#but for the entire premise of a book?

[gooenthusiast]

This is probably also why so many booktok/bookstagram-famous books are (imo as an avid „actual“ reader) shitty? As in ‚books written by 13 year olds on Wattpad make more sense and are written better‘-shitty.

I‘m not going bash people for liking to read or fantasise about toxic relationships, you do you. I don‘t like it, so I don‘t read it.

But I have no idea how people could stick around for an entire book of objectively bad & inconsistent writing and like it, without doing this parapgraph skipping/ only reading dialogue thing (aka not actually reading).

Do they know that reading is not mandatory? Nobody is forcing them to read?

[kingroan]

not to ramble about iwtv but i think a lot of people who balk at the unsavory parts of gothic fiction are people who have either 1) never truly had to face an onslaught of the macabre in their own life 2) have not actually sat with the discomfort of the darker parts of existence or simply not learned or had to learn how to process truly twisted emotions within themselves. and i bring this up in relation to iwtv because i see a lot of people pointing out 'problematic' parts of the book or bemoaning which ships are more or less toxic. and it's like it's a cow farm there's gonna be cows on the cow farm.

yeah anne rice wrote some weird shit and some of it is definitely unnecessary, most of those elements were corrected in the show. but a lot of it is just gothic fiction. you don't get to have sexy vampires, romanticism and tortured yearning without the inappropriate attachments, the true face of grief and the blurred lines between violence and eroticism which has evoked great interest in humans for centuries.

[obikin-obsessor]

Not Obikin but I will be ranting about these force forsaken books

I just finished book three of Jedi Apprentice and um...I think I genuinely dislike Qui-Gon right now? First of all in the past two books he has denied Obi-Wan becoming his padawan despite the fact that he even STATES that normally a force bond only happens between two close friends or a MASTER AND PADAWAN PAIR. Despite the fact that Obi-Wan wasn't his padawan at this point and Mr. "Follows the will of the Force" Doesn't think to question this??? To ask himself about if the Force itself wants them together? No, he's busy sulking in his own years old sadness of his past padawan turning to the darkside. My boy Obi does everything he can to TRY and be useful to Qui-Gon, to show that he would make a good padawan yet every single time, Qui-Gon brushes his efforts aside until we're made to believe Obi-Wan has moved past this, he doesn't btw. He gets brought to the agri corp, finds something he thinks Qui-Gon should know about, gets brushed off again, even though we find out later that the boxes and crates in the agri corp don't belong to them THEY BELONG TO QUI-GON'S EVIL EX PADAWAN. He then gets kidnapped and has a SLAVE COLLAR put on him, where if he gets outside of a certain radius HE WILL EXPLODE. He tries to be useful and find a way out despite this and gets captured and THROWN OFF OF A BUILDING TO DROWN TO DEATH. And it's stated that he has accepted the fact he will die, even though he is only like twelve, bordering thirteen at this point. He gets saved though, not by Qui-Gon, by some other person who ratted him out in the first place. Sure Qui-Gon then arrives and deactivates the collar but poor Obi has suicide on the brain clearly because after the big confrontation they're left in a place that will explode and kill them and everyone else so what does Obi do? He's like "Hey I can reactivate my collar and it'll go off and bring the door down! Then you'll be able to save everyone!" Like damn, he is thirteen and is already completely willing to just die if it means saving everyone else, no sense of self preservation there. It's only after all of that when Qui-Gon asks him to be his padawan and Obi agrees, should be happy sailing from here right? NOPE! (Book 5 has a whole ao3 tag for God's sake and it's hard NOT to know what's gonna happen there) When someone turns thirteen or their species equivalent and is officially someone's padawan. Their Master gives them a gift, one that usually Master's put a lot of thought and care into picking out the perfect thing to give them, and mind you Jedi aren't usually allowed personal possessions yet this is an exception. Some padawans get cloaks to keep them warm, or something to heal them should they be injured. Obi? He gets a rock. A FREAKING ROCK. And he's SO disappointed and I can't even blame him, for all he or maybe even Qui-Gon knows, it's just a normal ass rock.

Said rock ends up being force sensitive and saving him from having his memories taken away but he didn't know that and Qui-Gon sure as hell didn't tell him, even remarks at the end that he thought it was just a normal rock and Obi can't tell if he's being serious or not. Would it kill Qui-Gon to be a bit more open and honest with Obi? Because we know from his POV he does actually care about him to a degree, worrying over him and even mourning his loss when he thinks Obi's memories are gone) But does he tell Obi? NO! And I loathe it so much because I didn't really mention it here but Obi also has REALLY bad anxiety, he's never calm it seems like and again, he has suicidal ideation in the beginning and I don't know if that's fully gone yet. Thank you for hearing me rant, I will probably continue doing so the more of these books I read, thank you Jude Watson.

[papenathys]

I'm so terrified because someone I love and trust told me The Jasmine Throne is mango diaspora desi fantasy core

[nerdyenby]

Comic panels that are referenced in (or just remind me of) the movie

[bookwormwithadhd]

should i start Never Let Me Go the series or should i not go through that rabbit hole yet

[sarlias]

It's been awhile since I've spent an entire book wondering how the MC can be so stupid. I get that she's 17, but please rub your brain cells together occasionally.

Pretty cover art though

And for a character who constantly talks about how selfish the upper class is, she sure is selfish herself.

I think I might be so disappointed because I read the prequel novella Queen Song first and I actually really liked it and I liked Coriane. Maybe it's a sign that the writing improves and I should keep reading the series, I don't know.

Cal was truly the only bearable character in the book for me, I kind of wish it had been written from his PoV instead. WAIT I forgot about Lucas... he was also good.

[henry-bones]

Ok, is it just me, or was Amelia Bedelia just autistic?

[oflgtfol]

rewatched flatland 2007 last night. what was i talking about that this movie was a 1:1 adaptation of the book. the movie took so many creative liberties. but i guess they were good creative liberties that suited the main themes and ideas. but they were still so many creative liberties lmfao

[swagyna]

:v my friend really wanted me to read this gay cultivation book and like.... it's fine.

but i also CANNOT stand the blatant and petty sexism. it's unreal. it's so much so that it's detracting from my enjoyment.

[nicknederson]

my favorite character in the nancy drew files series is (still) nancy's tingle

[goingferalapparently]

sometimes i forget what fandoms i've been in until they smash me in the head like a steel beam in the most incomprehensible combination of letters like "QSMP but in VLD" and then it just makes perfect sense in my head and i spend 2 hours of my life sketching rough designs like

etoiles doesn't know how he got caught up in all this, but he most definitely did. etoiles is not related to the garrison, but he's visiting his friend baghera where she's got a job there as a communications specialist.

it's not his fault at all that there's a very suspicious "meteor crash" while he's there. it's not his fault at all that baghera goes investigating. it's not his fault at all that he follows her (okay, maybe it kind of is, but it feels like something he has to do okay?) it's not his fault at all that former junior officer forever is snooping around too. it's not his fault at all that the "meteor crash" was actually just a star pilot cellbit in an alien spacecraft - star pilot cellbit who notoriously piloted a mission to the outskirts of the solar system with junior officer felps and lead scientists pac and mike, star pilot cellbit who crashed the ship onto the moon kerberos. anyway...

it's still definitely not etoiles' fault that they commit some form of crime/felony/something- he's not even sure what they just committed but now they have half the garrison on their tails and an unconscious should-be-dead star pilot, so they run. forever apparently knows how to hotwire a car and baghera apparently knows how to disable all the tracking devices and they're apparently good friends too, and etoiles is just standing there with someone's unconscious body in his hands and he's already this implicated, definitely an accomplice, and he's doomed anyway so he follows.

star pilot cellbit wakes up and apparently he and former junior officer forever are even better friends, and it's just etoiles who's. here. for some reason. apparently, etoiles is also the only person here with a shred of rationality, because star pilot cellbit starts talking about aliens, former junior officer forever talks about telepathic conversations, and even baghera starts talking about government level conspiracy cover-ups. and, again, etoiles is just. etoiles. baghera's friend that somehow got caught up in all of this.

former junior officer forever tries to show them the traces of alien civilisation and traces of telepathy but etoiles wanders off (something calls at him, traces his steps out for him), and lo and behold, he stumbles upon the alien spaceship that has been sending out telepathic brainwaves or something to former junior officer forever for the past 2 years that star pilot cellbit has been declared missing

the alien spaceship is a giant yellow lion and there's a giant yellow forcefield (????) around it that doesn't lower itself no matter how much the others try, until etoiles walks up and says hi to it. it's another thing, with the controls not reacting to, you know, star pilot cellbit, former junior officer who was a pilot forever, or even just communications specialist baghera who at least has an idea of what all these controls are.

etoiles, who is still just etoiles and has no clue what all these stuff is, accidentally touches a control, which lights up under his hand, which sends the alien spaceship careening into the sky and out of the atmosphere, out to the fringes of the solar system, and there's a giant alien spaceship out there and he fights it somehow, and apparently that's the giant alien spaceship that star pilot cellbit escaped from. somehow, he opens up a wormhole and the yellow alien lion spaceship zooms through it and now they're half the known universe away from home.

they exit the spaceship - star pilot shiro first with the most confidence, then everyone else when they see that they're not going to die of suffocation due to lack of oxygen or improper atmospheric pressure or something. there's a giant castle, which the alien lion spaceship roars at and it opens up???? and then they walk in and baghera pokes around something and two cryopods rise up from the ground and open up.

cue the alteans. altean prince roier mourns the loss of everything he's ever known as he wakes up 10000 decaphoebs into the future with nothing but the castleship and one other person. this one other person is his closest friend jaiden, who was made royal advisor just 5 vargas before the destruction of their world. both cling to the castleship because it's all they have left and all that truly belongs to them.

obviously, since these new people have arrived in the yellow lion, the alteans decide that this must be about reforming voltron, and now must be the time to strike back against the galran empire. there's uh, only one issue.

there's four people and five lions. they do not have enough people to form voltron.

there's another issue, actually, where they don't even know who matches up with which lion. there's only really one person who they can match a lion to, and that's the yellow lion with etoiles - who, is still the only person here to not actually be caught up in any of this space business. he's still here somehow. he does actually have some sort of fighting experience, though? he was in the fencing club when he was in university! altean prince roier probably should actually know how to match them, but he was never really that interested in that aspect of his studies.

because they only have the yellow lion and the black lion, they also need to collect the other three. and because they don't know which lion matches up with which person, they can't just send one person in to pilot the lion out, they have to send the yellow lion in to physically pick up the other lions. thank the stars that the yellow lion is one of the more sturdy lions.

these issues are only apparent to the alteans because, well, the humans have no clue what's going on. there's 5 spaceships to be piloted? well, there's 6 people here, that's not a problem to them. just get one of the alteans to pilot the last spaceship.

the alteans do not want to pilot the last lion, too attached to the castleship to abandon it.

it's a fundamental difference in their point of views.

it gets worse from here.

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

y'know as shitty and horrible as warrior cats is, 'my blood is on fire!' goes hard as fuck

[nature-played-a-trick-on-me]

I've started reading this Outlander preview and so far it's fun... it did literally have the "let go of a breath I didn't know I was holding" trope thing lmao but what I'm expecting is something similarly dramatic / over the top as the TV series yknow Drama but Fun !!!!!

[zzora]

wait if the point of divergent was to 'fix' humanity by creating a lot of divergent people why did the government let them kill people who were divergent what

[angstandhappiness]

Yeah

every time i see a post talking about how alfred pennyworth failed bruce for not getting him into therapy as a kid i want to scream.

it did not exist. the idea that children could have PTSD was just starting to be discussed in the late 80s/early 90s at the FRINGE of child psychology, and then trauma therapy even for adults spent an unhelpful 2ish decades dominated by forced-conversation talk therapy. that's a thing that is detrimental to trauma recovery, because if someone doesn't feel safe or in control of the dialogue about their trauma and is repeatedly asked to describe their trauma when they're uneasy, it COMPOUNDS TRAUMA AND FEELINGS OF DANGER.

when bruce was a kid, even the best psychs available would have had training that taught them kids bounce back, that kids don't respond to or handle trauma the way adults do, and that any behaviors post-trauma were almost certainly unrelated mental illness.

i see this esp in fandom circles but a gentle reminder that therapy even when it's good doesn't fix everything. even if bruce had HAD access to good childhood PTSD therapy, he would still have grief, he would still potentially be socially awkward or withdrawn, he might have still decided to be Batman because it's a comic book where being a vigilante isn't as wild as it is irl.

therapy requires honesty, readiness, safety, sound application of theory, an accurate picture of life outside the therapy room (self-reporting is often flawed!), consistency, and more! it can help but it doesn't erase trauma or grief. it's dismissive of the history of trauma therapy to say an adult "should have" had a kid in a therapy approach that didn't exist, and it's dismissive of the actual work of therapy to act like therapy would have made everything ideal. bruce isn't going to be a normal, well-adjusted adult because his parents were murdered in front of him. he could be happy! he could have coping skills! but honestly it would be weirder if he didn't wrestle with residual trauma and grief throughout his life.

and maybe this is just because i love Batman, and love specifically Batman as a symbol/figure of hope and sacrifice and the belief that every life matters, but I don't think the worst ending here is Bruce deciding to give up a lot of his time, energy, and health to work in Gotham AND then choose to parent a traumatized child and actively meet his needs. like you think the alternative is that Alfred is a better parent by getting him into non-existent therapy and then he stays comfortably wealthy at home and is just another rich dude? that's the ideal version? the one who can't help Dick Grayson because Dick Grayson wants to run away and murder a man?

anyway tl;dr alfred should have flaws, yes, but there's a big gap between "flawed human parental figure" and "man who massively failed Bruce in multiple ways, one of which was not putting him in therapy."