#a lot to do with the story too but as most work- it has its flaws and I'm looking forward to how this show will go regardless

[snugglyporos]

// Christ I wish I could go back in time and erase concepts like 'unconscious bias' from the world of popular lingo because people apply it to things that they don't apply to. No, most people do not possess an unconscious bias that working class people are worth less than rich people, that's your classist ideology being applied to things that you shouldn't apply it to. We might call that a conscious bias.

What is actually happening is a mix of tropes being blended together and not changing over time. Namely, the idea that the more individuals there are, the weaker they are. We see this everywhere; fifty ninjas? Weak. Not a problem. One ninja? Super powerful. Legend. This exists in everything from James Bond movies to comics to Power Rangers.

The reality is that, narratively speaking, the random cannon fodder between the protagonist and the final boss do not matter. They don't! In real life they would, but if you tried to give ever goon a backstory and explain it you would have a shit story because the audience does not care about the backstory of unnamed good #23. After they take the punch from the protagonist, the audience has entirely forgotten they existed.

Which means that, narratively speaking, the killing of the main villain is more important and more impactful than the killing of some random goon. Now, if you're a good writer this shouldn't be the case. But this too, comes from the blending of genres and tropes.

In the late 1980s, fiction became more violent and more visceral. This means that a lot more violence was happening! And yet, writers still wanted to have their protagonist show that they were the protagonist, because people were all in on moral relativism. People would be like 'well, there's no difference between the hero and the villain if the hero kills the villain.'

The response was a lot of heroes started adopting a weird kind of no killing rule; Batman will break your fucking spine but kill the guy who just blew up a building? That's too far! 'I'm not like you, a guy who kills people, I just cripple them for life!'

And again, this is what happens when genre conventions (the hero should be morally superior than the villain, or at least attempt to be) mixing with trope developments (everything now needs to be brutal and violent to reflect real life).

Now, the circle has completed itself, where we're once again back to 1985, where people are like 'actually no, the hero should fucking kill that guy.' You'll probably be a big fan of the Death Wish movies and The Dark Knight Strikes Back; you know, things that lots of proto-fascists really love because they reinforce the notion that actually, heroes should wield violence against their enemies and impose their will through abject terror.

The reality is, people aren't sitting around going 'my work should reflect the idea that workers are less important than the boss' it's that narratively, the random goons exist to be smacked down to prepare the audience for the big bad, because rising action requires that there be rising challenges. This is mixing along with personal tastes in media.

Now, you could, for example, turn this new trope on its head and ask whether the Punisher murdering every jaywalker and low level drug dealer with extreme violence makes him a villain, because his ideal is that any lawbreaker should be murdered instantly no matter how low the crime. You might also argue that the trope should actually be that the grunts shouldn't be killed by the hero, but the guy who organized them should, because he's much worse than they are.

You could also argue that, the reason why the hero doesn't just kill the villain is that murder is wrong? Even if you think it's morally justified? I think people forget, when they fantasize about an ideal French Revolution, that the most common crime people were executed for was pickpocketing, and every day they would execute the guys who got caught working the crowds at the executions the day before. More poor people got killed in the French Revolution than rich people; you should probably keep that in mind!

Because the core reason you probably want your hero to not kill people in general is that you then have to ask who deserves it and your answer will inevitably include a lot of people you might actually like! You probably don't want heroes taking vague concepts like justice into their own hands because inevitably that makes them into the Death Wish protagonist, deciding that what really needs to happen is for a white guy with a gun to just start shooting up inner cities.

You don't want your hero to start killing people because this is corrosive and it will inevitably result in comparisons between people who got killed.

So no, it's not some kind of unconscious bias, it's because we've melted a worldwide demand for bloodshed and violence with established genre tropes and if you removed one or the other people would complain and be very unhappy.

Or, I guess you could go on and say that Freddy Kruger is anti-marxist because he only targets teenagers instead of people who really deserve it.

[comikbook]

Hi! I absolutely LOVE the most recent painting you're working on! The composition is incredible and the colors are everything to me 🫶🫶 I absolutely love the way you draw faces like the piercings help map it out without showing too much and just !!! It's so good 🔥🔥🔥🔥 I was wondering if you would be willing to explain some of the symbolism behind it? Like the bleeding mouth, the house, or the dog? If it's a personal thing and you don't want to share, no worries!!

absolutely !!! this one is a little bit different story wise than some of my others but ill do my best to explain

this is the piece for those who dont know !

so lets start, why the armor and the sword ? well !

i wanted to do a piece referencing joan of arc. as someone who also has had the experience of hearing god talk to them/feeling like a messenger of god due to schizophrenia i have always felt a kinship with her. so i wanted to do a piece inspired by this iconic painting. that also goes into the composition.

however, that nod is the extent of that reference.

what about the house ? well, that is my childhood home.

here it is :,) the one with the bird over the door is the house i consider my childhood home. i no longer live here of course, the neighborhood got a lot more dangerous, abandoned, and not taken care of, i live in a city with a lot of violence, particularly gun violence and gang activity as well as heroin and fent being popular on the streets. there are houses in this neughborhood that have been destroyed by fire and were never fixed, most houses had infestation of roaches rats or mice, occassionally bedbugs. it wasnt a great neighborhood before, but its gotten worse over the years. despite that i hold some of my fondest memories here. i think its beautiful in a way, and i felt safer there than anywhere else.

the house represents my past, the blood trail leading from the door to the figure, who is me, after having slain some beast inside. this is representative of moving on, of leaving your childhood behind. It also represents the violence of where i live, and the horrid memories experienced by my father who lived there growing up as well. it was his home, but he inherited it from his mother. while that house was a safe haven for me, it was a bitter memory of horrific events for him. it was bittersweet to leave. for him, he was moving past that, for me, i was desperately trying to hold on. it was a needed sacrifice, which goes back to the blood.

the dog is a character in my work that represents god. he is omnipresent, always observing. he watched me kill a part of myself, that held on to memories i loved, and forced to move on. he watched this attack, and did not intervene. Perhaps I blame him for this, my relationship with god is not a good one, but that is the symbolism nonetheless.

lastly, there is the blood around the mouth, insinuating the beast inside had been consumed. I have killed it yes, but it stays with me. I consumed its flesh and it is now with me forever, even if it is gone. We are still one, me and the memories i shared there, even if separated by life and death.

this was a really long post, but i hope you find this explination interesting :,) !

[abtheb]

Working on something new and almost done.

I wanted to take a break from character modeling and do a simple environment. I was inspired by this Grant Abbitt's beginner low-poly tutorial but wanted to make something more advanced. It's been a good way to learn the Blender 4.X changes though - since I was used to using 3.X over the last few months/years.

This looked pretty simple, and I liked the idea of having a small pocket environment stuffed with props and detail. It also lines up with a lot of the props that I made for school last year, though I made all those in Maya and had a much worse time.

The scene is modular, and it's fun to think about what other room/corners I could make. I enjoy this part of the process the most - filling a room with props/art and telling a story with it. Maybe a warrior room, a rogue room, a mage room, a druid room, that sort of thing.

The tech art behind the scenes is fun as well. I dont know how much I will end up animating in this scene, but I always enjoy making goofy shaders and working with the new post-processing options has been a gamechanger.

This window boolean is pretty neat too.

For now I just stuck my old Kass model in there because the postprocessing painted look reminds me of Breath of the Wild and its a nice set to show him off in. I sat my minotauren in there as well and he's looking comfy.

your character here

[lonelywretchjervistetch]

My DC Cinematic Universe - Creature Commandos: Part I - Introduction

In every comic book fanatic...there are two wolves.

There's the first wolf, the purist wolf, who has read all the canon, loves the comic book lore as it stands (no matter how ridiculous it is), and can tell you the unnecessarily complex backstory of that one character that no fully same person knows the backstory of (the Hawks for DC nerds, and any member of the Summers-Grey family for Marvel, for example). But the second wolf, the fan wolf, actively shares those characters and stories they love with other people, and thinks about those characters with its own headcanons and opinions.

Now, unlike the metaphorical inner wolves of normal people, these wolves are fed by external media. And when a comic book fan looks at a character or story they live, especially when its adapted, their wolves feast. The purist wolf feeds on accurately adapted characters, faithful to the page and to what they love to see. Meanwhile, the fan wolf just wants to see the adaptation, regardless of the changes, and loves to talk about it with other people who see it. Now, ideally, every comic book nerd has wolves that they feed in equal measure with books and media, especially if that media adapts comics well.

So, how are my wolves doing?

...Jesus Christ, when did the fan wolf learn how to walk on two legs? And use weaponry? And develop thumbs? And learn Spanish? And speak with the voice of acclaimed character actor Wagnar Moura? Well, shit, he's feeding pretty well as of late. Makes sense, there are a lot of adaptations nowadays, and comic books and associated media are considered mainstream! That means the purist wolf must be

Ah. It's dead.

Well, goddamn it, what the hell? Comic book purists have never really fed well, but it's not like they've been completely starved. As somebody who considers myself pretty flexible in my tolerance of character and story changes between media (different media means different narrative need and format), I often like the changes in adaptations. Plus, there have been plenty of changes that are at least faithful to the original spirit of the characters.

In Marvel, for example, every version of Spider-Man that we've seen in film has at least been faithful to the spirit of the character. Sure, Tobey's version wasn't very funny and created natural webbing, Garfield's version was arguably too cool for school and never said the whole responsibility thing, and Holland's version is way too reliant on other superheroes in his films, but ALL of them are still solid version of the webhead, in my opinion. Plus, hell, Into and Across the Spider-Verse are both more than enough fuel for a comic book purist, even with Shameik Moore's stupid-ass Tweets as of late.

And that's not even counting the Playstation Spider-Man, who's goddamn fantastic (BOTH of them in BOTH games), some of the animated Spider-Men (looking at you, *Spectacular Spider-Man*, unsurprisingly), and even fan-made versions of the character that have made the circulations as of late. Hell, adaptations have been doing better than the FUCKING COMIC BOOKS as of late when it comes to Spider-Man. But, OK, enough about Marvel. Not why I'm here. Just...bear with me, I'll get to the point.

DC has had plenty of faithful adaptations over the years, if not actual straight adaptations that also work all right. Young Justice, of course, is the most recently lauded animated adaptation, while older shows like Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the various shows of the DC Animated Universe (AKA the DCAU or Timmverse), and even more recent fare such as Harley Quinn shows at least an appreciation and familiarity with source material. That last one, admittedly, is a stretch, but Harley Quinn has genuinely surprised me with its attention to faithfulness, and its willingness to be more creative and funny with its alternate versions of classic characters. It was better in earlier seasons, though, just to be clear. But even then...passable.

There's also the animated film adaptations, which haven't been as good as they were in the late 200s and early 2010s, but still have some solid entries. The Crisis on Infinite Earths adaptations weren't perfect, but had their...sparse moments. The Long Halloween was actually quite a good adaptation of the difficult-to-adapt source material, as was Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (even if the TV series did it a little better, although much less accurate). Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is a recent adaptation that's actually VERY good, especially to those who love WW rogues. And if you haven't seen some of the older films, like Justice League: Doom, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Justice League: The New Frontier, Batman: Under the Red Hood, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Superman/Batman: Apocalypse, Superman vs. the Elite, All-Star Superman, and Superman: Red Son...uh, yeah, please do, they're all excellent.

But, OK, with all of those adaptations, some as recent as last year, why is the purist feeling so deprived? Well...because the bad FAR outweighs the good, especially as of late. Just talking about DC (because Marvel is a bag of angry, screaming Flerkens), the movies have only given us THREE decent adaptations in the last 5 years: the underrated Blue Beetle, which is a quite accurate iteration of the character; Matt Reeves' The Batman, and the associated The Penguin (which was so afraid of comic books that they changed the main character's name to be "more grounded"), and The Suicide Squad, which is...a fitting film to bring up. Oh, and Birds of Prey doesn't count because it fucked over A LOT of characters, especially Cassandra Cain. Just sayin'.

In terms of TV series, well...Young Justice returned, but kinda fell off in the process for a lot of fans. The CW series, with the exception of the excellent Superman and Lois, are...something for another post. And there is Peacemaker, which is...again, fitting to bring up, but also incredibly complicated, and not beholden to accuracy for various reasons. And anything else...doesn't really rate discussion. Yeah, it hasn't been amazing for DC fans, while Marvel fans were eating pretty well in the last decade-and-a-half. So, imagine our delight and joy upon hearing that the DC cinematic universe would be remade by a bonafide comic book fan who was unafraid of the source material: James Gunn.

With Guardians of the Galaxy, Gunn had already proven he was able to swing and swing BIG when it came to comic book characters, having successfully adapted the titular Guardians, and Ego the Living Planet, of all characters. Yes, he severely fucked up Ronan the Accuser and Adam Warlock (like...REALLY badly), and also kinda Drax, but he also adapted Mantis successfully. FUCKING MANTIS. At the very least, he showed that he was willing to go for it. And then, after the firing-and-rehiring from Disney and being brought onto DC as a result, he made The Suicide Squad.

Understand what a miracle this film is, OK? Gunn makes GotG, it's a massive success, and Warner Bros. and DC notices that. So, they make their own GotG with blackjack and hookers in the form of David Ayers' Suicide Squad, which is TERRIBLE, and seen for the rip-off it was. Then, Gunn's old tweets pop up and he gets fired by Disney, and JUST before he gets rehired, WB swoops in and snags Gunn to revitalize the film series that ripped off HIS film series IN THE FIRST PLACE. AND IT FUCKING WORKS. Not only does Gunn make a GOOD Suicide Squad movie that people actually LIKE, but he also adapts King Shark, Starro the Conqueror, and fucking POLKA-DOT MAN!!! And he gets Jon Cena to play Peacemaker, WHICH LAUNCHES ITS OWN FRANCHISE BY ITSELF!!! And with that, Gunn gets brought on to run the DC cinematic universe as their own Kevin Fiege. FUCKING POLKA DOT MAN??? It's incredible!

...Right?

Like I said, Gunn's The Suicide Squad seems like a miracle. Excellent performance, a lot of cool characters to introduce from the DC Universe, and a crazy-ass showdown that does DC Comics some justice. But, uh...hold on a second. The wolf is still starving over here. Because this film cleverly seems like a miracle. In reality, while Gunn made a fun film to watch, he also severely fucked over comic book nerds in a myriad of different ways with this film, because he set a dangerous precedent, while also continuing an irritating trend that he'd previously helped to promote. That trend? In-name only characters, AKA references for the sake of references.

...Fan-service. Gunn is a master of good-looking fan service.

Look, creative license is great, honestly. It's also incredibly necessary. But Gunn has found a way to put in superficial references that draw in comic book nerds, or the comic-book knowledgeable, while also not really even caring about the source material. Sometimes, it doesn't matter. Polka-Dot Man, AKA Abner Krill, is essentially a joke character that Gunn took and made into an actual character. No comic book nerd gives a SHIT that Polka-Dot Man was a Batman villain from the '60s who committed dot-based crimes, using various special devices and gadgets that he turned into dots that he wore. He's essentially a blank-slate of a character, and Gunn took that and changed it completely, but also made the character memorable and interesting (as did actor David Dastmalchian, of course).

In fact, Gunn did the exact same thing with a whole slew of bit characters in the beginning of the movie. Lemme give you a shortlist of the comic book characters that appear in The Suicide Squad, outside of the main cast of character.

Javelin*,Savant*, Blackguard*, Mongal*, Captain Boomerang*, Weasel**, Thinker*, Kaleidoscope**, Double Down**, Calendar Man**, Ratcatcher*, Starro the Conqueror**, and technically Arm-Fall-Off...Man*. Holy shit, that's a lot of characters! What's that you ask? What do the asterisks mean? Ah, right, sorry, I should explain. Characters with two asterisks have little more than a single brief appearance, just for a quick joke or a "hey look, they're here" appearance. And the single asterisks? Those characters die.

And yeah, OK, it's a "Suicide Squad" movie, death is part of the equation. But look at some of those characters again. Mongal? She's an extraterrestrial conqueror, and the daughter of a major Superman and Green Lantern villain. Definitely could be used better than dying LIKE A PUNK. And why is that character even in Task Force X? Starro the Conqueror? I mean, maybe they pull something off and bring him back for a later film, but that's a WORLD-ENDING THREAT, and a fucking JUSTICE LEAGUE villain! And...wait a second, did Gunn kill CAPTAIN FUCKING BOOMERANG???

One of the most iconic members of EVERY comic book iteration of the Suicide Squad (and therefore a survivor), one of the most iconic members of Flash's Rogues, and one of the only semi-decent things about Ayers' Suicide Squad? You gave Weasel, fucking Weasel, a post-credit scene where he survives the beach massacre, and Boomer is just fucking SHAFTED??? For what can only be assumed is a shitty SHOCK-DEATH? WHAT THE HELL KIND OF DECISION IS THAT???

Look...I actually like The Suicide Squad, I swear. It's a fun film, it is a Suicide Squad movie, and it does a good job with character development and the story of the team. Bloodsport and Peacemaker are great rivals and fun-as-hell characters, Margot Robbie gets a chance to actually shine as Harley Quinn, Ratcatcher and King Shark are great, and the fact that Flag and Polka-Dot Man die is actually genuinely affecting. Plus, shit, they made Starro the Conqueror FUCKING TERRIFYING, especially because he's a big dumpy STARFISH!!! I do like it! But...man, these are some controversial fucking choices, and I've never liked them.

And the big problem now? Gunn is running the DCU.

And again, I don't think that's inherently a bad thing, but...man, it has me worried. Hell, look at Peacemaker. While it was a great showcase for its eponymous character (and Jon Cena is stellar in the role), it introduces two characters that get kinda screwed, while also giving a kind of nothing-burger of a villain. I mean, I love Vigilante in the show, but Adrian was a fucking judge in the comics, not a complete sociopathic moron. Funny, yeah, but not the character. And Judomaster? Damn, did that character get completely shafted. Another in-name-only character, even though he's not a character I've ever been super-devoted to.

My problem is this: if Gunn approaches all of his projects, and the DCU at large, the same way he approached The Suicide Squad and Guardians of the Galaxy, this isn't gonna work. And that's not just in terms of how the characters are written or treated, it's his practices of pumping characters into his films, only to dump them and ruining them for the future of the universe as a whole. I mean, hell, he even did it to Marvel. Ronan the Accuser, Ego, and the High Evolutionary are gone from the MCU, despite being characters of enormous potential. But hey, is this a rational fear, or am I worrying for no reason? Well...cue the trumpets.

Earlier today, I finished watching Gunn's Creature Commandos, having kept up with it throughout the season. And understand, when this film was announced, I was super excited about it! I love the Creature Commandos in concept, and they've had a few incarnations throughout the years. It's a fascinatingly fun idea, and I was looking forward to seeing how the characters were adapted. I had my questions and concerns, especially about the roster, but I was intrigued. And what we got was...well, second after I finished it, I wrote this post. And that has sponsored what you're currently reading. So, uh...I have some notes.

Yeah, this is one of those rare occasions where something has made me SO irrationally frustrated, so very and incredibly irritated, I had to write a goddamn essay series about it. And yeah, this is only the first one of these. Can't help it. I'm kinda pissed off. Because Gunn wasted this team, ruined a fair number of characters for the DCU going forward, eradicated a pile of possibilities, and STILL GOT A SEASON 2 APPROVED FOR THIS SHOW. God, I'm worried. And I gotta tell somebody about it.

So, to the...I dunno, 1 to 5 people who actually read this essay, inclduing those whom I know personally (you know who you are, how ya doin'), thanks for reading and, if you're interested, stay tuned. A lot of unnecessary nerd-whining to come, believe you me. And more than a few headcanons, because I'm giving this the same treatment as my Superman essays. So, yeah, buckle in. It's gonna be a ride.

Part One: Introduction and Adaptation Part Two: The Original Creature Commandos

[nostalgebraist]

Thanks for this thoughtful review!

(BTW, for others – this is probably obvious but there are spoilers below the readmore, don't click unless you've read the book)

I'm going to use this as an opportunity to talk about one specific thing that bugs me about some reader reactions to my stuff. Therefore, most of what I say below will be negative (about your review), but I want to emphasize first that that's not a reflection of what I thought of it overall.

----

What I'm here now to talk about is this kind of thing:

There are parts of all his books, where I really think that the explanation for why they are the way they are is that they are "bad on purpose", and all the bullshit [note: in context "bullshit" seems to be meant as a neutral term for non-realist elements -nost] is a way of turning these shortcomings into strengths. The self-effacing voice which whispers that the characters aren't sufficiently well-drawn, are too cartoonish—well, what if that was the point? What if there was a reason for that, in the story?

And like... okay, there is sort of a sense in which this is true, sometimes, kinda. There is a grain of truth to this; it is getting at something real.

But it pains me to say that, because I don't want to encourage this kind of reading. Interpretations like this are occasionally correct but IMO they're much more common than they should be. IMO the right intuition is that this is a galaxy-brained, contrarian sort of take, a last resort you land on when you've ruled out everything else.

And not just with my work, with everything – I'm simply more aware of the problem when it comes to my work, because I wrote it and I'm aware of why I actually did things the way I did.

I've said this before, but watching the way that people react to my own fiction has been an eye-opening experience, one that has taught me things about reader (and viewer, etc.) reactions in general. Specifically, what I've learned was:

People's tastes are way more diverse than I had realized (before I started writing and sharing fiction). And they are diverse in a very fine-grained way; even if two readers have the same preferences about 90% of stuff, or 95%, they'll still diverge on some things. While it's not literally true that "every reader is a unique snowflake with a preference set that no one else shares," that is a very good first approximation of how things are.

Readers (including me!) have been trained by a lifetime of reading book/movie/etc. reviews to frame their preferences/reactions in a pseudo-objective "this is just how it is" way, like their own tastes have some special viewpoint-independent priority, a quality of "reality" or "accuracy" lacking in everyone else's tastes (which are all different, cf. 1). And this is not just a stylistic quirk of the way people write about fiction, it actually (IMO) feeds back into the underlying opinions behind the written commentary. It degrades people's ability to understand what it is they're looking at and their ability to make accurate inferences about the process of its creation.

----

Here's a sort of cartoonish schematic of the type of experience that led me to draw these conclusions. (And I suspect this is not just a thing that happens to me, I imagine it happens with any sort of work that "contains a lot of different types of stuff" the way mine does.)

Writer makes something that has X and Y and Z in it. Writer thinks X/Y/Z are "great tastes that taste great together." Writer is very pleased with the result.

Reader 1 has similar tastes to writer, says something brief about how they loved the book and it's a new favorite for them.

Reader 2 loves X, is OK with Y, hates Z. They write a lengthy review saying that the book was a mixed bag and could have been great if the writer had stuck to X and not messed things up by doing so much Z.

Reader 3 is the reverse of their predecessor: they hate X, are OK with Y, love Z. They write a lengthy review saying that the book was a mixed bag and could have been great if the writer had stuck to Z and not messed things up by doing so much X.

Reader 4 loves X and Z – but they hate Y. They write a lengthy… you can fill in the rest. Imagine a whole bunch of these guys (readers 5, 6, etc).

Reader 17 has the same tastes as Reader 2: loves X, is OK with Y, hates Z. But their lengthy review takes a different, in some sense "more charitable" angle, speculating that the inclusion of Z was a load-bearing pillar in the overall structure, a thing that unfortunately had to be included to "unlock" all that sweet sweet X.

Reader 18 has the same tastes as Reader 3: hates X, is OK with Y, loves Z. But, they explain, X was a load-bearing pillar in the overall structure, a thing that unfortunately had to be included to "unlock" all that sweet sweet Z.

Writer reads all these reviews and feels strange, dizzy. The "nicer" reviews like 17 and 18 are actually more uncomfortable to read than the "meaner" ones like 2 and 3.

"I don't know how to convince you guys," Writer thinks, "but I... I just liked all of it? I thought it was good? That was why I wrote it? (Why else would I have written it?)"

----

Or, as I wrote in that previously linked post from 2021, w/r/t TNC specifically (and making a slightly different but closely related point):

Some people say X was the worst part of TNC, some people say X was the best part. The story was a celebration of Y; the story was about how Y is laughably futile. It’s a letdown that we were never told more about Z; the reason TNC is good is that it leaves stuff like Z to the imagination. It was obvious we were meant to believe P; it is obvious we were meant to believe not-P; the ambiguity about whether P is tiresome literary masturbation; at least the story didn’t jump the shark by spelling out whether P! The reason people like TNC is, of course, that it has A, although nostalgebraist insisted on putting B in there too because he hasn’t fully perfected his formula yet / he somehow thinks B is good even though it isn’t / he thinks it’s funny how bad B is (but the joke tires). …and then someone else has same take, but with A and B flipped.

This exact sort of thing is of course happening again before our eyes with reactions to TAoHS.

I've encountered multiple readers who disliked most of the story but felt the ending (sort of) "redeemed it," and I've also encountered multiple readers who liked the story up until the ending but disliked the ending (or at least thought it was worse than the rest) – to say nothing of the many readers who liked (or disliked) the whole thing all the way through.

And this ending-related stuff is just one particularly obvious facet of a broader diversity in the overall reader response.

By now I know not to be surprised by this stuff, and even to find it kind of fun to watch... but I have to admit, it is still a dizzying and uncomfortable experience.

----

Now, as I said, it is sometimes true that things really are "bad on purpose."

But I think the interpreter's default hypothesis – which should be maintained by default unless convincing evidence against it can be brought forth – should be:

The writer thinks that the thing they wrote is good. They think the ideas are good and they think they executed them well. And they think this more-or-less homogeneously for everything in the work – there are no "bad but unfortunately necessary" parts from the writer's POV.

(At least, this should be the default with works that aren't making the writer much/any money. Obviously things are different with lucrative commercial fiction; there are plenty of well-paid hacks who know they're hacks and do it for the money, etc.)

Why should this be the default? Multiple reasons.

First: it takes a lot of effort to produce any sort of creative work. The writer thought that effort was worthwhile, for some reason – why?

The most straightforward explanation (and a very common one IMO) is that the writer simply believed in the thing that they were making. They believed the effort was worthwhile because it would yield a good product.

Second: as a writer you have an immense amount of freedom. It's difficult to overstate the extent of it. You are playing God, you decide the way that literally everything will be.

Obviously there are some constraints, cases where one part of a story will imply the existence of another or whatever.

But it's very rare that you actually get forced into "doing a thing you know you are bad at, badly." After all: why do that? No one's forcing you! Just do something else! You're God, you control everything!

(Note that this applies also to the very act of writing anything. No one is forcing you to write at all. If you can't come up with good ideas, nothing prevents you from just not writing your bad ones.)

Third: at least in my experience, "playing God" in this way requires a certain state of mind, a certain boldness and self-assurance, which is incompatible with thinking "yeah this is gonna suck but I have to do it" – but is very compatible with thinking "I am making something excellent and every part of it is excellent, hell yes."

Fourth: because of the previously noted diversity of reader preferences, it should not be surprising to any given reader that they find some parts of the work much better than others, even if the writer thought it was all excellent.

This outcome is predictable from the X/Y/Z stuff I talked about above. No clever interpretive work is required to explain it; it arrives pre-explained; it's simply what happens by default.

And finally: because, as I noted above, I think all of us are infected with "reviewer brainworms" and we need to be mindful of this fact.

(Just to be clear, I am not accusing OP of being more infected with said brainworms than anyone else; I'm still on my soapbox, giving a generic rant about a general issue, with OP as merely a jumping-off point.)

We've grown accustomed to the casual conflation between our own tastes and some (usually hazily imagined and under-theorized) sort of "objective, ideal artistic standards."

Outside of a few edge-case eccentrics who can be ignored for my present purposes, we do not do this because we've become intellectually convinced that

(a) such objective standards make sense and really "exist" or at least really matter and

(b) they just so happen to match our own preferences.

Rather, we've fallen into this habit because it's what the pros do: there's a standard style that professional critics and reviewers write in these days, and that style implies these stances. And if one writes (and thinks, in one's inner monologue) in this style, one can easily fall over backwards into uncritically believing (a) and (b) for no better reason than "I seem to already be talking as though I believe these things, hence it would be simple and convenient if I really did believe them."

But – even if we bracket the philosophical questions of whether (a) is in fact true, and (if it is) whose tastes in particular ought to be elevated in the way (b) presumes – even if we table all that for another day, still we ought to keep in mind how weird and audacious a move this is, this simultaneous assertion-without-explanation of the (a)+(b) pair.

We've gotten used to it by exposure, because "the pros" have normalized it. But in actual fact it is a pretty wild thing to just go and assume, given the X/Y/Z/etc. diversity of actual opinion!

If (b) is true for you (general "you" not OP), then it can't be true for me, because we're both unique snowflakes to a first approximation; indeed if (b) is true for you then (to a first approx.) it is only true for you. No one else's tastes have this magical relation to reality, just yours.

Holding the belief (b) about a given reviewer is conceivable-but-wild if we're only considering them in isolation. But once we bring a 2nd reviewer (with non-identical tastes) into the picture, who also believes (b), it's literally impossible to maintain that both of these people are fully right.

And then of course in real life there are not 2 but many, many readers out there, all of them unique snowflakes. And, while it is socially normal in our social context for each one of them to write like they're the chosen one blessed with that special (b)-magic, if you read enough such writing and actually think about what you're reading, it can't help but feel like a sort of game, like playing make-believe. As with most games, it can be very entertaining (for all parties involved), but we shouldn't confuse its amusing conceits for properties of the real world.

In the real world, the writer has their tastes, and you have yours. These tastes are probably not identical. The writer may be aware of the diversity of readerly tastes, and may thus be aware that tastes like yours are out there, but they have no special reason to consider you in particular, elevating you above all the other readers who are non-identical with them (and with you). The writer is dimly and abstractly aware of you, at best, as just another one of the people who will come along later, dislike some of their choices, assume that these choices were wrong in some "objective" way the writer knew about at the time, and then speculate as to why the writer would do something they know is wrong. For every choice, and every way of making every choice, one can imagine a reviewer who responds to it in this way, and quite often these reviewers actually materialize once the work is available for consumption. If you try to reason about these guys in advance, as a writer, it'll stop you in your tracks (if nothing else because there are 2+ of them whose takes are mutually incompatible). You've gotta have some other standard of value to rely on.

So, as a reviewer, if you ask "why would someone ever make a choice I don't like?" and try to pick at this question, you are quite likely heading toward a dead end. The writer wasn't thinking about you (or people like you). They were applying their own, distinct standard of value.

Better to ask: "suppose there was a person who actually liked all of this. What would they be like? How would they be similar to me / different from me? And what, if anything, can I conclude from that?"

The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen

My fourth novel, The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen, is now available in full.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

[starry-bi-sky]

hi I saw your post about hadestown and bingge and I'm frothing at the MOUTH. I think like how shen yuan started hyperfixating on pidw bingge just fuking becomes a number 1 fan for the performance troupe. What other performances do you think Shen Yuan will xianxia-ify?

SAME. Aaaaaa im so glad you liked that post, im in a similar state over it <33 Bingge went in expecting a vaguely entertaining but ultimately mediocre show and instead got fucking SCALPED. Like instantly obsessed, unable to go back to the way he was before, completely unhinged <3

And aaaurrgh I have this design idea for the Hades actor where throughout the whole show, Hades is wearing a mianguan with so many beads hanging over the front of his face that you couldn't see anything above his mouth. His upper face completely obscured by his crown and the jewels/beads hanging from it. The picture of an untouchable, terrifying, powerful emperor.

But during Epic III, when Orpheus sings the first "la la la", Hades bellows "Where'd you get that melody!?" as he stands from his throne in rage. As he does, his mianguan falls from his head to the ground, revealing the full of his face for the first time. Revealing the face of an angry, scared man.

He doesn't put the mianguan back on for the rest of the show, and he's so expressive that it's no wonder he wore the mianguan all the time.

and as for your ACTUAL ask -- nothing too modern gets xianxia-fied! Hadestown was easy because it already had mythical elements due to being another myth. He just had to rewrite it in a way that would make sense in PIDW. And he doesn't xianxia too many musicals i think, some of them require too much outside context that would be too hard to translate.

Epic I think would be one that gets xianxia-fied, although that's one of the trickier musicals because Jorge has very specific musical motifs behind each character that makes it hard to translate into PIDW -- Hermes' is associated with the harp and the lyre but every time he's in a song he also comes with a very techno-disco-y (???) beat. Plus a lot of other technical aspects as well -- Scylla is the first to come to mind -- that SY's troupe doesn't have the manpower or funds for.

I think it could happen, though! It's just rather tough and it helps fuel SY's decision to keep the musical adaptations to a minimum AND to use musicals that aren't super modern. Hunchback of Notre Dame I think SY could get away with xianxia-fying. Anastasia too. I don't know many plays so I can't say what plays he could xianxia-fy, but he DOES write stage adaptations for some of the stories he tells his troupe, and finds that he really likes it!

It's surprisingly fun coming up with roles, lines, story beats, etc, trying to figure out how he could make this into that. Writing is fun, and the mental challenge that comes with even more so. He loves it!

He makes a stage play telling the story of Hades and Persephone -- albeit altered to fit into Hadestown, rather than the original tale.

And eventually he starts making up his own stories as well -- retellings of myths from PIDW and his world, and things he made up himself to tell certain messages. Rarely does he play a major role in any of these stage plays themselves -- much to Bingge's dismay. It's too much attention for his poor thin face to take! He most often just plays Orpheus. He prefers to stay behind the scenes during plays.

But you can always find him outside the theater when his troupe is in town! If they're not preparing for a stage performance, SY loves going out to tell stories to a crowd! It brings him a lot of joy to watch them sit on the edge of their seats, hanging on to his every word. He especially loves telling stories to children, they get so excited and their interruptions can get annoying sometimes, but its endearing.

And oh, he does love to sing. He's just so very shy about it. It's a miracle that his troupe managed to convince him to be Orpheus -- but that's probably why they waited until opening night to do it. People get so weird when he sings -- it makes him self-conscious. So he only sings when he's alone or around his troupe while on the road.

Oh yeah no, Bingge is OBSESSED with this group. Specifically one mister Shen Yuan who looks so very much like his old teacher, but ISNT him. He's not sure if Shen Yuan is a descendant of Shen Qingqiu's family line, or straight up the man's reincarnation, but at this point he doesn't actually care that much he just needs the man's attention.

It's actual so funny I think. I don't think fan merch exists in PIDW which is a problem, because Bingge WILL resort to stalking. He's going to orchestrate a fan meeting with SY mark his fucking words. He has to see what this man is like when he's not on stage -- is he as pure as the character he portrays? Or is he as rotten as the face he wears.

(It turns out to be the former, and Bingge doesn't know what to do about it. Kidnapping is high on that list. It is SO high on that list.)

[sunlit-mess]

Do you also watch helluva boss?

ABSOLUTELY

[moeblob]

OC again gomen ... (her name is Yuma)

[quailxcrossing]

had to do toyhouse rewind AS FAST AS POSSIBLE

[widevibratobitch]

Ok, drop your favourite characters and ships from the Three Musketeers, queen. <3

the answer is pretty simple actually <3

Aramis is my babygirl, my murder kitten, my favourite little princess, my rotten soldier, my sweet cheese... truly one of the characters of all time. to me. and he ages like fine wine - the older, the more cruel and ruthless and cunning and evil he gets, the better.

im a die-hard Athos/Aramis truther 🙏 i also adore the whole thing Aramis and Madame de Chevreuse have going on, especially their fucked up little divorce in the last book, it's insane and i'm obsessed with it. I do also think Aramis and d'Artagnan are long overdue for some quality hatesex sesh! and none of these are mutually exclusive, the opposite actually. basically i live for and breathe the entire d'Artagnan/Athos/Aramis/Marie drama. it's everything to me <333

[bunnyboy-juice]

spent the first hour and change at work deleting some old files and am having a grand ol time laughing at myself for not realizing i was a lesbian sooner

[arolesbianism]

GUYS.

New dupe real! Also new pod????? Olivia is that you girlie speak to me

[puppppppppy]

i feel shy talking here when i dont have anything worth sharing but i cant help feeling like ive said things in the tags that could be brought up in court

[majorshatterandhare]

Today I, an aromantic, was getting ready to attend a wedding… with Stranger on repeat.

[cinnabeat]

i love how kh games are just sometimes psychological horrors

[gingerbreadmonsters]

gahhhh. im sure it doesn't sound like it most of the time, but wow my degree is so cool and fun 🥰🥰