#and there are some great stories in here
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Lookie what I got! The rarest of collector's editions, with only one in existence! (There's an @ symbol in place of a © on the title page.)
(There's only one because I fixed it after I ordered my proof copy.)
Someday this will be very valuable, for sure!
#optimism ftw#why yes I do feel a bit stupid for that rather boneheaded error#but instead of dwelling on that I'd rather think about how much people will surely appreciate it years in the future#my writer friends are very talented you see#and there are some great stories in here#I like to think that someday the anthologies we put together will be looked back on in amazement#because how could so many famous writers have known each other from the start?#it's a nice thought#no idea what the future really holds of course#but I enjoy this possible future#just like I enjoy writing about Narcissus as a vampire who wants a reflection#and the walking-out-of-the-underworld Orpheus & Eurydice story as cyberpunk#there are many other cool things in here#and it comes out soon!#and pre-orders are up!#everywhere but Amazon for some aggravating reason!#clearly they are Too Big To Fail and no one is going to give them a proper kick in the pants for not getting their act together#like they were supposed to weeks ago#here's hoping their page works by launch day at least#we'll see#anyways!#yay I have my proof copy!#and it looks good!#I did the cover myself#my objectivity is shot but I think it turned out nice and professional#Shatterlore#book recs#indie author life#bookblr
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Can you draw something with Doom Patrol!Edwin and Netflix!Edwin?
Maybe something about Dp!Edwin talking about his feelings for Charles with N!Edwin?
It's just something I've been thinking of, make it a little angsty?<3
Glad you asked
ko-fi
#ask ask ask#dead boy detectives#dbda#payneland#edwin x charles#doom patrol#dead patrol#cw homophobia#i know there are a couple of people who enjoy my rambly tags so these are for u#first of all anon i'm sorry i used your request to continue my story lol#most of my comics are meant to be standalones BUT#the doom patrol and dead girl detectives are all happening in the same universe#and there is indeed series of events here!#this particular one is happening after dp!edwin's feelings were exposed but before they met the girls#with that out of the way#i know this is not as funny as most of my stuff#but dp!edwin's internalized homophobia is an important thign that can't just go away because his charles loves him back#and he does love him back! in this verse#dp!charles is the only one not struggling with his feelings for his partner#dbd!charles and charlotte still have ways to go#also dbd!edwin is in no way an expert in self-acceptance but he has learned some things#i considered having him mention simon but i decided it wasn't his place to out him#(even though he's dead u know)#so yeah what he says here isn't... great#he's still putting himself down and he's still not sure if his feelings for charles are actually a good thing#but he knows HE is glad he feels this way#because fuck it it's not like he'll go to hell for it#and even if he did... he would crawl his way out
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It's always funny in sillydelphia or whatever. Sorry i can't concentrate on making a joke, there are women right in front of me (pointing at my own genderbend iasip drawings, sweating profusely)
#macdennis#fem macdennis#macden#iasip#it's always sunny in philadelphia#iasip genderbend#this goes out to the person who sent me an anonymus ask for posting the noir lesbian macden here too hope you have a great day :)#also shoutout to the person who shared that lesbian noir macden on their insta story with the caption:#'I THOUGHT THESE WERE BEAUTIFUL BUTCH LESBIANS. TURNS OUT ITS THOSE ASSHOLES FROM ITS ALWAYS SUNNY'#i think i cry-laughed at that when i saw it. im so sorry. they are beautiful butch lesbians in my lesbian head#anyway enjoy some screencap redraws! i'm doing friendly and encouraging karate chops in your direcion. Wha-pow!
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Average Drama Enjoyer observes some peak drama.
#dungeon meshi#toshiro nakamoto#laios touden#kabru#izutsumi#Before anyone mistakes this as mischaracterization: The joke here is that it's ambiguous what the hell he means.#Kabru does love getting into fights a bit more than average but he's mostly here for the drama.#I screenshot the scene of him going 'The dark arts!' with a little smile everytime I re-read dungeon meshi. He's so catty. I love him.#And shout out to Izutsumi for adding fire to the drama. Girl said 'I am the listener. I heard that shit.' and refused to apologize.#Joke two: the deep cut - Welcome to more propaganda for whatever the hell is going on between Laios & Shuro & Kabru.#Laios trusting Shuro with some *heavy* information because he admires him so much! And wants to be his friend so badly!#Kabru also has another great character moment when he immediatly clocks Laios as not being as malicious as expected.#We love a character who can put the clues together! It is such a good subversion of what role we think Kabru is to play in this story!#Now he's eager to befriend Laios - who is barely interested and currently trying to befriend Shuro - who is barely interested and...well.#The painful triangle of people trying to get to know the other person better and being rejected...Friendship triangle.#We have all had a friendship triangle situation before. Right? You guys have also struggled to read people. Right?#Laios is universally relatable. Right?
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I got lost while I was on my way to rewatch Granada Holmes
Now I know about Jooster
#my art#sketchy sketch#warmup doodles#jeeves and wooster#reginald jeeves#bertram wooster#jooster#the audiobooks are delightful and they really relax me#if me finding jooster fixes my insomnia I am going to laugh and cry#the show is great with some big problems#anyway yea#a little detour here höhö#bertie in the show is a little ray of sunshine. the stupidest person you'll ever care about.#in the stories he hopes a kid kills himself because bertie himself doesn't want to get caught stealing :D#he talks about murder a lot as a metaphor in many of the stories I've listened/read#anyway yea ok I'm off to bed
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okay one more thing
the scene where Kate and Tyler just so happen to be talking about exactly the same “we don’t know how a tornado forms” concept in separate cars, and the scene is cutting between them as they basically finish each others’ sentences—
—they’re chasing what, during that scene?
Twin tornadoes.
yeah buddy we do have twins, we sure do—it’s Kate and Tyler’s twin souls
#How great is that#Twisters#Kate x Tyler#there was no twist in twisters#they set him up as Her but Free From Fear very early on#twisters#twister#soulmates#late Carter#Tyler Owens#That’s how you tell a story#storytelling#Glen Powell#some E.T. Levels of simple goodness here
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I finished posting the unabashedly educational Sword Fic.
It includes a detailed (but hopefully beginner-friendly) explanation of all the steps of making a Nichirin blade from a sunny mountain like Mt. Youkou, a touch of swordsmith and metalworker folk lore (including demons), meta about what must make Kimetsu no Yaiba's swordsmithing methods different from real life methods, some character exploration for Haganezuka and his polishing method, vocabulary and additional resources in the chapter notes, and hopefully, an endearing, silly POV character to learn this all through.
#my fics#SWORDS SWORDS SWORDS#would you like a story about the years of background of this fic?#I was not very well-versed in metallurgy until recent years but my study of the Japanese language goes back to#well#longer than some of you may have been around#I always liked samurai and swords for the aesthetic but started to take more of an interest when I lived in Shimane#and on a day when I had a friend taking me around to rural sites associated with a legendary monster she was like#let's go see the sword museum while you're out here#but that museum was closed (it comes back into this story though)#so we went to a different one that no longer exists but that was my first encounter with how much work it takes to make the sword ore#fast forward years later#I am writing this blog and it becomes known as a fun place to read about Japanese culture as seen in KnY (thanks glad you enjoy)#I decide that I must tell people how hard it is to make the ore and finally visit that main museum on a trip back to Shimane#I collect material and struggle to do more research and wrap my head around it#and I write the first version of Teppi's story that focused mostly on the smelting and glazed over the forging and polishing and stuff#meanwhile I am in a job situation I have already long since wanted out of and soon I want out a lot more desperately#job searches were disheartening but then I found THE ONE I WANTED#and on that first interview when I was already like PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE#they asked if there's a Japanese cultural topic I could suddenly explain in great detail if asked#and without mentioning this blog I said I had recently written up something for fun about tatara smelting methods (and they forgot this)#fast forward again and I very happily got the job and was very nervous as I got the rundown on a very large annual nerd project#and when they announced the topics for that year I saw that tatara smelting methods in the region I knew them from was on the list#and I was like#asudyaiusdyuasdyuahduahduhsdhuPLEASE GIVE ME THAT#and i got it and when I went out there for research people were like#...why do you know all this...???????#and since I dared not mention my KnY blog I was like#...I lived in Shimane...#it seems I broke the tags because the rest of the story got cut off but hi yes you get the idea
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Holger unfollowing Carlos for like 5 minutes and then following him back is the most Holger thing to do
#childhood best friends to enemies for like five minutes#still people are NASTY with some comments (the bullshit I had to read in twitter dot com as soon as I woke up needs reparations)#another day another me complaining about tennistwt amazing#ANYWAY this is so funny if my thesis wasn't beating my ass this could be a great thing to write about#also I don't think an Instagram follow is that serious lol maybe holger just unfollowed by accident (?)#still if it was to catch carlos attention he definitely achieved that lmao#(at least holger didn't unfollow carlos for like 2 years UNLIKE OTHER STORIES *coughs* casper)#carlos alcaraz#holger rune#holgitos#runeraz#<- I think I'm the only person vibing here
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I get why JimCurly is popular cause hot yaoi and Jimmy is the MC but it's annoying how Curlya gets villainized as some ungodly immoral ship when JimCurly is far worse in terms of morality. In my opinion, Anya and Curly have the most interesting connection/relationship in the story. There's so much potential for depth, angst, understanding, resentment (on both sides), healing, etc. between them. Easily my favorite duo in the game to study with my microscope lol
#also....maybe I'll get hate for saying it lol but JimCurly is far more problematic than Curlya could ever be#On the scale of problematic I place JimCurly on par if not a little below Jimmy/Anya#and when I say little I mean like barely underneath Jimmy/Anya lol that shit is fucked up#But like that doesn't really matter cause I don't care what people ship fr I just wish people were chill about this stuff#but I do want to see more Curlya both platonic and romantic because I love exploring their relationship#There's so much between them that we don't see and I'm deeply fascinated by it#I say all this as my likes on here Twitter and Bluesky are full of JimCurly art#what can I say the boys are hot as fuck lmao I like men who weightlift#also something about how the fandom has focused more on Jimmy and Curly's relationship as opposed to Anya's story hmmm#could be something there....that might be not so great.....but whatever#mouthwashing#curly mouthwashing#anya mouthwashing#also the devs clearly like Curlya so idk some of yall gotta chill lol#the only time I visibly turn away from JimCurly in disgust is if they make Curly still chill or affectionate with Jimmy post crash#yall are crazy lmaoooooooooo that's also on par with making Anya affectionate with Jimmy#Curly would've put him in an incinerator
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Most normal energy drink consumer
#new tags time yippee#cj updates#so there's some old-ish tags here lol#i had this saved for a while actually. just didnt know if i wanted to post goofs yet#old tags:#i will say i personally cannot make fun of him for that#as i was [still am even] overly invested in drinking mnt dew#they used to sell a full liter mnt dew bottle for like a dollar at the stores near me & id take one to school a lot an drink the whole thin#[Sometimes id be able to get a whole 2 liter. Tho I couldn't drink the whole thing during the day [mainly just to save it for later rlly]]#which i would then have after the can id get every morning.....#im better now i swear#tho it was always very funny when i had a class with a friend where id slowly pull the very long bottle out from my bag#the face they would make is always so funny to me still#so i have a feeling i know *exactly* what face his teacher made#either like a mix of astonishment & confusion or its just disappointment#a “why are you like this” typea look#its great#however his story is still horrifying#i drink monster a bit & like one can is enough for me for a day [if i can finish it even]#maybe if i clutched onto that instead of mnt dew during school years id be just like him then#im in the good timeline thank god#rant over lol my bad
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It’s back!
If you missed it the first time around, the “human are weird” anthology is back for a second printing. (There’s even a new story included: “Black Box” by Dara Brophy.)
Here’s the blurb:
In science fiction, humans are usually boring compared to other races: small, weak, with no claws or tentacles, and no special abilities to speak of. But what if we were the impressive ones, the unsettling ones, the ones talked about by all the other aliens? What if we're weird?
If you’d like a collection of excellent stories about humans inspiring awe, fear, and utter confusion, it’s available everywhere books are sold!
#humans are weird#humans are space orcs#haso#hfy#eiad#science fiction#short stories#my writing#other people's writing#Did you know? The story I contributed is in the Token Human timeline#though it takes place after the short stories I've been writing lately#and shortly before the novel A Swift Kick to the Thorax#I hadn't even thought up the current series of stories when I wrote this one#so Robin is working on a different ship#shortly before she gets a job on an alien planet#though she doesn't know that yet#anyways it's fun#and so are all the other stories in here#there are some GREAT ideas#I recommend#The Token Human#and more
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I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?
Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate
-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)
-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.
-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.
Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.
-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.
But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')
In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.
All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.
-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?
-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.
I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.
WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.
And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.
Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.
#Sorry this turned into a 100000 word essay on The Iliad it can't be helped#I read Circe by the same author and thought it was like.. better? Definitely not great just less aggravating and kind of boring#Just rote 'you heard about this villainous woman from a Greek myth... Here's the REAL story' shit#It did have a few things I thought were good I remember it starting kind of strong and then just going limp for the remaining duration#I think part of it is that in that case she's expanding on a figure that Didn't have a whole lot of characterization in the source so#like. She had to actually Expand The Character#Again Silence of the Girls is the only Greek Mythology Retelling I have like....positive?.leaning positive? feelings towards#I've got BIG issues with it too but it does pretty much the exact opposite of everything I'm mad at SOA for and in some very#compelling ways (it's just that the author seems way more interested in Achilles and Patroclus than The Main Character Briseis#to the point of randomly starting to have Achilles POV interjections (which I thought were Good in of themselves but#really really really really really really really didn't need to be there) and then get kind of lampshaded by Briseis narrating 'I guess I#was trapped in Achilles' story the whole time lol!!!!!!')#It undermines the book on both a thematic level and just like. a construction level like it's real sloppy at times.#Also the Briseis POV sometimes has these like really out of place Author Mouthpiece Moments where she's very obviously#Stating The Point to the audience and it's like yeah we get it. We get it.#Wow in the scene were our mostly silent enslaved protagonist removes the gag from the mouth of a dead sacrificed girl as a#small but significant act of defiance and grieving in a book called 'Silence of the Girls' you inserted an ironic repeat of the line#'silence befits a woman'. in italics even. Thanks for that. I could not possibly have grasped the meaning of this scene if you didn't#spell it out for me like that. Thank you.#Actually hang on the only Greek mythology retelling I have unequivocally positive feelings for are the 'Minotaur Forgiving'#songs on 'This One's For The Dancer And This One's For The Dancer's Bouquet'. Fully love it. Like not just as songs I think it#does function well as a narrative and engages with and expands on the source in really beautiful and creative ways
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"I see all of you as rats. Nothing...but...rats."
The Abbot of Saint Markovia
#scp that breached contaiment#uncanny valley#fuck this guy!#some of yall got the most beautiful abbot ive ever seen and we got mr uncanny valley tumblr sexyman over here who is not great to look at#I also have no clue how to tell this story of how we got this guy killed#it was so insane it derailed our campaign for irl months#the abbot#cos art#curse of strahd#the abbot of saint markovia#dungeons & dragons#dungeons and dragons#dnd#d&d#d&d5e#dnd npc#cos abbot#art#my art#deva#dnd deva
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oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT
oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.
SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)
so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!
so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.
the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!
now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.
here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.
but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.
so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.
anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.
#using the tags as a footnote system here but in order:#1. quentin MAY not be dead according to some theories but in the text he is a charred corpse#2. arianne is great and i love her but to be honest. my girl is kinda dumb. just 2 b real.#3. faegon is totally a blackfyre i think it's so obvious it may well be text at this point#it's almost r+l = j level man like it's kind of just reading comprehension at this point#4. relatedly there are some characters i think GRRM has endings picked out for and some i think he specifically does NOT#i think stannis melisandre jon and daenerys all will end up the same. jon and dany war crimes => murder/banishment arc is just classic GRRM#but i think jon's reasoning will be different and it'll be better-written.#im sorry but babygirl shireen IS getting flambeed. in response stannis will commit epic battle suicide killing all boltons i hope#brienne will live but in some tragic 'stay awhile horatio' capacity. likely she will try to die defending her liege and fail#faegon will die there's zero chance blackfyres win ever#now jaime/cersei I do NOT think he knows. my brothers in christ i don't think this motherfucker knows who the valonqar is!!#same with tyrion i think that the author in GRRM wants to do a nasty corruption arc + kill him off but the person in him loves him too much#sansa i have no goddamn idea what's going to happen. we just don't know enough about the northern conspiracy to tell#w/ arya i think he has... ideas. i don't think she's going to sail off to Explore i am almost certain that the show doing that was a cover#because the actual idea he gave them was unsavory or nonviable for some reason. bc like.#why would arya leave bran and jon and sansa? the family she's just spent her whole life fighting to come back to and avenge?#this is suspicious this does not feel like arya this does not feel right#bran will not be king or if he is it'll be in a VERY different way not the dumbfuck 'let's vote' bullshit#i personally think bran is going to go full corruption arc and become possessed by the 3 eyed raven. but that could be a pipe dream#the thing is he's way too OP in the show so the books have to nerf him and i think GRRM is still trying to work out#a way to actually do that.#i don't think he told them what happened with littlefinger or sansa. i think sansa's story is vaguely similar#(stark restoration through the female line etc)#but the queen in the north shit is way too contrived frankly. and selfishly i hope she gets something different#being a monarch in ASOIAF is not a happy ending. we know this from the moment we meet robert baratheon in AGOT#and we learn exactly what GRRM thinks of the people who 'win' these endless wars of succession#and they are not heroes#they are not celebrated#and they are neither safe nor happy
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~ Batman: Detective Comics (2016)
I'm living for how Bruce is written in DC 2016. He is a caring father, he has flaws but everyone does, that's normal, and he tries. He listens to others, or at least hears what they are saying. Here, he listens to Tim's plan for Gotham, and he agrees with him (proud dad mode a lot with Tim). He decides to follow Tim's vision, and even after Tim is gone, he wants to continue to realize Tim's vision. When Steph gets mad at him, he doesn't try to fight her, he wants to listen to her and explain himself. He tell people he is worried about them and cares for them, even if they don't believe him. (steph) He wants his people to take care of themselves, and if that means they don't put on the capes for a while, then so be it.
And this scene is so good. It's the passage from a generation to another, the transformation of the Batman's legacy. The mission takes another form. It's Bruce admitting that it's time for his way to die, it has served its time and his purpose. Tim is seeing further away than Bruce because Bruce was blinded by his grief, and his son is showing him the sight over the fog.
#bruce wayne#batman#tim drake#red robin#dc comics#my ramblings#The problem with comics is that there is no end so great character development like this are destroyed later on to write more stories#Bruce loves Tim so much he is so proud of his little genius son#me reading those issues where Bruce is a good dad: finally some good food#somebody cooked here they cooked a gourmet meal
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I know we collectively agree that Hiccup isn’t romantically inclined, and his getting married and having kids didn’t make sense in the epilogue, but consider: Hiccup getting married for political reasons.
It’s a marriage of alliance, which is recognized both by him and his partner, and they enter it without expectations of romantic involvement. Since they’re now married, they live in the same castle, spend time together, and Hiccup finds he really likes his spouse. They’re funny, get along with his friends, and has the same interests and values. They both probably speak multiple languages. She understands why Hiccup is so dedicated to making the Wilderwest better, and holds similar views. She’s a good politician (her job after all, was to be an ambassador). Hiccup likes spending time with them, and the feeling is mutual. They’re not in love, they have their own lives, but they’re dedicated to each other and eventually decide to raise children. They teach their kids how to train hawks and hunt with dragons, riding, history, the Languages, and all the necessary skills of their world. They’re not in love and they’re happy together.
#pushing the aromantic hiccup agenda and also the queerplatonic agenda#as much as the idea of hiccup getting married was always a little off to me it was more the romantic angle#which I why I like the idea of a marriage of alliance and a partner who understands that#and then of course the montage of them being a good team and getting along#and going ‘yeah I like this person. I think this is the person I want to spend my life with.’#also a) a lot of arranged political marriages did have the foreign spouse function as an ambassador#b) polyglot hiccup is canon and I think it would be neat if his spouse was as well. it is a marriage alliance after all.#she isn’t from the small area of berm#(actually give all the Vikings regional accents. I think it’s neat)#c) she/they because I didn’t feel firmly about the partner’s gender and the nords were pretty gender diverse#anyway I think the partner would probably be fond of the library and admire hiccup got it open way back when#get along with Fishlegs and camicazi well enough#and enjoy dramatic stories of their adventures. maybe have some of her own#also: normalize people having their own lives outside their partners. hiccup and they are happy together but also have their own friends#oh and you know hiccup would be a great dad. he loves Stoick but he would so much be the dad he wished he had growing up#are the kids bio related? are they adopted (cast off and No Names)? who knows!#I could build in my head what hiccup’s spouse is like but I’ll leave it here#they exist as we construct them#httyd#httyd books#my post#book!hiccup#hiccup the third#hiccup horrendous haddock iii#book hiccup
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