#ITS NOT A STORY OHMYGOD YOURE NOT WAITING FOR A PLOT TWIST THIS IS A GENOCIDE!!!!!

[deesi-academia]

i want to get a job and be so rich so that i can donate ohmygod i feel so useless posting and reblogging for a free palestine when i can not give one single rupee

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

Hello! This is random but what are your Top ten favourite books of all time? Also do you have any book recommendations?

Ohmygod this is such a difficult question, because my answer is almost always 'whatever book I have just finished" but! I have pulled from my bookshelf the top 10 that have had the biggest impact on my life, behold!

The Classics™

1. Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen

When I was 18 and fresh out of school I set myself the arduous challenge of reading 3 'classical' books before I died. I struggled halfway through P&P thinking what an arsehole this Darcy boy was, until I got to "lydia will have to come upon the town". And I sat on the bus going 'Does... does Austen mean, lydia will become a hooker? Surely she can't mean that, it's a ye olde book!'

And I checked the notes and she DID. I was shook, I restarted the book and as I'd gotten used to the language I realised there were jokes!? And snarky comments!? And ridiculous people! And I LOVED IT

I realised that the classics were The Classics™ because they are good, and it opened a world of reading to me that I will never be able to repay it

I've read all her completed works, except Emma, and i love them all so much. (I'm saving Emma for the day I know I'll want a new Jane Austen book, cos one day I will and she ain't exactly writing any more)

2. Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte

Your self worth, your integrity, your ability to be a good person are attached to neither your station in life nor your beauty?

This message was completely foreign to me, I'd never seen it before and it latched on to my soul and stayed there

"Reader, I married him" is a single line that made me close the book and hold it to my heart while I recovered

3. Poor Miss Finch: Wilkie Collins

False accusations of murder, saved from the gallows by a mantelpiece clock, keeping secrets from your truest love, your identical twin living a life that is rightfully yours, the worlds more biased narrator, the most celebrated and wondrous Doctor Pratolungo, weird 18th century descriptions of medical conditions, poisons, cures, and their costs, a suspicious trip to the seaside? This has it ALL

It is a CRIME this book doesn't have its own film

Scottish Books

4. Quite ugly one morning: Christopher Brookmyre

This murder mystery is set in my home city of Glasgow and opens with the line "jesus fuck" as police officers try to long jump their colleagues and witnesses vomit to get a view of the crime scene and try not to add to the pile

It is fantastic and hilarious and is only surpassed by the later in the series "A big boy did it and ran away" which I no longer have as I grievously damaged it when I threw it across the room at the best/most gut wrenching plot twist I have ever experienced

5. Harry Potter and the philosophers stane: J. K. Rowling, translatit intae Scots by Mathew Fitt

Harry Potter was released while I was in high school and I loved it, lived for each release. But this version is in Scots, not gealic, proper Scots, which I have always been surrounded with but my parents forbade me to learn or speak because 'that's slang, if you speak slang you'll never get a job, speak properly'

And reading it was an indescribable feeling of understanding and coming home, like everything I'd ever read previously had been translated in my head into my own internal Scottish language. It was transformative and shaped my understanding of my own culture, language and upbringing

Also, every single insult is 100x funnier and I love it

Books I have never met another reader of

6. All my friends are superheros: Andrew Kaufman

I picked this book up in a shop while waiting for a train and stood transfixed until I absolutely had to leave. In a world where mildly extra ordinary superpowers are common, a man's marriage is ruined by his wife's ex's superpower of suggestion.

It's 108 pages of a man desperately trying to show his wife he's Right There, and it is gut wrenching and glorious and so very very clever

I cried on the train home

7. Kane: Stephen A Jennings

I met a guy at work who just casually mentions in conversation he's a published author, he lent me a copy of his book about a small town American family

The sacrifices needed to keep your head just above the poverty line, the way your roots often suck you back in, the sometime too high a price needed to pursue your dreams all hit a little too close to home

I loved it and have been completely in awe of Stephen ever since

Cult books

8. The Princess Bride: William Goldman

I'd seen the film 50 times before I ever knew the book existed, it is everything the film portrays and more. The purchase was worth it for Inigo Montoyas backstory alone.

The shrieking eels bit genuinely pulled me back into the room with columbo grandpa in a way I have never experienced with any other book

9. Guards! Guards!: Terry Pratchett

I only picked this up because of all the fuss on tumblr about the new adaptation and I am SO GLAD, I laughed all the way through and fell hopelessly in love with Carrot Ironfounderson (as everyone does)

I've recently finished the whole watch series and am on to new discworld books, but I'll always thank this book and the righteous anger over that bbc adaptation for bringing these books into my life

Books that made me goddamn angry

10. Invisible Women, exposing data bias in a world built for men: Caroline Criado Perez

Fuck me, honestly I haven't even finished this because every chapter fills me with an all consuming rage the likes of which I have never experienced before.

Criado Perez just calmly lists data, statistics, and processes, each one showing how 51% of the population is underrepresented or completely ignored in anything from kids cartoons to medical studies for the pill. And ohmyfuckinggawd I knew it was bad for us before, but i didn't know how bad.

Now I have numbers and I am filled with rage.

I'm only stopping now because of the picture per post limit, I love stories and will recommend almost any book I've ever read either because I loved it or hated it

[zenosanalytic]

Wonder Woman

Ok, so I saw this yesterday, and I liked it, and I thought it was a good movie, but I felt it was weighed down by the necessity of tying it into the DC continuity, and I found it philosophically unsatisfying in certain particular, idiosyncratic ways.

As a movie and an Action Movie I thought it did a great job. All the performances were excellent. The lack of male-gaziness, the placing of a guy in the traditional love-interest role, the allowance of said love-interest to be a full and complex character which so few conventional action movies with conventional male directors is willing to afford to women characters and actors, was Wonderful.

I could have done without the frame story. I understand why they did it, but it detracted from the film, i think, and they could have made it much smaller and accomplished the same thing. It could have been as easy as having the frame be a question from Bruce at a party, or Diana seeing the picture in her house or at work and remember. Or heck, have no frame at the start and fade from her looking at the picture on the memorial to her looking at the picture in her hand or on the wall or in a museum or something in the present.

I wanted MORE Movie. Yes, I realize it was almost 2 1/2 hours long, but it felt rushed to me; like they didn’t have much time establish the setting, background, and supporting characters in. There were a lot of good ideas there: the motley, dispossessed nature of Steve’s team being a implicit example of how destructive war is; Charlie’s PTSD; the revelation of the horrors behind Steve’s American optimism, but none of these felt like they were given the time they needed, or the development they deserved.

Every action sequence in the movie was in the trailers. This is Bad, and I kinda feel like it’ll alienate those fans who came to the it as an actiony summer blockbuster, though idk how big a sector of the audience that’ll be.

I’d have liked a bigger time-frame for the plot. Excepting the backstory section, the whole movie takes place in, like, a week or two at most. You see Diana go to sleep three times, so it’s possible it all happens in three days.

I don’t think you needed the McGuffin of the gas, and I’d have preferred a full-war time-frame, akin to First Avenger. Diana’s motivation is to find and defeat Ares, afterall, so the war in itself, its scope, and its world-wide, apocalyptic tones, would have been enough to draw her out through her desire for adventure and sense of obligation.

Pitch: Steve crashes, she learns about the war, she decides Ares is behind it and goes to find and defeat him, she confronts the cabinet/high command/whatever to offer her aid, being raging sexists they laugh her out of there, enraged she goes to the front and proves her worth ala the village sequence, now she’s a national figure and command HAS to use her but they use her in ways that keep her out of the main action and away from where the can end the war quickly, through all this she comes to see and learn the nature of war, of humanity, that her allies aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, how hopeless and stupid and wasteful The Great War was, and starts to question her OWN joy in and desire for violence, and what that says about who she is, who humans are, Who/What “Ares” is, and what it means to be good and just. And then you can do your ending, which I’ll get to later.

More could have been done with Etta.

The unashamed inclusion of dysfluency/fillers in the dialogue, both in response to Diana ‘s not-so-mere Presence and just for their own sake, was something I deeply appreciated.

The Romance stuff was Wonderful, and Good, and Pure. I Love that they did the “sex scene” with a simple room walk in and jump cut to their lighted window during the night. I think it could have been better though :| I am going to write-up how I think it could have been better, and when I do I will link it here :| :| Though I might wait until I can rewatch it online so I can make sure I get the dialogue right and everything right.

I agree with @purified-zone that including the Ares bit, and the way they did it, undercuts the really excellent and interesting Existential and Humanitarian message the film had been building up until then, only to replace it with a deeply unsatisfying, poorly done, and confusing Idealist ending that somehow manages to feel both enormously tacked on, utterly out of the blue, and unnecessary and clumsily foreshadowed for much of the movie. I mean, it wasn’t even much of a twist I was like “that dude is totally Ares because the movie so much wants us to believe it’s the other guy and he’s set up in opposition to him” the minute I saw him. I have more idiosyncratic Opinions about this bit, which I’ll get to below.

The Ares effects were really badly done ohmygods X| X| X|

I don’t like how the death of Steve was done, though I don’t really mind him dying in the movie. A WWI movie that doesn’t feature the protagonist and audience losing their dear friends is a bad WWI movie, and the more needless, horrible, and senseless those deaths are the more accurate the movie will be. Every WWI movie should be an anti-war movie.

IDIOSYNCRASIES

I felt the visual symbolism was confused in a few places. Like: you have a bit where Diana, through the power of Friendship, destroys the belltower(an architectural bit that often includes a crucifix) of a church to save a village, because a German sniper is sheltering in it. Then she stands above them all, in the ruins of said belltower, framed by clouds and shining golden light, and is cheered as a hero. That’s a pretty pro-pagan, or at the very least anti-church/clerical, image religious-politics wise. But then you have her killing Ares by floating into the sky, in the crucifixion pose(was she backlit here? I forget) and shooting a beam of pure white light(ning?) out of her chest at him. Pretty unabashed(and action-movie-conventional) Christian symbolism there. Then you have the obvious parallels the back story draws between the Abrahimic God and Zeus, and the “Fall” of Ares and the “Fall” of Lucifer. So the way the movie uses religious imagery is all over the place, and it didn’t come off to me as being meant in a positive and syncretic way, so it was just confused.

And why make the Olympians all dead in the first place? That’s such a dumb and utterly pointless thing to do. You can explain why they exist and do nothing to stop evil in the world as simply as having Hippolyta tell Diana that, after seeing the devastation and anguish caused by Ares and their necessary war against him to stop his destruction, the Gods swore to never directly interfere in the mortal world again. It’s literally that simple, and that would even leave open the possibility of indirect influence and “help” given to Diana by the Gods.

Ok so about the ending. One where there was no Ares would have probably been the best, and played better into the monologue Diana has at the beginning of the film. I think, if they really wanted to though, they could have included Ares in a way that didn’t undermine the movie’s message about existentialism and the protective lies Hippolyta had told Diana growing up.

Like, gods aren’t just beings, they’re ideas personified. They kind of play with this idea in the movie by having Ares “influence” humans towards self-destruction, but they could have done a better job with it. Ares’ motivation could have been sincere but mistaken. As a god of war, anytime and place he would have been able to manifest in the mortal world would have been one of conflict and destruction; simply by being around people, he would have encouraged their violent and impetuous traits. He would have seen, due to his nature, the worst in Humanity. From that perspective, it’d have been no surprise that he held them in the low opinion he did. Zeus tries to explain this to him, he won’t understand(no one ever accused Ares of ebing smart), and that misunderstanding is what leads to the first god-war, his weakening, and his banishment to the mortal realm.

So the conflict between Ares and Diana would be a rehashing of this -him being unable to see the truth of humanity and himself, her trying to get him to see it through the example of her own experiences- and that would have allowed the godly showdown at the end without undermining the existentialism message, and indeed could easily play into it by involving Ares’ own agency, choices, and beliefs in the film’s resolution(which would easily allow an ending without Steve’s Captain America esque death).

I also think playing that “showdown” as a wholly physical one was a mistake. Like, you could have had that be a conceptual battle -Diana and Ares fighting as their divine selves in, essentially, human brainspace- that resolves with Diana “winning” the argument, and is mirrored by Steve or Sameer talking the people at the base out of gassing the front and destroying the armistice; resolving the problem in the real world without violence. You would have Diana’s fight with the God of War be a manifestation of Steve or Sameer’s rhetorical “fight” with the desire for conflict that god represents in the real world, and have in genuinely be a fight for peace, through the methods of peace. I doubt that’d have much connection at all to the Wonder Woman of the comic books, but it’s an ending I would have Dug to see done, and it would have done something genuinely interesting with the whole “god” concept, rather than just having gods be really tough and magical humans.

[comicteaparty]

December 7th-December 13th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from December 7th, 2019 to December 13th, 2019.  The chat focused on the following question:

If you could redo one part of your story, which part would it be and why?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I can and do redo parts of my story. I’m working on a redux of the first two chapters of my comic, Dark Wings: Eryl (https://www.flowerlarkstudios.com/art-archive/eryl-redux-archives/ - rated M) right now. I’m doing so for quite a few reasons, some of which are very personal and have to do with my own growth as a person, not just as a creator. It was also to update the writing, partly to update the art, and because I took a three year hiatus a long time ago which created a huge, jarring gap in not the just art and writing, but also the tone and direction of the comic. I also sometimes go back and adjust speech bubbles in old pages to close plot-holes or fix some badly-written dialogue. I feel that if there is any part of my story where redoing sections can improve the entire course of the comic and readers’ enjoyment of it, I will. And if I don’t, I run the risk of losing inspiration for the entire comic because I can’t figure out how to work with an older part of it. Rather than twist my plot into pretzels trying to explain something carelessly written a decade ago in current scenes or allowing plot-holes to open, I go back and fix the bad parts. Reduxes are often seen as taboo by a lot of comic creators. But if looking back genuinely helps me to keep going forward, then I will.(edited)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

For Phantomarine (http://www.phantomarine.com/), it'd be less about rewriting existing things, and more about... adding back in the extra pages/detail/fun-stuff that I originally wrote, but had to cut out to meet a reasonable page count per chapter. With the number of hours a single page takes to paint, I really REALLY have to streamline things, or I'll never finish this damn project Good news is, I think it's helped the pacing in its own way. And I have lots of fluff and fun stuff coming down the line that I think are better suited to the story anyway. So... I guess... in a different world, I'd simplify the art style, so I could just write more? Yeah, that. Let's go with that.(edited)

AntiBunny

We all have things we'd like to redo, but if we kept rebooting we'd never make progress. That said in AntiBunny: The Gritty City Stories http://antibunny.net/ I'd probably have set it in the 1980's instead of present day. It's hard to write mysteries around google and cell phones, or to keep the superscience impressive. Grounding it in a known time period would have been easier.

Eightfish

@LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) I just read through your archive and ohmygod, wow! Your art is so beautiful. The colors! The backgrounds! Every page is like a painting the panels are so well put together. And I love the way you draw the seaghosts all together. I can't imaging how much time that took. And the worldbuilding is fantastic and creative, and the dialogue flows so well, and I'm so invested in your characters (when are we getting back to Phaedra??), and your villains are so fun. Cheth is so fun to see, and such a unique idea, I am so into it.

twothirty

i actually did redo the first half of chapter 1 (http://versecomic.com/) when i came back to it after 2-ish years. I opted for a much slower start to introduce readers to this world where things aren't perfect but people are getting by. Originally i had it start off in the midst of a catastrophe and i just wasn't feeling it. I always ruminate on the pacing of my story, i think the first book moves very fast, and there's some scenes i'd make a few pages longer to just get in some more dialogue...

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

@Eightfish Oh my goodness!! That’s so wonderful and so kind of you to say. It’s my only current story idea, so I’m putting all the effort in that I can muster. Thank you for checking it out! This is the last of the chapters that help flesh out the outside world - we’ll be seeing a lot more of Cheth and Phaedra very soon... for better or for worse. I can’t wait to get back to them and FINALLY tie all the threads together Thank you again!

seetherabbit

The only one that I would do a redo would the first story in Vulperra https://vulperra.com/comic/flash-gauntlet-1/ Apart from giving it a George Lucas (redrawing it with improved graphics aka art skill), I would also add in pages before and after the 10 pages thats out. What I would add is Flash Gauntlet (the main character) tell the tale of him fighting the demon in the story. There's one story that I did a redo on before it got published, which is this one. https://vulperra.com/comic/guardian-of-castle-bogo-1/ What I changed was the climax and the ending. The story is about a bunch of people in a castle that has only one guardian who protects the rest of the citizen from monsters and such. No one else wants to use weapons and the guardian is tired of his work and tries to throw it on Flash Gauntlet. The climax is that Flash Gauntlet convices the others to help the guardian out by making better defences around the castle. In the old version, the citizens learns to wield weapons instead. I didn't like the old version because I felt it was too preachy, and the ending gave me a bleh feeling. There's a couple of things in the story that's being published now, and one future one that I could change, but that's more minor things that I think I don't need to go back to. I'm more of a "let the mistakes be and leave them as a reminder to get gudd" kind of guy. Unless I hate it the story, like the Castle short

Capitania do Azar

Oh I have done so many edits over at https://www.sarilho.net/en/. They're mostly to text (for clarity) and minor edits here and there for continuity or correcting mistakes. Tho more recently I found out than I have the time I shouldn't let it reflect anything less than my best work, so in the latest chapter I've moved pages and panels around to make for a better story flow (even adding pages when I realized I would go over the initial number of pages I planned)

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Sometimes I think I should have started the story with Victoria's situation at home and her relationship to her mother, since that is pretty important for the plot. But to be fair...not showing this at the beginning created a little bit more intrigue and I guess I'm not far enough into the plot yet to really want to change anything of substance.

sssfrs

I would redo chapter 2 https://tapas.io/episode/1486719 to improve the art and change around some of the dialogue

Ooh there were also some details I forgot to include in the most recent chapter

Deo101

I think I would want to add some pages to slow my pacing down, and also spend a bit longer on backgrounds. I suppose in theory I could add pages in now, but I think I'd rather put that effort into moving forward!

snuffysam

In terms of art - a lot lol, the early art of Super Galaxy Knights http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/comics/ is pretty bad. But I'm almost finished redoing all the chapters that were drawn on paper & didn't have shading, so that won't be a problem for much longer. In terms of the writing and pacing and stuff, I'm mostly still good with my earlier work? The one thing I regret is the end of Book 1 Chapter 7 - the part where Cahe straight-up murders three guys. I feel like it doesn't make that much sense for his character, and doesn't even resolve the "we need a rounded out team" thing very well. An ideal redo would change Cahe's ability to make more sense for his character - say, he can put a shield on Pejiba that reflects all damage to her back at her attackers. But making a change like that would make it impossible for Mizuki to use that ability while fighting Zebugu, which would take away one of the major aspects of that fight. At the very least, I'd probably cut out the page where Cahe kills the tank driver :p