#and i like a really flawed alex who thinks he's fundamentally flawed and broken when he's not

[not-poignant]

For the behind the scenes asks 20, 21 & 26 about A Stain That Won't Dissolve please!! <slightly obsessed w it rn

Ahhh - so I have 21 in the queue, it's coming! The TL;DR for that one is 'I didn't expect so many people to apologise for the way the town behaves towards Alex, and it's like watching abuse apologism and self-defense of inaction around familial abuse in real time, which is a weird phenomenon that happens sometimes when you write trauma narratives.'

20. What is something you wish more people noticed about this fic?

Hmm.

I don't know if it's something I wish for, so much as something that I think people don't notice as much and I think it would be interesting if they did.

Things like... it's a shame more people don't realise that the reason Alex isn't a 'good communicator' is because no one in that town is except for maybe Dr Harvey. Even Haley, who is getting better, is a people pleaser who undercut herself and her skills all her life. People can't learn what isn't around them to learn. So when I get comments like 'I wish Alex would just open up to these people in the town' I can't help but always think: 'Why would he based on how the town has treated him for a solid 25 years.'

For me, connecting these dots naturally flows together, but I've had 10 years of practice writing trauma recovery, and 43 years of practice experiencing many different kinds of abuse and many different flavours of trauma recovery and I think, actually, I now have a weird skillset in this area that other folks don't have, or don't even know exist. So it's not something I 'wish' they noticed because firstly it would likely mean more readers who are victims, but secondly, I also appreciate having this be something more subtle, and it's not like I'm upset or angry when people say that Alex is the poor communicator because like, he is. He's a symptom of the entire town.

So it's like, it's normal for people to notice what's right in front of them (Alex not communicating well and then thinking his problems would be solved if he just talked about stuff, because there's this presumption that everyone wants to listen if he'd just...talk), that's actually the fun part of writing? I love the comments people leave so much, and I learn a ton, and I love the insights folks share. I'm sure people are noticing a lot of stuff like this and just not saying so. Especially folks who have lived these situations and just can't be fucked talking about it in comments because life's hard. (And it's also possible to notice that and still be mad or frustrated that Alex doesn't communicate more).

I don't think there's really anything else though. I think that's partly because I'm not... uhhh, sitting there going 'PLEASE NOTICE THIS' because the gift of writing serials for the most part is pivoting when people aren't noticing something subtle, and thinking 'this might be me not meeting the reader where they are, I can step it up in the next chapter.' So, I feel like I flow towards pushing the things I want people to notice or gravitate towards, and as a result, they almost always do.

And with the stuff they don't, there's usually extremely understandable life-experienced-based reasons for that!

...This response is really long x.x

26. Wild Card! I'll tell you a fun fact about this fic!

I have actually always imagined Alex and Sebastian making out together. I imagined it even before I wrote The Wind that Cuts the Night, but Alex/Sebastian fics existed, I didn't like them (no shade to those authors, but I clearly wanted a very specific crunchy kind of angsty toppy Sebastian fic and very understandably no one was writing my fantasies they were writing their own lmao), and I thought Elliott/Alex would be faster to write. (It was).

That's actually one of the reasons I make it clear that Sebastian is gay and topping the farmer in The Wind that Cuts the Night! And also why I felt it was important for Alex to know that. Even back then, I couldn't resist just a little tiny glimmer of some kind of chemistry, even if it was just friendship chemistry.

I find Sebastian really annoying as a spouse. He's one of my favourite NPCs to romance, and my least favourite to marry of the ones I marry. The storyline of Martingale divorcing him is based off me daydreaming about doing that (I can't because it's mean) in one of my farms. I found him cold and detached compared to many other NPC spouses, and too work-focused. So the premise of an older Sebastian recovering from being divorced for these exact flaws was extremely appealing and vindicating to me. Most people don't feel the same way about in-game Sebastian as I do, but I'm like 'you have so much potential and then oh no.' It turned out Martingale felt that way too, and eventually did something about it.

And that gave me a really flawed Sebastian to work with and that's been awesome.

I did always imagine him as being a dominant/top/sadist though. It's actually really hard for me to imagine him as anything else.

I don't think this fact is fun but it is a fact! Sebastian is a character I love but he's also literally 'I can improve him' and this fic is me doing that lol

~

From this meme!

[myhahnestopinion]

THE AARONS 2017 - Worst Film

A funny phenomenon overcame me this year, as, in my pursuit to watch as many new releases as possible, I found myself much more eager to watch the films I expected to be horrendous than those I felt would be quality. Well, like they say, and by “they” I mean one of the films you will find on this list, be careful what you wish for. And so, I ended up watching a lot of dreadful films this year. Here are The Aarons for Worst Film:

#10. Leatherface

While The Last Jedi and The Fate of the Furious showed this year that eighth installments in franchises can still feel fresh, Leatherface brought the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series sputtering to that ordinal in the laziest of fashion: the unnecessary prequel. Even wonder what Leatherface was like as an orphaned child who embarks on a road trip with a group of other unlikeable, thinly-written inmates? No? Like most people, you understand that the whole point of having a character who wears other people’s faces for a mask is the element of mystery? Oh. Well, don’t worry! This fundamentally flawed entry will probably get completely retconned by the next inevitable installment.

#9. Wish Upon

If I had a magical music box that granted me seven wishes, I wouldn’t waste one trying to figure out why the main character in Wish Upon continues to use all her wishes after learning a person dies every time, why she uses one of those wishes to make her dad hotter, why the film’s attempted Final Destination-style kills rely on a woman nonchalantly sticking her braided hair down a garbage disposal, or why the film casts two Korean-American actors to be its experts on Chinese culture. The answer is because the filmmakers were simply incompetent.

#8. The Book of Henry

The Book of Henry is the charming little story of a precocious child named Henry who navigates school with his younger brother, while being raised by a single mother, and crushing on his next-door neighbor. It’s also about 11-year old Henry romantically kissing his mom’s alcoholic friend on the lips while on his death bed, adults unconcerned by obvious conflicts-of-interest but persuaded by the power of interpretive dance, and, oh yeah, it’s about Henry’s elaborate, yet never detailed, plan to convince his mother to murder their abusive neighbor in cold blood and get away with it. If you’re one of the surely numerous people confused and appalled as to why anyone would think that would make for a good whimsical family film, congratulations! You display better judgement than Colin Trevorrow, who’s decision to film this thoroughly bizarre and hilariously misguided script led to him getting fired from directing Star Wars: Episode IX.

#7. Bright

A thinly veiled attempt to explore systemic racism in the way only a white beneficiary of nepotism like screenwriter Max Landis can, Bright magically manages to mash together generic buddy cop formula with generic fantasy “chosen one” tropes in a way that renders both entirely incoherent. Netflix squanders their biggest budget for an original film yet on the murky aesthetic of Suicide Squad director David Ayer and a script entirely disinterested in any worldbuilding. By the time Bright reaches its bafflingly ill-constructed climax, the viewer still hasn’t learned why it takes three magic wands to resurrect the non-descript “Dark Lord,” nor why the film uses fantasy stand-ins for every real-world ethnic group except for Latinx people.  Rather than light the way to further tolerance, Bright suggests a dark future filled with dull half-baked ideas for Netflix’s attempts to become a major blockbuster competitor.

#6. Split

In many ways, 2017 was a year of going backwards. Though many critics heralded the film as a return to form for director M. Night Shyamalan, Split is another misfire from the once promising director. James McAvoy tries his best to salvage the bland exposition-heavy screenplay, but the film is ultimately undone by its reliance on regressive horror tropes. The marketing for the film was already concerning, preying on archaic fears of those suffering from mental illnesses, but the movie itself manages to take its offense in a whole other direction, fetishizing trauma while giving its survivors no agency. With years of potential growth in-between, it’s disappointing that this is the direction Shyamalan chose to finally return to the world of his best work, Unbreakable.

#5. The Bye Bye Man

What can one say about a film like The Bye Bye Man? What is one supposed to think about a film like The Bye Bye Man? Luckily, the movie gives us an answer. “Don’t think it, don’t say it,” reads the film’s tagline, which is certainly a philosophy the filmmakers took to heart, as they don’t tell viewers a single comprehensible detail about The Bye Bye Man, his powers, his motives, his poorly rendered digital mutt, his obsession with trains and Greek coins, or why he apparently makes other people impotent. This lack of detail is probably because the movie clearly didn’t put any thought into its premise, ripping off numerous better horror films throughout its nonsensical, jump-scare-heavy cornucopia of inept filmmaking techniques, abandoned plot threads, and unrealized ambition. From the silly name to the lazy costuming to the character’s grab-bag of distinguishing features, The Bye Bye Man is actually quite charming in its complete ineptitude, hence its position as a longest running point of ranting and mockery on the Reboot Already Underway podcast I co-host.

#4. CHiPs

When Baywatch can’t be considered the worst raunchy reimagining of a classic TV show of the year, you know something went massively wrong. CHiPs’ repeated insistence that its jokes aren’t actually homophobic is about as convincing as Donald Trump’s tweets about his genius intellect. The film’s treatment of its female characters is about as misogynistic as, well, Donald Trump’s tweets about women. The movie’s formulaic buddy-cop plot is about as lazy as, well, jokes about Donald Trump’s Twitter.  The point is, CHiPs is loud, brash, incompetent, and nauseating, and you just can’t wait for it to finish out its allotted time.

#3. The Mummy

How do you kill what is already dead? Universal Pictures certainly found the answer when they killed their shared cinematic universe before it truly began. The Mummy is a thorough embarrassment, which elicited uncontrollable laughter from my friend and I as soon as the credits rolled due to its ridiculous dialogue, its jarring attempts at comedic relief, its logic-defying plotting, and its rancid stench of desperation to get audiences invested in the Dark Universe of shared monster movies, as seen in a momentum-destroying trip to the lab of shadowy monster-hunting organization, Prodigium. Universal’s decision to hand the reigns of this hopeful universe and the film’s $175million dollar budget to inexperienced director Alex Kurtzman makes about as much sense as Prodigium’s decision to keep their monster prison in the heart of a major metropolitan city like London. How could that possibly go wrong?

#2. Transformers: The Last Knight

If there was one consistency in a year of chaos and confusion, it was that the latest Transformers is once again one of the worst films of the year. No one probably expected The Last Knight to reverse the trend, especially with director Michael Bay still at the helm, but the film miraculously manages to lower the bar for the franchise ever more. What exists of The Last Knight’s so-called plot is a truly confusing attempt to weave together the Transformers mythos with King Arthur, Harriet Tubman, Nazis, Stonehenge, and Mark Wahlberg’s inability to get laid (Seriously, this is a big defining character trait in the film). The massive budget for special effects gets drowned out by the decision to switch aspect ratios ever other shot, even during simple dialogue exchanges, which makes the film nauseating and nigh-unwatchable. Unfortunately, despite the title, The Last Knight will not be the last we see of the Transformers series, as the near 3-hour run time apparently wasn’t enough for the film to finish up its story, ending with the cliffhanger reveal that the Earth is a Transformer. I repeat, the planet Earth is revealed to be a Transformer, and that’s not even in the top five dumbest plot developments of the film.

AND THE WORST FILM OF 2017 IS…

#1. The Emoji Movie

Should I just put a poop emoji and leave it at that? I mean, the world really needs to develop a new form of communication just to describe how awful this film is. Perhaps the only thing lazier than the jokes inspired by having to evaluate such a film as The Emoji Movie are the jokes in The Emoji Movie itself, with its festering byproduct of a screenplay, apparently created by a malfunctioning A.I. force-fed nothing but rough drafts of The Lego Movie, a book of old knock-knock jokes, endless Sony product placement, and the broken spirit of Sir Patrick Stewart. Led by two of the most obnoxious voices in modern comedy, the movie drudges viewers through an infuriating journey that replaces plot points with brand names, and never establishes any coherent dramatic stakes beyond the audience’s struggle to maintain sanity in the face of a Twitter bird deus-ex-machina and its half-hearted attempt at promoting feminism before a quick devolution into fascism. The Emoji Movie may not be the death of cinema, but it certainly feels like it while watching it, making it the worst movie of 2017.

NEXT UP: THE 2017 AARON FOR BEST DIRECTOR!