#And a lot of the time it's not even needed. Complexity addiction at its finest.

[actually-factually-anonymous]

I will counter that there's at least one example where Marinette sacrifices herself- namely during the incident with the Dinosaur. In addition, there's a vital reason why Marinette doesn't sacrifice herself: if she dies/loses her Miraculous then everything that Hawkmoth/the Akuma-victim did becomes permanent. The only way that one could reasonably argue that she should sacrifice herself over someone else is if she's been demoted from the Ladybug position all together and is now Multimouse or using another Miraculous.

Furthermore, while I'll be the first to call out Marinette's nonsensical tactics that only work due to luck or are just pointlessly convoluted or otherwise dangerous: I think it's a little unfair to push Adrien as a leader when he's untested as such. Marinette for all her faults has a 99% success rate when battling Akumas/Sentimonsters/Enemy Miraculous wielders.

Granted: that 1% includes such hits as losing the Miracle Box and getting the universe destroyed. But it's a decently low number if nothing else.

But now that I've been fair to Marinette. Let's be fair to Marinette:

As you pointed out, every time she goes off to fetch another hero in the earlier seasons she leaves Chat Noir to fight alone. This is an inexplicable and devastating strategic error that should never have happened outside of the most dire of circumstances. Because while the Parisian populace might suffer due the presence of an Akuma while Chat Noir stood on the sidelines, anything that happened to them would be fixed.

Chat Noir's instructions/orders under these circumstances should one thing only: stay on the sidelines and wait for Ladybug and her temp-hero to return.

Because under those conditions there are only two things that can be permanently lost: The Ring of the Black Cat and Chat Noir's identity.

Having Chat Noir as the only hero fighting an Akuma-victim (possibly also a Sentimonster) on his own for however long it takes for Ladybug to come bacl when there's no actual need for it is the worst choice there short of just handing Hawkmoth/Shadowmoth his Miraculous outright. And fun fact, the first time that Ladybug does this: Chat Noir comes within seconds of loosing his Miraculous then and there:

(Taken from the transcript of "Sapotis"):

Cat Noir: Huh? (as more clones appear behind a truck, he uses his staff to knock some of them down) What's taking so long, Ladybug? Hawk Moth: (from his lair) There, my Sapotis! Take his Miraculous from him! (The Sapoti clones pile on top of Cat Noir, trapping him. One of them is about to take his ring off, but Ladybug arrives just in time to break the propellers and cause all the clones in the pile to disappear. Ladybug and Rena Rouge start to take down the clones one by one.) Rena Rouge: This is so insane! I've got powers and I'm fighting super-villains!

If Marinette had been five seconds later, Adrien career as Chat Noir would have been over long before Shadowmoth came on the scene. Now, for the first time this can be forgiven, Adrien could also have just left the Sapotis to their own devices: but when it's a common tactic for Ladybug to leave Chat Noir to battle on his own?...

There's plenty more in regards to Marinette's poor strategic choices, but this one stands out because of Marinette supposed "Combat Pragmatism". Normally Marinette prioritizes winning over pretty much anything in a fight- but the choice to sacrifice Chat like this is anything but pragmatic for the overall mission.

Hello. :)

Can I asked for your opinion? I've talked with some of my friends and they said ladybug miraculous is exclusively a leader miraculous while I think it's more strategy related miraculous, not necessarily a sign of a leader, just like the snake.

This discussion is started when I want to write a story about Adrien take over as a leader of the miraculous team after Marinette got vetoed as a not good leader by the team (the story take place three years after s5 finale and they're all adults, Adrien also take times to heal and not Marinette boyfriend). so while she remain as a guardian and strategist, Adrien will be the one leading the team and my friends said it won't work because of the reason that I stated above.

I've seen some example where the leader and the strategist are two different people that's why I think it will work, that ladybug miraculous isn't an exclusive leader miraculous. What do you think? I'm confused because while I was pretty confident before about my opinion that any holder can be the leader, my friends keep saying the same thing that only ladybug holder can lead because the lucky charm ability and it make me doubt myself now.

Thank you and take care.

---

You are absolutely correct, the fact that you can find examples of the team strategist and team leader being two different people with the team still functioning proves it. Your friend has simply fallen into the trap of thinking that, since one thing is what we mostly see, it's therefore the only way to do things. The team leader and the strategist being interchangeable is what we more commonly see, which is why I, too, used to think Marinette's strategic thinking made her a good leader back during the pretool era.

Furthermore, the Lucky Charm ability is not what makes the Ladybug hero indispensable, since Luka has also shown that he can strategize with the Snake Miraculous, it's the Miraculous Ladybug and purification abilities. The reason Marinette is the most important member of the team is because only she can purify Akumas and fix the damage caused by any fights. Basically, Marinette has three times the amount of abilities any other Miraculous, outside of the Dragon.

Regardless, post-retool Marinette has repeatedly failed at everything else a leader should do outside of strategy. What Miraculous she's holding can't change that. Who cares that you can purify Akumas when you lead your team like a dictatorship and are inconsistent with what the rules that you yourself alone enforce are? That's extremely stressful for the team members. Who cares that you can fix the buildings after the fight when you play favorites on your team and never listen to any dissenting opinions even when they're absolutely correct? This tendency has caused problems that could have been avoided if Marinette just stopped viewing her teammates as drones.

Her go-to tactic in a fight is “keep my distance and think of a plan while others actually fight the Akuma”, which makes it obvious she should be more of a strategist instead of a front-lines leader. But, I’ve even grown disillusioned with Marinette's strategic ability. It's one thing to, in a desperate situation, after deep deliberation, make the sacrifice play, to sacrifice something or someone else so that more can be saved. Even with the Miraculous Ladybug ability, Marinette treats sacrifice plays extremely casually and she's very willing to make them when they're her idea. Way too often, Marinette comes up with a convoluted plan that can still be summed up as “sacrifice Cat Noir and fix him with my Miraculous Ladybug later”. Backwarder is the most obvious example, but whatever she was doing to him in Reverser is pretty up there too, never mind how casually she leaves him as the sole cambatant every single time she's getting backup and whenever she's busy implementing a plan. Way too many of Marinette's plans rely on having Cat Noir do most of the heavy lifting for her to sacrifice his well-being so casually even from a logical perspective.

Frankly, the only reason to argue that Marinette should still remain the leader after all this is if you want her to keep doing a bad job or shield her from criticism. Like, her tendency to treat Cat Noir as expendable cannon fodder would be brought to question by everyone on the team if Cat Noir was the leader instead of one of her drones. Marinette's standard for leadership can only be maintained in a team where only she's allowed to do any of the thinking, with everyone else going “Well, she's Ladybug, and she can do no wrong”. If she loses this cover, she's far more likely to get called out on her willingness to sacrifice anything or anyone but herself.

Meanwhile, Cat Noir brings a lot more to the table as a potential leader. He’s friendly to new team members even when he doesn't pick them (contrast how these two greet Volpina, who they had no reason to be suspicious of the time), he considers how their team members might be feeling (even when they aren't on the team anymore like Chloé) and he's concerned over things like having consistent rules for everyone on the team instead of playing favorites for his favorite team members (he was appalled when the found out Nino and Alya were being held to a lower standard than anyone else even though Nino is his best friend). He’s also far more open to perspectives other than his own and he'd never hold others to standards he doesn't also hold himself to.

[leviackermansbrat]

You Can't Save Them All Prologue

Attack on Titan Modern Detective AU Hange Zoe x Fem! Reader Series Masterlist

Synopsis: Hange and the rest of the BAU take on the case of Y/n L/n, an international superstar who is being plagued with a relentless stalker.

Prologue

"I like when you get mad"

Hange Zoe scrambled into the conference room where her coworkers awaited her arrival. The entire Behavioral Analysis Unit has been chattering and gossiping about the latest case revolving around the international superstar Y/n L/n. Hange, knowing nothing about the woman, was absolutely clueless as to why everyone was making such a big fuss over things, but she figured she would be briefed for hours on this girl by the unit supervisor Erwin Smith, so there was no need to do any outside research just yet.

As Hange entered the room and took her seat, Erwin sent her a curt nod and began the meeting.

"I'm sure everyone is familiar with the case that we have been given so let's dive right into it. Y/n L/n, lead singer in the band 'Corruption at its Finest' has been dealing with a stalker recently. Unlike any ordinary case, this case is to be handled at top-level security because of the status of this celebrity which is why we were brought in instead of the local police force," Erwin begins.

Hange looks at the image on the projector and sees the h/c female who looks to be in her early twenties. As Hange looked through the folder with all of the images for facial recognition, she noticed a few things. The dark circles under her eyes that were poorly concealed, the lack of a smile in any of the pictures, and the cold dead look in her eyes. Just looking at the pictures sent a shiver down her spine.

What the hell happened to her that made her seem so lifeless?

"I can't believe I'm going to get a chance to meet her. I've been a fan of her since I was in middle school!" Armin Arlert, the technical analyst exchanged conversation with Historia Reiss, the communication and media liaison.

Historia smiled and nodded her head enthusiastically, obviously agreeing with Armin's statement.

Eren Yeager, a rookie field agent fresh out of training, rolled his eyes at the two.

"Are you guys seriously fangirling over her? She literally looks brain dead in most of these pictures. A drug addict if I've ever seen one. The only reason she isn't labeled as one is because of her status," Eren scoffed.

Hange listened carefully between the exchanged that the other agents had and realized she had no idea who this superstar was.

"I'm sorry but, I've never heard any of her music," Hange retorts sheepishly.

Armin and Historia's eyes widened at Hange's lack of knowledge of the superstar and Eren rolled his eyes yet again. Mikasa shot an apologetic smile to Hange as if she knew what was going to happen next.

"Come on four-eyes, you're telling me you've never heard of her? Even I have and I just switched to a smartphone from a blackberry a few months ago," Levi chides, making Hange laugh.

Armin and Historia rush over to Hange and Historia pulls out her phone.

"You have to listen to her songs! She's literally amazing. There's a reason she's been nominated for a Grammy every year since her debut in high school," Historia explains.

Hange looks at the contents on Historia's phone and sees a music video being pulled up.

"The goodbyes are getting old, Next time you can go ahead and go I'm tired of begging you to love me"

Hange notes the restraints on the young girl in the video and takes note of the minimal visual effects which adds to the eeriness of the song.

"Why do I cry to sleep? Goodness gracious I'm replaceable You say that I'm too crazy. I guess you were right I guess you were right"

"Well this girl is obviously facing some unresolved trauma. Maybe from a past relationship? We can start there. If her songs are a direct representation of her feelings, then there's evidence of obvious gaslighting and emotional manipulation. Whoever was the influence behind this song could possibly be our lead," Hange interjects when Historia pauses the video.

"That's a good connection Zoe," Erwin remarks.

"Well we have a lot of exes to sort through. She previously dated the bassist in her band Jean Kirstein, and there's an on and off platonic relationship with her best Ymir Fritz. Those are the most recent ones but they started dating after this song came out," Armin chided.

"I can't believe you guys are whipped for this woman and you haven't even met her," Eren scoffed.

Hange quirked an eyebrow at Eren's foul mood, but eventually brushed it off.

"Well I think it's very interesting and I think the better we understand how she became the girl we see in the pictures from today, the easier we can establish a connection between her and the stalker. It could be someone close to her," Hange retorts.

Levi gives Hange a knowing look.

"I understand you want to help her, but this is strictly for the case shitty glasses. Don't go getting attached to her with your hero complex. We don't have the time nor resources to save every overworked celebrity that develops a drug addiction," Levi says.

"I'm not trying to save her! I'm just interested," Hange defends.

Erwin notes the exchange between the two and nods his head, agreeing with Levi.

"Just remember Hange, this case comes first and personal feelings come after. You can't save them all, especially when they don't want to be saved," Erwin says.

A/N I'm actually really excited for this fic! It's the shortest one so the chapters will be a lot longer than the rest. I can't wait for you guys to read the finished product!

[th3okamid3mon]

Gisaengchung (Parasites) [SPOILERS]

A lovely tale on why you shouldn´t trust people!

Sinopsis: 

A family barely subsists in a basement they call home. Unemployed and at the border of misery, a job opportunity is presented to the older son Gi Woo, which consists on giving english classes to the daughter of a high class family. Step by step he gains the trust of the owner and begins to introduce his own family as workers in hopes of getting more money from them. 

Writing and characters (+some acting):

I am not very familiar of Korean movies, I´ve heard about some good movies but never actually watch any from the country. Now, I´ve heard about Bong Joon-Ho since I watch one of his previews works called Snowpiercer and even though that kind of movie is not exactly my favorite I have to admit it was really well written and the visuals were really creepy but pretty in some twisted way. 

Gisaenchung´s story is really well thought, all the details fit together like a puzzle of 500 pieces or more. It had to be meticulously written so to make some sort of sense and even then some things dont make so much sense, but Joon-Ho has a cover: this movies is a drama, suspense and dark humor movie. When you have a super dramatic rich family with their over the top reactions and mannerisms in an only drama movie it would be seen as a joke if they were trying to look serious or be taken seriously, in this case works perfectly since they are used as comic relief, specifically the rich mom being the most gullible and most dramatic of all. Their purpose is accomplish perfectly and the sheer dumb and naive nature of the mother works in favor of our bunch of vermin. 

It is a very understandable and digestible plot: you have a poor family of scammers, they get an opportunity to scam a family, they proceed to scam the rich family by pretending to be strangers to each other and working as a house keeper, a driver and 2 teachers, and then they get discovered. At the simplicity it doesnt sound that entertaining I suppose, everything in between is simple yet complex and then it goes into fucked up territory almost from 10 to 110 really quick. 

This family are assholes! Like... Complete assholes, the name of the movie is after them! They take advantage of a character that is super anxious about her children and is super naive and is really lonely because of his husband leaving for work a lot and completely destroy 2 lives in the process too! They get the husband´s driver fired by framing him as a sex addict with a kink and the housekeeper is fired by making her look like a tuberculosis patient. This people are awful! They are manipulative, dangerous, assholes! And yet... you kind of root for them? That´s how good the writing is. You know they are awful, you know they are manipulative. Hell, at the beginning they use manipulation to probably get someone fire and get money from a small pizza company they work for as box benders. AND THEY FUCKED UP AT LEAST A QUARTER OF THOSE BOXES! They are not good! 

...But who can blame them for being like that? They are living in a really bad situation, they are stealing wifi from a neighbor so they can check a WhatsApp to see if the pizza place send them a message. They were talented at sports, the daughter knows how to work with programs like photoshop and probably other types, the son is really smart reason why he was given the job as an english teacher and to be honest he is kind of good at it. They are not lazy people. The situation is not good for them and they can´t exactly get a good job due to not having a degree. It´s actually kind of sad to see their potential being wasted due to their economic situation. Of course anyone would survive in however manner they can, even if that makes them a bad person in the process. 

You have a rich family that supports and loves their children, shown as getting both of them private ¨teachers¨ (not enough love I guess, due to not fucking checking this people up in the first place and only trusting the recommendations of a college student). They aren´t bad people, they treat their workers fairly and they respect them and when there´s reason to fire someone they try to do so respectfully as not to damage their reputation or shame them (so much). You should feel sorry for them because they are so nice and are being scammed but you can´t shake the feeling that they kind of deserve it for being so naive. Well, at least not the children, those kids have 0 control over who their parents choose. THE PARENTS ARE SO DAMN DUMB! The mother specially! So anxious about your children learning and exploiting their talents but not so anxious to get the first whoever that crosses your ears? You feel bad, for them and maybe you dont get angry, they antics are not anger inducing, they are hilarious because, as i explain before, they over react A LOT. I don´t know if that was a directors decision or if the actors did what they pleased, they fit too well in the scene to not be planned.

One thing that stood out to me were the dialogues, they made sense but they became a bit descriptive in certain points.There were really good silent scenes, there was a good balance between dialogues and silence, though I don´t know why I felt certain dialogues were too much? Maybe it was with their reactions as well, Korean and older Mexican movies have a thing in common and that´s a level of exaggeration. Sometimes it´s good, sometimes it gets the spotlight and not in a good sense. With the rich family there was no problem, it was with certain characters like the daughter of the scam family that overreact in one scene. Since they were drunk it kind of made sense but it there wasn´t exactly a follow up of his outburst. it passed relatively quick so it wasn´t much of a problem. 

Sound and music: 

The dialogues were well said, there was no difference in volumes and it had no noise. The silent parts had a good sound, whether it was background noises or music, it never felt out of place. The sounds were actually relaxing at some point, specially with the rain or water flowing. It had a good crispiness on them, they sounded natural and not manufacture with materials. The music wasn´t over used or overbearing, it was mostly in the background. It wasn´t almost present in certain scenes, you could hear it but it was very low. It didn´t had weird spikes and it was kind of nice. Not exactly the most memorable. 

Photography and art: 

First... Some examples:

I mean... WOW. The different lights, the shadows, the colors, the difference in lighting from each set. EVERYTHING IS GORGEOUS. Easily identifiable, with that I mean if you see this screenshots you would probably recognize them immediately. I don´t know how original the setting is from other movies but MAN is it gorgeous. The shots are most of the time open, details are hidden in the background (even when they can be a bit blurry, sometimes there something behind), the lighting is the first thing you´ll notice. There´s so much contrast between the highlights and shadows, even though most of them are not really strong. 

The colors schemes for each place are not entirely different, I think the reason is they wanted to portray that both families have certain similarities, mostly the only difference being the living situation. It´s really interesting how you can find warm colors in both families, they all love each other, both families support each other and their interests. The parents praise their children (even though the scam family probably shouldn´t praise illegality but, meh...at that point it can be consider too late)  

The art department went OFF with this one. You can feel the filthiness and close space they live in, their living situation is bad but they manage. The other family is clean and clear and it has to be perfect that way. I think there were 2 parts where they work even harder. 

(This is a kind of Spoiler for the end) When they use blood, it tends to look fake in some movies, in here it looks really, really red and dark. The makeup for the strangled neck also was a nice touch and look really good. 

The other part I think was really well accomplish and that also might have taken FOR EVER TO MAKE IT WORK, was the flood, because it not only involved flooding and ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD, it involved a toilet spewing black water out as if it was puking. How did they manage to do all that? HOW MUCH WAS THE BUDGET? Geez, How many TAKES TOOK TO ACCOMPLISH THAT?! It look hella gross and the way it was spewing water was very realistic. 

There´s an entire sequence where three members of the family gets out of the rich house and walks towards their home and each step they take they descend even more, but that´s not all, it is raining and water is flowing and pouring, it looks fantastic and the neighborhood gets flooded and there´s stuff out getting fucked over. The makeup and the art design were crazy here, I wish and hope and pray they got paid well because MY GOD this was hard work at its finest. 

Conclusion: 

I need to watch more of this foreign movies and so do you! If you haven´t seen any movie out of Hollywood, you should do so. Maybe this one is a bit too much though. It goes well but there are certain parts that are a bit slow and then it goes fast and then slow again, it can be a rollercoaster and I´d be lying if i wasn´t expecting the movie to finally end. It is entertaining and it isn´t that long (2:12 hours), it doesn´t have any popular references. This movie was thought to be seen by an international audience. If you as an USA Citizen (´cause I´m not calling you Americans, America isn´t a country and USA is not the center of it) feel uncomfortable to be shown or for your culture be mock, well TOO BAD GET USED TO IT! Nah, I´m kidding. The kid in the movie has an obsession with indians and the family acts like USA is like high standard but in a mocking kind of way? My brother actually thought it was a Get Out situation so... 

This movie has a perfect blend of suspense and humor, the drama is palpable, it is there, the suspense and dark humor are the spotlight though. The actors are really good and the dialogues are not complicated to follow. It is pretty funny, heartwhrenching at points (specially the end) and entertaining movie, if you want to start watching foreign films you could start with this one. 

The worst part of the story is that both sides are right to react the way they did, and it´s kind of sad. 

This is what I took from it:  Poor or rich, it doesn´t matter. People are humans and they all have needs. And those needs will be satisfied one way or another. When you have a family, You will do whatever it takes to make them happy and sometimes drastic measures will be used. 

Go watch it, you won´t regret it. 

-Sincerely creeped out, T.O.D 

[biofunmy]

The best TV of the decade? It’s a lot to sort out.

Impossible, really — and, at first pass, my picks for best shows of the 2010s wouldn’t look much different from most other critics’ lists: “Breaking Bad,” “The Americans,” “Game of Thrones,” “Twin Peaks: The Return,” “Veep,” “The Good Wife,” “Transparent,” “Atlanta,” “Fargo,” “The Crown” — that’s 10, right? Hit “send” and let’s get on with life.

But perhaps there’s another way to approach this stretch of much-too-much TV, and instead categorize the shared qualities that separated the decade’s very best shows from the heap of mediocre ones. That way, we can talk about this extraordinary period of scripted dramas and comedies without starting one last argument about where they rank.

I know readers only have time anymore to read lists, but bear with me. Here are the best kinds of shows we watched over the last 10 years. Many of them belong to more than one category — a sign of their greatness.

Anxiety-makers

These would be your nail-biters, seen mainly on prestige cable, often on Sunday nights.

Why we gorge on these cliffhanging, often upsetting dramas on the night we most need to rest up for the week ahead, I’ll never know, but we went to bed desperate over characters and story lines we couldn’t control: In AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” probably the decade’s finest work of story engineering and execution (and yes, I’m aware it premiered in 2008), when will Hank Schrader (or Skyler White) finally catch on that Walter White is the meth kingpin of New Mexico? Some of those close calls (the train episode!) and slow-building conflicts were almost too hard to take.

The decade’s other great adrenaline-producer, FX’s “The Americans,” aired on Wednesday nights, where the panic attacks seemed more manageable. How long would it take FBI agent Stan Beeman to figure out that his friendly neighbors, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, were deeply embedded KGB spies? How much does Paige know? Will they outlast the Cold War? Showtime’s “Homeland,” meanwhile, neatly bundled our post-9/11 anxieties with the mental problems of a CIA agent who thought she could save the world.

These are but three shows that gave America’s TV addicts a strong case of the jitters. Others tried and sometimes came close. I started out the decade worrying way too much about Rick and the other doomed survivors of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” (until I gave up on them entirely a few years ago), but the show’s success is notable for its stress-inducement, which was so strong that the network started an aftershow, “Talking Dead,” to help audiences cope with the latest gory developments.

Immersive portraits

These were some of my favorite shows, broadly defined by the word “dramedy” (because they were sometimes intensely funny), but better described as character studies, portraiture — of characters I’ll never forget: Amy Jellicoe in HBO’s “Enlightened,” followed by Hannah Horvath in “Girls.”

Many shows in this category can in some ways be regarded as selfies. Louis C.K., who quickly became persona-non-grata, nevertheless triumphed with “Louie,” which made it possible for similar shows to act as a mirror that not only reveals a personal nature, but a universal quality that potentially can be shared by the audience. I’m thinking here of Donald Glover’s “Atlanta” (FX), Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None” (Netflix), Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s “Fleabag” (along with “Catastrophe”) and Pamela Adlon’s “Better Things” (FX).

This genre also, at long last, helped television achieve the diversity it had for too long failed to produce. Issa Rae’s “Insecure” (HBO) is a triumph in the way it both inhabits its creator’s viewpoint as millennial black woman, yet welcomes viewers of any sort.

To that list add Hulu’s “Ramy” and “Pen15,” HBO’s “Looking” and Comedy Central’s “Broad City” — any show where a viewer potentially discovers someone unlike themselves: different age, different background, different race. Or, more importantly, a viewer at long last sees themselves in the main character.

Washington certainly saw its uglier self in Armando Iannucci’s gloriously foul-mouthed “Veep” (HBO), the true definition of comic relief and on-point satire at a time when politics grew unfathomably absurd.

Metaphorical profundity

The best dramas in the 2010s reflected a larger message about the society that watched them — sometimes obliquely, sometimes bluntly. Despite its notably weakened final season, HBO’s “Game of Thrones” has proper claim, I think, to be deemed the show of the decade, but not just because it grew so popular. It’s because how much of it seemed to eerily echo our surroundings: Climate change (and denial of it); shocking acts of violence; widespread social collapse; galling politics; extreme disparities in class and wealth; weapons of mass destruction . . . I could go on.

Timing is everything. Hulu took a 1985 dystopian novel — Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” — revved it up and released it just as the Trump administration began detaining, locking up and banning immigrants, appointed conservative judges and looked the other way at nationalist fervor. The metaphor there was almost too applicable; fortunately, the show was strong enough to withstand the hype.

Viewers learned how to find meaning in just about any show — the betters ones made it more compelling: AMC’s “Mad Men” was a beguiling search for the soul of the 20th century; CBS’s “The Good Wife” was a wicked running commentary on politics, technology and modern relationships; NBC’s “This Is Us” was (and still is) a fascinating rumination on the essence of what makes a family. (Note to all you Ancestry genealogy nuts: It’s not just DNA.)

Happy-snarky-sweet

Certain comedies just make us feel better (and also sharper, wittier — empowered, even) no matter how many times we re-watch old episodes. It’s in the camaraderie aspect, the life lessons, the archetypal arrangements, the snarkiness glossed over by group cohesion. It’s a continuation of what began in the best multicamera, studio-audience, ersatz-family sitcoms (“Cheers,” “Seinfeld”), rejiggered for a wired generation. Most of them aired on NBC: “Parks and Recreation,” “30 Rock,” “Community,” “The Office,” “The Good Place,” “Superstore” — now joined by “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.” A few others aired on other networks, giving viewers a similar satisfaction: “The Big Bang Theory” on CBS; “Modern Family,”“Happy Endings,” “Cougar Town” and “Black-ish” on ABC.

Transformative tellings

In addition to finding new narrative styles and (quite belatedly) focusing on overlooked demographics, TV turned out to be an excellent venue for recasting an old story from a fresh perspective or enlightened distance.

I’m thinking here of FX’s “American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” a compelling departure from the way we popularly regarded that murder trial. It inspired others to dramatize previous events with a corrective, even courageous new viewpoint — such as Netflix’s “When They See Us,” about the unjustly imprisoned teens who were wrongly coerced into confessing to a 1989 Central Park attack on a female jogger.

Crime wasn’t the only subject in need of a remix. Both “Downton Abbey” (PBS) and “The Crown” (Netflix) succeeded because of the way they re-examine extreme privilege, without preventing us from enjoying the luxurious roll in it.

Some shows were revelatory in more subtle ways: Jill Soloway’s “Transparent” (Amazon Prime) masterfully wove a woman’s journey with the entirety of modern American Judaism, enlightening its audience to more than just the trans experience. And Showtime’s “The Affair” played with the very nature of truth, telling the story of marital infidelity from competing — and crucially different — perspectives.

Impossible puzzles and true art

If the decade in TV will be remembered for anything, it will likely be the complexity of some shows. The weirdness. The unexpected swerves. It turned its viewers into perpetual puzzle-solvers and conspiracy theorists. After beginning the decade with an unsatisfying wrap-up of ABC’s “Lost,” co-creator Damon Lindelof returned on HBO with a confounding take on “The Leftovers,” finally mastering the balance between befuddlement and momentum with “Watchmen.”

There are, finally, two standouts — and they challenged my ceaseless harangue about reboots. One was Noah Hawley’s expanded and wholly reimagined take for FX on “Fargo,” a Midwestern crime saga first seen in Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 film classic.

The other was David Lynch’s long-delayed but staggeringly beautiful sequel to his 1990 TV sensation “Twin Peaks.” Critics argued, somewhat pointlessly, whether “Twin Peaks: The Return” (Showtime) was a very long film or a strangely protracted TV series.

I can settle that: It was nothing short of pure art — unexpected, absolutely original and layered with deep, trippy meaning. Of all the TV I slogged through in the 2010s, it’s the show I most look forward to someday watching again.

Sahred From Source link Entertainment

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[douxreviews]

Five TV Shows I Stopped Watching

More often than not, a show we enjoy or love to death will lose its way and test the extent of our faithfulness to it. We can either watch it until the bitter end or let it go once we realize the magic that hooked us is gone. I have done both. How I Met Your Mother was a TV series I stuck with for pure loyalty. The struggle was real, though, and I fast forward through several of the final season episodes. The thing is, it's much easier – and healthier, even – to just let it go. With that in mind, I compiled a list of shows to which I said goodbye before they were over, why I did it and if I would consider going back and finishing them.

Spoilers below!

Chuck

Why I loved it: I identified with Chuck a lot. His clumsiness, his insecurity, his struggles. Plus, the show was very funny. Season two of Chuck is still one of my favorite seasons ever. It's a terrific character journey, with Chuck completely focused on getting rid of the Intersect, only to sacrifice everything in the end for the greater good.

When I dropped it: At "Chuck Versus the A-Team" (S04E18), in which Sarah and Chuck are surprised that there is a new facility built inside the Castle, even though it wasn't secretive at all, their reaction makes no sense, it's dumb, it drove me crazy and I stopped watching the episode five minutes into it.

Why I dropped it: I defended season four for a while, but it lost me too. The show was taking itself too seriously but the plot simply didn't hold. If you are making a spy comedy and there are some plot holes here and there, that's okay. If the show becomes more spy drama than spy comedy, you better fix those plot holes. Chuck didn't. Instead, the plot holes were as prominent as the lack of comedy.

Would I go back to it? Not really, no. It's weird that I feel this way about a show I loved so much, but if I ever watch Chuck again, it's probably going to be the first two seasons and parts of season three, not a completion mission.

Battlestar Galactica

Why I loved it: Season one of Battlestar Gallactica was sci-fi at its finest. The miniseries was enough to get me on board, I was blown away by the first episode, and by that episode in which Starbuck hijacked a Raider to return home, I knew that I loved her and the series. When everyone cheered that she was safe, I cheered too. This definitely doesn't happen often when I'm watching a TV show or a movie.

When I dropped it: During season two.

Why I dropped it: All I remember was that the last episode I watched ended on a weird cliffhanger (four main characters were on a planet, near sacred stones or something, Number Six and her crazy lover were in a temple somewhere else, it was all very mystical-y), I decided to take a break and forgot to resume watching. However, that's a false memory, because as I went through the list of season two episodes to write this article, I realized that I watched the episodes that feature Admiral Cain, which take place after the weird temple stuff. So I don't really know when or why I stopped watching.

Would I go back to it? Totally. Even though I know many people didn't like the finale (and I'm spoiled about the bizarre ending one of the characters got), when I stopped watching the show, it was still great. The problem is I lost my season one DVDs, and when I tried to resume watching starting with season two, I had no idea what was going on. It's been too long. I really need to restart from the beginning, but as of now, I'm not rushing to buy again the DVD set of season one. Should I?

Game of Thrones

Why I loved it: I don't know if I ever loved it. I grew very fond of some of the characters, though: Ned Stark, Jon Snow, Sansa Stark and Arya Stark. Basically, the Starks. Yes, even Sansa. Her decisions were infuriating, but she had "is going to have an awesome character development" written all over her.

When I dropped it: After the end of season one, to which a lot of people ask me, "you watched the first season and didn't continue?"

Why I dropped it: Well, don't kill me for this, but I think Game of Thrones is a bit overrated. It's a quality show, but one problem I had with it is that it was too much buildup. Season one has ten episodes: the first eight are buildup, episode nine is execution and the finale is setup to the following season. I understand that the political nature of the story means there will be some dancing around the throne, but still. Daenerys' story was the only one that had more dynamism to it. But the wall, for instance? Nothing ever happened there. There is also the issue that the series has ten billion different characters, and I tend to like stories with fewer characters.

Would I go back to it? Yes. Like I said, it is a quality show, and I have heard so much about that red wedding that I need to watch the damn thing.

The Vampire Diaries

Why I loved it: The Vampire Diaries was a great supernatural series. Initially looked down upon under the label of "teen show" (as if that were a bad thing), the first season grew and delivered great TV, with awesome arcs and interesting characters. After six or seven episodes, I was hooked. The story kept going to unexpected places, with a rich and ever expanding mythology. I remember that I loved the arc with the tomb vampires a lot. Season two was also a must, with Katherine Pierce and the introduction of the original vampires.

When I dropped it: After the end of season two.

Why I dropped it: The show used to kill too many characters, some of them way too soon and eventually one death upset me a lot. It was Jenna's, in the penultimate episode of season two. It's not that I was immensely fond of her or anything, but her death felt wrong somehow. To make it even worse, the season finale was emotionally focused on Damon and Elena, not on Elena losing her tenth parent figure. I knew right there and then that I wouldn't keep watching a show that valued romance shenanigans over the death of a loved one.

Would I go back to it? Not most of the time, but I have to admit that recently I watched a random scene of TVD on Youtube, a new one to me, and it was so delicious. It featured Damon being evil and twisted (obviously), Caroline being awesome (as usual) and Elena being dramatic (you know the drill), and it instantly made me remember why the show was so addictive. Maybe I should give season three a shot?

The 100

Why I loved it: Like The Vampire Diaries, it was dismissed as a forgettable teen show and it took a few episodes to find its footing. Despite the rocky start, I liked it from the beginning and by the end of season one I was a fan. The main characters are complex but likable and face some impossible dilemmas, especially the leading lady. The sci-fi stuff is good, the Grounder mythology is awesome and the series knows how to deliver a climatic finale. What's not to love?

When I dropped it: After "The Tinder Box" (S04E05).

Why I dropped it: Even though I was enjoying season four, I decided to take a break after watching yet another guy ruin it for everybody. I'm referring to that grounder who blew up Arkadia. There was also that arkadian who nearly killed Roan and started a war. Just how many times do we need to watch Clarke et. al. work really hard to keep everyone safe, only to have said work undone by the reckless action of an ill-motivated person?

Would I go back to it? Yes, absolutely. If there is a show on this list that I know for sure I will resume watching, this is the one. In fact, writing about it has made me realize how much I miss it.

That's it, guys. Do you have anything to say about the shows I listed above? Why I should totally go back to watching them or avoid them at all costs? What about some shows you have dropped watching yourself?

Lamounier

[thetygre]

30 Day Monster Challenge 2 - Day #10: Favorite Goblin/Orc

1.      Uruks

I wanna’ tell you a story, folks. It might sound a little familiar, but stick with me. Once upon a time, there was a farm-boy. A simple lad, who had high hopes for a life of adventure beyond the town. He wasn’t the brightest, but what he lacked in brains he made up for in bravery. One day, as you do, farm-boy was working out in the field with his family when a monster attacked. The local guard piled on to the monster, but they just couldn’t bring it down. It tore through soldier after soldier after soldier, just for the fun of it. Our farm-boy knew he would probably die, but he didn’t care. He had his chance and took it; he picked up a stick, ran at the monster, and brought it down. Our farm-boy became a hero.

That farm-boy’s name was Kravitz the Marked One. He was an orc slave working in the fields the first time he killed me. The warchief promoted him on the spot and gave him a set of armor. The second time he killed me they gave him a caragor to ride. The third time he was given command over a company of hunters. I got him on the fourth time, though, and recruited him to the Bright Lord’s army. I was going to make him Overlord of Nurn, and raise him up to sit at my right hand, a real rags-to-riches story. He helped me take the Overlord’s fortress, riding with me at the siege. But poor little Kravitz took a mortal wound there, one I couldn’t save him from. And as he lay there, dying in my arms, he looked and me and he said, “Remember this moment, Tark. Remember it for as long as you live.” And I always did.

There’s a lot of other stories I could tell you. About Ugakuga the Maddest One, who saved my life, or Kellec the Tree Killer who communicated only in screams, or Flug the Ghul Lover who would track a matron across Mordor just to protect her. Uruks are rambunctious, and violent. They fight with each other even if you get them on the same team. They’ll betray you at the drop of a hat for the smallest slight. They pick fights with warriors and monsters that can kill them in one hit just to make a point.

But when they’re your own, you love them.

2.      Greenskins

The greenskins are the puncline to the grimdark joke that is Warhammer. While they’re in both the fantasy and 40k settings, they really stand out in 40k. Warhammer fantasy still has halflings, dwarves, and typical fantasy shenanigans to pick up the slack; 40k NEEDS some comic relief. The Orks aren’t concerned about empires or Chaos or the greater good. The Orks, pure and simple, are in it for the fun. They’re work is at its finest when its fast, loud, and in flames. Put together, they can generate a kind of psychic field that makes their beliefs a reality. This power is not used to reshape the fabric of the cosmos, but to enforce much more important principles like ‘things go faster when they have flames painted on. In the grim darkness, the orks are a pie to the face filled with C4.

3.      Order of the Stick

The goblins in Order of the Stick are kind of different from how they’re commonly depicted, but not too unrecognizable. They’re a monster race, living in the wilderness, trying to eke out a living, though they’re a bit taller and smarter than standard goblins, about on par with humans. But the thing that makes them stand out is Redcloak, and Redcloak is pretty great, both as an antagonist and a character in his own right. Redcloak has made decisions, bad decisions, decisions that he could have not made but he did because he felt he had to. And it’s interesting to watch him now, filled with regret, committed to this course, and wondering what will happen next.

4.      Nyambe

Nyambe-Tanda was an African campaign setting for 3rd. Edition D&D that not a lot of people remember. They should, because it was pretty great, both at representing an underexplored area of fantasy and also for its own setting features. Somehow, it blended West African mythology and post-modern tabletop fantasy masterfully. One of the best examples is its orcs.

You’ve got your standard narrative; at the beginning of time, there were the various races, and each of the gods favored one race over the others. Originally, the gods only divulged so much to the races because they wanted to keep things fair. But the orcs were having a hard time of it, living in badlands and scrounging for food. So their god, Ogun, the god of war, decided to give them a little boost. He made them stronger, faster, tougher than other races. But Ogun wasn’t just the god of battle; he was the god of blacksmithing. So the orcs of Nyambe learned how to mine and forge metal while the other races were still wearing leaves and furs. And by the time the other races figured out bronze, the orcs had iron.

From there, things went about as well as you would expect. The orcs swarmed out, conquering the continent one region at a time. The other races barely had metal, much less iron; any resistance was like bring a stick to a gun fight. Even after Ogun withdrew his patronage from the orcs, they turned to worshipping dark gods and demons, adding sorcery to their arsenal. The orcs set up a dark empire across Nyambe-Tanda, and it took nothing less than an alliance between all the races, the dragons, and God to stop them. The dumb orcs of Nyambe today are the cursed remnants of that empire, and their demon-haunted ruins still litter the continent.

Just think about all that. Look at how much the orcs did in this setting. And they did it for themselves; not for any god or Dark Lord, but because they wanted to. The Evil Empire that the plucky last-ditch rebellion had to stop didn’t use orcs; it was MADE by them. They fundamentally shaped the setting. In Nyambe, orcs are legendary and feared. Even the few remaining half-orcs are watched closely and with fear, looking out for any sign that the old powers might return. And that’s just such a massive departure from the norms of fantasy while still staying true to certain elements; I love it.

5.      Pathfinder

Pathfinder’s goblins are clearly descended from Warhammer’s; cheerful, incorrigible pyromaniacs who enjoy arson, butchery, and singing adorable little songs about how much they hate horses. Even their designs are cute; oversized head, constant grins, beady little eyes, big flappy ears, and a shark-like nose make them look more like gangrene bats than monsters. When Pathfinder was first released, it was decided by the Paizo team that they wanted their monsters to stand apart from the standard D&D variants of monsters, remaining true to certain aspects while inventing new ones. Goblins were the first example, and are still the most beloved. They became mascots of the system, and even a playable race. So much malevolent charm has been poured into Pathfinder’s goblins that you feel almost bad for killing them. You’ll have to though, because they really don’t feel bad about killing you and then burning your house down.

6.      Eberron

Eberron orcs are another attempt to experiment with the standard formula, seeing what can be retained and what can be changed. An orc on Eberron can still be a wild berserker, but they’re more likely to stick to one of the villages they live in as a farmer. Orcs in Eberron are the oldest species on the planet, predating humans and all the other races. It gives them this kind of grouchy veteran persona that pervades the whole race, and they tend to look down on the younger peoples. Eberron orcs are also a lot more spiritual, trying to live in tune with the land and spirits. It was the orcs’ druids that saved the world from extradimensional horrors long ago, and most of them stick to that tradition. They don’t want any praise or to be raised up as heroes, though. They mostly just want the young races to listen to them when they say important things like, “Don’t poke the fabric of reality” and “Don’t trust elves” and “No, ma’am, I would not care to do that with you.”

7.      Warcraft

It was inevitable that Warcraft orcs would be on here. There’s no escaping them; by now they’re probably more popular than Tolkien orcs. They actually have a fairly complex history and lore; addicted to demon juice, tricked by an evil shaman, warring with the goat-people. Thrall is still the coolest shaman in anything ever, even if it is kind of hard not to just call him ‘orc Moses’. Even their explanation for the green skin is cool; an eternal curse for drinking demon blood in wars past. Honestly, though, I loved the orcs best in Warlords of Draenor. The Iron Horde is what elevated the orcs from ‘kind of cool’ to full-on ‘Metal’. It was a shame to see them go, but that’s just how it is.

8.      Rankin Bass

My first orcs. I watched the Rankin Bass Hobbit films when I was a kid, so these were the first time I met goblins who didn’t come out of a fairy tale. They were scary more than cool, but they also had a kind of dorky charm to them. The original Hobbit goblins with their gaping mouths and giant fangs are still a classic. They seem like perfect fairy tale monsters to me, and fit right in to the Hobbit’s original tone. Also got to love those classic goblin hits like ‘Funny Little Things’. The orcs in Return of the King had way more variety in shape, and there was even some blurring between them and the trolls, but no particular design stuck with me. You know what did stick with me? The best damn song in the entire world, that’s what.

9.      The Wolverines

Stan Nicholls’ Orcs series is more in the vein of the Black Company or the Golden Age of Berserk than it is any other kind of orc story. It follows the exploits of a mercenary band of orcs while they traipse around first one fantasy world, then more. By the second trilogy, they’re freedom fighters for orc supremacy on whatever world they can find them. All the while, they never stop being just unapologetically bastards. You get a feel for the commanders and the soldiers, while taking in that whole mercenary life pastiche. Not anything groundbreaking yet, but still a good band.

10.   Goblin Slayer

Credit where credit is due, Goblin Slayer tries its damnedest to take goblins and make them horrific, intimidating monsters. Does it succeed? Ehhhhh... I don’t want to keep saying ‘Berserk did it better’, but it really is hard not to compare the goblins to the trolls from Berserk. Still, there’s stuff to applaud here. These are some nasty goblins, even in terms of design, with jagged shark teeth and dead frog eyes. If nothing else, it’s interesting to see the kind of hierarchy usually reserved for higher-powered monsters like dragons and demons given to the ‘cannon-fodder’.

[dreaming-of-submission-blog]

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[makoblue]

scorching-passion​:

Oh, how Roche dreams of the day that this man would actually be pleased to see him; and in all that’s fair in love verses hatred, the here and now should have been that very moment, typically when he’d been sent specifically on a hunt and had decided his mood didn’t quite fit the ideal of his employer this time… or any time for that matter. 

Courage came in all shapes and sizes, and today it was marginally shaped like a blonde mercenary riding a stolen vehicle~

Fuck the system! DOWN WITH SHINRA! 

“Oh! But don’t you see, my friend? We are already so finely entangled in the fine art of the dip and sway!” as if to emphasise his point, the Third would grip either side of the pillion seat, fingers digging violently into the leather and lilted his body first to the left, and then aggressively to right forcing the body of the motorcycle to bank against its riders will, notably almost having them collide right into the wing of a passing HGV, almost, but not quite~ And the action certainly wasn’t without the trademark “WOOOOOO!” as the driver of the truck beside them would sound his horn aggressively in response to the near miss and Roche would simply wave back at the man as they passed. 

A fit of maniacal laughter would follow, high on adrenaline, the spontaneity, the thrill of it all was simply addictive, the finest of all divine cuisine one could consume to sate their hunger, Roche was of course a very different style of animal with very different dietary needs. Alas, his reasonings for this sudden invasion of space, harbouring one mop-a-top mercenary positively bamboozled and glaring at him with those lovely oceanic eyes of his, were not to cause a critical traffic collision. Quite the opposite in fact. 

With the ease of any veteran rider, Roche would then make himself quite comfortable on the leather of the pillion - certainly not used to being the passenger but there was always time to adjust, never let it be said that Roche was against trying new things at least once - he leans into his fellow swordsman’s back, mindful of the enormous blade still nestled between his shoulders. 

“As for what I want~ Oh, a lot of things, I’m nothing if not a complex fellow!” he would chortle into the blond’s ear, an edge of coquetry hanging in his tone if only to feed into this man’s unease. There truly was something very satisfying about making him feel marginally uncomfortable, though he’s quick to move the conversation along. 

“I am, however, increasingly interested in your secrets, Cloud Strife~” Roche could almost feel the man’s flesh tightening around his bones at the mention of his name, all things considered that a formal introduction had never truly taken place. Or he could at least hope! 

“Alas! That will have to wait, it would seem that we’re being tailed.” his voice would remain calm, not even glancing away as he would lift a single arm and point to the chopper following overhead; ShinRa were beginning to clamp down on all things AVALANCHE it would seem, and Roche’s objectives went very much against it. 

“It may be in both of our interests for you to pick up the pace!”

“Great, you can keep telling yourself that,” Cloud rolls his eyes, prepared to return his attention to the road when he spies Roche angling his body off to one side of the bike. “What’re you–” he starts, knowing, sensing what horrible feat Roche is about to attempt alongside the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. 

Roche simply defies common sense. Roche moves, and Cloud’s bike moves too.

Lips parted, the breath stilling in his lungs, Cloud’s shoulders seize to brace against the swell of rushing air and the rapidly nearing body of a nearby truck. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, followed by the swoop-fall of adrenaline when the riveted steel body of a truck whizzes just past his shoulder. Fear, relief; brushing past death lingers in the hammering of his heart in his chest. 

To say nothing of the disorienting and painful ringing in his ears as the truck driver bears down on his horn in a wordless ‘fuck off!’ 

Cloud has the same popular epithet sitting on the tip of his own tongue by the time Roche has properly moved to warm the leather only to find it lost somewhere between the immediate desire to shrink away from Roche’s breath fanning over the shell of his ear and the urge to turn around and connect a fist to Roche’s jaw when Cloud can feel the other man’s chest press up against his back. 

Planet, why.

Thrumming helicopter rotors in the distance are a telling sound. Cloud does not need to look back over his shoulder to validate Roche’s claims. “You ever shut up?” he groans, purely rhetorical as he weaves nimbly through traffic to the farthest lane. The front wheel of the bike suddenly springs up as Cloud leans back, then throws the weight of the bike forward into a bunnyhop over the guardrails. 

Down one level, then careening off the next. The helicopter cannot easily follow them through the criss-cross of intersecting lanes. Off the road, far, far below. To the slums. Cloud can just start to feel him lifting off his seat when the bike makes contact, throws up garbage and debris as they slide down a towering pile of refuse and abandoned construction material. 

He can still hear their airborne admirers circling somewhere above. Cloud twists on the throttle and speeds up as they hit the ground and blow past the gap in the junkyard’s chain link fence. Slow, quiet, from roar to rumble, Cloud takes them directly into the huddled favelas and maze of outstretched awnings to ensure they can break line of sight. Roche has, unfortunately, managed to stick around the entire time. He can already feel the onset of an inevitable headache as he turns off towards a secluded alleyway. Killing the engine with one hand and bringing the other to press against his temples, Cloud fixes his glower on Roche’s unrepentant grin.

“Alright, tell me what the hell I have to do to make you go away.”

[alphanyawa]

I know a lot of the times we talk about the Fuck-boy. The reality is Mr Nice Guy or the Good guy is a bigger Fuck-boy, because he pretends that he is different from the guy he loathes so much. You can find the Nice Guy in your local church, library, and supermarket and in the friend zone.

Now let me explain because I’m tired of women being given a bad rep because we have an attraction to bad boys. The reason women are enthralled by the bad boy archetype is, because he presences a mental challenge. This is what they good guy has yet to figure out. Chris Rock was right, Women don’t want a boring guy.

At least with a fuck-boy you know what you are getting yourself into, his character pretty much speaks for him. He is straightforward generally if he is highly evolved in his toxicity 😂 Nice/ Good Guys think that because they treat women with basic human decency that they deserve to have a girlfriend.

They act according to what I’m coining as the “Pendulum effect.” BD ©️ 2019

 I use this to describe the fact that they swing between covert narcissism and an inferiority complex. Nice guys have no drive. They are too afraid to be themselves that’s why they are nice. We need real.

Lets Adapt this to, When a man can’t show who he is, Leave him…..  

Because when you find out the truth later it might be too late.

– Batisse Dionysus

Fuck-boys and Nice Guys are the same to be honest. They can both treat you well but emotionally it’s the same they are detached. They both operate from a lack of self-love. Fuck boys are generally hyper masculine, whilst nice guys embody hypo- masculinity. Both are toxic because they cause an imbalance

Nice Guys think that because they treat women with human decency that they deserve to have a girlfriend. They are always mad at women for liking “bad boys” seeing as they are so good.

That’s covert Narcissism at its finest. It is then coupled with Inferiority complex because they don’t have the drive to chase a woman that will actually like them back, they look for the unattainable and when they get rejected they are in their feels.

They normally complain of the friend zone and blame women, instead of recognising their own shortcomings as to why the object of their affections wasn’t attracted in the first place. They don’t see what we see in the bad boy. And what we see is an experience, fun, excitement, adventure and the inevitable throes of the ultimate fantasy, a bad guy that is willing to be good for you. It might be a dream, but in that we obtain a level of real that the Nice Guy is afraid to show.

A bad guy presents a mental challenge and keeps the sexual tension. It is the these two things that keep us addicted to them will show you his worst self and leave it up to deduce whether he’s with the trouble. He might even warn you. But generally they have an awareness of a woman’s vulnerability, they protect us.

A good guy acts more like a mother/father you replace the romantic love with a familiar love and who wants to have sex with their parent..?

Good guys can be the worst because they feel like they deserve a girl based of the fact that they treat people with basic human decency,

Overall in my opinion the nice guy is a Fuck-boy that has yet to evolve, he just needs that one certified heartbreak to begin his evolution process.

The Charms of the Unavailable

Good guys tend to look for a lover that lives far away. This may be emotionally, mentally, spiritually as well as physically. They look for an external obstacle to love, this makes the desire more intense. The love will not be strong in spite of the challenges it just feels like it is, because it’s on a superficial, chatty level. The love feels strong because it’s not real. It is unrequited or incomplete. Defences are weakened because subconsciously they have made sure that they cannot disappoint or be disappointed so they pick a situation which prevents real love.

I remember when I was caught between two good guys, my boyfriend at the time was focused on courtship for marriage. I was literally 20 years old. In this same way I had also picked a situation blocking real love so that I could have control. I allowed myself to settle due to loneliness. I was not yet aware to the subconscious patterns that were causing me to sabotage myself.

Instead of being in the present he was fast forwarding to a future I hadn’t even considered. The more he impressed marriage to me the more I wanted to escape. He was one of those church boys. Mountain of Fire, boy do I know how to pick them. So in his mind he had an unrealistic vision of our future.

At the time I had a friend he was a DJ so we connected on our mutual desire for music, and we were both from the same country so there was a healthy connection with good conversation and laughter. He was a friend nothing more I saw him as a brother. I even told him this. I wasn’t physically attracted to him. He knew I had a boyfriend, but as the course of my relationship got difficult I would find myself looking for refuge in him. I never complained about my man to him, but when I saw him calling me at inappropriate times, and I would ignore my boyfriend’s calls to Face-Time him.

We were friends for a good while, but I broke it off after he said to me

“These Twitter guys ain’t gonna love you” “I’m gonna love you” Pathetic!!!  He tried to manipulate me into loving him. There is no true love here, no risk. In his attempt tell me he wanted to love me. He tried to manipulate me. He knew that I was too good for him and deep down he would rather be in control of a sad situation than half out of control of a happy one.  The worst part is he is worse that the twitter guys he’s accusing me of wanting attention from.

He like many other good guys due to subconscious self-sabotage maybe stemming from a parent leaving us or humiliating us unaware of the pattern still operate from that lack of self-love.

Ultimately I broke up with my good guy boyfriend, because he was talking to a woman in his phone saved in his phone as heartless bitch. I didn’t go through his phone I saw it when we were in the cinema. He was right because I told him after I saw it I told him to jump in the river, and the saddest thing is he was ready to do it. Plot twist, the Heartless Bitch I broke up with him over was me the whole time.

It was me his girlfriend he had saved as Heartless bitch. And again plot twist, he made a fake Instagram account 2 years later and posed as his best friend to tell me this. What he was gaining from this I don’t know. A man would have communicated him feeling towards me. But him believing he’s a good guy he’s the victim, and I am the villain in his story he cannot take responsibility for his actions. He is the good guy remember.

Our defences are the key to our self-confidence

The key to love is a mutual risk that we can both enjoy, accept falling in love with someone who loves us and enjoys seeing us all of the time.

The absence of risk is what loosens hearts.

Batisse Dionysus 

The Nice/ Good Guy I know a lot of the times we talk about the Fuck-boy. The reality is Mr Nice Guy or the Good guy is a bigger Fuck-boy, because he pretends that he is different from the guy he loathes so much.

[douxreviews]

Five TV Shows I Stopped Watching

More often than not, a show we enjoy or love to death will lose its way and test the extent of our faithfulness to it. We can either watch it until the bitter end or let it go once we realize the magic that hooked us is gone. I have done both. How I Met Your Mother was a TV series I stuck with for pure loyalty. The struggle was real, though, and I fast forward through several of the final season episodes. The thing is, it's much easier – and healthier, even – to just let it go. With that in mind, I compiled a list of shows to which I said goodbye before they were over, why I did it and if I would consider going back and finishing them.

Spoilers below!

Chuck

Why I loved it: I identified with Chuck a lot. His clumsiness, his insecurity, his struggles. Plus, the show was very funny. Season two of Chuck is still one of my favorite seasons ever. It's a terrific character journey, with Chuck completely focused on getting rid of the Intersect, only to sacrifice everything in the end for the greater good.

When I dropped it: At "Chuck Versus the A-Team" (S04E18), in which Sarah and Chuck are surprised that there is a new facility built inside the Castle, even though it wasn't secretive at all, their reaction makes no sense, it's dumb, it drove me crazy and I stopped watching the episode five minutes into it.

Why I dropped it: I defended season four for a while, but it lost me too. The show was taking itself too seriously but the plot simply didn't hold. If you are making a spy comedy and there are some plot holes here and there, that's okay. If the show becomes more spy drama than spy comedy, you better fix those plot holes. Chuck didn't. Instead, the plot holes were as prominent as the lack of comedy.

Would I go back to it? Not really, no. It's weird that I feel this way about a show I loved so much, but if I ever watch Chuck again, it's probably going to be the first two seasons and parts of season three, not a completion mission.

Battlestar Galactica

Why I loved it: Season one of Battlestar Gallactica was sci-fi at its finest. The miniseries was enough to get me on board, I was blown away by the first episode, and by that episode in which Starbuck hijacked a Raider to return home, I knew that I loved her and the series. When everyone cheered that she was safe, I cheered too. This definitely doesn't happen often when I'm watching a TV show or a movie.

When I dropped it: During season two.

Why I dropped it: All I remember was that the last episode I watched ended on a weird cliffhanger (four main characters were on a planet, near sacred stones or something, Number Six and her crazy lover were in a temple somewhere else, it was all very mystical-y), I decided to take a break and forgot to resume watching. However, that's a false memory, because as I went through the list of season two episodes to write this article, I realized that I watched the episodes that feature Admiral Cain, which take place after the weird temple stuff. So I don't really know when or why I stopped watching.

Would I go back to it? Totally. Even though I know many people didn't like the finale (and I'm spoiled about the bizarre ending one of the characters got), when I stopped watching the show, it was still great. The problem is I lost my season one DVDs, and when I tried to resume watching starting with season two, I had no idea what was going on. It's been too long. I really need to restart from the beginning, but as of now, I'm not rushing to buy again the DVD set of season one. Should I?

Game of Thrones

Why I loved it: I don't know if I ever loved it. I grew very fond of some of the characters, though: Ned Stark, Jon Snow, Sansa Stark and Arya Stark. Basically, the Starks. Yes, even Sansa. Her decisions were infuriating, but she had "is going to have an awesome character development" written all over her.

When I dropped it: After the end of season one, to which a lot of people ask me, "you watched the first season and didn't continue?”

Why I dropped it: Well, don't kill me for this, but I think Game of Thrones is a bit overrated. It's a quality show, but one problem I had with it is that it was too much buildup. Season one has ten episodes: the first eight are buildup, episode nine is execution and the finale is setup to the following season. I understand that the political nature of the story means there will be some dancing around the throne, but still. Daenerys' story was the only one that had more dynamism to it. But the wall, for instance? Nothing ever happened there. There is also the issue that the series has ten billion different characters, and I tend to like stories with fewer characters.

Would I go back to it? Yes. Like I said, it is a quality show, and I have heard so much about that red wedding that I need to watch the damn thing.

The Vampire Diaries

Why I loved it: The Vampire Diaries was a great supernatural series. Initially looked down upon under the label of "teen show" (as if that were a bad thing), the first season grew and delivered great TV, with awesome arcs and interesting characters. After six or seven episodes, I was hooked. The story kept going to unexpected places, with a rich and ever expanding mythology. I remember that I loved the arc with the tomb vampires a lot. Season two was also a must, with Katherine Pierce and the introduction of the original vampires.

When I dropped it: After the end of season two.

Why I dropped it: The show used to kill too many characters, some of them way too soon and eventually one death upset me a lot. It was Jenna's, in the penultimate episode of season two. It's not that I was immensely fond of her or anything, but her death felt wrong somehow. To make it even worse, the season finale was emotionally focused on Damon and Elena, not on Elena losing her tenth parent figure. I knew right there and then that I wouldn't keep watching a show that valued romance shenanigans over the death of a loved one.

Would I go back to it? Not most of the time, but I have to admit that recently I watched a random scene of TVD on Youtube, a new one to me, and it was so delicious. It featured Damon being evil and twisted (obviously), Caroline being awesome (as usual) and Elena being dramatic (you know the drill), and it instantly made me remember why the show was so addictive. Maybe I should give season three a shot?

The 100

Why I loved it: Like The Vampire Diaries, it was dismissed as a forgettable teen show and it took a few episodes to find its footing. Despite the rocky start, I liked it from the beginning and by the end of season one I was a fan. The main characters are complex but likable and face some impossible dilemmas, especially the leading lady. The sci-fi stuff is good, the Grounder mythology is awesome and the series knows how to deliver a climatic finale. What's not to love?

When I dropped it: After "The Tinder Box" (S04E05).

Why I dropped it: Even though I was enjoying season four, I decided to take a break after watching yet another guy ruin it for everybody. I'm referring to that grounder who blew up Arkadia. There was also that arkadian who nearly killed Roan and started a war. Just how many times do we need to watch Clarke et. al. work really hard to keep everyone safe, only to have said work undone by the reckless action of an ill-motivated person?

Would I go back to it? Yes, absolutely. If there is a show on this list that I know for sure I will resume watching, this is the one. In fact, writing about it has made me realize how much I miss it.

That's it, guys. Do you have anything to say about the shows I listed above? Why I should totally go back to watching them or avoid them at all costs? What about some shows you have dropped watching yourself? Hit it on the comments.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Educating Vitae

by Shim

Monday, 18 January 2016

In which choices are explored, people do things they know to be bad, blood is unhelpfully like sex, and there are altogether too many types of vampire.~

I must apologise firstly for the title, and secondly for not incorporating any song titles from Meat Loaf into this article. I already spent too long writing it.

So, only six years late, I finally finished reading Vampire Academy.

It’s quite fun. I originally wrote "really fun", but reflection on the social plot has made me a bit less enthusiastic.

The following will contain enormous amounts of spoilers, including big plot-type revelations. I should also point out that the book includes self-harm, and I will briefly mention it but not go into detail.

On Protagonists and Viewpoints

So the book is a little ambiguous about its nature. Let me cite some of the back blurb here.

Lissa Dragomir is a mortal vampire. She must be protected at all times from the fiercest and most dangerous vampires of all - the ones who will never die. Rose Hathaway is Lissa's best friend - and her bodyguard. Now, after two years of illicit freedom, they've been dragged back inside the iron gates of St. Vladimir's Academy. The girls must survive a world of forbidden romances, a ruthless social scene and terrifying night-time rituals. But above all, they must never let their guard down, lest the immortal vampires take Lissa - forever...

Huh. I don’t think I’ve seen a single night-time ritual. How misleading.

But never mind that! The point is, in this blurb and the early stages of the book, it’s not entirely clear who’s the protagonist (as discussed originally in

The Text Factor: Halloween Special: Girl Books for Girls

). The description kicks off with Lissa, and she’s the vampire, and the one affected by most of the weird events of the book. However, our viewpoint character is always Rose.

I wondered for a while whether this was going to be a dual-protagonist book with a single viewpoint character; due to blood bond shenanigans, Rose sporadically ends up in Lissa’s mind, which is a handy way to convey key information. That would have been interesting.

As the story progressed, though, I increasingly got the feeling that Lissa is more of a plot point (albeit a nicely characterised one) than a protagonist in her own right. Her early interactions with Christian, and her special status, suggest that her experiences might be the main focus of the book, with Rose there for support, observation and a bit of romance on the side. However, it soon becomes clear that Rose’s experiences are going to be much more narratively important than Lissa’s.

Introduction to the Vampire

There’s quite a lot of vampire stuff to introduce, especially for those of us not familiar with it. I’ve not idea how closely it fits folklorific ideas of vampires. However, the broad-strokes picture we get of how vampire society works seems to fit together in its own rather bizarre way. The relationship between moroi

[1]

, dhampir

[2]

and humans is clearly unhealthy, particularly their utterly hypocritical view of the people they depend on for blood.

However, Mead is careful to weave in some explanations for this. Not only are the ‘feeders’ providing food, which tends to dehumanise them; they do so willingly and eagerly, because of the intoxicating nature of vampiric saliva, making them into addicts. Society doesn’t respect addicts, so it’s easier to accept this situation. Moreover, Rose calls out the hypocrisy in the situation explicitly, while still allowing shades of it to slip into her own attitudes and words. Knowing something’s morally dubious isn’t an easy route to resolving it, after all.

They were well cared for and given all the comforts they could need. But at the heart of it, they were drug users, addicts to Moroi saliva and the rush it offered with each bite. The Moroi - and guardians - looked down on this dependency, even though the Moroi couldn't have survived otherwise unless they took blood by force. Hypocrisy at its finest.

This trait of allowing grey complexities into Rose’s voice is one of the things that pleased me about the book. Rose is quite perceptive about wrongs, injustices and ambiguities, but Mead hasn’t written her as some righteous, crusading heroine. In fact, the book is riddled with her weaknesses. You might even argue that one of the themes of the book (and, I suspect, the series) is morality, boundaries of acceptability, and the strength and opportunity to make moral choices. Let’s see if I can make a case for that.

Choices and Morality

One of the first things that happens in the book is a feeding; Rose’s vampire, Lissa, needs blood from her. This introduces the intoxication aspect, but it’s only later that we learn how unacceptable – dirty, perverted, unthinkable – this is in vampire society. However, it’s a decision they made to keep Lissa alive, and one that’s left Rose with a mild addiction.

Soon after they return to school, Rose walks into a classroom to find two high-status kids tormenting a poor kid, magically blowing his papers around the room. In many books this would be a teaching point, where Rose or Lissa stepped in to deliver justice and demonstrate their righteousness. Here, nobody does a thing.

My instincts urged me to do something, maybe go smack one of the air users. But I couldn’t pick a fight with everyone who annoyed me, and certainly not a group of royals – especially when Lissa needed to stay off their radar. So I could only give them a look of disgust as I walked to my desk.

And then the narrative moves on to another part of the plot. Although Lissa is technically high-status, and both were once socially powerful, the school has moved on in their absence. Now, the rumours about their escape – and soon about a series of associated events – greatly complicate their attempts to blend back in.

Similarly, Rose frequently does things that aren’t particularly nice, or good, or sensible. As the story is told from her viewpoint, we even hear her acknowledging these issues. She still does them, though. It’s very human.

Some tiny, tiny part of me was starting to feel sorry for Christian. It was only a tiny part, though, and very easy to ignore...

And later on:

"...between stealing [her boyfriend] and spreading those stories about her parents, you guys really picked the best ways to make her suffer. Nice work." The smallest pang of guilt lurched inside of her. "I still think you're lying." "I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a lair. That's your department. And Rose's." "We don't-" "Exaggerate stories about people's families? Say that you hate me? Pretend to be friends with people you think are stupid? Date a guy you don't like?"

All of the above accusations are, of course, entirely accurate.

A feud erupts between Rose, Lissa and another girl called Mia, apparently at Mia’s instigation. Still, both sides are determined to utterly crush their rival and exact painful revenge, which means immense suffering for both parties as their most private secrets are turned into playground gossip by the other side. It’s mutually-assured destruction, basically.

Another important decision involves Lissa’s vampiric powers. We learn early on that Lissa has some compulsion abilities, and gradually discover that she can influence both humans and vampires, which is highly unusual. When their social standing is destroyed by revelations of blood sharing, a furious Lissa resolves to use those abilities to forcibly change people’s opinions of them, catching them one by one and altering their feelings by magic. This does indeed allow them to gradually regain acceptability in the school, but Rose is deeply uncomfortable about it, with good reason.

Finally, there’s Natalie. Poor Natalie.

Natalie is the daughter of a powerful vampire, Dashikov, and she just wants to be loved. Throughout the book, she seeks social validation, but it’s made clear that above all, she wants her father’s affection, and doesn’t quite get enough. This poisonous little worm is enough to turn her into a pawn for him, and his total carelessness about her really reinforced how unpleasant he is. From spying on her friends for his sake, she’s eventually pushed into leaving mutilated animals around in an attempt to make Lissa reveal her healing powers.

Finally, when her father is captured, she takes the ultimate step of becoming a Strigoi, murdering one of the teachers to gain the power to break him out. It fails, and her death is another trivial loss in his quest for power. Once again, out come those Themes I mentioned.

Natalie breaks the bounds of friendship in the hopes of winning validation from her father, and what she’s prepared to do for his sake pushes her into the final betrayal of her friends and her entire species. Although apparently happy, she doesn’t have the willpower to withstand his influence and refrain from doing wrong on his behalf. Dashikov betrayed his duties as a father by turning Natalie into a pawn for his own sake, and manipulating her love to force her into immoral acts. This contrasts with Dimitri, who as a child defeated his vampiric father to defend his mother, and now bursts in to help Rose defeat her one-time friend.

Although Natalie was only ever a minor character, looking back, you can see hints of what’s going on in the way she casually teases out information and hangs around Lissa. I did feel genuinely sorry for her, and I was sorry to see she just got killed off at the climax. On the other hand, stories where the bad guys just hang around indefinitely can drag.

Knowing what’s best for you

It strikes me that throughout the book, I don’t think Lissa ever actually asks Rose for anything. Partly this is perhaps just habitual expectation that Rose will be there, but I feel that part of it is that Rose projects her own ideas about what Lissa needs onto her charge. The mental bond that lets her literally see through Lissa’s eyes and experience her thoughts surely doesn’t help. We never see Lissa’s side at first hand.

This is shown up most flagrantly when she intervenes to block what she sees as an unhealthy friendship blooming between high-status Lissa and the local brooding loner, Christian, whose parents were killed after going rogue and hunting other vampires. Lissa finds his company soothing and there’s a sympathetic spark between them.

Rose, who is unusually bound up in social games for a contemporary heroine, is horrified at the thought of Lissa associating with this outcast, and repeatedly takes her to task. Between her prejudice and his rather erratic behaviour, things spiral until Rose intervenes, actively lying to Christian to separate them. Naturally, both Lissa and Christian think the other party has wronged them, and things become progressively worse. She does become guilty, though, and eventually she’s forced to admit that she was in the wrong.

Nonetheless, Lissa’s story throughout the book is one of having her best interests decided and controlled by other people. Her escape from the school turns out to have been at Rose’s instigation and with no warning; they’re forcibly returned to the school; Rose patrols her friendships and tries to dictate her social interactions; and eventually, Dashikov steps in to capture her in the hopes of curing his terminal illness. Even this he tries to frame as being good for her, providing an escape from the problems caused by her unique magical abilities.

The problems are, essentially, mental illness. For some reason not yet explained, Lissa's abilities not only lead to her mental bond with Rose, but also to extremely distressing mental episodes. Her coping mechanism for this is the self-harm I mentioned above, and there are a couple of explicit scenes, including first-person perspective courtesy of Rose's bond. Her eventual hospitalisation after a particularly bad episode causes yet more social waves, but also kicks us over from the social plot to the Dashikov plot that seems likely to be the overarching arc of the series.

Interestingly, I don’t think Christian ever does this. One of the things that seems to make him a suitable friend is that he’s fully prepared to leave Lissa alone. In their first encounter he simply extends a tenuous offer of conversation, making no attempt to force it, and he gives her plenty of space. When Rose tells him that Lissa doesn’t actually want him around, he immediately pulls back (causing both plenty of grief).

He does approximately set someone on fire to end a spiteful conversation about Lissa and Rose, but in fairness it’s purely a distraction and he doesn’t really get a chance to ask whether they’d like any help. Although he also clearly thinks it’s really funny. It's sort of reminiscent of the earlier scene with the boy being bullied, only this time the observer does decide to step in and face the consequences.

Since neither Jacob nor Ralf would have set Ralf on fire, it sort of made the culprit obvious. The fact that Christian was laughing hysterically sort of gave it away too.

Coming back to my point, though, I do think his willingness to just let her be herself – tied in to his own solitude and need to just be himself – is a strong point in his favour. When he realises she’s been self-harming, he twigs immediately, says nothing, and just exudes a kind of supportiveness that Lissa finds very comforting. He’s also smart enough to realise she’s been mesmerising everyone to restore their social standing, which is another point in his favour. Admittedly, he thinks it’s hot, rather than an alarming abuse of a power she shouldn’t even have, but then he is a teenager, and she is canonically doing nothing harmful with it, so the narrative’s always going to be on her side.

What I’m saying is, basically, I liked Christian as a character. I thought he was a well-constructed love interest, even though we mostly only see him in brief glimpses through Lissa’s eyes, as he doesn’t let his guard down as much around Rose. To some extent he comes across as the conscience of the story, reminding Rose and Lissa of their moral failings.

In fact (if I can be astonishingly pseud for a moment) you could almost posit him as a jester; his outsider status, total lack of social power and uncaring badass lonerism means he can speak truth to power (and set people on fire) with impunity, having very little to lose. He's also positioned to observe the other students without much personal involvement, and thus to comment on them.

I found Dimitri appealing as well. Mead did a good job of building the connections between him and Rose – they have similar mindsets, a strong sense of dedication, they feel somewhat isolated, and they’re very physical people. In both cases, they bring an outsider perspective that gives rise to mild contempt for some aspects of vampiric society; a sort of flipside to Christian's status as scion of a family fallen to the strigoi.

Yet they’re not entirely the same. There are clear differences in upbringing: she was raised by the school and indoctrinated from birth to become a model guardian like her mother; he was raised in a tight-knit community of blood-donors. Age also creates a distinction: I can see Rose eventually maturing into a more measured person, though probably still less reserved than Dimitri.

The older lover thing is a trope, and being a trope it isn’t quite as problematic as a 17-24 relationship would seem to me in real life. Rose has also been surviving in the real world for two years, so she’s a bit more savvy than her years. I was pleased that Dimitri, and to some extent Rose, recognised and tried to deal with these issues. As well as the simple age barrier, school rules, and his pastoral responsibility towards her, there are some professional complications.

One odd observation: given how Dimitri is presented as a consummate professional, he completely misses a massive and glaring clue that something suspicious is going on, and the narrative skips right over it.

"Well, it was a hell of a lot better than the last one they tried" "Last one?" "Yeah. In Chicago. With the pack of psi-hounds." "This was the first time we found you. In Portland." "Um. I don't think I imagined psi-hounds. Who else could have sent them? They only answer to moroi. Maybe no-one told you about it." "Maybe," he said dismissively. I could tell by his face he didn't believe that.

It's not very clear to me whether this is supposed to mean "he decided Rose was making it up" or "he was deeply suspicious and pretending not to be". Either way, nothing seems to suggest that anyone actually follows up on this obviously suspicious point, even though it ties strongly into the conclusion of the story.

Changing Minds

It’s maybe worth noting that this offers one of the more accurate portrayals of manipulation and social dynamics I remember seeing. Everyone involved is aware that what they’re dealing with is say-so, rumour and gossip, and quite harmful gossip at that, but they nevertheless either spread it or at least allow it to influence their behaviour. First Lissa, and then Rose, know the other’s desire for revenge is excessive, but they don’t seriously intervene and eventually both are committed to destroying Mia (we never get to see Mia’s side, sadly).

This isn’t just about bitchy girls, either. The boys in the story don’t come out too well. Several are happy to spread damaging lies about girls to get some attention, or even to be bribed with sex. There’s petty bullying, and Lissa and Rose are regularly targets of leering remarks and speculation on their relationship. Even the nicer named boys, Mason and Christian, are hot-tempered and use violence to defend Rose and Lissa from bullying. Only Dimitri, Rose’s smoking-hot combat instructor, escapes most of this – and as a 24-year old, he’s presumably matured more than the others, though he does have one aggressive confrontation with a student.

The school principal is interesting in the little we see of her. Rose views her quite clearly as despotic and arbitrary, but I don’t think the text quite supports that. She is quite harsh with Rose and Lissa, but then she has very good reason: they have committed a serious breach of rules by running away for two full years, causing enormous trouble and worry for a lot of other people. They also appear to be habitual troublemakers (lots of illegal parties and midnight escapades) and smashed up another student’s bedroom before leaving. Of course she’s going to be strict.

Moreover, this isn’t just normal school strictness; the vampires face the very real threat of strigoi hunting them down. In the absence of a very good explanation, which the girls don’t dare to give, severe punishment is inevitable and appropriate. She does intend to expel Rose before Dimitri intervenes, but then again, she’s prepared to change her mind when he agrees to take her in hand. I thought she was pretty well-done as a character.

Social Protagonists

On that social games point – my observation (from an admittedly limited subset of reading) is that the majority of protagonists in contemporary literature, particularly literature aimed at younger people, don’t really dabble in social politics. Many are bookish nerds, particularly on the more fantastical end of the literary spectrum. Many others are simply everyteenagers; they’re averagely attractive (at least in theory), averagely clever, have an average number of friends, and so on. I can only remember seeing high-status people in more literary books, or that high-society flavour of romance a la Jilly Cooper. Historical novels seem much readier to star nobles and the socially-influential, possibly because those are the bits of history that sound most fun.

As such, it was interesting to see a story whose protagonists were enthusiastic participants in the social scene. I was a little disappointed to realise that that was going to be strictly past tense; I suppose it does make sense for things to have changed in their absence, including their own feelings. Mostly, though, I imagine the narrative called for them to have to make new friends and not have very much support, because most of this volume is about that social uncertainty, and how it leaves them vulnerable.

Oh Sole Mia

Mia was actually the aspect of the book that I thought was weakest. I liked the fact that there was an apparently-arbitrary rivalry between these girls, and was quite sympathetic to Mia. Truth be told, I still am. We learn that her family are very low-status and she’s managed to work her way into more influential circles – another example of boundary-crossing, as this seems to be viewed in much the same way as social climbing in 1950s Britain, but seems quite reasonable to me.

Later it’s revealed that the reason for the feud is her appalling treatment by Lissa’s deceased brother, which Lissa is naturally reluctant to believe (as quoted above). Again, the brother made bad choices and harmed Mia both personally and socially in the process. However, Lissa loved and had faith in her brother, and it's difficult for her to accept that he was not only in the wrong, but actively wronged someone else. The fact that she's currently in a serious feud with Mia naturally makes that even harder.

I felt like both sides were being realistically angry and vindictive, but both were also understandable and sympathetic in their motivations. Although Mia technically starts the feud, she's clearly on the defensive from the start, responding to what seems an invasion of her social territory from someone she hates both as a royal and as the sister of her horrible ex.

Later on, though, the authorial voice turns violently against Mia. She becomes increasingly desperate in the face of the nobility closing ranks against her (which is quite understandable), and resorts to trying to get Rose’s help after a fall-out between her and Lissa. This is a sort of unpardonable sin in narrative terms, trying to create a betrayal between friends, and she’s quite explicitly painted as dangerous and ruthless. Of course, this is all in Rose’s voice, but it also felt fairly clear that this was the reality.

Worse is to come, though; it turns out that Mia spread rumours by offering sexual favours to a couple of bragging lads, while in a steady relationship with someone she’s apparently devoted to. This is the point where the narrative switches from nasty-but-somewhat-understandable to, it seemed to me, depicting her as genuinely obsessive and (in Rose’s words) “well into sociopath territory”. It’s not the actions specifically, so much as how far she’s willing to push boundaries in pursuit of revenge. Rose, on the other hand, is the Sexy Spice half of the Rose-Lissa pair, but the text is careful to emphasise early on that she hasn’t had sex, despite all the kissing and “semi-nakedness” that’s brought up regularly.

The problem is, though, that this leaves us with an antagonist who is flat-chested (highlighted very early on), short, relatively unpopular (until she started dating Lissa’s royal ex, apparently), working-class, and promiscuous, who is also portrayed as nasty and sociopathic. I feel like the conflation of those things is a bit unnecessary – I’d rather hoped to see the end of Bad Common Girl when I stopped reading Enid Blyton. She’s left to contrast with a conventionally-attractive, athletic, popular, high-status party-girl heroine who’s conveniently balanced between “sexy” and “virgin”.

This increasing vilification of Mia helpfully means that Rose and Lissa never have to really reconsider their own actions or question their consciences. In fact, the final flare of this plot in the book involves Mia making yet more bitchy remarks while Lissa is in hospital, and Rose punching her in the face. The uberplot kicks off while she's under lock and key, awaiting punishment. Narratively, Mia is placed firmly in the wrong, and I think that's a shame.

Weirdly, in some ways I actually felt more sympathetic to Mia than to Rose. She’s got plenty of issues, but she had been very badly treated by Lissa’s brother, and had fought had to overcome the major social disadvantages of her background in a prejudiced society, only to have that stripped away by the sudden return of Lissa and Rose.

To a large extent I also felt she was treated badly by the narrative, with Mead making an apparently conscious decision to make her a nasty piece of work and piling sexual condemnation on top of that. I’d have liked to see an antagonist who was just someone whose interests constantly clash with the protagonist, and I feel that would have worked well, given how Rose is constantly presented as flawed.

The Sex Talk

Awkwardly, I think the book is framing a lot of the social stuff around sex. I don’t know much about the sociology or literary issues here, so apologies for the aspects I will undoubtedly miss. Essentially, there’s a slightly weird thing where blood is sometimes a sort of metaphor for sex, except there’s also sex. You know?

People who provide blood to vampires are popularly called “blood whores”, which seems to be completely acceptable terminology – the only alternative, “feeders”, isn’t much better. I’m a bit surprised there doesn’t seem to be a single official or neutral term in use, even if teenagers don’t use it. The characters conflate these with the dhampir communities who raise children, creating an impression that non-guardian dhampirs (mostly women) are basically just sources of blood or sex or both for moroi. It’s not entirely clear how accurate this is in the setting.

The entire blood-sharing issue, which is the cause of Lissa and Rose’s fall from grace, is explicitly depicted as both “dirty” and strongly associated with kinky sex. The rumours spread about them claim that Rose has been sleeping around while allowing vampire boys to drink her blood - which is, predictably, treated as only being icky on her side, because sexism.

I mean, it makes some sense. I can see that in a world where “people you feed on” is an actual thing, then taboos would quite likely arise on also having sex with those people, and that all sorts of baggage would build around this.

The awkwardness here is that half their social redemption comes from proving (well, getting those same accusers to declare) that it’s all lies and Rose never actually had sex with anybody, let alone allowed them to drink her blood (the issue of Lissa is allowed to drop). The second half comes from revealing that, while Rose hasn’t been having sex, Mia has, which makes her the slutty one, so ner ner na ner ner. More or less.

It’s all fairly believable behaviour-wise... no, wait. The responses of the teenagers to these various bits of gossip and scandal are sadly believable, though Mia’s behaviour specifically was pretty hard to credit as plausible. At the same time I found it uncomfortable, because these attitudes were also bundled with Mia being quite clearly the spiteful antagonist and also presented as somewhat unstable, and the fact that she specifically uses sex as a lever to get boys to lie on her behalf.

Broadly speaking, you end up with a situation where Our Heroine is vindicated and approved because she wasn’t having sex, whereas Our Antagonist is condemned because she was having sex. This is, bizarrely, true even though Rose and Lissa actually were doing the blood-sharing that’s the biggest part of the taboo, whereas Mia just had sex.

It’s also a bit strange that as far as I can tell, the two boys who spread vicious lies about Rose in exchange for sex are perfectly happy to admit it and don’t seem to expect any consequences. Sexual mores are messed up, but in my experience flagrant lying tends to cause social backlash – and more so considering that the targets of the lies, Lissa and Rose, were social bigshots whose popularity is now restored. As far as I can tell, they agree to come clean under threats from one of Rose’s friends, but I didn’t find it entirely convincing. It felt a bit like the writer just needed to wrap this arc up now to start introducing the series plot.

It wasn’t a huge problem for me or anything, but this Rose-vs-Mia arc is the biggest arc of the book (it’s a series, so the main plot only just gets a look in), so it seemed a shame it had this awkward aspect to it. I feel like just dropping the sex aspect and having the scandal built purely around blood-sharing would have been both neater and stronger, as well as less problematic. As it was I didn’t feel like this arc was very well written.

The end bit

I feel like I should have some kind of conclusion here, but I don't really. I'm not sure whether I'll read any more of the series; I thought some of what it was doing was quite interesting, but I've noticed how much hmming and hawing I'm doing here, especially over poor Mia. The fact that I'm even thinking "poor Mia" is perhaps an indication that this series isn't for me.

I must also confess that I've got limited tolerance for plots along the lines of "you alone have the one special magic long thought lost or legendary, which will be the key to saving the universe".

On the other hand, I liked the bits of it that weren't about Mia, and maybe with the uberplot kicking off, that won't be much of an issue? I dunno. I've got plenty more to read right now. But perhaps, as with

Fallen

, now that I've worked out what the series is doing I've got what I need.

[1]

“Vampires” who are, as far as I can tell, essentially human wizards who drink blood but not in a bad way you guys, and also don’t like sunlight. They don’t seem to be superhuman other than some elemental magic.

[2]

Half-vampires who are basically Buffy as far as I can tell, but get brought up to be fanatically loyal to their vampiric masters and dedicate themselves to either protecting moroi from attack by the strigoi

[3]

, or being “blood whores” because… why not, as far as I can tell. Maybe it’s hard to get social security numbers when your parent was a vampire? Your dad, I mean. Dhampirs are basically all the bastard offspring of horny male moroi who wanted to get some curvy human female action, because moroi are always pale, thin and flat-chested.

Canonically, the dhampirs do all this to ensure the survival of their species, which is to say, their hybrid. Given the reality of dhampir life, I’m not sure why. Basically this seems to boil down to accepting a brutal life of either dedicating yourself to being elite bodyguards for feeble moroi and under constant risk of death, or being junkie blood sources for moroi and at constant risk of abuse, or breeding the next generation of dhampirs – in order to ensure that you can have descendants who have the same kind of lives.)

[3]

Vampires who are canonically evil because they kill their victims, although I get the feeling they’re mostly bad because they feed on moroi specifically to be honest. Also their bite turns people into more strigoi. They’re presented as being incarnations of predatory evil, but from the one strigoi we meet in the book, they come across as a mixture of Character In Goth Makeup and

Character In Evil Voice

. Basically these seem to be the Buffy Vampires of the setting – basically just like they always were, except faster, stronger, more metal, cooler and probably sexier.Themes:

Books

,

Young Adult / Children

,

Horror

,

Text Factor Halloween Special

,

Romance

~

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Bill

at 17:25 on 2016-01-18

The girls must survive a world of forbidden romances, a ruthless social scene and terrifying night-time rituals. But above all, they must never let their guard down, lest the immortal vampires take Lissa - forever...

Two out of three ain't bad

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Shim

at 18:31 on 2016-01-18

Two out of three ain't bad

I... how did I miss that? *facepalm*

Also I just realised this cover is different to mine (probably the US edition?) and although it's the exact same photo, mine is very pale with black hair and red lips (classically vampiric), whereas the above is pinkish with... brown hair, I think?

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Robinson L

at 15:00 on 2016-05-24I checked this one and its sequels out, along with

Fallen

and

The Morganville Vampires

after the TeXt Factor Halloween special. I read the final book, book 6, a year or two ago, and I recently started listening to the spin-off

Bloodlines

series on audiobook. So, I obviously liked it—quite fun on the whole, with occasional forays into really fun. I'd put the series somewhere above

Fallen

, but below

The Morganville Vampires

in terms of my enjoyment/appreciation.

(I also encouraged one of my sisters to read the first book, and while she enjoyed it, she loathed Lissa and all the Moroi, because she considered them useless in their dependence upon the dhampir guardians.)

I broadly agree with your case for the themes the book explores, and I'd definitely say it carries over to the rest of the series—and the first two spin-off books, at least. Interestingly enough, despite dealing with these fairly weighty issues in a moderately intelligent manner, the books still come across to me as light beach reading; I still haven't worked out whether I think that works towards their favor or against it.

Book 2—where my sister bailed on the series—is a downgrade in quality from the first, as there's less stuff going on through most of it. However, it rallies at the end with an exciting climax, and one which redress one of my major disappointments with the climax to the first.

Book 3 is a return to form, and a solid addition to the series.

Book 4 is, in my opinion, the best of the lot: here we see Rose's internal struggle at its most intense, and Rose herself at her very lowest point in the series. I said the books feel like beach reading, but there was a point about two thirds of the way through the fourth book which got me right in the heart, and I was impressed with the depth of emotional reaction Mead managed to evoke. Plus, the Lissa subplot was pretty cool, and the resolution was both awesome and unexpected.

Book 5 like Book 3, is a really solid addition to the series, though it feels like a bit of a downgrade coming off the high of Book 4. Still, it's got a lot going for it, and while the big plot points themselves aren't to surprising, I wasn't expecting when or how they would play out.

Book 6 was a little disappointing, not because it did anything really bad, just that it wasn't quite as exciting as I would have liked from the final installment. While I like that the climax doesn't revolve around a big fight with an Arc Villain for the series, I could have done with something a

little

more epic. Plus, the villain turned out to be a very likable character I'd pegged early on as being either a villain or a victim, because they didn't fit into any other story slot. Just when I was beginning to think this was just a cool supporting character, it's revealed that person was a villain after all. Sigh.

I agree with you about Natalie, poor thing.

As I recall, the school principal is, indeed, a strict but ultimately reasonable authority figure throughout the series, whom Rose misreads because Rose's and Lissa's behavior often brings out the “strict” part of her character. Actually, that's a bit of a running theme in the series.

From what I remember of the first book, Mia does degenerate from understandable antagonist to Designated Villain, part of which involves her engaging in sex to influence someone else's behavior—rather than for love, in contrast to both Rose and Lissa* over the course of the books—and that's not good. It's probably no big spoiler to reveal that Mia is rehabilitated later in the series, but as I recall, it's a case of a reformed villain rather than both sides admitting they shared the blame equally.

*I think Lissa slept with her then-boyfriend—Mia's current boyfriend—before the events of the book because she was young and horny, which is still more “legitimate” than sleeping with someone because so they'll help you out in your evil scheme.

I also felt like the series as a whole has a disappointing lack of follow-through regarding some of the more unpleasant aspects of Moroi society. The hypocrisy over feeders (I think that

is

the common parlance “neutral” term) is brought up at times, but nobody ever really tries to do anything to resolve it, so the overall message comes across as a helpless shrug, “too bad, what'cha gonna do?”

Furthermore, the books never really acknowledge how immensely f*cking scary the Moroi's compulsion magic is, and how, in a more realistic universe, even well meaning people like Lissa would probably wind up using it for much more destructive purposes than undermining their rivals' popularity; kind of like a miniature version of the One Ring. (One character in the

Bloodlines

novels is suitably freaked by it, but this is explicitly depicted as part of their irrational distrust of Moroi and magic in general. Not once so far have we seen how easily compulsion could be abused to disastrous effect. I know Robert Jordan had a lot of flaws as a writer, but his characters knew to treat that kind of power with the respect and suspicion it deserves.)

The Moroi's institutional aristocracy and monarchy (even if it's a constitutional monarchy) also strikes me as pretty disturbing, but no one even suggests there might be something wrong with that one.

I think Mead does a better job of keeping Rose's faults and flaws as a character foregrounded, even with Rose providing first person narration the whole time, while still keeping her a likable character. One of the fascinating things in the later books is the way Rose gets into relationships which we know because of narrative convention are never going to work out, and which she has some misgivings over, but which she talks herself into anyway, sometimes multiple times, and the boy in question is so enamored of her that he keeps holding out the hope she'll commit to him for real. It's very unfair of Rose, and depicted as such, but also as completely understandable given what she's going though. It's like a total deconstruction of the Evil Girlfriend Who Toys With Innocent Boys' Emotions archetype, without ever hitting you over the head with what it's doing. (Indeed, I could be prepared to believe Richelle Mead didn't set out to explode this stereotype at all, and just happened to do so in the course of writing about a young woman caught up in an Epic Tragic Romance trying as best she can to navigate a swathe of feelings and emotions which she doesn't fully understand.)

The older lover thing is a trope, and being a trope it isn’t quite as problematic as a 17-24 relationship would seem to me in real life.

Me too—although on the other hand, one of the best matched couples I know got together at ages 17 and 30, and they're still going strong 8 years later. Funny old world.

On a tangential note, it's really weird to consider that I'm now several years older than Dimitri in the books. The way he acts, I guess I always tend to think of him as being in his early 30s, rather than early 20s.

I must also confess that I've got limited tolerance for plots along the lines of "you alone have the one special magic long thought lost or legendary, which will be the key to saving the universe".

For what it's worth, we meet a couple of other spirit users over the course of the series. Also, while Lissa's magic is, indeed, critical to the plot, it is not the key to saving the universe, as that's not really what the books are about.

We learn a lot more about Strigoi in later books, too, and they do indeed come across a lot like Buffy-esque Vampires: pretty much the same personalities, and they seem to have some sort of feelings for other people, and yet still somehow evil and uncaring, and the juxtaposition of the two is about as awkward as you would expect. (I fantasized while reading those sections that the Moroi and the Guardians might just be mistaken, and Strigoi, while alien and with very different priorities, might not be actually evil and uncaring. No such luck, sadly.)

If you do decide you want to continue reading the series, don't get attached to the psi-hounds. They get dropped so completely in later books that I was shocked to see them when the film version of the first book came out, as I'd literally forgotten they existed.

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While various other racers often tend to have the very same features, Job CARS allow's you change a range of UI and race settings prior to every race. The puzzle-focused games in the Portal series may lack the clue-collecting and also range of puzzles that Myst offers, however still should have addition on this listing merely for its outstanding physics-based problems and also dark humour. An Excellent Match For: Followers of fast-moving activity video games like Devil May Cry and also, well, the first Bayonetta. The video game has separate controls for executing numerous feats, and also therefore produces an excellent way to kill time when you have absolutely nothing on your hands. These benefit your girl. Certainly a few of these are a given like that of Lara Croft and also others? The video game takes you with numerous surfaces like desert, turf and so on. The cars and trucks can be opened and new automobiles can be utilized for better performance. If you have actually got a PS4 with a PlayStation Virtual Reality headset, basically every one of the game can be played in digital fact, which needs to be one of one of the most immersive auto racing experiences on console today. This video game is a relatively new arrival, however trust me, it's quite outstanding. Control has been taken over by a transcendent hazard and it's up to you and your newly found powers to fix the problem. It's based on drag auto racing concept where you require to move the gears at the proper time to attain an ideal equipment shift, which will certainly help you in crossing the finish line quicker. The video game is designed around a strategy where you require to move equipments at the appropriate time to go across the finish line initially (which is the principle of drag racing). Yes, this is the most one-of-a-kind game in parking world. This is an activity role-playing computer game that takes place in a post-apocalyptic globe that is swamped with vampires. There is, obviously lots of research study that enter into whether video games cause aggressive behavior. Ladies aren't as dumb as they look, and also here I will certainly explain the means to efficiently play video games with women, aiding you conserve hours of begging, and from doing the dreadful points they like to waste their life doing. A couple of that are advised to play are Drift Racer, Drift Transformation and also Super Wander 3D. All video games are conveniently found using your preferred search engine! You see, this is what I'm discussing when I babble on regarding consistency, as Namco is STILL draining hits, with Tekken, Soulcalibur as well as Time Dilemma just being a few of their most recent offerings. Among minority video games that does not make me mad. You may bring in added lamps to make it extra bright as well as fun. Tracking timelines might be made complex, however the characters' motivations never were. The game has intense graphics which look really realistic and tons of tracks to be chosen from. Tracks are initially locked as well as obtain opened when you finish the previous tracks. The even more you put into Super Mario Run, the extra you'll get out of it. I definitely suggest that you take a look at this game! Multiplayer setting matches you with arbitrary players online, whereas solitary player setting has unlockable 60 degrees, out of which originally just the first degree is opened, but subsequent ones get unlocked as and also when the previous ones are completed.

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The Ideal PSP Multiplayer Gamings - Pick the Finest Video clip Video game for yor Kids

Read our full testimonial of Extreme Road Trip 2 here. Extreme Road Trip 2 is a limitless 2D car racing video game in which you need to race versus time by carrying out stunts. Playing the most recent installation in a significant gaming franchise business like Madden, Grand Burglary Car or Last Fantasy makes it very easy to get addicted on the story, style and also general idea behind the video game. For those of you who do not yet understand the art of driving a race automobile the NASCAR racing video game comes full with a tutorial by Kenny Wallace himself that gets you ready to go behind the wheel. You must note that this video game is only usable on non touch gadgets/ with a connected key-board. What makes it sticks out from the group is that it even runs on lower end Windows 10 gadgets without any exterior graphics card under the hood with piece de resistance. How to Choose Video Games for Kids The graphics of the video game are excellent, and the controls are simple - all you have to do is to draw the equipment change lever up or down relying on your speed to shift the get ready or down. The video game is lightweight also, and also is certainly worth your download if you are looking for a video game which offers car racing with a highly adjustable experience. The video game is mission oriented and also is pretty lightweight and also well brightened all over. It collaborates with Windows 8 and also 8.1 too. Well I make sure if you have games you most likely beat them quickly with the aid of rip off sheets, however with on-line computer game stores you can defeat more as well as pay much less! Virtually everything can be fine-tuned, from positioning or getting rid of anything on the HUD to exactly where you favor it to a ridiculously scalable AI that let's you slide the trouble from 0-100 till you've dialed in the perfect electronic challenger. While other racers often tend to have the very same features, Task CARS allow's you change a selection of UI as well as race settings prior to every race. The puzzle-focused games in the Portal collection might do not have the clue-collecting and also range of challenges that Myst offers, however still deserves incorporation on this checklist simply for its outstanding physics-based problems and also dark humour. A Great Suit For: Fans of fast-moving action video games like Evil one Might Cry as well as, well, the initial Bayonetta. The game has different controls for carrying out different stunts, and also thus creates a great way to eliminate a long time when you have absolutely nothing on your hands. These are good for your woman. Undoubtedly some of these are a given like that of Lara Croft and others? The video game takes you via different surfaces like desert, lawn and so on. The cars and trucks can be unlocked and new cars can be utilized for far better performance. If you have actually obtained a PS4 with a PlayStation VR headset, basically every one of the game can be played in online reality, which needs to be among the most immersive auto racing experiences on console today. This game is a relatively newcomer, but believe me, it's quite remarkable. Control has actually been taken over by a transcendent risk and it's up to you and your newly found powers to fix the issue. It's based on drag racing idea where you require to change the gears at the correct time to achieve an excellent gear change, which will certainly help you in going across the finish line much faster. The game is designed around a strategy where you require to move gears at the right time to cross the goal initially (which is the concept of drag auto racing). Yes, this is the most special video game in auto parking globe. This is an activity role-playing computer game that happens in a post-apocalyptic globe that is swamped with vampires. There is, of course lots of study that go into whether or not computer game create hostile habits. Girls aren't as foolish as they look, and also below I will clarify the means to properly play video games with women, helping you conserve hrs of asking, as well as from doing the awful things they like to waste their life doing. A few that are advised to play are Drift Racer, Drift Change and Super Drift 3D. All video games are quickly found utilizing your preferred internet search engine! You see, this is what I'm discussing when I ramble on about consistency, as Namco is STILL draining hits, with Tekken, Soulcalibur and Time Dilemma just being a few of their newest offerings. Among the few games that does not make me mad. You may generate added lamps to make it additional intense as well as enjoyable. Keeping an eye on timelines could be made complex, however the personalities' inspirations never were. The video game has extreme graphics which look very reasonable as well as lots of tracks to be selected from. Tracks are initially secured and also get unlocked when you finish the previous tracks. The more you take into Super Mario Run, the a lot more you'll get out of it. I most definitely advise that you look into this game! Multiplayer mode matches you with arbitrary players online, whereas single gamer setting has unlockable 60 degrees, out of which originally only the first level is unlocked, yet succeeding ones obtain unlocked as and when the previous ones are finished.