#lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters

[veliseraptor]

i’m team “not all transformative works are fanfiction, fanfiction is a specific modern phenomenon founded on a specific relationship between reader and text that doesn’t require historical proofs to be a legitimate form” up until people start being snotty and obnoxious about it and then i am there going "hamlet is gesta danorum fanfiction”

#lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #important text posts

[veliseraptor]

once again petitioning for at least the temporary retirement of the word "problematic" in order to encourage more specific and precise language and force people to actually say what the issue is

"[x] is problematic because it depicts homophobia" okay but that doesn't actually tell me anything at all, try "[x] includes outdated stereotypes about gay people that go unquestioned/unchallenged by the narrative", more specific, more informative, less fucking obnoxious for me personally to read

#important text posts #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters

[veliseraptor]

sometimes fandom seems to struggle with the concept that...people can be kind/"good people" in some situations and very very not kind/not "good people" in others.

I feel like there's this urge to either write off the positive behavior as "fake" or to find a way to ignore/explain away/write out the negative behavior. and I personally find this really really irritating in both directions, actually

#the really bitchy addition to this post i'm leaving in the tags: it kinda makes me wonder if they've ever met real people #this isn't just about villain police stuff either #but it's not not about that either #mostly it's just. characters can be more than one thing depending on the situation #just because a character kills somebody doesn't mean every time they're nice it's totally fake #and conversely: just because somebody does good things doesn't mean they can't also have taken very harmful actions #anyway. irritable early morning post i might regret later #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters

[veliseraptor]

sometimes I think people think "narrative parallels" means "exactly the same" and like...that's not the point, actually, the point with narrative parallels is that they're variations on a theme that are meant to illuminate something about each variation. a narrative parallel that is just a precise reiteration of another thing isn't saying anything. it's just redundant.

#important text posts #actual english major lise #this one really grinds my gears actually #'it can't be parallel because they're not the same' no...no that's not what that means i don't think #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #mildly! but i'm still feeling bitchy so it gets the tag

[veliseraptor]

re: that post i just reblogged about 'cozy horror'...i know better than to expect anything approaching decent commentary from the mary sue these days but this article really is just. sending me this morning. (thank you for sharing, @bereft-of-frogs! this was a good diversion from being angry about work stuff to being angry about something else.) starting off strong with:

local writer has been introduced to novel concept of broader horror genre!

ah yeah that instantly makes sense to me particularly as a segue after mentioning midsommar and the witch, two movies that i would definitely describe as "cozy"

the cozy horror novels of t. kingfisher, like the one with the description of an animated deer skull hovering outside a window at night that still freaks me out to remember? those ones?

my favorite part though might be the author's confident assertion that this is all about gender really:

because boys like icky bad horror that's difficult and intense and girls like nice cozy horror with happy endings and low stakes. ah yes. feminism!

if this becomes a thing i am going to perish. isn't taking over the sff environment with cozy feel good fluff enough, must the world take this from me too, it's hard enough to find horror i like already

#lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #feeling very uncharitable and grumpy this morning

[veliseraptor]

i think i should be legally allowed to bite people who post things that annoy me in character tags

#important text posts #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters

[veliseraptor]

"i'm not an [x] apologist" fool. weakling

#i'm joking. sort of. #fuck the villain police #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters

[veliseraptor]

one of my lesser discussed grudges against the fandom police is the way in which they render interesting conversation in fandom borderline impossible due to the ripple effects of their rhetoric poisoning the ability to actually talk about characters in a complex way

#like. the whole 'x did nothing wrong' is at least partly a reaction against #i'm thinking of how like...you can't talk about the potentially interesting and painful ramifications of the possibility #that jgy killed jrs/let him be killed #because it'll just be taken as an opportunity for people to be like AND THAT'S WHY HE'S EEEEEEVIL #or else by people who will (understandably!) get very suspicious and preemptively defensive about it because of the former #and it just. it makes for much more shallow analytical possibilities #and that's sad #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters

[veliseraptor]

Top five spiciest untamed opinions!

man, I've been in my own little corner of fandom for long enough that I feel like I struggle a little to parse what is spicy of my opinions and what isn't, but here's a go at it

The Untamed is a show with complex, morally grey characters that's telling a slightly different but not inherently inferior story. Maybe I'm just a bit defensive about this, and I have with time come to appreciate a lot of things about the novel over the way they play out in the show, but The Untamed was the first version of the story that I fell in love with and I think at least some of the criticisms of it overstate the degree to which it morally simplifies the story. I think, whether because of requirements of censorship or other reasons, that the moral messiness of the story is subtler, I don't think it's absent, and while Jin Guangyao in particular falls victim to a pretty intense villain edit the narrative still has plenty of sympathy for him (even if the audience, all too often, does not). I think it's telling a slightly different story (as others have discussed), but I think it's a strong adaptation that still works with the underlying themes of the text.

However, that being said, The lessening of Wei Wuxian's culpability, as in the introduction of the second flautist, weakens his character. I feel like the character of Wei Wuxian as we see him in The Untamed still has the recognizable flaws of the character from the novel - I think the degree to which they're sometimes claimed to be toned down is overstated, which I think I've written some about before. He's still at least a little arrogant, causes problems, has a definite temper, and doesn't always respect other peoples' choices, among other things. But what The Untamed does do is remove some of his culpability, or at least temper it - both for Jin Zixuan's death and the massacre at Nightless City, which are two moments that contribute to a strong tragic arc in the first life, which makes for a more powerful (imo) arc in the second life. Removing, or at least lessening, Wei Wuxian's culpability for Jin Zixuan's death and Jiang Yanli's death makes him more a victim of circumstance than of his own human flaws, and at least for me, a character who is doomed by their own flaws is a far more compelling one than one who just happens to fall victim to outside forces. It makes him, I would argue, more passive and less of an active force, and I think the culpability for those two deaths - and the loss of control that causes it - makes for a more powerful narrative than that of a man who is victimized by someone else's actions.

Jin Guangyao was a good Chief Cultivator. I see people talk about him as though he was corrupt and evil and just plotting all the time, but the Bad Things™ he does mostly happen before his tenure as Chief Cultivator and, even taking those into account, have a limited impact on the world at large (with the exception of Nie Mingjue's death, but even that I would argue has more personal repercussions than broader political ones). As far as his responsibility for the cultivation world at large, we have no evidence prior to his downfall that he is negatively perceived by people, except for the fact of his birth/origins.

this is more MDZS-related than Untamed specific, but: MXTX deserves praise for writing "problematic" and messy queer sex, but it's just not hot. I don't have a whole lot to add on this one, but one of my least favorite parts of some corners of The Untamed fandom are people who are thoroughgoing MXTX antis who are quick to cry about the ~problematic~ aspects of Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian's sex life (which, honestly, I think are overstated a lot of the time, as is the weirdness of the sex scenes); however, in my opinion, the sex scenes as they stand just aren't very sexy, and I don't think that's intentional (as it arguably is in SVSSS). The sex scenes may be a shortcoming in the text, perhaps, but not the one certain people think it is.

this is again a stronger argument in the novel but I think it's present in the show as well: Jin Guangyao and Wei Wuxian are "there but for the grace of god" foils, but not in the sense of Jin Guangyao being "Wei Wuxian if he made bad moral choices" but in the sense of "who Wei Wuxian could've been if his circumstances were different." I've definitely written about this before and how much it drives me nuts the way people treat narrative foils in this story in general as Goofus and Gallant style duos, but this is a specific one. I think Jin Guangyao is an example of a story that runs alongside Wei Wuxian's, but ends in a different place, and I think the story isn't saying that he ends in that place because of something inherently worse about Jin Guangyao, but because of the way his circumstances happen to diverge from Wei Wuxian's in specific key ways. In some ways his ending is even a near beat-for-beat rewrite of Wei Wuxian's death, and Wei Wuxian receives the grace of a second life not because of any inherent merit, but actually because of his bad reputation. I think this goes for Xue Yang, too, actually.

I absolutely know I'm forgetting things and there are probably things back in my bitchy opinions tag that I could dig out, but here's at least a few that came to mind.

#conversating #maester of spreadsheets #lise has opinions #none of these feel so bitchy they need to go in the bitchy opinions tag but just in case i think i'll #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #lise memes #top five meme #the sad queer cultivators show

[veliseraptor]

funny how often incorrect quotes are not "incorrect" because they do not belong to the canon the characters are from but "incorrect" because they're just out of character

#important text posts #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters

[veliseraptor]

going to go out on a limb and say that it's not in fact a condemnable offense for a character to react badly to awful traumatic experiences. sometimes upsetting things happen and characters get upset about them and I don't actually think that is a reason to point and laugh

controversial perhaps but I stand by it

#i feel like i see it fuckin everywhere and it's starting to grate #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #queueing this to show up in a month and a half

[veliseraptor]

there are few things that inspire me more as a writer than reading something with the seed of a brilliant idea, executed badly

#this is one of the snottier things i've written in a while #but if i can't be a little snotty on my own blog then where can i be #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #confessions of a frustrated writer

[veliseraptor]

sometimes i get...frustrated...with some peoples' seeming inability to acknowledge that somebody could be genuinely wronged and justifiably upset without saying that it's someone else's "fault"

unfortunately i see this a lot specifically in fandom with my own people (villain fans), who in a desire to point out the ways in which a character's Bad Behavior is, perhaps, an understandable response to suffering which was legitimately a Bad Thing and not, in fact, deserved due to their later actions, will find another character to point a finger at and go "instead it is their fault! they are the Bad One!"

when like. there are two things here that are not contradictory:

Character A can have understandable and sympathetic motivations, and background of trauma that is actually still bad regardless of what they might be doing in the present

Character B can hurt Character A and/or cause them suffering in a real way, and still not be completely and utterly in the wrong and worthy of total condemnation.

like. I think the problem here is the idea that someone has to be condemned! wholeheartedly! as opposed to like. digging into the respective motivations and perspectives of two characters in conflict.

and I'm not even going to go "blah blah blah of course the ~bad character~ is still in the wrong because they're doing ~bad stuff~, their pain doesn't justify their actions" because honestly I could care less about who is "justified" or "in the right" and I wish other people would too.

#fuck the villain police #ish #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #i don't know if this is coherent but i am tired

[veliseraptor]

truly tragic experience I have every so often remains the one where someone is like "jin guangyao is a complicated character who isn't actually a horrible evil monster" and i'm nodding along and then comes the "unlike xue yang who is a horrible evil monster"

#just makes me :( every time #they are different! yes! #but they are both perfect and have done nothing wrong #< JOKE #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters

[veliseraptor]

actually though you know what, possibly the thing that drives me most insane about the feelings yakuza lurking about in mdzs fandom, specifically those dedicated to a really, really shallow moral dichotomy, is the way that. okay. how do I say this.

one of the things I found so deeply refreshing about getting into mdzs, and mxtx's other novels, when I did (and also the cnovels I've read in general, tbh), was getting into a text that seemed on first blush tailor-made to work for my general love of morally questionable characters who do bad things who are in awful situations often with no good solutions, and my specific distaste for both (a) morally didactic storytelling and (b) morality-obsessed fandom.

surely, thought I, this fandom, coming from a canon where the protagonist has done absolutely hideous things to people and presumably that's not a deal breaker, can be reasonable about not taking "did this character do bad things: if yes, then bad character must die, if no, then good character perfect angel" as the beginning, middle, and end of the matter. surely! finally, a place where I can lay down my arms and my weary head, cease bearing endless arguments about who's right or who's bad and who you're allowed to like, because, you know, surely it's obvious that's not the point here

and then. and then.

it just feels like, you know, finally feeling like I had a little corner of fandom where I could just roll around in people being terrible and coping badly with their problems and have the conversation not be dominated by circle-jerking about moral correctness, because that's what the text itself seemed to be actively disinterested in doing, and then here come a whole bunch of fucking clowns hellbent on making everything about morality all over again.

and I truly cannot overstate how much I don't care about that as a lens of "analysis" (to give it a generous name), but I also cannot overstate how much it feels like everybody thinks I should care, and how tiring it is to feel like I'm once again just soaking in a downpour of people yelling about how morally upright and correct they are when like. I came here specifically because I, foolishly, thought this wasn't what we were going to be doing.

i'm just extremely fucking tired and it feels like things have been particularly rancid lately. which sure sucks the joy out of doing things like "writing fic" let me tell you

#lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #important text posts

[veliseraptor]

it's so unimportant and petty but people reblogging my "obsession at first sight" post like

no! no!!! that's not what I'm talking about! I want deranged and obsessive and terrifyingly intense and at least a little bit toxic vibes! you have badly misunderstood me here and this is in fact kind of the opposite of what I meant

#important text posts #lise's aggressively bitchy opinions about irrelevant and unimportant matters #it's not that bitchy but. bitchy enough