#(I do not...exactly. But this story is not great for her)

[possiblythreefourthspeahen]

OP if you haven't yet I really recommend you look into art jewelry - it's pretty different from most commercial jewelry, tends to be a lot more experimental, and goes beyond showing pretty rocks (though I also adore pretty rocks). It's not all art nouveau in style, but the philosophy and emphasis is similar: jewelry as wearable art, a creation in itself, sculpture that stands on its own or with the backdrop and context of the body. Art Jewelry Forum is free and has loads of pictures, articles, and interviews to read:

There's also narrative jewelry, a subsection of art jewelry, which uses form and material to tell a story. My favorite narrative jewelers are Carolyn Morris Bach and Kim Noguiera.

There's also some incredible enamelists working today. The Enamelist Society is a great place to learn more about enameling and current enamelists:

One of my personal favorite enamelists is Sandra McEwen and while her style isn't exactly art nouveau, it carries a lot of the flowing lines, natural forms, and vivid colors from the style.

And enamel jewelry, actually enamel jewelry, is not cheap! The cheap "enamel" - the stuff on pins and key chains and some costume jewelry - is actually an enamel paint or resin. Fine, vitreous enamel, actual glass fused to metal, is extremely labor intensive and priced appropriately. Sandra McEwen has a cicada pendant for sale that is basically just that central piece on a pearl strand and it is almost 3,000 dollars. If I had the money I would snatch it up in a heartbeat.

Anyway that's my jewelry rant for the day, there are awesome jewelers and enamels all around the world making beautiful, fascinating pieces you won't find at Kay's or Jared's or any other chain store. I hope these links and pictures are a good starting point for anyone looking to find them.

A lot of the time when I reblog jewellery on here, it’s art nouveau jewellery, because I really like art nouveau. In general, and in jewellery in particular. And most of that is the aesthetic. I like the natural forms, I like the twisty curly bits, I like the use of materials, I like how a lot of art nouveau jewellery is using metals and stones and other materials to create a specific form, an insect or a plant or a goddess or even sometimes nature scenes. I like …

I feel like a lot of the time with jewellery, it feels like ‘I’m going to use this object to show off the size and value of my pretty rock���. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Some of those rocks are indeed gorgeous. But art nouveau feels more ‘I’m going to use these pretty rocks, and several other things, to create the impact of this object’? I just love the use of materials, glass and enamel and colour, as well as precious stones and metals, to create a form or a scene.

Like, you get a diamond ring, it’s a diamond ring. But you get something like a dragonfly brooch (Louis Acoc):

Or a lilypad hair comb (Rene Lalique):

Or a wisteria branch (Georges Fouquet):

And it’s a whole creation. A little wearable piece of art.

And I don’t want to sound too dismissive. I know the craftmanship and skill and artistry that goes into any kind of jewellery making. That diamond ring took skill I will never have. I just.

I like the emphasis on form more than material that you get with art nouveau. Like normally you hear ‘glass jewellery’, ‘enamel jewellery’, and it’s cheap, it’s frowned upon, but in art nouveau it’s what that glass or enamel was used to make that’s the important part:

(Rene Lalique)

(Eugene Feuillatre)

Anyway. In summary, I really, really, really like art nouveau jewellery?

[minniesfiles]

WHOEVER YOU WANT ME TO BE

You wanted a way to escape your misery, and Mingyu was exactly that.

❧ PAIRING; mingyu x reader

❧ GENRE; fluff, hurt/comfort

❧ TAGS/WARNINGS; strangers to lovers kinda, hurt/comfort, mention of infidelity, smoking, fluff

❧ WORDCOUNT; 0.8k

𐚁₊⊹

▍2 FEBRUARY 2024

You pressed your back against the cold brick wall with your arms wrapped around yourself as you tried to steady your breathing. The best still pulsed from the inside of the club, and you could hear the laughters and chatters from people whose lives weren’t falling apart like yours.

You wiped your face, smearing mascara across the back of your hand. You were fine — really, you were — until you weren’t. One moment, you were dancing to the music, and the next — your whole world shattered.

You hated this. Hated that you let yourself care so much. Hated that you let him break you like this.

There he was, the boy you loved for two whole years, the boy who whispered promises into your skin, his lips now pressed against someone else’s.

You stared for too long, frozen in place, waiting for him to pull away, to look guilty, to do something. But he didn’t. He just kept kissing her.

So you left.

Now, you were out here, your breath hitching and fingers digging into your arms as you tried to hold yourself together.

The scrape of a lighter pulled her attention.

You turned slightly, just enough to see a boy — maybe a year or two older — leaning against the wall with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He was very tall — at least six feet two inches. His hoodie was unzipped which revealed a worn-out band tee underneath. He had a dark leather jacket on, and his hands were stuffed in his pockets. He leaned casually against the wall as he exhaled a slow cloud of smoke.

He noticed you staring and turned his head towards your direction. “Bad night?” he asked, exhaling another smoke into the cool air.

You let out a bitter laugh as you swiped your hand across your damp cheeks. “Something like that” you answered.

The brunette boy studied you for a moment before flicking ash onto the pavement. “Let me guess,” he said, tilting his head slightly. “Boy troubles?”

You let out another hollow laugh. “How did you know?”

“You’ve got the look” he smirked, but there was something softer behind it.

“What look?” you frowned.

“The I just had my heart ripped out and I’m trying really hard not to fall apart in front of a stranger look.”

You huffed, shaking your head. “Great. Love that I’m so obvious.”

The boy took another slow drag before exhaling. “Want me to beat him up for you?”

That caught you off guard. You turned your head to look at him properly, and searched his face for signs of teasing.

“I’m kidding. Unless you want me to” his smirk deepened.

You actually laughed at that, though it was short, surprising yourself. “Thanks, but I don’t think he’s worth it.”

“Probably not,” the boy agreed, flicking his cigarette away. “Most of them aren’t.”

A silence stretched between you, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. You found yourself breathing a little easier.

“Who are you?” you asked finally. ‘What’s your name?’ would’ve been more appropriate.

The boy pushed off the wall and turned to face you fully. His gaze held yours for a long moment before he gave a slow, crooked smile.

“Whoever you want me to be.”

“That’s not an answer” you blinked.

“Sure it is” he shoved his hands back into his pockets.

“You want a distraction? I can be that. You want someone to listen? I can do that too. Or—” he grinned, eyes glinting.

“You want to forget for a little while? I’m your guy.”

You tilted your head, considering him. “And why would you do that?” you questioned.

The boy exhaled, looking up at the sky as if thinking. “Because I know what it’s like.”

He then looked back at you, and the teasing edge in his voice softened. “To need an escape.”

You bit your lip, considering again. He was a stranger. You had no idea what his story was, but there was something in his eyes — something that made you believe him.

And maybe you did need an escape.

“Okay,” you said finally.

The boy’s smirk returned. “Okay?”

You nodded. “Be my escape.”

“Come on, then” he held out a hand.

You hesitated only for a second before slipping your hand into his. His fingers were warm against yours despite his tough exterior, and oddly you felt safer than you did with your now ex-boyfriend.

You both started walking away from the club, away from the past few hours, and away from the pain that was simmering in your chest.

For tonight, you didn’t have to be the girl whose heart had just been broken.

For tonight, you could be whoever you wanted to be.

And so could he.

“I’m Mingyu”

“I think that was the right question you were meant to ask”

“Y/n” you replied, a little embarrassed.

[phantomrose96]

It's interesting how Madeline responds to Christophe's reassurance that they won't be like her mother and stepfather, considering that in the first loop, she's the one who declares she's leaving him. It makes me wonder what exactly Lucinda said to her after Madeline followed her out, as well as (what with the resentment coffee and the mom argument and the 'she moved into HIS apartment' thought) how long she's been thinking about getting a divorce before this.

(Before the Birds Sing)

(You know? I think I just realized I never clarified in-story Christophe and Madeline's relationship. I'd written them as boyfriend and girlfriend [but serious enough to be living together]. I am now recontextualizing this with the read that Madeline is his wife.)

It WAS the intentional read that Madeline and Christophe's relationship is... perhaps... not great. Keeping in mind, the entire narration is from Christophe's POV. So when he says she resents giving him the first cup, maybe she does, or maybe that's Christophe's read. But they are very quick to assume defensive stances against each other. Christophe is more interested in navigating this power-play against Madeline than, like, actually being on the same team as her.

I really like someone identifying in the tags (checked, it was @narsh-potatoes and @popcorn8784) that Lucinda is a foil to Christophe. Even if she's absolutely horrible, can it really be called wrong of her to do what she wants with her life...?

Lucinda makes this huge life decision, and makes it anyway knowing it'll upset people and garner her a negative reaction. And then here's Christophe, who has ceased living his life in favor of doing what others will approve of over and over.

Maybe Madeline leaving Christophe was a long time coming. Maybe it was inevitable--because if it wasn't this blow-up, it would be a later one. But actually, "That Won't Be Us." Madeline will never be allowed to be Lucinda and leave Christophe. Because Christophe is keeping them here. Today. Forever :).

[daffydilled]

On using the Robins

Alright, I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but DC? We gotta talk about the Robins and how they're used. For a company and comic universe with a truly spectacular willingness to explore every possible avenue of a character, if you want to really get to the point of Batman, we're going to need Robins used consistently across media and we're going to need the right ones used.

Why? TL;DR: the Robin you use tells us a hell of a lot about the Batman you're using. If you're going to keep using Batman in everything, we're going to need Robins. And they need to be the right ones. Using the wrong Robin is destroying live action DC adaptations.

Believe it or not, this whole rant started with me playing Gotham Knights on my PS5. Normally, anything that distinguishes between Robins and puts them interacting with others is pretty damn good to go in my book. It's not exactly common, after all. But I got about 15 hours into it and realized what was bugging me so much: it uses the wrong Robins.

Let me clarify. Nightwing and Red Hood are nearly perfect. They're exactly where they need to be. But if that game let Tim Drake detect in the role filled by Batgirl, let Batgirl be Oracle, and put Damian Wayne into the 'young Robin finding his wings' role that Tim plays, the story would have been far more cohesive. Why? Because I would have bought the final word Bruce tells them far more and I would have bought Talia's involvement as well.

This particular Bruce Wayne is an older Batman, one comfortable removing himself from the cause and passing it on to the rest of his family. The balance of Robins (and the misuse of Batgirl) upsets this. This isn't a team that is ready for that step yet, and Bruce in-game would know that. One can argue that's part of the tragedy of it, but the weight of the dynamic is still lopsided. The game feels unbalanced. If a story is going to rest on proteges and inheritors, I need to buy their ability to take over for Batman, and I don't. (And don't get me started on the misuse of Babs in this game. That woman has her own team, her own struggle!

Batman v Superman pokes me too. It's the lack of a Robin in these, though, that really grind my gears. That is a violent, brutal Batman that has fallen so far into 'The Mission's' ass, I kept expecting to see a suited memorial to a dead kid in his batcave and an extremely stubborn thirteen-year old stopping him from breaking a Kryptonian's face open before the dread "Save Martha" can be said.

That is a Batman that screams I just lost my son. He is so angry and bitter and walks around with an armory for a suit. That's a perfectly acceptable Batman to explore, when paired with the context of Jason Todd. Otherwise, it just reads like they made the movie gritty for the sake of being gritty and missed out on piles of nuance for both the heroes.

Frankly, a Batman grieving Jason Todd and a Superman processing the arrival of a cloned version of him mixed with Luthor's DNA would go miles to explaining the mental states of both these guys, but nobody bothered to do that, so I'm just bitter.

One of the oddest mix-ups of Robins I've ever seen has absolutely nothing to do with Batman. It's from Birds of Prey or The Fabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn, where somehow Stephanie Brown and Jason Todd pre-pit get fused into one character and named Cassandra Cain. That is. Odd. I don't even really know how to address it, but I'm going to try.

Fact one: Steph would have been a perfect kid for Harley to meet in that movie. She's whip-smart, tough as nails, survived having a supervillain for a dad, and could, in the right light, even look a bit like Harley. There's this great potential there for her to remind Harley of a younger version of herself before the Joker got to her and wouldn't have messed with the vibes Birds of Prey was going for at all.

Fact two: Jason Todd also wouldn't have been too odd of a fit, especially if this was happening in a world where he did manage to jack the tires. He's immediately recognizable to the fans, though, which I do think would have pulled focus from the Birds in that movie.

Fact three: That was not Cassandra Cain and it was frankly a bit of an insult to her character to name that character Cassandra Cain. That's a rant for another time though.

Why mention it now? It's indicative of the greater issue DC has with adapting its characters to screen. Namely the issue to actually adapt the characters at all and not turn them into some weird Frankenstein'd versions of themselves. There's no Batman in Birds of Prey, but the world he'd inhabit is. And that world, based on our poor scrambled egg mess of Robins, is a disaster.

I think it's important for DC to remember they are adapting comics here, and those comics do not shy away from using Robins in them. Even in the most bat-shit (pun not intended) alternate universes where there's Cthulhu Batman or Edwardian Batman or White Knight Batman, the Robins are there.

How they're living and dying in those universes is one of the reliable ways to judge things like tone, narrative priorities, and themes. There's nothing wrong with trying a few different version of Batman, but Batman without Robin doesn't work long-term. It hasn't before and it will continue to fail if DC, in their adaptations, don't get a handle on their universes' scale. After all, the heroes only work if they have people to pass the work onto.

[unforth]

How did it feel to go from the 80’s to the explosion of acceptance around the 2010’s? In terms of being queer?

hm, interesting question. First, a couple disclaimers: I am not an expert in queer history, I was not involved in queer activism in anyway growing up, and no one in my family was queer. I was born in 1982 and am currently 42, and my mother had a lot of gay friends, but she intentionally sheltered us (my brother and I) from a lot of that once they all started dying from AIDs. For my own queerness, I worked through a lot of identities because I was an extremely confused asexual who didn't actually learn that asexuality existed until I was 30; I'm afab and was already married to a woman before I realized I was ace (I now ID as aroace, agender.).

All that said, I grew up in New York City, in a very accepting city and with a very accepting family. I knew queer people from a young age and my mom was sick of watching her friends die and got involved as she could (she was a New York City public school high school teacher; a lot of queers gravitated toward public schools because it was a stable job with decent pay and no one would care if they weren't married, in fact it was often considered a plus in the 60s and 70s for teachers to be single, and when mom got pregnant with my brother in 1976 she says multiple other teachers pressured her to quit because okay fine she was married and a teacher, but married and a teacher WITH KIDS? Appalling. needless to say she didn't quit.)

Anyway. Sorry. I lost the thread.

Honestly, the answer to this question is: utterly unbelievable.

If you had told 1990s about-to-start-high-school me that this is where we'd be in my lifetime I'd have thought you were out of your goddamn mind. I was obsessed with To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. I'd walked in AIDs walk and raised money with my mom every year starting in 1990. Mom and I saw the original off-Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and the original Broadway production of Rent. I was about as in-the-loop and accepting as a kid in that era could be, and I spent my college years thinking I was bi (I feel the same about everyone! that's bi, right? lmao, so young and clueless). And I never, never thought that nationwide gay marriage was even in the cards. I never dreamed that trans people would be able to live as openly as they do now. I didn't even really think we could do much about AIDs beyond slowing the spread.

I am only 42. I don't even consider myself middle-aged yet (though I'm definitely getting close to that particular tipping point). I grew up with my mom's even older stories, about being friends with the gay men at Cornell when she was in college in the early 60s, and her discussions of how far things had come in HER life (she's 80 now) and yet I was the one who pointed out that my great uncle, who died before I was born, was clearly mostly definitely bi and maybe gay (the look on her face when I said that and she realized I must be right. I keep meaning to post some of Natie's photographs.)

When my wife and I got married in 2013 we planned where to live, where we could travel, where we'd have kids, all around where it would be safe. My wife has health problems; if we traveled and something happened to her, we had to be sure that we were in a state where they would recognize our marriage and let me visit her, or else we wouldn't go there.

Sorry. I'm not holding the thread of narrative in this post well, I've been pretty sick with strep throat and my brain is just refusing to make this very coherent, and also it's just... so much. The amount I've seen, how far we've come, since I was a kid, is so fucking much.

I still sometimes don't believe how far we've come, nor how quickly we've done it.

And that's exactly why conservatives are shaking in their boots. These trends challenge all the things they believe true about the nature of authority and societal control. If they let up for an instant, then they'll have to accept that cis hetero white christian men actually have never been any better than anyone else, and their whole worlds will crumble, and that scares them to death because they're also old, most older than I, and they remember exactly what every queer person when I was a kid lived with. They remember Matthew Shepard, and all the hate crimes that the queer community survived, they remembered all the slurs that we've strived to reclaim and how they were used such that we had to reclaim them, and they really think that equality is a demotion for them, and that true equality would mean they're subject to the same things they've subjected us to, and that terrifies them.

Ugh, sorry, rambling again.

What I think about the changes is that they're fucking amazing, and that if I could somehow convince 13-year-old me that any of this would happen, she'd have sobbed with joy. Especially about the asexual part lmao.

We're in a down-swing of acceptance now, but the pendulum still won't go back to where we were during the AIDs crisis, much less back to where things were a hundred years ago.

We've come so far.

We're not going back.

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[shorthaltsjester]

maybe this is just because it feels like a metaphor for how tlovm uses vex in general (and i could write an essay about it and have and will again) but something that i both understand tlovm choosing to do and deeply hate as a choice they made is vex no longer being the one to break thordak’s crystal even though vax was still the one to kill him. especially since the show was very explicit about thordak being responsible for killing the twins’ mother and also set it up as a sort of avenging of percy, it felt tonally weird to literally just have vex hanging out in the background for both the crystal breaking and him being killed. it’s fine (deeply upset voice) i understand that adjustments to pike’s vestige made this make sense for the plot but. glad to have vex continue to be a witness in tlovm moments that in the campaign her agency in were delicious character moments. it’s fine.

[yellowocaballero]

hi! i've been reading some of your older fics and was wondering if there's any merit in watching buffy for the first time in the year 2024

This may not be obvious, but this is actually an extremely complicated and highly subjective question. I'll try to go on for too long.

As background: my mother loved Buffy and its spin-off Angel growing up. It was our Bible (besides the actual Bible). Not kidding, she was on the forums and fan groups and wrote fanfiction for it and everything (These days, she's really into kdramas and Asian dramas, and calls me about how the Thai seem like big fans of gay people). So I'm quite biased.

BTVS is both a product of its times and ahead of its times. It was a show about feminism and the struggle of living in this world as a woman, when very few shows were doing that. It was the first show to have a long-lasting lesbian couple, and the first show to depict a kiss between them. For better or for worse, it was one of the codifiers of broody vampire boyfriend. It was pretty unafraid to be experimental in a lot of what it did. It had incredibly complex and nuanced character work and growth that I still aspire to. Spike's arc is still matched in quality only by Avatar's Zuko. Angel's long term arc, from Buffy to his spin-off series, still makes him one of the most complex characters on TV. It had the most complex depiction of depression on TV at the time and I still think it's one of the best. I think the show had very high highs.

It also had very low lows. Some of the feminism is problematic in retrospect. The sapphic couple has a rather famous element that was severely problematic. There are, overall, some deeply atrocious arcs that I can appreciate objectively but not in practice. Xander: a whole-ass character aged awfully. On a meta level, the workplace conditions were bad (thanks, Whedon.) There are no people of color. The spoiler's sake I won't go into detail on this, but in general the good stuff was so influential and the bad stuff was just awful.

I think these days people tend to brush off the entire thing because it's Whedon. That is more than fair. But I'd also say that Whedon & Buffy is extremely similar to Brian Michael Bendis & Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis was fantastic at writing sassy, bouncy, permanently stressed-out teens - issue was, he wrote entirely different serious adult characters the way he wrote these sassy teens. Same with Whedon: the annoyingly constant quips are perfect for Buffy, because that's who the characters are. They're awful in Marvel, because Steve Rogers is not Xander. Kinda similarly, Buffy was genuinely feminist for 90s TV - issue is, Whedon has not grown or developed his views, and now his works feel so sexist (oh my fucking god why did you treat Natasha like that). After a certain point it's egotistical: you're writing like that because you're Joss Whedon and it's how you write, not because it's what's best for the characters and story. But it was really important to me to get the character voices right, and it's freaking difficult to endlessly write dialogue that distinct, full of voice, witty, and clever.

I think BTVS & Angel TV's greatest influence on my writing is how intensely character-driven both of those shows were, and how intricate the characters were. What every character did was something they would do, if that made sense. Even the stuff I hated to watch, that made me uncomfortable, was the culmination of so much (usually). I think I also picked up the constant wit and humor lol. On a personal level, the conversations I would have with my mother where she broke down the character motivations and composition of the story was my first exposure to looking at storytelling from an analytical perspective and a framework of critical analysis, which was an approach I carried into the rest of the media I consumed and that was the primary reason I was able to become a decent writer. Thanks, Mom. Have fun with your kdramas.

TL:DR: There is merit, especially if you care about good character work. There are things about it that may make you want to drop it, which is extremely valid. Season 1 is rough but interesting, Season 2 and 5 are the best, Season 3 is pretty good, Season 4 and 7 skippable, and Season 6 is........epic highs, epic lows......

[atopvisenyashill]

hey! i’ve been sort of lurking on your blog for a while, lol, but seeing you answer one of your recent asks abt some of your main theories got me curious enough to finally start a convo. so for the record, i was kind of ambivalent about sansa before reading some of your metas, and i’m still not really a jonsa believer, but a lot of things you’ve catalogued on ur blog did a lot to solidify sansa being lady of winterfell as a new member of my ASOIAF Endgame PredictionsTM, and seeing u answer that recent ask w all your separate bits of evidence collected together really sold it for me! quick question, though: i tend to skim-read long posts, so maybe i missed something, but did you say anything about why sansa would specifically end up as QiTN, rather than just lady of winterfell (still under whoever the next major ruler of westeros is)? i mean, especially if we do go ahead and assume that bran will end up as king in harrenhal, i don’t quite get why sansa would want to establish the north as a separate kingdom by seceding from her own brother? i suppose there’s the angle of wanting to honor what robb fought for, which certainly isn’t a bad motivator… but i think the remaining starklings, of all people, would be more likely to recognize (and focus on the fact) that robb’s main motivation in participating in the Wot5K was mostly just to avenge ned and secure the safety of the rest of his family. and even if the idea of finishing what robb started is a motivating factor, considering that asoiaf’s endgame is almost certainly going to be post-apocalyptic in some senses, i feel like whoever’s making these big decisions (even if that group does include some of the starklings, though it definitely will) would be more likely to prioritize trying to kind of return the world of westeros to something most resembling the previous status quo, which committing to splitting the kingdoms would maybe not really help with?

interested to hear your thoughts on all of this, thanks for reading :D <3

First - thank you for the compliment!!! I love to spread the gospel of Sansa As Ruling Lady In Winterfell lol, and it's nice to know I've convinced some people about some aspects of it! I have got to get better about adding a tldr at the ending though bc I too will sometimes just skim a post and queue it alsdjfla. (also validating each other on "the ending is going to be post apocalyptic" - YES that's what I've BEEN saying omg I do sometimes feel like some of the endgame predictions leave out that imo the last half of ados is going to feel very much like a post-apocalyptic type rebuilding!). Also sorry if this is kind of meandering, I wanted to organize it a bit more but that didn't work out lol.

But honestly okay - I go back and forth a LOT on whether Sansa is ruling lady of Winterfell or straight up Queen on the North. I’m still very undecided on it! I think it makes sense, narratively and just like logically that if Rickon is found he’s Bran’s heir in the South (both as a parallel to the Aegon/Viserys ending of the Dance and as a kind of neat bow tie on their story as brothers - they start the series being left behind in Winterfell and end the series choosing to stay behind but together in Harrenhal), then the girls are in the North as the Starks in Winterfell. Again, I think this is a parallel to Sansa/Serena & a play on the she-wolves of winterfell, but also, being the two oldest Starks, makes sense that Sansa is ruling lady and Arya is a sort of Hand (and like Rickon, potentially the one their line descends from but again - call me Sokka because I love to waffle!) But Queen in the North specifically? I think that's less clear than Sansa being ruling lady of Winterfell (which imo isn't just clear, it's the obvious answer for her story arc) though I still think there's a high probability of it.

First, let me get into the more conjecture side of it. Basically, I think part of the reason the kingdoms are going to split is because there will be some population and geographic changes after the Long Night/second war for the throne - I think I've mentioned it before I believe the Neck is going to "break" ie become flooded the same way the arm of dorne was "broken" and flooded and became the stepstones. This would make the North a lot harder to get to, geographically, which could further isolate them and want them to have their own monarch who is In The North and can make more snap decisions as they rebuild than Bran could all the way passed the Neck in Harrenhal.

I also think the Iron Islands are going to get fucked and Asha will lead a lot of her people to the mainland to settle, probably in the North due to them needing more population because they also got fucked - and two groups of people who are notoriously kind of isolationist coming together might prefer to stay partially disconnected from the main kingdoms. Which isn't to say they won't have contact with each other - I guess I was picturing like....idk a sort of EU thing lmao, or maybe a Narnia thing of like, open borders between the 2-3 kingdoms who are all allies and work together due to being on the same continent.

Of course, the breaking of the Neck (which is something I'm a lot more confident on - I think it's a guarantee tbh) could also drive the North back into the arms of the other kingdoms, as they need more help recovering from the Long Night and can perhaps offer help to the South as the South recovers from their wars. But anyways that's my geographic/logistical reason why I think the North might stay separated from the rest of the Kingdoms, even with a Stark King on the throne.

Now, in the previous ask, I mentioned her parallels to other Queens and some of the Queen imagery surrounding her - there's the abundant Naerys/Sansa parallels, and the Cersei/Sansa antiparallels. There's a bit of talk about how ~Sansa is good at queenly things~ and ~Joffrey was foolish to set her aside that feels (to me) like setup for her being a ruling Queen - no one can set her aside or disrespect her then, like Naerys and Cersei go through. Of course just paralleling a few Queens doesn't inherently mean she'll be Queen but I do think the emphasis on comparing her to queens is pointed - then again, imo there's also a lot of parallels between her and Princess Rhaena Targaryen of Dragon Twins fame, and Rhaena does not wind up a queen!

(there is also some parallels to historical queens there, most notably to Elizabeth of York, Queen of England and wife to Henry VII. Notably their marriage ended the War of the Roses, but I don't claim to be an expert there but I have reblogged some meta on that here and I'm sure there's others floating around).

There's also these two little bits here-

Ahead he glimpsed a pale white trunk that could only be a weirwood, crowned with a head of dark red leaves.

In their midst was a pale stranger; a slender young weirwood with a trunk as white as a cloistered maid. Dark red leaves sprouted from its reaching branches.

The first is from a Jon chapter and I think it could point to Bran or Sansa - dark red hair, pale skin, and a crown. The second one is what makes me think it points to either just sansa or both of them - that comes in a Brienne chapter. Again you have the pale skin (white as a cloistered maid) and dark red leaves acting as hair almost. To be honest, there's a lot with the Tully-Starklings having the coloring of a weirwood that's sort of fascinating in what it implies - perhaps that their roots are leading them back North, perhaps something more sinister re: Bran being eaten by a tree. I digress lol.

There's a few comments from Ned as well that feel like they might be foreshadowing-

“Brandon. Yes. Brandon would know what to do. He always did. It was all meant for Brandon. You, Winterfell, everything. He was born to be a King’s Hand and a father to queens. I never asked for this cup to pass to me.”

"Yet someday he may be the lord of a great holdfast and sit on the king's council. He might raise castles like Brandon the Builder, or sail a ship across the Sunset Sea, or enter your mother's Faith and become the High Septon." But he will never run beside his wolf again, he thought with a sadness too deep for words, or lie with a woman, or hold his own son in his arms. Arya cocked her head to one side. "Can I be a king's councillor and build castles and become the High Septon?" “You,” Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, “will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon.” Arya screwed up her face. "No," she said, "that's Sansa."

There's a lot made of that last one, about how Ned potentially lays out his kids endgames right there to Arya -

Lord of a Great Holdfast and sit on a King's Council - Jon Snow

Raise Castles Like Brandon the Builder - Bran

Sail a Ship Across the Sunset Sea - Arya

Enter the Faith and Become High Septon - Rickon

Marry a King, Rule His Castle, Sons will be {etc} - no, that's Sansa

Those comments stick out to me because imo Sansa & Arya's endgames will be a sort of mirror to Ned & Lyanna so it seems natural to me that some of Sansa's endgame would be foreshadowed in the chapters of her father the same as Arya's endgame is sort of anti-foreshadowed (idk how you would phrase that one lol) in Lyanna.

tldr i am much more confident in the idea that Sansa will rule Winterfell than I am in what title she will have while ruling. I do think there is some Sansa-as-Queen foreshadowing, in her comparisons to other Queens like Naerys, Cersei, and Elizabeth of York, and the way characters like Ned & Tyrion talk about how ~queenly~ she acts and how naturally leading under stress comes to her.

[fisherrprince]

Although - let me premise. I like Lyse. I don’t think Conrad choosing her to lead the resistance was earned, it felt very fast and a bit out of nowhere because she’s not a leaderly type and the traits she gained were in Doma (he didn’t see that happen), but you actually don’t have to change anything major to fix or at least better it in my brain, you just need to swap around some dialogue. Don’t have him talk to you about choosing her, have her take the reins herself or with encouragement when he dies. thassit I think itd give her some je ne sais quoi

[archerstreet]

you ever hangout with someone and their company is actually much worse than being alone?

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Shit like that is why Tangerine should've stayed in Ericson! She must take care of her leg but nooooooo! People in Ericson was mean to me :'(! I'm not surprised she caught a fever considering she's ignoring her wound. Sorry for sounding so bitter.

It's a big issue with the "Clementine left Ericson willingly" plot point in this trilogy. Aside from it just being out of character for her based on what we see in TWDG, it lessens the amount of sympathy we're willing to give as readers.

If she was forced to leave Ericson, whether because they kicked her out or it was under attack, she would have no choice. She'd have to leave, and then these situations wouldn't feel like her fault, y'know? You're more likely to see her suffer, fall down, or get an infection, and feel bad because it's not her fault, she was dealt a shitty hand.

But this angle of her leaving because she was unhappy or because she felt like a burden... she still left the safety of place where she could've properly healed from an amputation. Losing her leg isn't just another injury you can be like, "Oh just keep off it, it'll heal." That's a lot of healing and physical/emotional trauma to get through and she would've had a better chance of it if she stayed with AJ and Ericson.

Since she left, we're kinda just sitting here saying, "Yeah, Clementine... you have to take care of your leg. You have to wash it. You can't be running around on it all the time while it's still healing. You're going to be more prone to infection, and in the zombie apocalypse, that's super not great. What were you thinking? You should have stayed at Ericson. You should not be here at this ski lodge or running through the woods."

A lot of problems with the story and characterization stem from that decision and unfortunately, it's weakening the story.

[artheresy]

AAAHHHH ICHOR OF TWO DRAGONS WTF

HOYOVERSE IS SICK, THEY’RE SICK AND FUCKING TWISTED IM NEVER RECOVERING FROM THIS

BAIHENG APPEARANCE, SHE’S GORGEOUS, SHES RADIANT, SHE BRINGS THE WARMTH AND CARE AND I LOVE HER SO FUCKING MUCH IM GONNA CRY

AND YINGXING,,, MY LOVE 😭 MY OLD MAN BABYGIRL, I WANNA CRY I LOVE HIM SO MUCH TOO, THE FUCKING BRACER, THE GODDAMN BRACER IM SO

And Hoyoverse isn’t SLICK for showing the flash of Yingxing presumably (or perhaps? Blade at that point already the hair looks dark but I could be wrong) being stabbed through the torso, a front view from Dan Feng in a position where it looks like YX might have shielded him? Somehow, BUT ALL OF THAT SHOWING WHILE THE VOICE AOVER TALKS ABOUT THE TRANSMUTATION ARCANUM?? They aren’t slick, I’ve never believed in the dragon heart theory more in my life DO YOU HEAR ME

Ugh, I atill can’t collect my thoughts fully I’m going crazy, I feel insane, high cloud quintet lore devastates me to my very core

Also

then :’) at the end, with the Astral Express? His found family pulling him back out, that’s so… I love this animated short so much

Seeing Yingxing even if it was for such short moments made me so happy, SEEING THE BRACER AFTER ALSO SEEING THEY ADDED THE BRACER TO DAN FENG IN THAT ONE LEAK ART MAKES ME SP HAPPY today has been a greatday for me and im feeling exceptionally annoying

[joyridingmp3]

crazy to me to think that my dads birth chart is predominantly fire, my mothers is mostly water, my sister is super earth heavy, and i have a lot of air in mine

[designernishiki]

sometimes i kinda wish mirei wasn't killed off because boy the divorced exes dynamic with majima could've been so god damn funny

[quietwingsinthesky]

I think the nature of Clara haterism on Tumblr can’t be fully understood without the historical context of 2013. Namely that by the time of DW season 7b Moffat was widely hailed as The Bogeyman Of All Misogyny Ever. Clara was considered THE prototypical Shallow Moffat Girl, and she became a sort of figurehead for everything wrong with the show. (Bc everyone was maybe 14 and Smith was too beloved to insult.) Consequently, she evokes a kneejerk bad faith reading response in many users even today.

yeah, alright, i can see that. i am surprised that, at least as far as i’ve seen, amy & river don’t get the same treatment? or if they did, it hasn’t persisted half as long as opinions on clara have. Because having now seen how all three of them were written, amy got treated. so much worse with The Misogyny™️, and River bounces between ‘actually a fascinating character’ and ‘moffat wrote a sexy girlboss who wants to fuck the doctor’ so hard it gives me whiplash. (and i say this as a River enjoyer, I love her and she deserves so much better lmao.)

Of the three of them, I think Clara actually comes out a lot better written overall? She’s allowed more space to be a character rather than be a woman, if that makes sense. Sure, bit of a rocky start in s7, and I can certainly see why the Impossible Girl thing could be aggravating to some people. (I think it was. Fine. fantastic episode conceptually that sort of fell apart when it came to actually doing anything.) but Clara in s8 (and the start of s9) is fantastic. Her relationship with Danny and the Doctor is messy and deceptive and so understandable. “Listen” as an episode almost felt like ‘hey what if the clara putting herself in the doctor’s past was actually interesting and impacted him’. Her becoming more like the Doctor, especially after losing Danny, both as an effort to hold on tight to the only person she perceives as keeping her moving forward and giving her a purpose AND because to her, the Doctor is able to lose so much and not be destroyed by it and she wants that (without really understanding just how much this life is fucking him up, too.), is just. fantastic.

where was i going with this. i have no idea. my point, i think, is: i guess i can see how initial reactions to clara might color a less than flattering picture of the rest of her, but :( consider: i love her so so much and everyone should be niceys to her.