#as far as I'm concerned harry is literally no fucking different i don't want to hear it

[joyridingmp3]

i just realised all 4 of the people I'm seeing live within the next 2 months have this in common

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 4/30/2024

most annoying book i've read so far this year under the jump

listening

a lovely polyrhythmic instrumental piece with previously-featured tuesdaysong artist, terrifying master of the cello, abel selaocoe. this is very textured and kind of scrubs at the inside of my skull in a pleasing way. like the kind of back scrubber you can buy with a bamboo handle and the long soft bristles. popped up on my recent releases playlist from spotify.

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reading

really fucking pissed about this book and i am not able to be reasonable about it. i was really thrown, much like the fantasy prince's mother from her carriage as she was being chased by regency gossip reporters, that this was a prince harry/meghan markle RPF AU. i am a bit uncomfy about the fact that our female lead, the fantasy AU meghan markle, is some flavor of fantasy Gaelic instead of fantasy mixed-race. now, i have no particular moral or physical beef with RPF but i don't typically seek it out. but/also/and, much like works about marilyn monroe, i think works with the specter of princess diana are in poor taste. can we leave these women alone maybe

i got about halfway through the book before this revelation and didn't really feel like it succeeded at much of anything it was trying to do. oddly informal and choppy, like it was originally intended as a contemporary romance with some urban magic and changed to regency in a late draft. this is combined with some fairly weak prose: more simple sentence structure than i would expect in a book for young adults, far too many proper nouns, and a lack of interest in showing not telling.

i straight up don't understand why the leads are attracted to each other if she keeps making very public mistakes and he's a rude cunt. i have read other books (most recently the t kingfisher books) where someone grows to love a very gruff or taciturn man, but it takes time and mutual trust and an effort on both sides, none of which happen here. the core conflict is duty to family in all its various forms vs the heart wants what the heart wants. the conflict is not much of a conflict, though, because characters come to realizations within three sentences of confronting them and then vocalize them with therapyspeak. someone literally pats someone else's hand and goes, "It's hard, I know." the author mercifully did not describe the sad little pursed sympathy mouth but i'm sure it was there.

i'm also deeply annoyed with how this author chose to go about characterization. while the character concepts are people i would love to meet in a ttrpg, it feels very concerned about Good Representation and it makes everyone feel very wooden. i think when you put together characters from a list of various oppressions and disabilities it starts feeling like a grownup version of a children’s ensemble show meant to sell little blind box figurines. here is the Chronically Ill one, and her color is pink! here is the Addicted one, and his color is green! here is the Goth and Depressed one, and her color is black with some bones! here is the Gay one who was once badly hurt by the Addicted one, and we don’t care enough about him to give him a color! here is the superficially fantasy-Jewish one, and we don’t care enough about her to give her a color or an action figure either!

while normally i would love to read a book with two! TWO! canonically bisexual leads of different genders! this book is written for the "folx" spectrum of gays instead of the "fags" part of the spectrum and it strays very close to a modern morality tale for me.

this popped up on a list of books with bi leads i think, but if it was here or on libby i cannot remember.

anyway! fucking hated this one.

pleasantly surprised these came in back to back off my holds lists, bc they are about the perfumer Grace and Grace's former landlord, the spy Marguerite. my favorite of these Saint of Steel series is still the one with the werebear nun. i have nothing to complain about these books and not much to say about them either. they were such a delightful and competent change of pace after the annoyance of the previously discussed book.

oh i loved these. oh i LOOOOOOVED these. how the fuck does novik do it. she is so good at capturing the very specific feel of a grandpa military historical novel. except with dragons. i love these in the same way i know i will love the patrick o'brien books if i ever get around to reading them. i was a navy brat and unfortunately this is fucking catnip to me. truly i have inherited all my father's tastes

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watching

largely fallow week. i don't have anything particularly great to say about The Bad Batch, but when have i ever. have not caught up with dunmeishi bc my siblings have once again inadvertently locked me out of the netflix account i pay for. considering a vpn for many reasons but watching netflix and watching porn (the state of texas does not want me or anyone else to watch porn within her borders) are the two big reasons for. idk. cashing out the paltry cash-back credit card rewards and coughing them up for a vpn. vpn opinions welcomed, i know most of them are straight garbage

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playing

i straight up ran out of money in genshin, which is pretty hard to do since they're pretty generous with it? i have spent several million in-game currency on leveling up neuvilette (i am so so so happy to not have to collect any fucking starfish mats for him anymore [mats are different materials you have to collect or buy in-game in order to level up a character. very grindy most of the time]). anyway i am now scrabbling around for the last couple chests and puzzles i marked on my map in fontaine. i haven't bothered with grinding for his specific boosting artifacts or leveling up his talents all the way yet but this is really not shabby. i have the bad habit of completely levelling up all my 5-stars and then ignoring them until i need them for a specific fight or a specific level of the monthly..battle royale puzzle? i don't really know how to describe the abyss. anyway when i do eventually need his pretty intense water AOE attacks i will frantically grind for his talent mats. right now we're grinding for other things thanks

this latest update contains both the best and worst new areas so far. the underwater lost city of Remuria is a fuckin banger. gorgeous. incredible puzzles. very fun music-based quest line with new abilities and giant whale. however, im kind of disappointed by the new coastline area in the map: there is pretty much nothing there. almost no interactable plants to harvest, very few enemies, almost no chests. i get that they are focusing their time and attention on the new underwater area everyone will be focusing on (killer, btw, super dense and great use of vertical space). very lore-heavy expansion, sort of what if atlantis was a bit roman-inspired and also. hold on. wait a second.

sorry this has just occurred to me at 10:21 PM on Monday night as im drafting this but oh my god are the fucking fontanians the Sea Peoples of the bronze age collapse. this is hysterically funny lore if true. im going to have to go back and reread a lot of the environmental storytelling notes but oh my GOD that's extremely funny if true. genshin has some of the most batshit lore of any game ive ever played and im so sad that so few game journos are focusing on it.

where was i. leveling up characters in legally-not-france who may or may not be descendants of the sea peoples. i often find myself leveling up characters in genshin not based on how useful they are to the party but by how fun the bosses i need to fight for their mats are? for example: neuvilette is a water-based AOE character with not a lot of on-field time. however this big electric seahorse, whose antlers i need to level him up, is really fun to fight and i can knock it out in about thirty seconds.

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making

my sister's birthday is tomorrow! my birthday package to her was kind of heavy on stupid little trinkets and art books and not very much like. homemade? so i cranked out a little sampler. it's framed i promise i simply forgot to take a picture of it framed. about 3"x3", slightly adapted from a piece in Julie Jackson's Subversive Cross Stitch. i do think the F and C turned out way better (or at least the backstitching stands out way more) but hey. sometimes you need to hastily stitch a gift with the limited colors you have on hand

[skepticalarrie]

That anon you just answered about H&L "wasting time" and that oh no! Louis is turning 30!! really pisses me off. This fandom has this weird obsession with age that I will never understand, whether it's regarding fans ages or the ages of the boys themselves. I just turned 30 this past June and I just got married in July, did I waste too much time anon? I know a few people that got married at 18 and some that are also 30 that are still in the "F around with a bunch of people and have fun" stage of their lives. And that is what works for them. I can only assume that your anon is younger is has a warped sense of what it means to be an adult. I know when I was in my teens I was thinking I'd have it all figured out by the time I was like 25 and be married with a good job and couple kids (because isn't that was society teaches us is the ultimate goal) I learned very quickly that was not going to be the case and that everyone's life paths are going to look different. I think people need to realize we don't know H & Ls plans. We don't know where there paths are leading them. They may not want to get married, they might not want to have kids. We project these ideas we have of what we think they want on to them as if we actually know them and we do not. I also think it's important that people remember that we are also not owed anything from them. If they choose to share things with us in the future that's wonderful but it's not something we are owed.

Yes yes yes, anon. Everything you just said! Particularly what you said about what society teaches us as the "goal" of our lives, is so outdated. And I say that because when I was 25, I was in fact married and with a lot of plans in terms of having a family... but I was extremely unhappy, I needed to figure myself out and it took me forever to understand that what I was doing with my life was much more about following what I thought it was "right" than what I wanted. So I got divorced and now I'm finally FINALLY getting my shit figured out, there's so much I want to do for my career (to compensate for the time I thought my ex's career was more important than mine) that having a family/kids is not on my plans at all. And that's not wasting time, this is being mature enough to understand you need to respect the timing of things in your life. And that's something you only truly understand as you get older, I can't wait for a few fans to grow the fuck up and understand the amount of shit that is being said about people's ages.

I'm not saying though this is what Harry and Louis want, as far as we're concerned they could literally be having a baby as we speak, who the fuck knows... or they can choose to be boyfriends forever, it's none of our business. And as someone mentioned in tags, Elton John just became a father in his 60s, so who are we to say someone is wasting time.

In reference to this

[hoefette]

All the petty things I hate about fate!winx and their shitty universe/world building because

I'd added most if these in tags of other posts but I'm still so mad lmao

The way characters, Aisha and Mrs Dowling specifically make references to explicitly human or American things like instagram and Harry Potter

These people are from a different dimension for ffs why are they concerned with or are even aware of this very earth-specific shit? Do they teach earth classes at school over there?

I understand not wanting to have them be oblivious so Bloom wouldn't have to explain it to them, but it simply could be ✨omitted✨

Why would you go out of your way to date your work like this lmao ew

Ms. Dowling calling Tinkerbell an air fairy.. I cannot breeve with the stupidity why did they keep that in there

Why is Ms. Dowling.. the headmistress.. teaching classes? Where are the other teachers?

We ended up with a trio of antagonists (I guess you could call them that?) by the end of the season anyway so why not give us the trix, why have the characters play double roles as friends of our protagonists and also the villains/bullies? They clearly wanted a delinquent trio, in which case they could've gender bent the trix if they wanted to keep all the unnecessary sexual tension.

It just feels like the production team was lazy, they didn't want to hire more actors, they didn't want to bother with making the world immersive or lived in or believable at best, they just didn't give enough of a fuck

They wanted to make this show and attatch Winx to it for.. what? Like did you even google the main plot points? The abridged version or sparknotes to get details on the very literal, basic characteristics of our main characters or their roles or the world they inhabit????

It lacks wonder and intrigue.. I mean Bloom moves to another dimension, a school for fairies and we don't see her marvel once at anything.. and that's because she might as well have been in Switzerland because she's in exactly the same environment she would've been in over there anyway.

They could've said Alfea was in Europe and I'd believe it because nothing about the setting makes it feel otherworldly. I'm sorry but I'm not impressed.

Why do the teachers and graduated specialists communicate via facetime ?? In the magic dimension. ??? Why do they text each other and those texts then appear on screen like .. oh look, like a bad netflix teen movie ????? HELLO ??? it's the way technology and magic could've blended in so seamless into the world THE WAY IT WAS ALREADY DONE/SHOWN. Missed opportunity. it just takes you out of it imo every time you see the ugly, bland, gray text bar. Some fucking flavour pls I'm begging

How stupid the specialist must feel clonking around with the skinniest shreds of armor, plastic swords on their backs and battery powered flashlights and cellphones in their bags. R we larping?? I know I'd be laughing and asking why we hadn't already come up with something more effective .. idk like guns. I'm surprised I ain't see one gun in there.

In the beginning Ms. Dowling says some nonsense about fairies having lost the ability to transform to explain why there are no wings, which means they could've transformed before. So are we to assume that this supposed to be set in the time proceeding the original then?? Because something is not adding up with where they should be as a magical society technologically if that's the case

How does the production team want to keep the dark academia vibes with torches lining the walls and also want them to be face timing each other, presumably from miles and miles away in the dark forest???

Pls pick an aesthetic and stick to it everything was so unnecessarily dark. Where do they charge their phones since it's the only device we see that is the slightest bit modern and dont fucking tell me they charge it with magic I will punch you in the face

Why is there only one major monarchy that we are shown? Why are Solaria the only ones contributing to the efforts to defend the school and where is this mysterious battalion we never see lmaoo it's all so bad its laughable.

Is this set in the kingdom of Solaria? And why does the queen of an alleged interdimensional superpower monarchy pull up in black SUVs??????????? Why does she pull up with Andreas?? Is he not the king of Erakleon?? Where are his soldiers and his battalion and just?? Huh!? The world just feels empty like nobody lives here fr

Are we supposed to believe that the specialists get paired up with fairies just as a normal occurence and that they have to 'trust each other' and not because the plot demands it suddenly half way through when all we've seen so far are the fairies doing normalish school and homework, and the specialists outside, being physical everyday all day. This was never even implied that they'd have to work together apart from when we see the faculty as youngins with Rosalind. But even then.. it's like well why are they even together lmao? Is this a special team formed from Rosalind’s protégées? Were they formed after graduating from Alfea or what is this?? Are they the ONLY team of specialist/fairies hunting every single burned one?? What?

Are we now supposed to buy that Musa is being switched to 'support' because that's where her strengths lie and not in combat?? Are we supposed to believe that these girls know hand to hand combat?? When was this established? We see Terra wrapping some baby vines around a dude and I'm sorry is that the practical application of her power? Is this what the fairies are supposed to do once they graduate? Or is it just a switch in curriculum because of the threats outside the barrier?? This is never made clear.

Because if not then what's the point of this?? Why do they suddenly have endless classes together when the expectation was never set for the fairies to be like soldiers or out in the field fighting ?

Where exactly are they supposed to be what was the purpose of including Aster Dell and why is it a joy ride away from Alfea lmao?? Where Bloom is from and also not from?? Plot pls make it make sense

Why are fairies from another dimension vaping or smoking weed?? They are not human so why are they engaging in specifically human vices, yol couldn't come up with anything else to characterize 'delinquents'?? Very lazy very como se dices.. no effort. Nothing a little more spicy yol could invent, at least change the name and some properties holy shit did yol even try ??

So its fairies everywhere, having a lil party in the east wing of a phat castle.. and they are playing beer pong and dressed in t shirts and jeans..

Can you hear me screaming? Can you hear me vibrating with rage?

Not one floating decoration or magical anything in sight. Just purple lights and subpar vibes

Stella's costume design: tragic. I won't discuss further because we don't have the space or time but just know that it was absolutely atrocious and I hated it. Giving very debutante vibes

The entire budget going to that lame transformation sequence that was not a transformation sequence and those horrible, barely-there fire wings

Edgelord bloom and all her fucking leather jackets. Why do 30 yo, white cis men think girls exist in a binary? They could keep her earlier characterization and make her a hothead.. Bloom literally screamed herself into a couple power upgrades in the original come ooonnnn

Let girls be feminine without it being a character flaw what is wrong with yol its 2021. They could make her more mature, more angsty or whatever the hell else and not style her like that

The way Aisha's abilities flipflop between episodes and scenes. Very inconsistent. One minute she's struggling with a drop of water and the next she is moving an entire body of water for her bestie Bloom to fake transform because the plot demands it. Why even add in her struggles at all if you're just going to ignore it?

Why was Stella with them in that scene? She didn't do anything literally.. Aisha pulled the water and she did .. nothing.

Who the fuck is Rosalind? Why would they add her in,, to add nothing to story? The company of light was a thing, they could've plucked one of them hoes to be the antagonist. Why did the winx club need their own Delores Umbridge? Valtor was right there if you wanted an evil educator type character.

The camera work was so bland during the down beats, stagnant and fixed during a fairy party and erratic and ugly and disorienting during the fight scenes

I'm not getting over the fairy party because it was a good opportunity for the production and everyone else to show the differences between where Bloom was and where she is now but instead it just looks like a regular teen high school party?? This could have been set in Switzerland fr.

Everyone's just kind of standing?? You mean to tell me these people are from all different places in the magical dimension and their customs are all the same? They all throw parties like this ??

White and flavorless I am very bored

I guess the main question or takeaway I have is just.. who is this for? Because everyone, including the showrunners keep saying that it's for us, the fans of the original. But apart from the characters sharing some names, there are really no other similarities. So again, who was this supposed to appease or placate or satisfy? Because it sure as hell wasn't the winx club fans.

Overall, this feels very much like something I wrote and probably published on ff.net when I was 13 because I thought girls couldn't be taken seriously if they liked pink, and injected angst into everything that didn't need it and had no idea how to structure scenes or dialogue. It's just bad, objectively and N*tflix will keep making shit like this because apparently some people have bad taste??? Idk yol, be easy

[breitzbachbea]

oh oH OH! 18 and 25 for the oc ask thing? :D

AHHHH thanks for being nosy Riva! <3 <3 <3

Some OC Questions

18. Any OC crackships?

I once parodically shipped Robert (Team England) and Marco (Team Sicily). I have no idea why anymore either, I think. I think I was imagining the bullshit a big fandom would come up and they fit a very heteronormative view of M/M ships??? I guess??? Marco leaving Charlie for his archnemesis would be funny??? This ship be so cracky, I have no recollection of how it was conceived in the first place.

There is crack potential in the Arora twins (Team Denmark) playing Sex Tic-Tac-Toe for sure. (Each horizontal line is associate with a goal like 'Kiss' or 'Fumble' or 'Flirt' etc. and the boxes are assigned names. They then place their X or O by reaching that goal with a certain person. They also both have moleskine notebooks concerning their sex life; it's a joke on how organized the Danish are in the eyes of Icelanders).

OH OH OH SINCE I AM LISTENING TO FRIENDS BY SIXLIGHT - Robert and Diego (Team Spain)! I just thought "People who fight each other big sexy." And by god. It would be the funniest fucking dynamic. Diego is Aro-Ace and while he enjoys sex (mostly with women, but yknow), he doesn't really care to have it. And he'd never let Robert B. Bailey hit it. It is literally the easiest thing to do for Diego, meanwhile Robert is losing his mind that he just can't win with this fucking spaniard. He wants to fuck him so bad it makes him look stupid. Arthur and Tahir think he's lost his mind and watch the clown show with differing amounts of exhaustion and amusement. I'm going to cry, it's so fucking funny.

Also Tahir and Ethan (Team Scotland), but that was solely driven by me wanting a flirtsy Tahir and a flustered Ethan. I can't imagine them having any chemistry or, honestly, interest in each other. Tahir likes himself either a man who takes charge or an intellectual, but a failed biology major who used to work on an oil rig is somehow neither. And Ethan is too busy being unhappily in love with his best friend to have a thing for the enemy.

Hmmm, I think that's it. Everything else is either canon or I wouldn't call it a crackship (The Derry Trio as OT3, Franlie, etc.). I do realize that the Arora ships would also be canon, but still, there'd be some whacky conquests. Frankly love that they are friends with Charlie but probably fucked both of the English. (Well, Frej couldn't get Robert. Now that I think about it, these two should have tried to crack Arthur, fucking another boss, now that's a badge of honour as a right hand. One that Hugo btw gets to wear with François, but then again, who hasn't fucked the Frenchman).

25. The OC that resembles you the most (same hobby, height, shared like/dislike for something etc?)

Well, Charlie started out the most annoying motherfucker on the planet and now he is the most annoying motherfucker on the planet and blatantly informed by myself. He was the first OC with ADHD, once I realized why he was so annoying ... His mother Gwen also has ADHD and she's both modelled on my mom's best friend (especially when it comes to her relationship with Harry and Soph, her godchildren) and my mom herself. But there's differences, too - He's extroverted, I'm introverted, his interests differ vastly from mine (Car and Fashion nerd), and so on. Christoph, Ann-Lizs best friend and somewhat of a major-minor character in Herz auf Beat does study German studies like me, but he resembles my German class teacher far more than me.

I don't know honestly ... I recognize a lot of myself in many of my kids, but wouldn't call any of them 'like me'. Charlie is probably the closest you are going to get and even he's quite different.

Lookswise Maeve though, she's one of Soph's friends and she's 1,70smth m, has a blonde bob and wears glasses. Also, thin and probably a bit gangly (but I am ganglier).

[tabithahallows]

Hey do y'all remember epi 11, season 5 of Stargate SG1? In which Major Carter gets kidnapped in the hopes that her past experiences with being a goa'uld host and actually surviving could save the life of some dude? Yea, well, that part where Jack has to meet up with everyone's fav, Maybourne, to try and get some info on Carter's kidnappers? Yea, that shit fucking breaks my heart cause Jack is so fucking desperate to get her back. Like, he hates Maybourne's guts and here he is all like 'Harry this is Carter we're talking about here', cause Maybourne just has to know something, he just has to get Sam back. And literally without hesitation, Maybourne says 'I know and I'm sorry Jack. I really am', and I honestly? It feels so sincere to me? Maybourne, scum of the Earth, would-sell-out-his- own-mother-to-save-his-own- skin Maybourne is genuinely sorry. Even he can see how much Carter means to Jack and he is sorry. Just the look on his face when Jack says that Carter is missing says everything. He then goes out of his own way to help Jack save her. And why? Jack doesn't ask him to dig any further. He had accepted (at that point) that Maybourne didn't know who took Carter. Maybourne just decides that he's going to help. Sure, you can argue that he only did it so that Jack wouldn't drag him away to be executed for treason but that would only explain why he continues to go along with Jack's plan. Why would he go digging for more info in the first place? Yes, we find out that Maybourne supplied the same people that took Carter with a symbiote and that maybe?? He feels kinda responsible?? That the symbiote might be used for nefarious purposes???? Mmmm, maybe. I personally don't buy to far into it given his character and his vague attitude towards the situation. As far as I'm concerned, Maybourne did what he did because it was Carter. Because Jack came to him and he felt sorry. Now, I'm not an overly romantic kind of person and don't get the sense that Maybourne is any different, but maybe, just fucking maybe, how much Jack and Carter mean too each other has melted that cold dead heart, just a little? Maybe, if he can help it, he doesn't want to see them torn apart? Maybe some, tiny little piece of him sees how pure that bond is and doesn't want to just be sorry. He wants to preserve it.