#babe the cognitive dissonance is coming from inside the house

[itspileofgoodthings]

so the problem was adapting a Colleen Hoover novel to BEGIN with

[animasphinx]

im completely baffled by some south park fans. like i saw a south park artist on here have their blog marked as "proshippers dni" but like

you're drawing fanart of THE proship show lol

this show has literally everything bad in it, including children being abused in all manners of way (including sexual abuse), incest, racism, ableism, literally everything because i cant list it all 😭

the cognitive dissonance is incredible? i honestly can't fathom how they hold both of these very conflicting ideals

like babe, the proshipper is coming from inside the house!!

[luvnhugsgt]

G/T: Almost a Garden Gnome: Chapter 3

***As told by Eddie “The Man” Edwards (stupid parents who thought they were funny)***

I don’t really know what to say or do. I hope asking if the little mystery human was alright didn’t cause any lasting trauma? I didn’t know I was such a scary guy! Take a look at me standing next to my buddies, and you’ll find that I actually have a noticeably slighter frame than they do. I’ve never been the biggest, toughest dude in the crowd, and I’m cool with that, I think. That’s how it’s always been, you know? I’m sinewy, light and lean. It runs in my family.

Considering my self-image, I’ve always had some sort of cognitive dissonance about hanging out around the little human folk. I’m not sure why, but I’m kind of… afraid of them? Uncomfortable?

When I look down at my feet, bending my neck at a near ninety-degree angle and squinting my eyes just to see somebody, it hurts—well, my neck—and my eyes—and my self-esteem. Am I truly a big-lug, taking up way too much space and sounding like a hurricane, just because of my race, something I’ll never be able to reconcile with the littles?

To be around Little Lady, then, as you may have deduced, while she’s ostensibly cute (I can hardly see her face, so maybe I’m just an optimist), freaks me out, big time.

Should I, then, take a good, hard look at myself in the mirror, and say ten times, “Humans are friends”? Should I shut the door and keep her out of my house for the sake of my mental health? Should I get someone to scare her awa-no, wait, that’s horrible!

I guess, just maybe, I could leave out something for her to eat, then promptly go back inside. I certainly don’t mind her munching on my strawberries, even though I holler at the damn squirrels for doing the very same thing. But I think something’s wrong with the squirrels here—they have an attitude problem! They chatter at me and they shoo me away after I shoo them! Ah, but if I dodge this tiny woman, I’ll also have to avoid my garden; my only hobby!

You’d be surprised—I show off my garden to everyone, even ~lady friends~, and everyone digs it, or at least they seem to humor me. Aw man, I love my garden! If I abandon the garden, (I named it Steve), where will all my bragging rights come from? Oh, I ooze masculinity, guys.

Unless it doesn’t matter if I attract the Bel Parine 'Babes anymore—unless—u-unless I swing a full 180 and fall in lo-

Um-fall for a cute h-

Ahhh. Let’s not push our luck here, yeah?

How do Bels usually deal with bum-humans squatting in their backyard, anyhow? Yes, this one’s endearing—‘guess I’m lucky—but what if—I mean, this is pretty shallow, but—what if she were a crusty old man with a grating voice from years of drinking and smoking? A bit of a yikes from me, dog. Maybe I should see the ‘silver lining’ in this situation…

Oop! The phone’s going—“Hiya Grandma, what’s doin’?”

“Eddie, I was passing the nursery on Main Street this morning on my way to pick up my prescriptions, and I saw the most beautiful sunflowers. Oh, to tell you the truth, I didn’t even know they were in season, yet! And of course, I bought you two pots, because I know how you adore your garden—” she pauses, “what’s that you’re calling it now—Steve? Oh, you silly goose! But you’re my silly goose, you handsome young ma-“

“Grandma, oh thank you, I love ya ‘a million,” I explain, “but, about the garden… I do have something to ask of you.”

“Oh? I’m sure I can help. I’ve got lots of books with all the different flowers, loads of detailed, colorful pictures, all kinds of guid-“

“N-no, Grandma, it’s a different kind of issue. Do you…uh…know anything about humans?”

Her tone changes, “Humans, huh?”

“In your garden?” I add.

“…Lucky you!” She chirps; I can easily visualize Grandma beaming on the other side of the line. “Oh, do you have a homeless human on your hands?” She sighs. “Well, that’s not very good. We’ve got to do something. First thing’s first—let’s attract him. I hear humans like honey water. I read it on the web. There are so many wonderful things on the ‘line’.”

I sigh, knowing now that I’ve boxed myself in. I’ll have to face my fear. Why’d I get on this crazy ride? My grandma, she’s got the opposite issue, though she’s got scant self-awareness. She doesn’t seem to realize that the way she fawns over those ‘cute, cuddly’ humans, makes them seem uncomfortably similar to animals. It comes off as, I don’t know, condescending? I know I’ve got no stake in this narrative, but it grates on me for some reason or another. I’ve not been very exposed to humans in my twenty-nine-and-some-months years of life, but even I can understand how to respect the othersiders.

“Eddie, this is the best news I’ve had from you in weeks!”

“What?! What about my Impatiens?” I frown. “You know how hard it is grow those badboys ever since they were wiped out by the—what is it, fungus?” I mused absentmindedly, distracting myself from the trainwreck that’ll most surely ensue after this phone call.

“Oh, wait—wait—after the Impatiens!”

I pout. “Okaay, Grandma, I get your vibe. I gots’ta’ go catch my show, I’ll chat with you later…?” I speak rapidly, looking to flee as soon as I can.

“Great! Love you, Eddieboy! Enjoy your show. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at ten!”

“Grandma, wait a second!” I panic, but it’s too late. She’s already hung up, and I’m reeling here, almost in tears as I draw closer and closer to facing this phobia—yeah, I’ll acknowledge it as a phobia—for real, after all those sheltered, trepidatious years…

Agh! I run my hand through my hair melodramatically. What the hell do I do here! What say you, reader, ol’ buddy ol’ pal?

Jeez, next you’ll tell me you’re a human, too! Haha!

[fae-fucker]

Zenith: Chapter 24-26

Chapter 24

Andi wakes up in a cell, and can you guess what the inside of the cell looks like?

If you guessed it’s VERY DARK, and filled with DARKNESS that settles into Andi’s BONES (Shinsay is very fond of this metaphor, huh?), you need to leave this blog and never come back because you’ve obviously been here long enough to be permanently damaged by all this bullshit.

But you’re also right. It’s very very dark here, you guys.

So basically this whole chapter is Andi and Dex waking up in a dark cell and ... getting up and out of the cell. That’s it. 

I’ll include some juicy dumb bits for you though, because what’s a snark blog without snark?

This could have been her life—should have been her life. Locked away behind bars, awaiting the death penalty, the ghost of her best friend the only thing to keep her company.

This might be a nitpick, but “this could’ve been her life” implies that she’d be locked up for the rest of her life. Which I guess would technically be true since waiting for her death penalty would be the rest of her very short life, but it still sounds really weird. It’s like she’s expecting to wait for ... well, years and years and years, when the previous chapters mentioned her sentencing happening quickly.

That familiar wave of fear spiked through her, and Andi wanted to reach for her swords, to slash and slice and tear apart that piece of herself as she tore apart the bodies of others. Death after death, to cover up Kalee’s. To give herself the kind of fate she deserved.

So Andi harms herself? Does she want to seppuku this bitch up? Why else would she want to physically reach for her real, actual swords? Does she want to actually slice at a metaphorical part of herself? 

Also, can I just say that this still doesn’t make a lick of sense? “I technically didn’t murder my friend and technically hate the fact that I do think that I murdered my friend, and I will put a soothing balm on the wound of my soul by murdering even more innocent people, but this time intentionally, thinking I need to kill people for some reason even though I constantly mope about how badly I don’t want to kill people!” 

Makes ... no sense. This is why her characterization is so bad, Shinsay can’t commit to the “soft, compassionate, uwu bean” side of Andi because that would make her NOT COOL AND BADASS AND WEAK, but they also barely touch the “RUTHLESS MERCENARY” side of her because that would make her morally ambiguous and we can’t trust the reader to make up their own mind about her, can we now? Nor can we write anything that complex but that’s another debate.

Anywhoo, Dex wakes up and fingers Andi in the dark. 

She didn’t even flinch away as his fingertips scraped hers and he froze.

Gotcha.

Then we get a ... joke? I think it’s supposed to be a joke, at least. Someone teach Shinsay how to be funny and how to translate comedy into text, please!

“Please tell me this is Andi, and not some love-hungry Xen Pterran carriage slug named Stubby.”

Despite herself, Andi laughed. The massive slugs were gruesome, oily beasts that tried to bed anything with a heartbeat.

If there was anything this story was missing, it’s oily fuck-slugs. 

Thank you for that, Shinsay. 

Also ... “bed?” Are you telling me these slugs, that seem to be used to pull carriages, take their (dubiously willing) partners ... to bed? 

Shinsay, I get that you physically cannot get off SJM’s massive throbbing cock, but you’re not actually writing a faux-medieval fantasy book, ok? You’re writing a SUPER EDGY AND MATURE space opera, with all sorts of edgy violence and references to sex in it.

I don’t understand how bad your cognitive dissonance must be if you can invent rapey fuck-slugs, but don’t have the guts to say “fuck” or even “sex.”

Are you afraid your moms will read this? Is that why this is all so coy and immature as hell?

That’s what gets to me tbh. This book is too inappropriate to really be for younger YA audiences, but it’s also far too childish to be anything but laughable for older teens and young adults.

Dex and Andi have completely pointless banter as they try to get out of their cell. I find it very convenient that they ended up in the same cell, but ok.

Andi sticks out her tongue at Dex after he mildly insults her like a super cool ruthless murderess and not at all like a five-year-old.

We also get several mentions of the fact that Andi’s wrist cuffs can give off light, because I guess Shinsay are very proud of that particular high tech sci-fi invention. 

It’s very very very very dark, like SUPER dark, and Dex asks Andi if she’s scared.

She feared a lot of things.

Loneliness. Losing the lives of her crew or damaging her ship beyond repair.

But not darkness. That was a part of her; the very thing that had allowed her to survive for this long.

I had to read that, and now so do you. 

The thrill of the moment had arrived.

Without a word, Andi took a step forward, shedding the weakest parts of herself as she allowed the Bloody Baroness to take over.

Let’s wait until Andi becomes all sad and mopey over this again. 

Does this woman have ONE consistent personality trait?

Dex followed, and together, they left their empty cell behind.

Are you sure it was empty? And not full of DANK DARKNESS?!

Anyway yeah, it took Andi and Dex one entire chapter to wake up and leave a room. 

So this is how you pad your word count ... 

Chapter 25

We’re in Dex’s POV. They take care of a couple of guards, and by that I mean Andi does a couple SICK FLIPS and Dex is very impressed. 

“Godstars, Andi,” Dex said now as he leaned over to inspect the corpse.

The key looked strangely at home in his eye socket, perfectly positioned in the center, as if Andi had placed it there with an artist’s flair.

Ok, I’ll give Shinsay credit and say that this is reasonably evocative and Dex does admit that the key strangely looks at home in the guy’s EYE, but the “artist’s flair” thing ruins it completely. When you think “artist’s flair,” you don’t think of someone forcefully shoving a blunt object into someone’s eye, you think of a fancy shmancy person doing a little elegant flourish with their hand, like painting the delicate eyelashes of some noblewoman. 

Even when Shinsay manages to write something that’s actually rather imaginative, they ruin it by adding more guff that simply doesn’t fit and is only there to slap on more “pretty prose” and make Andi sound awesome and pad the damn word count.

Furthermore, specifying that it’s “perfectly in the center” doesn’t mean anything. If you manage to pierce a person’s eye with a key in the first place, there’s little margin of error, assuming this was a human and not an alien with abnormally large eyes with lots of options for key placement.

If you want to take the absurd imagery of the key “belonging” in the eye further, here’s what I’d suggest: 

“Godstars, Andi,” Dex said now as he leaned over to inspect the corpse.

The key looked strangely at home in his eye socket, and Dex felt as if he could just lean down and twist it and open the man’s face like a door.

Dex seems deeply horrified by Andi’s actions for reasons I cannot fathom, seeing as he’s the one constantly bragging about how he taught her everything she knows. 

When Andi explains to him that she had to kill the guard to make sure he didn’t sound the alarm and summon more guards, Dex has a really dumbass realization:

As Dex stared at her, he suddenly understood the bare truth.

There was no remorse in her eyes for the kills. Not even a flicker. There was nothing but the promise of the mission pulling her forward.

... Well, doy? How exactly did you expect this to go down, Dexy-Boy? Did you want to talk the guards into silence with your witty banter? 

This chapter serves literally no other purpose than to wank on about how cool and remorseless Andi is. We get Dex angsting about how Andi used to feel things very very hard, you guys, but now, the rumors were TRUE, and she was indeed a cold, non-feeling murderer. 

Dex asks Andi all deep about how the Bloody Baroness isn’t “just a reputation” and thinks about how badass Andi looks when she’s all stoic and shit. 

Andi then tells Dex about her apparently-not-so-secret ritual of carving tallies into her swords, which then makes Dex realize that MAYBE the Bloody Baroness IS a facade and Andi actually DOES have feelings, just like he thought 500 words before this! Rendering this entire internal monologue -- and by extension, this fiking chapter -- COMPLETELY USELESS!

Shinsay, literally what is the whole-ass fiking point of this? Was there progress made? New character traits revealed? No. We ended literally where we started. Nothing new was discovered. 

1. Dex thinks Andi still has some humanity left and the Bloody Baroness is just a reputation fabricated by her to protect her and her friends

2. Andi murders a dude, making Dex think that BB is indeed REAL and that Andi has no remorse for killing dudes

3. Andi tells Dex about her tallies, saying she remembers each and every kill, making Dex think that perhaps there is some humanity left and the Bloody Baroness is just a reputation fabricated by her to protect her and her friends

Shinsay, I’m coming to your houses to leave rotten eggs between your couch cushions.

We get this from Andi:

“Two deaths. Two tallies on my swords.” She looked down at the dead guards, then back up at him. A flicker of pain flashed through her eyes. “I have a code, you know. Lines that I don’t cross.”

Won’t surprise me the least if we never find out what that code is. 

Dex thinks about how cool and great it is to be working with Andi and the “chapter,” as I’ll generously call it, ends. 

Chapter 26

Hey, remember Klaren? 

Me neither.

Anyway, it’s year nineteen now and she’s holding baby Nor. Klaren thinks about how her baby -- oh sorry, “babe,” because this book still wants to be fantasy I guess -- is a mistake and how little effort she had to put in to make the king love her.

She’d hardly had to try to entice him. Perhaps, in some way, that meant he was her gift. A man who loved her despite what she was. Despite the past she’d kept hidden from him all these years.

Did this reasoning actually make sense to Shinsay? How can he love you “despite” the past you’ve hidden from him if you’ve HIDDEN IT FROM HIM AND HE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW ABOUT IT?! 

Who let Shinsay write? I need to find them and have a few words.

Anywhoo, the king is off to war and Xen Ptera is dying and it’s the apocalypse and whatever.

The baby wailed, drawing the queen’s attention. “Sleep now, my perfect little mistake,” she whispered. “Sleep, and remember to dream of the light.”

I guess this is supposed to be deep? Who even knows tbh.

Alone in her palace quarters, the queen of Xen Ptera rocked her daughter gently, a tear slipping down her cheek as she remembered her mission and thought of how little time they had left.

We’ve had a bunch of chapters with Klaren already and I still have no idea what purpose they serve or what their plot is.