#MAN support your writers

[sophiethewitch1]

i laugh evilly when i tease my readers about plot points/twists but you aren't allowed to do it to me back. it's not fair you don't understand I'm just a little guy D:

[inkskinned]

you know, you know. no gods, no masters, no kings on pedestals. everyone is fallible. death of the author. you know! you are balanced about your intake of media - you allow the wiggle room, the grace, the gratitude, the skepticism. nobody above criticism.

but still. a weird gut-punch feeling, something akin to betrayal. you read the article. surprise! an author you love is actually: a serial fucking predator.

well, shit. what now. no, you knew he was a person (all people are), but now you're wondering - what have i overlooked by accident? what messages have i internalized that are strange and cruel? and also, like, what the fuck?

his actions lay a thick glaze on top of everything. like each place is now ruined, opaque in a new way. but okay, fine, you've done this before. you knew better, right? you've been betrayed by many a cherished childhood author.

still, this stickiness. fuck. can you pick up that book again. will you read it to your children. you've recommended it to others - will you ever do that again? and of course, of course, no parasocial relationships. you were theoretically above this kind of sentiment. but the artist informs the art, right.

so it's not something as clear-cut as feeling he owed you, specifically (a stranger) better behavior - just that you kind of, in a distant and odd way... sort of trusted him to do better. it's not like a real trust or something speakable, just the faint hope that the product (good books) was a thin representation of the soul. now it feels like the product (good? books?) was a mask. in some small or insignificant way, your previous support of this person lent them power. your money and your time and your laughter.

and the thing is - you have this terrible, echoing sensation. how many times will this happen? over and over. you find out that the singer you love is actually a predator. you learn over drinks that your favorite high school english teacher is in jail for what he did to her. you listen to the news idly and suddenly discover that a woman you used to idolize has been abusing her kids for an actual eon.

what can you touch without the static melting off. you can't even really complain about it too much (you were supposed to know better, and besides, you don't want the same re-split "it's not your fault, love what you love" basic advice), but now it's here. somehow, it feels like - you let him into your life.

it's not that things need to be pure or an artist has to be like, endlessly perfect, mindful. demure. it's more just this terrible truth that has been replayed through your veins so often it feels criminally vain. power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. did you want any one person to be worth that power?

it's just that he wrote books where he seemed to understand that. he seemed to know about hierarchies and unfair systems and bigotry and privilege. you thought they were books about what it means to struggle. you thought they were about having power and still using it for good rather than for control. he spooned you a narrative of being a good guy, a kind soul. you fucking bought what that fucking monster sold.

maybe that's why they were fantasies, after all.

[thatsbelievable]

A Message From the That’s Believable Guy

Guess what? The spooky humor middle-grade book that I wrote and Robb Mommaerts illustrated, The Monstrous Adventures of Mummy Man and Waffles, is on sale for 59% off HERE.

Mummy Man is a silly, spooky friendship adventure, filled-to-bursting with ridiculous B-movie monsters. There’s even a turtle named Frank!

If you’d like to support the work we do on That’s Believable, a great way to do that would be to order a copy! Or, you could ask for the book at your local library. We would be incredibly grateful. Thanks for reading!

[lemonhemlock]

I did not get into Game of thrones when it first started airing. In fact, I waited until it was long past it's heyday (around s6 or 7) to check it out because the marketing and the conversation surrounding it misled me into thinking it was nothing more than "grimdark" bullshit. As one famous YouTuber sarcastically called it "hot fantasy that fucks." So, I avoided Martin's work for literal years due to the impression that I got from online reactors and show-only casuals who did as you and a few others have described as his work being fundamentally misinterpreted.

Fortunately, I overcame my hang-ups, purchased the books (even the supplementary material) and fell down an entire rabbit hole of ASOIAF which led me to recognizing that this world he spent decades creating is far more complex than what had been portrayed onscreen. Regardless of the possibility of the books remaining unfinished (which I am fine with, personally), what George has created is a genuine work of art that I imagine took a tremendous amount of time and energy. So, for so many people online to behave like children and throw tantrums because they feel entitled to him (ew) instead of ushering forth more reasonable conversations and legitimate debates about the nature of his situation frankly makes me look at this fandom with a heavy dose of skepticism.

It is truly baffling to hear even professional critics and see articles describing George as being "ungrateful" or "unprofessional" when it has been well-documented just how often authors get locked out of the adaptation process and left to the wayside as consultants. Look at what happened to Rick Riordan and Christopher Paolini! George R.R. Martin is not the only author to have qualms with how a multimillion dollar studio has mishandled his creative work, and to act like he should remain silent just because he's amassed a certain degree of wealth is quite frankly, ridiculous. He shouldn't have to settle down, be grateful, and stay quiet because the greedy corporate executives and their media drones will get offended by actual criticism that could alter the perception of the adaption being revealed as mediocre for having departed from the source material.

TLDR: authors should be allowed to speak up about their art being sacrificed for commercialization.

Thank you so much for this message, anon! This needs to be talked about more, because I don't think a lot of commentators truly understand the vulgar, late-capitalistic sheen that seems to set in and slowly poison any ASOIAF adaptation. It honestly baffles me how quick some members of this fandom are to rush to the defense of, what is essentially (let's not be kidding ourselves here), a cashgrab by a giant corporation to the detriment of the actual artist and the actual creative foundation behind it.

Why else would "MAX" (if that is even their name) make another (or several other) ASOIAF adaptations? Not to stay true to any philosophical aesthetic vision, as it has become more than apparent with Season 2, but to increase shareholder profits by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Even the basic premise has been shifted in order to address popular trends and satisfy the mindless consumer that doesn't want to engage with anything deeper than their favourite tropes, prettily packaged:

from a story about a doomed ouroborous family superimposed on the pitfalls of feudalism, with villainy and heroism to be found on both sides, it has been simplified and reduced to a narrative that exalts white feminism and disqualifies anyone who opposes its girlboss protagonist. This is Sheryl Sandberg's version of Fire and Blood.

Truly, I think Sara Hess did (unintentionally) outline it the best: "civilians don't matter in Game of Thrones". They don't matter in Game of Thrones, but they matter in A Song of Ice and Fire. The entire heart of the series is contained in Septon Maribald's speech. The writers "kind of", must have forgotten, though.

[nenoname]

What are your thoughts on Hirsch?

i do genuinely respect him a lot (the fact that a bunch of the show was improvised is both horrifying and kinda amazing, standout examples being ford himself being written on the fly and also the last mabelcorn being written in a day) and love that he's insistent on the importance of found family and platonic affection, and that he's furious when people devalue family relationships if they're not directly blood related

but also a bunch of his ford takes are pretty iffy (even if he's gotten somewhat better about him recently) and he's pretty "two steps forwards, a bunch of shuffles back" about treating the abusive relationships he writes cos it was like "oh he's talking about it normally for the panels--" and then that charity stream was basically a cannonball to any goodwill he built up

also god damn he's bad with writing romance and picking side ships in general (tad/woodpecker guy is the most 'picked random names outta a hat' shit), especially when he's fully aware that it gets fans sidetracked from the main points he's trying to make with the series

his current take of bullying and shaming ai shills however? excellent! love to see this when people are going "uwu if we ignore them stealing and being shitheads maybe they'll go away there's nothing we can do anyway" defeatist bullshit-- do it hirsch!!! send your legions of obsessed fans after those morons!!! him openly bitching about how disney execs are a bunch of spineless cowards is great too

[maybeitsalivescribbles]

VH - Meet the Wife

Vampire Hero was insufferable. All his foes agreed on that.

So, after Supervillain escaped, the first thing he wanted was revenge. It was easy to locate Hero – it was not like this smug bastard was hiding. Currently, Supervillain was watching him by one of the windows of his home.

It was a nice scene, if a tad melodramatic. Hero was sitting by the bed – and yes, he was kneeling – holding the hand of a pretty woman who didn’t react. Supervillain knew that she wouldn’t. He had made an inquiry about her. She was Hero’s wife, and she'd been cursed.

“It’s a sleeping spell, and it’s not curable for now”, he’d heard from one of Hero’s colleagues. “She’s only awake one or two hours, poor guy. He basically turned good for her sake.”

Supervillain’s reasoning was simple. If you couldn’t attack your foe directly, you went for the weak spot. A hero annoys you, you kill his wife, the hero goes mad with grief, that was a classical story. He had a nice view from the window. She really looked like one of these virginal princesses you see in these old fairy tales books. It was not hard to imagine the girl with her hands clasped, pleading for the life of the innocents until her man relented. Yes, it would be fun to rip her into pieces.

After a while, Hero went off. Breaking into the place after that was easy. Supervillain opened the door, checked a couple of rooms, and smiled. He didn’t have to be careful. Even if the wife would wake up, she looked frail even wrapped in blankets. He tilted his head, looked at her, wondered if that was worth gloating when no one could hear him, then shrugged and stabbed his victim.

“Zdiiiiiiiingbonnng”

Supervillain’s eyebrow went up his hairline. He removed the blankets, leaving the body covered with only a silk gown, and tried again. The result was the same. The dress was damaged, but the blade bounced on the skin. Supervillain squinted.

Two purple eyes slowly blinked and stared at him. A skinny hand brushed over the hole in her dress. The wife yawned.

“Are you the delivery man ?” she asked.

Supervillain straightened up.

“I’ve come to deliver a message to your husband”, he answered. “I will not rest until I’m avenged.”

“Avenged ? You didn’t get a tip ?”

“I’m your husband’s mortal foe.”

She laughed.

“No, you’re not. You’re food.”

She opened her mouth, and Supervillain just had time to see a glint of her razor-sharp teeth before she bit his neck. That didn’t last long. After the first sip, she rejected him with disgust. Her thin arms threw him away much farther than the laws of physics should have permitted. He landed in the middle of the room, and not too softly.

“How dare you,” she said with a voice low enough to make the ground shiver. “You’re not even worth eating. A couple of centuries ago, young man, I wouldn’t even have wanted your head in a spike near my castle.”

Supervillain crawled back in the direction of the main door. She stepped towards him with as much enthusiasm as one would throw the trash out, but she stopped. Her eye had caught a note stuck on the fridge. Supervillain squinted. The note said: “Please don’t kill or maim in the house sweetheart ♡ (because of my job)”

The wife clucked her tongue and sighed, but reluctantly stayed still. Supervillain’s pride got the better of him. He stood up, dusting his cape, squared his shoulders and groaned:

“You have no idea who you’re dealing with. You might be strong, but I’ve wiped out cities. Once the country was nearly in my grasp. It takes talent. It takes guts. It takes more than powers that were given to you on a silver plate.”

“Nearly ?”

She gave him a look of absolute contempt and went back to bed:

“Don’t boast about your failures, little man, and leave me be.”

Incredulous, he watched her getting back to sleep, putting on her face something to shield her eyes from the light. It looked like a mask, and not a normal sleep mask, but a huge, heavy thing that glittered. As a vampire, he supposed she didn’t need to breathe, but still, it didn’t look comfortable. He stepped forward to take a better look. It was in metal all right, and it was a grimacing face of a demon.

His blood ran cold. He already saw that mask. It was depicted on a book he had as a teen, about the dark and evil rulers of the ancient times. “The Iron Death”, said the legend. “The gory story of an evil empress who drowned her captives in the blood of their subjects, and sought to be turned into a vampire so she would keep her empire forever.”

He shook his head in disbelief. It was an old tale, a story from at least a couple of centuries ago. And the Iron Death had been vanquished by a vampire hunter who had...oh.

Who had put her to sleep eternally.

He suddenly felt a drop of sweat on his forehead, but he grunted for good measure:

“Right. Like I’m going to believe that. Where’s your consort, Iron Death? Where’s your cruel prince who tortured for his entertainment?”

“The Hero agency offered him money to look after me if he worked for them”, answered the low voice of the lady. “My poor darling didn’t enjoy the scream of his victims as much as before. He’s changed his hobbies. You do that after a while. But I didn’t. Get out.”

Supervillain ran.

*

Vampire Hero is now a recurring character. His job is to troll current villains. (Yes, I know he technically doesn't appear here, but it still counts.) Check the Vampire Hero Masterlist or Tag for more snippets with him.

[godblooded]

so like… controversial opinion but… if you agree there should be more female muses or lesbians… uhh… write them?

[cinnamonest]

Look, you didn't hear it from me, but if you read AO3 fics, magatsuslut has some of the best Adachi characterization that I've seen. There are at least dozens of us Adachi fuckers! Their fic 'Sweet Dreams' is just great, Adachi straddles the line between terrifying and pathetic.

Sweet Dreams - Chapter 1 - magatsuslut (saccharine_saint) - Persona 4 [Archive of Our Own]

(link)

BLESS YOU anon I am always so happy to find fellow Adachifuckers in this world out there. Good to know this awful man has captivated others as well <3

[sodaneko]

waking up to fucking AI “art” on my dash

[chaoswillcalmusdown]

is it just me or is there a recent(past few years) increase in people just. caring so much about what actors think ?

like, yes, sure, it can be interesting, but i don't actually give a flying fuck. their opinions don't matter more bc they're acting out the script.

actors are not writers. actors are not the source text. actors do not carry the correct answers to their character's future or inner life

[holocene-sims]

next // previous

may 10, 2013 6:00 p.m. the entrance to hell

is binn béal ina thost

sweet is the silent mouth

[undistortedworld]

sure i have so many important things i need to do with a time limit that i am already cutting it too fine on and i have unread messages from various people in my life so i feel a spark of panic everytime i look at my phone BUT HAVE YOU CONSIDERED I COULD WATCH GLACIATOR 2 FOR THE 10TH TIME THIS MONTH

[britcision]

Anyway in case anyone was wondering why I do firmly aver I did not get to DPxDC from DC and am not a DC fan despite having consumed all of the Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad runs up to 2018

(And have an exciting grab bag of shows, movies, and assorted trivia under my belt besides

Batman vs Dracula was fucking great fight me)

It’s because DC as a whole is hostile as fuck to the concept of being a casual fan

(And about 90% of the main heroes annoy the hell out of me for the very tropes that DC is known and praised for in their heroes I am here for villains, antiheroes, and sidekicks exclusively)

There is no such thing as consistent characterization, especially as you consume more content or fall down a rabbit hole, and the rabbit holes are ENDLESS

Everyone cameos everywhere else, referential jokes are often dropped in as Easter eggs for people who have read every single other DC comic put out in the same decade and yet within the same comics you get glaringly inconsistent characterization and different retcons for the same events

Big stories are retold and retconned every couple years, we got 3 separate Spiderman origin movies and the exact same Batman origin in more than half the live action movies; DC PAYS PEOPLE to make up their own different versions of canon events

There is a REASON that the Marvel and DC cinematic universes are both officially divorced from comic canon; the sheer volume of canon content is inaccessible to most of the population, and DC and Marvel know it

That’s why the New 52 was a big divorce from all previous canon too - it’s an on ramp for new fans, because sorting through the web of old content is off putting as fuck

It’s the one thing not a single DC fan I’ve spoken to who complained about “canon characterization” has bothered defending or even acknowledging, and yet it has been the core of all of their arguments:

“Canon is what I want it to be, not what any of the sources say”

And listen, I was a Torchwood fan, we were the archetypal example of “canon only happened if I acknowledge it” (so sad that show ended after only two seasons and nothing else ever happened again Children of Earth who), you just gotta acknowledge that that’s what you’re doing

But you frankly cannot have a serious conversation about canon characterization with someone who does not acknowledge entire swaths of canon and cannot understand why that makes their argument completely invalid

Any kind of conversation about the “right” characterization for a DC character necessarily has to involve the acknowledgement that it’s your personal preferred characterization, not a One True Canon, because I guarantee there are canon incidents for every single big name and most of the small ones that directly counter the ones you like

You may note I share a bunch of posts with things like “My Batman would never do this”, as opposed to “canon Batman would never do this”

Hell, on Batman specifically there are hundreds of beautifully put together posts talking about how the different canon runs get him wrong; I too prefer a Bruce Wayne who does genuinely care about his family and tries to protect them, but isn’t perfect or always right over the massive asshole elitist who just grunts and treats them like soldiers

Canon Batman slaps his kids around, it’s the meme that broke containment and you don’t have to like it or accept it as something your Batman would do!

But it’s still canon

Both versions have a massive well of canon support, and exist simultaneously in the multiverse

Every single characterization of a character is true and exists in the multiverse

And that is why the idea of a “canon version” of any DC character is utterly meaningless

TL;DR: write DC characters however the fuck you want and do not worry about it for more than 10 minutes together, that is what the paid DC writing staff do

There will be at least two pieces of canon media to back up whatever interpretation of the character you pick

Not everyone will like that characterization or agree with how you see the character, and that is all fine and good! But “canon” is meaningless in this context, neatly encapsulated by the “multiverse” explanation

Everything is canon, which means that nothing is canon

[zipstick]

just watched Musings Of A Cigarette Smoking Man. cannot believe when he's not orchestrating alien government conspiracies he spends his time projecting his problems onto his ocs

[purplemoonabove]

Three weeks in, and Good Omens is still destroying me. At the same time, amazes me with all these posts on theories and analyzing scenes, whether they speak similar or complete truth in the writers’ planning.

I’m a writer and to see how much people would detail into this show is also an interesting use of research. Despite being of people’s opinions—nobody really can verify other than Neil if they’re true or not—the posts, especially the long ones with the examples, make a great viewing of research that inspires me on what I would do in my future stories.

I pray to my God that the third season will be confirmed, and the writers will be back in charge while getting their best desserts.

Such a damn good show. A damn good inspiration in writing. And a damn good reason to go to therapy for emotional damage

[irritablepoe]

no one gets him like i do