all otome games for a really long time lmao so................................ 

#Anonymous #snow answers #takane momochi #destind: mr. almost right #dmar #genji higashiyama #in your arms tonight #iyat #satoru kamagiri #10 days with my devil #10dwmd #seiji goto #my sweet bodyguard #msb #shinobu narita #serendipity next door #snd #voltage inc

[battlestar-royco]

Just so you know, there’s a SJM account that’s saying you guys worship grrm and like the way he wrote about dany’s rape scene. To elaborate, this user wrote that you guys unfairly critique SJM for including sex scenes in her novels because she’s a woman but then worship grrm anyways because he’s a man. I don’t know if you guys get a lot of anon hate but I thought I would warn you in case because she made it seem as if you guys are abuse apologists instead of just people who don’t like sjm

Okay so I sat down to answer this ask and it kind of unintentionally became an anti SJ/M manifesto. So before I begin, thanks anon for sending me this and giving me an excuse to write it. Here is an obnoxiously long answer about the nature of the anti community. TL;DR, critiquing Mess is valid for many reasons, and there are many further reasons why the “antis should critique GRRM more”/painting SJ/M antis as GRRM apologists/stans arguments don’t really hold water.

I think we’ve run into that essay and maybe actually butted heads with the author. From what I remember, the account in question took us out of context by implying that because we critique SJ/M more and for the most part believe Martin is technically a better writer than Mess, we inherently excuse his horrific depiction of rape and women. I try not to read stan tags or specific accounts except for the rare occasion that someone directs me to a blog, so the only time I see their posts is when an anti quotes or screenshots an SJ/M blog post. I also try not to take stan critics too seriously because every time they critique us they just further clarify that they have no idea what the anti community is about–specifically, our reasons for critiquing SJ/M (rather than Martin), how diverse our approaches to critique are, the kind of action we intend to inspire with our posts, and what we actually post about. The main argument against anti blogs is that we’re too hard on SJ/M in favor of GRRM, which is a strawman argument for many reasons. So even though I shouldn’t have to explain the reasons for our community existing, and specifically not focusing on Martin, this seems a better opportunity than any to do so:

Just because we have more critique of SJ/M on our blogs than we do of Martin doesn’t mean that the critiques of SJ/M are invalid. In fact, we critique SJ/M because her books are written such that people (specifically teen girls and young women, more often white and cishet) are able to reject Martin’s books due to their problematic nature. They can then turn to the hollow feminism of SJ/M’s work and say that she is better–at worldbuilding, at craft, whatever may have you, but specifically at writing women and progressive/feminist narratives. Though I disagree with all of these things, the former aspects don’t bother me as much as the last one. I take great issue with this last takeaway and I think it’s very privileged and even further problematic to maintain it in the grand context of fantasy literature, so that’s why I focus my blog on SJ/M. Additionally, for as long as I’ve been in the community–a little over a year now! :D–I have never witnessed an anti praise GRRM’s diversity and representation of women in a positive light compared to SJ/M. This is in large part because aside from my and Marta’s accounts, GRRM rarely comes up, and if he does it is not in the context of critiquing SJ/M. Additionally, he does not have the Martin equivalent of “Messisms”–AKA repeated and inaccurate claims of progressive sentiments in his books, as SJ/M does. As someone who has read copious feminist/activist and radical gender/postcolonial etc theory, it is very important to me to unpack the implications of Mess’s frequent and frankly careless ascriptions of “feminist” to her books which are being marketed to girls and women. (To be fair, I don’t pay as much attention to Martin’s interviews as I do Mess; his books, writing style, and persona fail to inspire me to research his writing advice and meta commentary.)

Another main reason why GRRM is not discussed as much in the anti corner is that most of our blogs are YA lit-oriented, which necessarily means that many of us mostly or only read and critique women writing fantasy for other women. As Martin is a male adult fantasy author, bringing him up in respect to SJ/M is often inorganic–in fact, probably as inorganic as critique would be on an SJ/M-oriented blog, which is maybe part of the reason why they don’t critique him themselves. For me, there is incredible power in doing the work I see in the anti community–marginalized people coming at the same text with completely different perspectives, using our different knowledge and reactions to the books to spread awareness for other upcoming marginalized readers and writers in the hopes that the YA community at large (again, a community created/maintained by and for mostly women, non-binary people, and girls) will improve. This simply could not be done if our community was GRRM-focused or equally critiquing GRRM as we do SJ/M and other YA authors.

I also find it odd that though SJ/M blogs have expressed interest in seeing more critique of GRRM, they 1). hold anti SJ/M blogs responsible for doing that work (which some of us in fact do) instead of doing it within in their own community and 2). do not seem to seek out the plentiful and diverse ASOIAF/GOT blogs that also critique Martin. I regularly read plenty of ASOIAF/GOT meta blogs that both extensively praise and theorize about his books and offer intricate and harsh critique of his books. Almost all of these are run by women. The existence of such blogs evidences another main reason why GRRM doesn’t come up in anti SJ/M circles as much: the ASOIAF fandom doesn’t need antis because they know how to critique Martin. There is nuance in their conversations that I did not see in SJ/M’s fandom in the years that I was present. That being said, there definitely are Martin stans out there, and in my experience they come in two forms: white edgelord men who love grimdark and violence against marginalized characters, and white women who claim against all contrary evidence that Martin is a wonderful writer who knows exactly what he’s doing and deserves the benefit of the doubt because his books are ultimately progressive and feminist. Neither of these types of stans are anywhere to be found in the anti SJ/M community. This may be because I don’t check SJ/M stan blogs, but I’ve seen way more critique of anti SJ/M bloggers–who were hurt by both Mess’s and GRRM’s books–from stans than I have ever seen of Martin or Mess themselves, and it is often justified with the specific panem-et-circenses argument you mention, anon (ie, ridiculing antis for discussing Mess more than Martin instead of calling out who actually needs to be called out: MESS AND MARTIN). The situation is a lot more complex than “antis have double standards against Mess because Martin is a man.” At this point in my anti tenure, ASOIAF/GOT is the second most-discussed topic on my blog, closely followed by the likes of Casserole Eclair, JKR, YA drama, and random TV shows I’m watching. Seeing as I have been affected (often negatively) by many of these authors, I want to talk about it. I like talking about it. It’s how I engage with most literature, and I don’t see why that’s something stans look down upon.

#anti sjm #anti tog #anti acotar #stans being stans

[rosecorcoranwrites]

When a Plot Hole is Not a Plot Hole (or, at Least, When It Doesn't Matter)

Much like 45 million other people, I have recently viewed Bird Box. I also watched The Ritual and re-watched A Quiet Place. All of this got me thinking about the horror genre, yet again, but it’s too soon for another “Thoughts on Horror” post. Thankfully I also watched a Youtube video about world building in the Divergent series, which gave me an idea for a more far-reaching analysis not just of horror, but of genre and plot holes in general.

A Matter of Genre

The fact of the matter is that Bird Box, A Quiet Place, and Divergent have gaping plot holes (The Ritual doesn’t. The Ritual is great… but freaking horrifying, so watch with caution). These plot holes, however, are only a problem in one of those stories, and this is due to genre, and I will climb onto my genre-soapbox for as long as it takes for people to realize that different genres work differently, and need to be read or watched differently.

Let’s step back a minute, and I'll explain what I mean. In my senior year of high school, we read The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. My class loved it, not least because it was a welcome break from all the depressing literature foisted on us throughout our high school career. I was also a student aid in another class that read the same book and got to eavesdrop on their class discussions. I sat in the back, filing papers, and heard the students say they didn't like the book because, quote, "It was so unrealistic." The Little Prince? Unrealistic? You don't say! I'm not sure I have ever heard a more idiotic critique of a book. Yes, The Little Prince is unrealistic. It's a children's-book-esque fantasy/fairytale about a prince from another (tiny) planet who's in love with a rose. It's not supposed to be realistic!

A similar phenomenon happens when people—both Christians and atheists—treat the entire Bible as one genre. It's not! It contains poetry, myth, history, genealogy, letters, biography, parables, apocalyptic visions, and law codes. If you read poetry like you would read a law code, or a letter the way you read a myth, you're probably going to miss out on most of the meaning.

Back to my point, different genres require different ways of being read or watched. There are varying amounts of belief one should be required to suspend. Fantasy requires more suspension of disbelief than sci-fi, because the audience needs to accept that magic and magical creatures exist, whereas sci-fi only needs them to accept that humans have advanced to some future scientific point. Both genres, however, need internally consistent world building, no matter what other wonders we are shown. Otherwise, the audience will be taken out of the story, and the point of these genres is to immerse the readers or viewers into a believable, if fantastic, world. If magic works a certain way, it always needs to work that way. If smaller spaceships can’t use FTL, then no little ships should be shown using FTL unless you make a point of saying they have some new type of FTL drive. There is some wiggle-room in this, since "fantasy" and "sci-fi" are big labels that cover a lot of things. Fairytales or magical-realism stories tend to be a little looser about what is and isn’t allowed. These stories still shouldn't break their own rules, but they also don't have to explain themselves as much as other fantasies. Sci-fi that bleeds into fantasy, such as that which incorporates time-travel, other dimensions, or robots with kokoro still needs internal consistency, but don't need to be as scientifically accurate as hard sci-fi.

On the other hand, genres which rely on audience reaction can get by with much less in the way of tight world building and well-thought-out backstory. The two genres to which I am referring are comedy and horror. Obviously, these can intersect with fantasy/sci-fi, but taken as their own thing, they are a different species of genre altogether. They rely not on immersing the audience into a believable world, but on eliciting a reaction from the audience. A comedy is only a comedy if it's funny and horror is only horror if it's scary. Those are the requirements. Thus, a comedy or horror doesn't need unassailable world building to be a successful comedy or horror. Comedy, in particular, often relies on pointing out or playing with plot holes in whatever genre it's in. Horror, on the other hand, often focuses on the scary situation at the expense of backstory and world building.

Plot Holes in Horror

Thus, we come to Bird Box, or A Quiet Place, or Signs, or any other horror that, frankly, doesn't hold up if you think too much about it. People critique these movies by asking things like, “Why doesn't everyone in the world just blind themselves to be immune to the phantoms?”, “Did no one else in all of society think to use sound against the creatures?”, and “Why don't the aliens wear waterproof suits?”. These are valid criticisms for sci-fi or fantasy stories, but… these stories aren’t really meant to be sci-fi or fantasy. They are meant to be horror. Specifically, survival horror. For this genre, backstory is utterly irrelevant. In survival horror, a person or group of people are put into a deadly situation and need to use their wits and whatever they can find to survive it. The end. That's it. Are Sandra Bullock, the family in The Quiet Place, and the family in Signs put into a deadly situation? Check. Do they attempt to survive it? Check. Is it scary for the audience to watch? Check. All three movies pass the survival horror test. They aren’t trying to be good sci-fi/fantasy; they’re trying to be good horror, and do a pretty good job.

As a side note, I’m not some Bird Box apologist. Of the four horror movies I’ve mentioned in this post, it’s my least favorite. But the issues I take with it are not with the world-building (unlike some critics, I thought the rules regarding the phantoms were fairly well spelled out), but with the choices on how to induce horror. (SPOILERS INCOMING: SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU CARE) From the beginning, we know the rest of the people in the house don’t survive because only Sandra Bullock and the two kids are alive in the current time; that undercuts most of the tension in the house. Also, I thought the first phantom-acolyte they encounter, at the supermarket, was horrifying, as he appeared to be stuck forever in his place, doomed to coax unsuspecting souls to their death. One character even commented, “How is that guy still alive?”, so I wondered if he even was, or if he was sort of an undead thing controlled by the phantoms. Scary! Unfortunately, the rest of the acolytes (aside from the one in the house, who we knew John Malkovich would kill because how else would Sandra Bullock and the kids be alive in the future? The structure of the narrative seriously undercut the tension!) are pretty much your run-of-the-mill murderers in any post-apocalyptic movie. Not scary! Finally, I took issue with the last few minutes, after their boat capsized; I felt it was unnecessary for them to run around in the woods. It would have been scarier if she reached out of the water to feel a person’s foot, making the audience think it’s an acolyte, until he taps a cane on the ground and it’s revealed he’s blind. But, I digress. I don’t mind that the story has a few plot holes; I do mind that it wasn’t as scary as it could have been.

Plot Holes in Dystopia

Where, then, on this spectrum of genre does dystopia fall, and why do so many YA dystopian novels seem to fail? Could not "dystopia" be a sort of parable, requiring little explanation and thus little scrutiny, in the same way that comedy and horror and fairytales can get by on little to no explanations of what, exactly, is going on? Yes. I'll say it again, yes. I think dystopias absolutely could get a pass on world building... if they wanted to. The problem with books like Divergent or Hunger Games is not that they explain too little, but that they explain too much. If they simply set up their messed-up situations—everyone is sorted into a Hogwarts House faction, innocents must fight to the death for the enjoyment of the rich—and left it at that, I think it would be fine. The problem arises when these authors, usually in subsequent books, attempt to hash out the reasoning behind these horrible societies which... kind of couldn't arise for any real reason, or if they did, wouldn’t last very long. The explanations we are given don't make sense, or are at least are very, very full of holes and inconsistencies.

To be fair, other dystopias also offer explanations for why the world is the way it is, but they don’t dwell on it. 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 offer lip service for how society got so bad—whether that’s due to government rule or human complacency—but then move on. We don’t need to think too hard about how Eastasia or Eurasia were formed; we need to care that the government keeps switching which one we’ve “always” been at war with. We don’t need to know who’s running the world in Fahrenheit 451, because they’re not the ones who caused Montag’s wife to O.D. or who hit Clarisse with a car or who made Beatty hate books; the society of that book is twisted because individual people are twisted. Though they contain sci-fi elements, these stories are not sci-fi books. They are much closer to horror, in that their events are supposed to provoke a sort of cautious fear in the audience. The idea is that this could happen here, and maybe it’s already happening.

Again, YA dystopia’s could do this, but that’s clearly not what they’re going for. If Hunger Games was only a nod to the dangers of media and decadence, I could get behind it. Instead, it decided to become a story about revolution, with a somewhat Chosen-One-esque figure. It went the sci-fi-fantasy route, following the epic story of a hero who attempts to save society. If Divergent only concerned itself with the idea that humans are sorted into groups based on a single personality trait… well, I would still think that was pretty silly, but I could see a skilled writer making it work. It goes beyond this, though, into this whole backstory involving genetic engineering and human experimentation. It’s a sci-fi. And because both of these stories have decided to be sci-fi, rather than only dystopias, they fail. Because sci-fi stories require a somewhat believable backstory and set-up and current world building, and the worlds of Divergent and Hunger Games could not happen, or at least would not happen like that, even if there were rebellions and mutations and human experimentation. There are too many inconsistencies and plot holes that strain belief, and sci-fi needs to be somewhat believable.

With that, I hoped I’ve converted some of you to my genre-focused cause. Before you criticize a story for having a plot hole or being unrealistic, first consider the genre. Consider what the story is trying to do, and if it does it well or not. The plot holes might not be as big of a problem as you thought.

#dystopian fiction #horror fiction #writelr #writeblr #writing analysis #plot holes #writing #genre #bird box #divergent #dystopias #a quiet place #hunger games #writing critique #world building #worldbuilding #writing problems #plot hole #plotholes #long post

[canardroublard]

TMFU, Gaby’s fashion, and some feminist film analysis

Back when I slapped together a reblog post about the men’s fashion in The Man From UNCLE in between physio appointments, which somehow got like way more notes than I ever really expected or even wanted, I didn’t address the fashion of the lead female character, Gaby. It was outside the scope of the OP, and I didn’t feel like I had anything new or interesting to say about Gaby’s fashion, or lack thereof.

(My beta says those earrings are the ugliest thing ever. I disagree. It’s a wonder we’re still friends)

Anyways, we see only one brief scene of Gaby in her own street clothes, and a slightly longer sequence of her in her work clothes. The rest of the film, she is wearing clothes chosen for her by Illya. Saying “we just don’t have enough info” is a perfectly reasonable approach to this. So this was the other reason I had no intention of making this post.

But then people started getting interested. Someone reblogged commenting about Gaby’s fashion, and I discovered that I have very strong opinions about something I’d previously claimed was unknowable, and it made me wonder what was going on in my brain.

Then I talked to some other TMFU friends who all seemed interested in what I assumed was common knowledge/nothing unique. So, they may have been feigning interest out of politeness, but it activated the art history side of my brain, and here we are now!

The boring stuff but please read this

I am not attempting to tell anyone how to interpret this film. I am not even trying to change people’s minds or persuade them to my thinking. All I am doing is sharing my thought process. I wasn’t even going to do this for Gaby until people asked. To this end, please don’t attempt to argue with me about this. I don’t want to argue. I won’t respond to it. If you disagree, then please, just move along.

And I’m going to remind people that I love TMFU. I love this movie so much it hurts. Why am I putting this reminder here? Because I am about to apply some critical analysis to it, and in places this will be cynical, and it will not always look kindly on the film. If you just want to exist in a happy “I love TMFU!” bubble and not hear anything less than 100% positive about the film (which is a totally valid choice, I don’t fault anyone for that), then don’t read. But don’t yell at me for being mean or criticizing the film, because I warned you.

Tldr; or, if I were still being graded for this stuff here’s my thesis statement

When analysing Gaby’s fashion, there exist considerations which don’t apply to the male characters. Namely, she is a woman and the male gaze is a thing. So I am very, very wary about taking at  face value any expressions of traditional femininity in the choices made  for her outfits, hair, makeup, etc. Therefore, when considering her character, I find it much more useful and informative to give more weight to the aspects of her appearance which do not connote traditional femininity, rather than those that do.

For readers who have studied enough  media analysis to follow my thought based on that alone, there’s the thesis statement, y’all can go home (or at least skip to the end where I come to a conclusion). If you’re lost, then read on.

(mobile readers, the cut here might not work, and if so I apologize for what is going to be a very long post. Tumblr’s “keep reading” functionality is inconsistent at best, but I tried)

Context is for kings essential for analysing media in a meaningful way

(Or, some brief background. Stick with me here, we’ll get to the good stuff soon)

So, art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Attempting to analyze any artwork (in this case a film) while disregarding the culture it was created in and the intentions of the creator is...not going to get you very far. Asking “what is art” is a question that quite frankly exhausts me at this point (looking at you, Duchamp) but the closest I’ve ever come to an answer is that the only thing that separates art from everything else is intent. And intention only exists within cultural context. So yes, intent and context don’t just matter peripherally, they are one of the biggest considerations one needs to make when analyzing works of art. The creator in this case being Guy Ritchie et al, the culture being British/American Popular Cinema in The Year of Somebody’s Lord Two-Thousand-And-Fifteen. 

Everyone views and creates (if applicable) art through their own distorted, murky, imperfect lens of personal experience. And one of the most persistent Things in western art is that cishet men create art based on their experience of Being A Dude. This is crucial, because this lens of cishet male perspective literally underpins almost all of western culture including popular culture. And thanks to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, we have a name for this.

The male gaze and you

I’m going to quote Wikipedia here, because honestly this intro sentence sums things up rather neatly (with one exception which I will address momentarily).

In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer.

What does that all mean? That the Viewer and the Artist are both cishet men by default, and any women are Subjects of art. Women are viewed, never viewers. Men take action, women are subjected to actions. Furthermore, women are supposed to be pleasurable to view. By men. Since the Viewer is male by default.

But I would disagree that the pleasure is inherently based on women being sexual objects. That’s honestly a really damn limited read on the whole theory, and it’s one that Wikipedia itself contradicts later in the article. More broadly, cis men also derive other forms of pleasure from the presentation and viewing of female bodies, including aesthetic pleasure (the enjoyment of looking at beautiful things).

The theory of the male gaze is not without limits. As originally theorized, afaik it’s not particularly intersectional. It doesn’t really address queer perspectives or perspectives of POC. However, these issues are something I just can’t address here, unfortunately. And when looking at popular media, I still find the concept of the male gaze, imperfect as it may be, is a helpful means of analysis, so it’s worth having in your toolbox.

Circling back, the easiest way to sum up the male gaze, if you’re still not super clear on what it is, is with a demonstration.

Ever seen a shot like this in a movie?

And did you immediately roll your eyes? Feel gross? Congrats, you have just perceived and reacted to the male gaze.

Now we actually get back to TMFU

But the male gaze also shows up in many more subtle, insidious ways than fanservice-y boob shots. For this post, let’s focus on the following considerations, which might help everyone follow my thought process more clearly.

Gaby is a woman

She functions as the love interest of Illya in the script (I am not talking from a shipping perspective. What you ship does not matter for this discussion. I am talking about the narrative function of Gaby in the script as written. Put on your “cishet man” goggles for a moment)

Illya is a man who is attracted to women, specifically Gaby (again, I don’t care if your shipping conflicts with this. I am analyzing the film based on a literal reading of it as if I were a cishet man. Why? Because that’s who made the film. That’s who it’s “for”. I am all for queer readings of film--hell, I ship OT3, I myself have chosen a queer reading for how I interact with it, but I’m not critiquing people’s readings, I’m critiquing the film itself and to do that I have to critique its intentions and cultural context.)

Cishet men are traditionally only allowed to be attracted to women who are conventionally attractive. If they were to be attracted to anyone else it would destroy their fragile senses of self and their heads would explode or something. At least I assume that’s what must happen, based on how terrified they are of it.

Therefore, Gaby must be conventionally attractive, because it is literally required of her or otherwise the whole underpinning of western straight malehood crumbles and then where would we get such a pure, vast source of unadulterated toxic masculinity?

(Yes, this is a very cynical read on things. I’ve studied, like, three centuries worth of this bullshit. I’m tired. Let me be cynical.)

Or, to force myself to be less cynical, Gaby has to be pretty because...nope, this is still going to turn out just as cynical.

But what I will say in favour of this movie is that it gives Gaby and Victoria both a lot of agency and general awesomeness, which is quite unusual in this sort of big-budget action film, and it’s one of the big reasons I love it. I’m not saying that the entire film is sexist. On the contrary, there’s a ton of stuff to celebrate about how it portrays its female characters. But these aspects don’t change the cultural context, and we still have to consider the impacts of the male gaze.

Anyways, point being is that as filtered through the male gaze, Gaby is never given the option to, say, wear no makeup (or the appearance of such, as the guys are afforded, this being cinema where “no makeup” still means makeup) because that would look “ugly”.  Instead she needs to have a “baseline of pretty” which is way higher than reality because she is not a real human being with her own agency, she is a character created by a cis male writer/director team in a film directed by a cis man in a genre that caters to cishet men.

Gaby doesn’t exist in a vacuum. She exists battling centuries and centuries worth of sexist convention.

Now then, remembering all of that, let’s actually look at her. There are woefully few good pictures so I’m going to have to piece things together a little. Starting with the coveralls.

This is a great look, I love it. And I’m going to give Ritchie a lot of credit here because it would’ve been easy to go for a “Michelle Rodriguez in F&F sexy mechanic lady” look. In case I need to provide a visual:

(Repeat above gif about rolling my eyes)

Now, to be clear, I am not making any judgement about the way any real-life women dress. I’m sure there’s plenty of female mechanics who have their hair down and wear tank tops while working. That doesn’t bother me. I don’t care if real life mechanics choose to do their jobs in a string bikini. Or in cosplay of the bee from Bee Movie. I don’t care (and quite frankly it’s none of my business) because they are real people who can make their own decisions. But what I am talking about here is a fictional character who does not have her own agency. I am critiquing how male creators choose to dress their female characters.

So I personally choose to read much more into the unpretty  aspects of Gaby’s outfit, because these are not the “obvious” or “easy”   things. Obvious and easy are “of course she wears makeup” and “of course her hair looks good” and  “of course she doesn’t look like a swamp witch  who bathes in mud and spends her days cursing passing men”. Those things don’t challenge or disrupt the assumption that women must look attractive for male consumption.

Gaby’s introduction to us is with her in a pair of grease-stained, baggy coveralls, not wearing any obvious makeup (again, this is cinema, so she is wearing makeup. For cinema the goal posts around “wearing makeup” always need to be moved from where they’d be irl). There’s very little here that screams ‘pretty’. And that is fascinating to me.

I don’t know how deeply Ritchie thought this through when giving final approval to the costume, hair and makeup. But unpretty is not the default here. It’s a choice

And look at this. This is the stance and dress sense (and socks!) of a woman who does not give a damn about looking good for the male gaze, whether the in-movie gaze of Napoleon, or the implied gaze of the viewer and creator. It’s not ‘pretty’. And this is the only time in the film we see Gaby in her own everyday clothes, as she only escapes East Berlin with the literal clothes on her back.

So how do I think Gaby dresses? I think that for the most part she dresses....like this. Practical. Comfortable. With a few simple touches of things she likes/finds pretty, perhaps, but not with a specific interest in being pretty. She dresses for herself, not for others. And if that isn’t something to aspire to, I don’t know what is.

#gaby teller #tmfu #the man from uncle #meta #costume design #male gaze #fashion #thank you to michael bay for providing me with such a good example of the male gaze

[theexistentiallyqueer]

Okay so I’ve been thinking about that really bad Hot Take that’s been circulating about fanfiction. And it’s been kind of simmering in me. The root of the problem with it isn’t so much that it diminishes the quality of fanfiction so much as the way it characterizes two completely different genres of media.

Preface: at no point is this ever, ever, ever a diatribe or condemnation against fanart or the work fanartists put into their work. This is about the value that is ascribed to visual art vs the value ascribed to literary art. I am trying to talk specifically about the denigration of literary art in fandom spaces and the way it’s been recently, in a very popular tumblr post, martyred at the expense of queer and disabled writers and writers of color.

Fanart (as a collective genre, according to that post) - Good, artistically-driven, pure, wholesome. Fanartists draw for the sake of becoming better artists, and every work a fanartist draws or creates is made with the goal of becoming a better artist. Fanartists never draw anything that is base, silly, shippy, or smutty; if there is pornographic art, it isn’t pornographic but Erotica. There is no such thing as low- or middling-quality art, because all artists are striving to sharpen their skills and become better artists, and there are no fanartists who draw just for fun or shits and giggles. Fanartists achieve fame purely on the merit of their own artistic ability. There’s no room to criticize fanartists who attempt to cis-wash trans (or trans pesenting) characters, or fanartists who blatantly, frequently, and with frankly no impunity (as their art is reblogged, and reblogged, and reblogged) whitewash characters of color.

Fanfiction (as a collective genre, according to that post) - Smutty, ship-fodder, audience-pleasing trash. Fanfic writers write for the sake of expressing their inner boners or enacting their internal fantasies. No fanfic writers seek a sense of growth in their writing or work to improve their writing in any way. The only reason any works of fanfiction are popular is because they cater to the readership’s base instincts, and the True Authors, the Really Daring authors who write Real Literary Content, are cast the wayside.

It’s such a two-dimensional view of the situation--and it doesn’t even take into account edited content, such as gifsets, which makes up a huge portion of fandom content and has been a type of content, along with fanart, that fanfic writers have long voiced their (our) upset about getting more active & polarized attention than written works. It presents this dichotic view of fanart good/fanfiction bad. Which is also incredibly ugly and disturbing when you consider the fact that fanfiction is the earliest form of curated fan content, and fanfiction itself is inherently transformative in a way that fanart and edits are not, because fanwork in general, and and fanfiction in particular, is inherently in and of itself the public (fans) themselves overriding the corporate-owned landscape with their subversive interpretations.

Like, I have seen not-good fanart. I have seen bland, unimpressive, generic fanart. There is fanart from artists who don’t have their own unique sense of style. Fanart from artists who are just starting out and haven’t developed their skills yet. Fanart from artists who draw as a hobby, and damn they may be good, but they don’t give a fuck about contributing to The Body of Artistry because they have bills to pay and career interests outside of art, and damn, they’d really rather draw these two characters making out, or blushing at each other, or straight-up fucking, than they would create something of Great Artistic Importance. That art gets so many notes. It is liked and reblogged and shared.

And that’s all valid, because art ISN’T A COMPETITIVE SPORT. I embrace fanartists who draw just because they want to, because they don’t care about quality or artistic ideals or whatever, and just want to draw someone being happy, or sad, or angry, or getting dicked down, or whatever!!! It doesn’t matter. Draw because you want to draw. Because your art is an expression of yourself that speaks of your experiences and transgresses the definitions of the world you’ve been told to adhere to. You make art for yourself, to say fuck the system!!!! We’re just the lucky souls who get to appreciate it afterwards.

The complaints that come from fanfic writers--and yes!!! I am one, so proceed with the accusations of butthurt--are that fanart and edits get more social media attention (in the forms of likes, reblogs, retweets, shares, etc.) than fanfic does.

And it’s a valid complaint! It isn’t rooted in some alien reality that fanfiction is inherently more base and less artistic than fanart. I’ve seen some pretty aesthetically displeasing fanart get a high reblog count. And I’ve seen some incredible works of literary attention get no recs, no likes, no comments. I’ve seen works of middling writers who have a lot of fucking talent and show it in their work, and yeah maybe they write porn, but their prose SINGS, and no one comments, no one shares it, no one makes their love of it public the same way they do the fanart, the same way they do the edits and the gifsets.

It’s rooted in two things:

1. Literature (which fanfiction is a subgenre of) takes time to appreciate. You can look at a piece of art and reblog it without thinking about it. It could be a work on par with the Mona Lisa, and you could still look at it without any aesthetic or artistic sense and say, “Hey, that looks pretty.” But you can’t read without thinking; reading is an active mental pursuit you have to engage with. (If you try to pull out Twilight on this point to fight me, I’ll fight you back. I’ve actively read Twilight. Even reading awful literature takes effort; arguably it takes more effort than reading something good).

2. Literature is hard to market with words, because when you’re trying to encourage other people to read it, you have to use even more words. You have to use words to convince someone to read even more words! Some fanartists draw comics or fanart inspired by fanfiction--I love those artists and they do more for us than they could possibly know--but for the most part, you can’t use visuals to show someone why they should invest their time in reading a thing. And unlike fanart--when it’s a tribute, when it’s a showcase of the character’s or characters’ canonical attributes--fanfiction can’t be green-stamped by creators, because fanfiction is inherently built in narrative, and canon-compliant or not, that opens the legal owners of the property up to legal disputes.

So much easier, then, to focus on fanart, which distribution and publishing companies love because they see free advertising in sharing it, to complain that fanfiction is a dispirited genre of unartistic creators who just want to read the queer version of a bodice-ripper.

And then we get to the question of: why is the bodice ripper so bad? Are you willing to critique Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski with the same derision you have for queer writers? Are you going to hold the wish-fulfillment fantasies and introspective examinations of sexuality in relation to gender, race, class, and physical ability written by writers expressing their own experiences as inherently debauched and debased because pornographic fanfiction is popular, but not hold George R R Martin to the same standard? Are you going to criticize the prejudices and disparities and biases in publishing that prevent marginalized writers from being able to break into the industry? 

Are you ready to combat the enduring popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is overwhelmingly a series of heroism tales about shitty and mediocre white men?

Are you going to take aim at HBO for taking a fantasy series that, while still written by a sexist author who has a disturbing fixation on female sexuality has uplifted its female characters as heroes in their own right, and then drove it into the dirt to end on a note with the male “hero” murdering his female lover, an abuse survivor, after engaging her in an intimate kiss?

Did you take issue with the streaming blockbuster Stranger Things only confirming a character as canonically gay--after planning to have her be a straight romantic option for a major character--because the actress is the one who repeatedly badgered the showrunners about how she didn’t feel her character fit that role?

Are you invested in the fact that video games continue to be majority white, majority male, majority able-bodied, and majority inaccessible to disabled gamers?

You want to complain about fanfiction having too much porn and somehow that deligitimizes fanfiction as a genre as a whole?

Fuck off. There are hundreds, thousands even more likely, of other authors of equal skill to you or greater, who are struggling to have their works recognized in fandoms that don’t want to put the effort in to reading them, the effort into sharing and appreciating them. It’s harder to make someone care about a fanfic. You can reblog a fanart, and your followers will see the art itself right away. If you reblog fanfic, they have to make the conscious choice to engage with it. And none of that is your fault, because you can’t control how other people engage with fan content, but you can advocate, vocally, for the fair and equal respect for fanfiction and fan-written content. You can remind people, again and again, how fanfic writers do so much for so little.

But you want to come into my house and compare fanart to fanficton and claim one is inherently better? You’re the Banksy to my Catherynne L Valente, to my N.K. Jemisin, to my Seanan McGuire.

Start understanding the system is built against us all and start understanding why your battle is uphill. What’s oppressing your creative success is a white, straight, cis monopoly on what the good story, what the correct story is, limiting your options, tying you to a narrative you don’t belong to. Queerness and marginalization exist beyond what’s depicted in mainstream media, and fans expressing that through their own written content?

That’s us taking back the corporate-owned narrative for ourselves. It’s self-liberation through the written word. And yeah, some of it is porn.

It’s porn when it’s a drawing too.