#but the main couple didn’t really have to overcome any conflicts for their love

[cheshirefaggot]

it’s funny how jwqs has all the elements that i hated in tgcf (too long, too much political talk etc.) but jwqs is now extremely dear to my heart while tgcf was dropped like a hot potato.

[maxwell-grant]

What are your thoughts on Jekyll/Hyde and his archetype of the human periodically changing into a monster ?

Jekyll & Hyde was the 2nd horror story I read following Frankenstein, I got it off the same library and it always stuck very strongly with me even before I got into horror in general. I even dressed up as Jekyll/Hyde as a kid for a school fair by shredding a lab coat on one side and asking my sister to make-up claw gashes on my exposed arm and paint half of my face, although in hindsight I think I ended up looking more like Doctor Two-Face than Jekyll/Hyde, but I was 12 and didn't have any Victorian clothing to use so I had to make do. The first film project I tried doing at film school was intended to be a modern take on Jekyll & Hyde, and I didn't get much farther than a couple of discarded scripts

Much like Frankenstein, Mr Hyde as a character and a story is something that's kind of baked into everything I do artistically. And it's not just me, as even in pop culture itself, none of us can escape Mr Hyde. I would go so far as to argue Mr Hyde may be the single most significant character created by victorian fiction, if only by the sheer impact and legacy the character's had.

(Fan-art by guilhermefranco)

Part of what makes Mr Hyde such a powerful and lasting icon of pop culture is that the very premise of the book invites a personal reading that's gonna vary from person to person. Because everyone's familiar with the basic twist of the story, that it's a conflict of duality, of the good and evil sides, but everyone has a more personal idea of what those entail. Some people make the story more about class. A lot of readings laser-focus on sex and lust as the driving force, and there's also a lot of readings of Mr Hyde that tackle it to explore a more gendered perspective, and so forth.

I don't particularly take much notice of the Jekyll & Hyde adaptations partially because the novel's premise and themes have become baked so throughly into pop culture and explored in so many different and interesting ways, that I'm not particularly starving for good Jekyll & Hyde adaptations the way I am for Dracula and Frankenstein. The Fredric March film in particular is one that orbits my head less because of the film itself (although I do recommend it), but because of one specific scene, and that's when Jekyll first transforms into Hyde on screen.

Out of all the things they could have shown him doing right that second, they instead took the time to show him enjoying the rain.

Just Hyde taking off his hat and letting it all cascade on his face with this sheer enthusiasm like he's never been to the rain before, never enjoyed it before, and now that he's free from being Jekyll, he gets to enjoy life like he never has before. It's such an oddly humanizing moment to put amidst a horror movie, in the scene where you're ostensibly introducing the monster to the audience, and it makes such a stark contrast to the rest of the film where Hyde is completely irredeemable, but I think it's that contrast that makes the film's take on Hyde work so well even with it's diverging from the source material, even if I don't particularly like in general interpretations of Hyde that are focused on a sexual aspect.

Because one, it understands that Jekyll was fundamentally a self-serving coward and not a paragon of goodness, and two, it also understands one of the things that makes Hyde scary: He wants what all of us want, to live and be happy. He's happy when he leaves the lab and dances around in the rain like a giddy child, he's happy when he goes to places Jekyll couldn't dream of showing up, he's happy as a showgirl-abusing sexual predator. Hyde is all wants, all the time, and there's not that much difference between his wants, his domineering possessiveness, and the likes exhibited by Muriel's father and Jekyll's own within the very same film, which also works to emphasize one of the other ideas of the original story, that Edward Hyde doesn't come from nowhere. That no monster is closer to humanity than Mr Hyde, because he is us. He is the thing that Jekyll refused to take responsability for until it was too late.

(Art by LorenzoMastroianni)

While many of the ideas that defined Mr Hyde had already been explored in pop culture beforehand, Hyde popularized and redefined many of them in particular by modernizing the idea. He was the werewolf, the doppelganger, The Player On The Other Side, except he came from within. He was not transformed by circumstance, he made himself that way, and the elixir merely brought out something already inside his soul. To acknowledge that he's there is to acknowledge that he is you, and to not do that is to either lose to him, or perish. Hyde was there to address both the rot settling in Victorian society as well as grappling concerns over Darwinian heritage, of the realization that man has always had the beast inside of him (it's no accident that Hyde's main method of murder is by clubbing people to death with his cane like a caveman).

I've already argued on my post about Tarzan that the Wild Man archetype, beginning with Enkidu of The Epic of Gilgamesh, is the in-between man and beast, between superhero and monster, and that Mr Hyde is an essential component of the superhero's trajectory, as the creature split in between. That stories about dual personalities, doppelgangers, the duality of the soul, the hero with a day job and an after dark career, you can pinpoint Hyde as a turning point in how all of these solidified gradually in pop culture. And I've argued otherwise that The Punisher, for all that his image and narrative points otherwise, is ultimately just as much of a superhero as the rest of them, even if no one wants to admit it, drawing a parallel between The Punisher and Mr Hyde. And he's far from the only modern character that can invite this kind of parallel.

The idea of a regular person periodically or permanently transforming into, or revealing itself to be, something extraordinary and fantastic and scary, grappling with the divide it causes in their soul, and questions whether it's a new development or merely the truest parts of themselves coming to light at last, and the effects this transformation has for good and bad alike. The idea of a potent, dangerous, unpredictable enemy who ultimately is you, or at least a facet of you and what you can do. That these are bound to destroy each other if not reconciled with or overcome.

You know what are my thoughts on the archetype of "human periodically changing into a monster" are? Look around you and you're gonna see the myriad ways The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde's themes have manifested in the century and a half since the story's release. Why it shouldn't be any surprise whatsoever that Mr Hyde has become such an integral part of pop culture, in it's heroes and monsters alike. Why we can never escape Mr Hyde, just as Jekyll never could.

It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde.

He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close… - Hunter S. Thompson

There is a scene in the movie Pulp Fiction that explains almost every terrible thing happening in the news today. And it's not the scene where Ving Rhames shoots that guy's dick off. It's the part where the hit man played by John Travolta is talking about how somebody vandalized his car, and says this:

"Boy, I wish I could've caught him doing it. I'd have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It'd been worth him doing it, just so I could've caught him doing it."

That last sentence is something everyone should understand about mankind. After all, the statement is completely illogical -- revenge is supposed to be about righting a wrong. But he wants to be wronged, specifically so he'll have an excuse to get revenge. We all do.

Why else would we love a good revenge movie? We sit in a theater and watch Liam Neeson's daughter get kidnapped. We're not sad about it, because we know he's a badass and he finally has permission to be awesome. Not a single person in that theater was rooting for it to all be an innocent misunderstanding. We wanted Liam to be wronged, because we wanted to see him kick ass. It's why so many people walk around with vigilante fantasies in their heads.

Long, long ago, the people in charge figured out that the easiest and most reliable way to bind a society together was by controlling and channeling our hate addiction. That's the reason why seeing hurricane wreckage on the news makes us mumble "That's sad" and maybe donate a few bucks to the Red Cross hurricane fund, while 9/11 sends us into a decade-long trillion-dollar rage that leaves the Middle East in flames.

The former was caused by wind; the latter was caused by monsters. The former makes us kind of bummed out; the latter gets us high.

It's easy to blame the news media for pumping us full of stories of mass shootings and kidnapped children, but that's stopping one step short of the answer: The media just gives us what we want. And what we want is to think we're beset on all sides by monsters.

The really popular stories will always feature monsters that are as different from us as possible. Think about Star Wars -- what real shithead has ever referred to himself as being on "the dark side"? In Harry Potter and countless fantasy universes, you have wizards working in "black magic" and the "dark arts." Can you imagine a scientist developing some technology for chemical weapons or invasive advertising openly thinking of what he does as "dark science"? Can you imagine a real world leader naming his headquarters "The Death Star" or "Mount Doom"?

Of course not. But we need to believe that evil people know they're evil, or else that would open the door to the fact that we might be evil without knowing it. I mean, sure, maybe we've bought chocolate that was made using child slaves or driven cars that poisoned the air, but we didn't do it to be evil -- we were simply doing whatever we felt like and ignoring the consequences. Not like Hitler and the bankers who ruined the economy and those people who burned the kittens -- they wake up every day intentionally dreaming up new evils to create. It's not like Hitler actually thought he was saving the world.

So no matter how many times you vote to cut food stamps and then use the money to buy a boat, you could still be way worse. You could, after all, be one of those murdering / lazy / ignorant / greedy / oppressive monsters that you know the world is full of, and that only your awesome moral code prevents you from turning into at any moment. And those monsters are out there.

They have to be. Because otherwise, we're the monsters - 5 Reasons Humanity Desperately Wants Monsters To Be Real, by Jason Pargin

(Two-Face sequence comes from the end of Batman Annual #14: Eye of the Beholder)

For good or bad, Hyde has become omnipresent. He's a part of our superheroes, he's a part of our supervillains, he's in our monsters. He lives and prattles in our ears, sometimes we need him to survive, and sometimes we become Hyde even when we don't need to, because our survival instincts or base cruelties or desperation brings out the worst in us. Sometimes we can beat him, and sometimes he's not that bad. Sometimes we do need to appease him and listen to what he says, about us and the world around us. And sometimes we need to do so specifically to prove him wrong and beat him again.

But he never, ever goes away, as he so accurately declares in the musical

Do you really think That I would ever let you go...

Do you think I'd ever set you free?

If you do, I'm sad to say It simply isn't so

You will never get away FROM MEEEEEE

(Art by Akreon on Artstation)

[itoldsunset]

ipytm episode 3 thoughts (very very long), take it or leave it. i have a lot of asks in my inbox and honestly i'm overwhelmed (there are a lot of feelings about this episode that i'm not prepared to hold because i am processing my own) so i don't think i'll get to them, but here are my reactions after thinking about it for a bit.

i kind of wonder what my reaction to episode 3 would have been had i stayed off of social media all day yesterday. my mindset going into ipytm was, "i don't want a cheating plot, but if there is one, i trust nadao to handle it well" because they're responsible for some of the best writing i've ever seen in thai television. i still believe that. i wish they hadn't chosen the cheating plot because there are other relationship conflicts to explore that don't involve cheating, but for me it's not a dealbreaker.

i disagree with critiques saying they did it for ratings or sensationalism. if anything, they lost viewers from this. people are not okay with cheating plots, and the team most likely knew this when they wrote it. yet they took that gamble anyway, which makes me want to believe they have something they want to say, and i'm waiting until the series ends to give my final judgment on whether they succeeded in that message.

i watched the episode live and saw thai fans' live reactions on twitter, then i spent the morning checking everyone's reactions here on tumblr. as of right now, thai twitter has not stopped insulting the director, the writers, and the company. the backlash is harsher than anything i've seen from international fans (i'm leaving it at that so please don't ask me). pretty much everyone hated what happened this episode, which i understand. but i don't think it means that it was lazy writing or that teh was out of character. i definitely think there's a problem, though, if the majority of viewers are feeling alienated from the show, because it means something went wrong along the way with the storytelling.

it is totally possible and in character for teh to cheat on oh-aew, because you can love someone with your whole heart and still hurt them and betray them (to be clear, it's still not okay). and it is totally possible for teh to have done something as shitty as this and still grow up to be a decent person in the end. this is where the time jumps become an issue for me. we left episode two with teh crying because he was afraid of losing oh-aew, and then we land in his third year where he's seemingly indifferent to oh-aew. but we weren't part of that journey, and the storytelling didn't lead us there emotionally. all we see is oh-aew being a super dedicated partner who is trying to salvage their relationship, while teh is completely distant and seems to have given up altogether.

i get it, he's insecure about his career and the possibility that he might end up like khim, and jai is the last thing he has to latch on to his now-more-elusive dream of becoming an actor. he's barely thinking about oh-aew and he's incapable of being a good partner right now, especially since oh-aew's success and happiness in advertising probably makes teh doubt himself even more. he's so in his head he's not even himself anymore. he has completely lost who he is, which is why he seems so foreign to us here. the objective facts are all there, but the emotional connection to make me empathize with him isn't, which is why all the shitty things he did this episode--juxtaposed against all the wonderful things oh-aew did--make him come across as such an exceptionally terrible person. and the thing is i know he still loves oh-aew. in the sex scene, he still clearly loves oh-aew. sure it was initiated by a desire to improve his acting for jai, but during the sex and the morning after, the love and affection for oh-aew are still there. teh just doesn't recognize it because all he sees is oh-aew having left him for better (a new career track he's happy with and doing well in, a group of friends who understand and support him) while teh remains stuck in the same loop holding on to jai as his last hope, which is why he's giving jai his everything. none of that makes any of it okay, but it makes it make sense.

i wish they had spent more time developing this internal conflict so that we could see it better, because it was only after rewatching it a couple of times, sitting on it, and reading people's reactions that i could begin to understand where teh is at in this episode. and i know we like that itsay gave us a lot to analyze, but i think ipytm has tried to jam too much into too few episodes that it ends up leaving the audience with blanks to fill in, which is a bit more work than i want to do when i'm enjoying a series. i think teh and jai got too much screen time, and teh and oh-aew not enough. i think there's a lot of insider stuff about drama/comm arts that's taking up space, which might resonate with folks who come from that field but not the majority of the audience who don't speak that language. i think if they had given more time to exploring teh and oh-aew's relationship, we wouldn't be seeing as much of this backlash.

a cheating plot doesn't make it cheap drama. i would happily watch a series that tackles infidelity in relationships because it is a super real topic with lots to explore: how does a couple navigate the aftermath of infidelity? can they rebuild trust, and how? what are the consequences to the relationship? all of these are important things to address, but the topic deserves a lot more space than a five-episode series can deliver, especially when it's combined with teh and oh-aew's other conflicts related to career, ambition, and other coming of age struggles. so for me it's not the cheating plot that's the problem but more so the fact that i don't think there's enough time for them to do it justice.

all that said, i think there's a tension here between a creator's creative vision and audience expectations, and i think this is an example of the showmakers maybe going too far in their vision to the point of alienating the audience. itsay is a comfort show and teh is a comfort character for a lot of us, and it's justifiable that folks are upset at the turn he's taken in ipytm. i'm also disappointed that it seems like teh remains the main character in ipytm while oh-aew's role has been reduced, because i can tell pp's acting has really improved and i would have loved to see more of him on the screen. the cheating storyline also makes it a lot harder to root for teh and oh-aew, and that honestly hurts the audience and affects our relationship to the show, and is another consequence of the writers choosing to go in that direction.

for me personally, itsay was full of angst but it gave me joy to watch because i loved watching teh and oh-aew fall in love with each other and i was rooting for them to overcome their obstacles to be together. ipytm has proven a lot more stressful to watch, where it doesn't spark that same joy but a lot more anxiety about "what's next," which was definitely a choice in setting the mood of the sequel. the material just doesn't work with the audience's emotions in the same way, it almost works against us. there's not the same sense of comfort and nostalgia and romance, but a darker realism of coming of age, and i wouldn't blame people for dropping off for that because it's a legitimate shift and doesn't match everyone's tastes in terms of the media they want to consume. i think we can hate the choices that were made here because they don't speak to our demands as an audience, but i wouldn't say they did it for the drama or for the ratings.

[freddiekluger]

please drop the essay length analysis Judas and Jesus (extra gay Swedish edition), O great and knowledgeable monarch of our times

alright, you ask i deliver! please excuse any typos, my eyes aren't exactly working rn

welcome to my probably super subjective but correct analysis, aka

Judas Was Right and Jesus Was A Victim (At Least, In Swedish)

Before we get started, a couple points: i’ll try to avoid comparisons to other specific productions, i’ve only seen the other recorded 2012 british version which i didn’t like for reasons including but not limited to the amount of white people with dreadlocks. Also, my understanding of swedish is limited to a couple words and phrases, so most of the lyrics i reference will be english subtitles from Ola Salo’s swedish translation and therefore might not be the most accurate !

There’s so much i could cover in this, but for now i’m going to focus on how jesus and judas are portrayed in the 2014 swedish arena tour of Jesus Christ Superstar (JCS) starring Ola Salo as Jesus and Peter Johansson as Judas, along with how this production more implicitly views god. 

From the opening number, translated into swedish as En Dimmig Himmelsdröm (A Foggy Heaven’s Dream), Peter Johansson’s acting and semantic differences in the lyrics present us with a deeply sympathetic portrayal of Judas. Looking purely at language, the english equivalent Heaven On Their Minds instantly paints Judas as much more of a faithless doubter- lyrics exclusive to the english version like “all your followers have gone blind / too much heaven on their minds” and “they think you’re the new messiah / and they’ll hurt you when they find they’re wrong” strongly enforce Judas’ main motivation for his actions being that he has less belief in Jesus and God’s plan than any of the other disciples with strong statements judging the other disciples for following him and claiming that Jesus ISN’T the messiah. The swedish translation doesn’t paint exactly the same picture- the focus of Judas’ number becomes his fear for Jesus’ wellbeing, not because he isn’t the messiah (the production remains fairly ambiguous on this point), but because Jesus can’t cope. The root of Judas’ concern comes from fear for Jesus’ wellbeing, and the disciples are referenced as regularly misunderstanding and wilfully twisting Jesus’ words. The swedish equivalent lyrics for the above examples are “they say, “jesus is god’s son” / but you know how people can change” (judas isn’t concerned with truth, just the danger that jesus will be in if the tide turns), and “the kingdom of heaven is within us, that’s what you said / bu they sew it, stitch by stich into some kind of foggy heaven’s dream”. Judas is showing that he HAS been listening and cares for Jesus’ teachings, but ‘they’ [his disciples] are turning them into something else entirely, and Judas’ worries that the support of the masses is fragile at best- the lines “and everything you say gets twisted by your lackeys / it will be anything but what you’ve said”  and “you are being used by people who want you in their battle” reinforces this again. When combined with Peter Johansson’s tough but tender performance, in which he dances between disdain for Jesus, the institution, and affection for Jesus, the man (an important distinction), Judas is the harsh realist doing his best to look out for the man he loves. The way he takes Jesus hands and looks at him with love and urgency straight away establishes that his motivations are pure- Judas is doing what he thinks is best, even though it feels like no one will listen to him. 

That was long, but En Dimmig Himmelsdröm is the perfect character introduction for Judas. He’s not totally unrecognisable, still delivering digs about ‘Jesus, the little carpenter’s son’, his manner is still rough and at this point we’re not sure whether or not the claims he makes about the disciples have any truth to them, BUT we can also see how much Jesus means to him, an important point that give context to the intensity of their future arguments and really makes the whole story much more heartbreaking.

This brings me to Ola Salo’s Jesus. Delightfully camp and queercoded, Judas describes him as being caught up in his own magic and mystery and buckling under the pressure, and he’s not entirely wrong. Throughout the first act, Jesus basks in the luxuries that being messiah can give him (the oils Mary paid for using disciple funds that were supposed to go towards helping the poor, him absolutely thriving in the shopping cart in What’s the Buzz?), and is shown actively avoiding any reminders of the seriousness of his position. He’s sick of the disciples asking him for a plan, he chooses the comforting Mary, who’s theme consists of telling Jesus everything is okay and he doesn’t need to think about anything, over Judas, who is less perhaps ‘cosy’ but is actively trying to warn and protect Jesus from an awful fate. During The Temple, he starts to crack as he’s overcome by the followers begging him to make him well, fear in his eyes as he raises his arms while frozen on the spot trying to avoid being devoured by the frenzy in desperate need of a messiah. Judas’ point about Jesus buckling under the pressure is starting to look more and more reasonable, and the dashes of showbiz campness add to the sense that much of Jesus is a persona constructed for the masses to give himself enough distance to prevent him from being crushed by the weight of God entirely. Jesus, the institution, prances around, lays his hands on his followers, and projects an air of easygoing calm. Jesus, the man, is scared and alone, and Jesus, the man, really comes out in Last Supper, but before we get there, I want to circle back to the Jesus/Mary/Judas thing.

Jesus, Mary, and Judas are presented as a love triangle: so much so, that Judas seeing Mary sing of her love for Jesus (I Don’t Know How To Love Him) is actually played as the inciting incident that sends him to the pharisees. Judas, the picture of the jealous lover, storms onto the scene, breaking them up and attempting to kiss Jesus, who instead shoves him to the ground in disdain. Judas, who is perhaps a little controlling, realises that any influence he had over Jesus has gone, and it’s likely a combination of jealousy and the knowledge that Jesus won’t stop that prompts him to head to the pharisees. In his meeting with the pharisees (known in english as Damned For All Time, although that phrase doesn’t appear once in the swedish), Judas’ expresses outright that “I’m the one who sees / Jesus, he can’t handle it anymore” “the truth is that this hysteria is making him lose control”, once he can get past explaining how much this plan of action feels like a last resort. He never even verbally or physically accept the pharisees’ offer of money, he denies it twice before it is eventually thrown over him after he reluctantly gives them the date and time to find Jesus- we never even see him pick it up, unlike other productions which show Judas grabbing for the cash and place a higher emphasis on Judas making sure he ‘won’t be damned for all time’, painting Judas as far more self serving. When it comes to Jesus, Judas is active- he’s running around trying to help, caressing him, embracing him, grabbing his hand, kissing him. They share countless moment of intimacy, especially at the start, establishing the fondness between them instead of instantly jumping to their conflict. When it comes to Mary (and admittedly, this is partially because she’s a secondary character- don’t get me wrong I still love her and Gunilla Backman does a brilliant job), she’s much more passive. Other than the much more gentle kisses in I Don’t Know How To Love Him and her penchant for dabbing Jesus’ forehead, she’s mostly just ‘there’. She cares for Jesus after the fact, and even when performing acts of intimacy like the oil and the kiss, she maintains a lot of physical distance- her songs touch on this as, much like Jesus (admittedly for different reasons), she actively distances herself from feelings to protect herself, so naturally she literally places distance between herself and the object of her love.

This brings me back to Last Supper, Gethsemane ( I Only Want to Say), and the kiss of death that broke all of our hearts. Throughout this segment, this is when Jesus, the man, really comes through, and it’s devastating. In Last Supper, he properly expresses the sheer amount of loneliness he feels, reiterating how he feels everyone will forget about him once he’s gone, and doesn’t really care about him as a man (”for you, my blood is not worth more than wine / for you, my body is not worth more than bread” “you will have forgotten me as soon as i give up my life”). This devolves into the disciples fighting each other and, you guessed it, ignoring him. For the first time, Jesus meaningfully lets out his anger, and as it turns to Judas, Judas does the same. Because of the set up of their complicated romantic relationship and the stakes involved, the amount of personal attacks and anger that comes out of Jesus and Judas’ repeated fights (which get physical) make complete sense- Jesus’ frustrations come from the fact that his entire fate has been predetermined and to him, Judas is just another instrument in the ways he’s been controlled (both with Judas being his betrayer, but also the way that Judas’ constant advice and interference with Jesus’ life (most obviously, the mary thing) are acted by Ola Salo as becoming increasingly frustrating to Jesus)- these frustrations are directed at their real cause, God, in Gethsemane. Judas’ frustrations come from the fact that no matter how hard he tries to help Jesus and keep him safe, Jesus keeps rejecting his efforts resulting in “all that we’ve built up [being] destroyed”- Judas’ heart hasn’t just been broken by Jesus rejecting him romantically, but on every level. Here, he’s actually shown to be the disciple most passionate about helping people practically and long term, being the only one concerned about Mary taking money which was supposed to help people, manipulated by the pharisees with the promise of doing good for the masses, and criticising Jesus for how they could be doing so much for people, ending his part of Last Supper with “every time i look at you i ask myself why you let all your things go so wrong? / all i ever wanted was to help you”. 

This is also the point where Judas’ claims about the disciples are essentially confirmed, and this productions intent to portray Judas as more of a tragic hero become absolutely clear. In the english version, the disciples chorus remains virtually the same each time it appears, generally being far too calm considering their leader is about to die, revealing their aspirations to be apostles, and their intent to write the gospels to be remembered. the swedish translation still achieve this, but with variations from chorus to chorus it becomes much more poignant. i’m just going to stick to ttwo, which are choruses 1 and 3. In chorus 1, lines roughly translate to “i’ve always wanted to be an apostle / life is so nice when you’re saved/ then when we’ve got time we’ll write the gospels / then everything will be the way we want”-  the apostles declaring that life is so good when you’re saved supports Judas’ opening statement that they care more about some idea of heaven than anything else, not to mention ignoring the absolute horrors that Jesus will have to go through to be saved, while the final line about the gospels introduces their intent to change whichever details they need to make ‘everything the way we want’: once again, exactly what Judas warned us of in En Dimmig Himmelsdröm. In chorus 3, taking place after Judas storms out for the last time, these lines change to “never really liked that judas / never saw what jesus saw in him / then, when we’ve got time we’ll write the gospels / and we’ll angle it so he gets all the blame”. Judas as a sympathetic character is confirmed here, as the disciples straight up admit how they don’t like Judas anyways and intend to write him as a villain (also inadvertently admitting that, since they have to write the gospels to make it look like only Judas’ fault, Judas isn’t really the sole one responsible for everything that is to come). It’s deeply unsettling, and for me was the point where I really began to question how good any of these disciples were, and by extension, how good is this production’s God if his truly sanctified followers are acting like this?

Jesus vents out all of his anger and desperation in Gethsemane. He acknowledges his own powerlessness and begs him to change the plan, but with the dark stage and no response (along with Ola Salo’s spectacular acting) it becomes clear that if anyone is there, they’re certainly not listening (”you, who have all the power / can you please change the plan / for i can already feel the pain burning in me”). It’s worth mentioning that a lot of the imagery in this swedish version is much more intense than the english, both in this song and the production as a whole. Jesus plainly calls god “thoughtless”, begging to understand, and it’s that this point we realise that he agrees with much more of what Judas has been saying than he’s been letting on- Jesus’ faith appears to be the only thing keeping him from listening to Judas and running away. Judas’ messages about people misunderstanding Jesus’ words also come out (”you care that everyone sees / but not that anyone understands”), and his eventual agreeing to die is played less as an inspiring act of faith, and more an act of desperation as he realises, he realise has no other choice. In this song, we see just how much of Judas Jesus has valued and taken on board, and that his air of carefree aloofness which frustrated Judas was, as we’ve already touched on, a complete act. The line “might as well finish what i’ve... what YOU’VE started” is absolutely miserable, reinforcing one of the major themes of this production: the idea that Jesus and Judas were both just ordinary men tormented by futures defined by forces out of their control. Just as Jesus has absorbed Judas’ logic, as an audience so we have, and it’s difficult to view the rest of the play’s events as anything other than an immense and unnecessary act of cruelty.

we’re almost done i promise!

Even knowing what Judas has/will do, Jesus still greets him with love. Judas, still under the impression that Jesus will be okay and that he’s doing what’s best, approaches him with the utmost tenderness, and the kiss is a beautiful signifier of two things. For Jesus, the return of his love for Judas shows his realisation in Gethsemane that Judas isn’t the one who’s sealed his fate and has only being trying to help, it’s god himself who has decided Jesus’ future. For Judas, the kiss shows that despite all of the anger and frustration that has been pouring out of him, he truly does love Jesus, and the way he cradles the scared and alone Jesus to his chest afterwards shows just how much he wishes he could be the one to help him and keep him close. Even with all their arguments and dysfunction, here Jesus and Judas find comfort in each other, and it almost seems like everything will end up alright. It’s in this moment that Judas and Jesus are most identifiable not as enemies, or as villain and hero, but as archetypal lovers from a Shakespearean tragedy. Neither of them set out to hurt each other, but through miscommunications, their own flaws, and external forces (both natural and supernatural), their love is simply never to be. Furthermore, in the following torture and spectacle, everything that Judas predicted for Jesus is about to come true. Another detail I find interesting is the way that Jesus and Judas both sport black nail polish, leather pants, and similar length hair: along with just looking cool as hell, the similarities really reinforce how close they are and how much they influence each other- it feels like a contemporary version of carrying a cameo or a lock of your lover's hair with you, a way for 'star crossed lovers' to keep a piece of their beloved no matter what.

The disaffected persona of Jesus, the institution, comes back as he’s taken by the authorities and subsequently insulted, degraded, and whipped. Also the swedish version of The Arrest, when the chorus starts singing questions, contains this dick joke and I think we all deserve it: “why were you dating a whore? / talk about a huge magic wand!”

Skipping forward to Judas’ Death, this is where both his character and the production’s conception of god beautifully (and miserably) align. When Judas runs to the pharisees, minor semantic changes (along with the genuine concern and great acting from Peter Johansson) reinforce that this Judas genuinely didn’t know that Jesus would be beaten and sentenced to death the way he has been, and Judas’ concern regarding how things look is played less as ‘oh no people will hate ME!’, but how having sentenced the man you love to death is one nightmarish thing, but for everyone to think you did it knowingly and willingly and then congratulate you for it is unthinkable. Where the english shows Judas’ attempting to evade responsibility for Jesus death, the swedish is more focused on Judas’ guilt, horror, and regret. The english “I’d save him all the suffering if I could / don’t believe our good / save him if I could” is swapped in swedish for “If anyone should die here I should / don’t say I’m good / better if I died”. While the english statements are somewhat empty (sure, Judas says he’d save Jesus’ suffering if he could, but he can’t so we’ll never truly know) and are still focused on Judas’ attempt to construct himself as a good guy, the swedish translation has Judas admit his guilt (even if it’s not really his fault), and make the promise of “better if i died” which, given the name of this sequence, he later delivers on. When english Judas sings “Christ, I’d sell out the nation / For I have been saddled with the murder of you”, swedish Judas sings “Jesus, I’ve been deceived / because of my act your blood’s now being spilt”, and instead of ending this first section with “I should be dragged through the slime and the mud”, swedish jesus returns to the theme of character assasination with “i will be cursed as the one behind your murder”. 

The swedish translation of the next rework of I Don’t Know How to Love Him also places much more emphasis on Judas’ genuine romantic love for Jesus- we’d be here for hours if i listed everything but here are a few key contrasts. The english has Judas sing “I don’t know how to love him /  I don’t know why he moves me”, whereas the swedish has Judas crying while singing “how do I show my love / all I want is to be close to you”. Along with acknowledging Judas already loves Jesus, the entirety of this segment is shifted from Judas singing about Jesus in the third person ‘he’, to a direct address. Judas isn’t performing his sadness, or venting his emotions, he’s emitting one last desperate cry to the man he loves as he sobs on a stage completely shrouded in darkness, and it’s devastating. Peter Johansson lets his voice run raw as he’s belting, and interrupts lines with sobs, and this Judas answers the question of “do you love me too? do you care for me?” with a quiet “no”- Judas is about to go to his death convinced Jesus must hate him, just as Jesus will face his knowing his love inadvertently put him there.

We finally reach Judas’ actual death, and the production’s far more ambiguous (if not negatively geared) depiction of god comes to a head. Judas’ screaming at god the moment he realises that his god essentially forced Judas to be the one to kill Jesus (an act of ultimate cruelty given their love) comes across as horrifying in it’s validity, unlike in other english language productions where it follows the more common characterisation of Judas being an unbeliever who can’t take responsibility for his own actions. When he spits on the ground, screaming “you have murdered me!”, we can’t help but agree- Judas was trying everything he could to stop Jesus from dying, and yet here he is. Most notably, Judas doesn’t set up his own suicide- a noose literally descends from the heavens, already tied, and Judas is literally trapped between the edge of the stage, and the symbol of death behind him. Much like he didn’t choose to kill Jesus, Judas has no choice in his own suicide- it’s suggested to merely be another part of the plan god has for him, and Judas raising his arms to form a crucifixion pose before he finally turns and jumps, disappearing into the depths of the theatre as the rope trails down (somewhat evocative of a leap to hell), highlight the sick joke. Much like Jesus begging in Gethsemane, a plea with god that in anyway implies fault or cruelty is met with silence followed by a death sentence. 

When Judas reappears to the broken and bloodied Jesus in Superstar, he appears as more of a twisted hallucination than the literal spirit of Judas. He’s the opposite of everything he was in life, draped in colour, surrounded by red lighting instead of the signature blue, his hair quite literally let down, joking and dancing. Despite singing about him, Judas virtually ignores Jesus for the whole song except when he’s taunting him, snatching his hand away after a broken and desperate Jesus reaches out for the image of his beloved (refuting Judas’ belief that Jesus would die hating him), along with the swedish additions of Judas repeatedly addressing him as “little Jesus”. Where the living Judas was serious, sometimes harsh but always well intention, often paying more attention to Jesus than he received, this Judas is the opposite: light hearted but cruel, not caring about Jesus one bit. It’s somewhat an inversion of the beginning of JCS, where the tormented Judas was constantly reaching out to Jesus, and often met with scorn and insult (see: most of their arguments, this line from Everything’s Alright: “the thought is beautiful but quite unrealistic / yes, even quite stupid”). As the song goes on, and even as Jesus is crucified, the victorious scoring of the Superstar theme ends up reinforcing the cruelty and questioning of god distinctive of this production: Ola Salo’s Jesus is one of the bloodiest Jesus’s (Jesii?) I’ve been able to find, with blood covering his torso, his arms, and all over his face, not in passive dribbles, but violent ‘swooshes’ spreading out from his eyes, emphasising the fear and pain contained within them. As the music suggests how great and wonderful Jesus’ death is, the images straight out of a horror movie before us don’t seem to match up: as both Judas and Jesus question, if no one is understanding what Jesus is saying, why kill him? instead of making a point, you’re ensuring that the falsehoods continue to circulate, unless spreading the true message isn’t really the intent at all. or, simply that Jesus was wrong: his interpretation and teachings of god were far too kind and practical, and the true god really is the one that he briefly saw in the garden of Gethsemane, and that Judas saw before his death- a cruel and vindictive god using them for his own sick purposes. If you're a strong Christian, I'm sure you could watch this production and still believe that God was right (although I think Jesus and Judas being in love counts as blasphemy), but I think in doing so you'd lose part of what makes this production so hard hitting and, as i keep saying, devastating.

that’s pretty much it for this one! i feel like jesus and judas as a queer couple is less significant to this production than the fact that it’s specifically jesus and judas that are in love - they don’t face explicit homophobia as such, although i do think the paratextual and historical associations of queerness (both with them each looking visibly queer, and them as a couple) adds a beautiful dimension by subverting the standard christian teaching of Jesus’ sacrifice as “a love that changed the world” and making the love that truly could have been transformative (and was, to a degree) the love between Jesus and another man, not to mention the way in which queerness is often viewed as radical perfectly upholding the ‘radical’ views of god and the story of Jesus shown in the production. Why wouldn’t the love between two men be the love which has us questioning god, faith, and that which many of us have been taught since birth? Ola Salo has talked about how he’s able to be positive and negative towards christianity, along with how he wanted Jesus and Judas to really represent two sides of the same coin (’faith and intelligence’), and being bisexual along with having alluded to being raised christian (not to mention Breaking Up With God, a song by his band The Ark), it’s not surprising he’s managed to present such a nuanced and layered interpretation of Jesus Christ Superstar that even me, a trans exvangelical, can fall in love with.

UPDATE: @bands-and-hobbits has just let me know that Ola's dad was a priest! Apparently he's said that he liked the organs and the music, but that was all when it comes to christianity, which (when combined with Ola stating in interviews that the JCS soundtrack has been one of his favourite albums since he was 14) makes a lot of sense about the level of familiarity he had with the text giving him confidence to go in and make changes to really capitalised off of some of the themes that are hinted at in the english version- you have enough information to understand how everything works together, but aren't so dedicated to preserving belief that you feel you can't improve/change things (and my god are we glad he did)

[mst3kproject]

Planet of Dinosaurs

This movie is blessed with some pretty cool stop-motion dinosaurs and absolutely nothing else, and it’s got a Rifftrack.  That’s… that’s it, really.  Press play.

The spaceship Odyssey suffers a reactor meltdown and blows up with only just enough warning for the crew to launch a single lifeboat shuttle.  Luckily, there’s a life-bearing planet nearby where the spandex-suited survivors can land, but unluckily, it turns out to be inhabited by giant reptiles, not unlike the prehistoric fauna of Earth!  There’s also a spider the size of a Yorkshire terrier, for no particular reason.

There’s not really any plot from there, it’s just bad actors shooting toy laser guns at plastic dinosaurs, interspersed with Rock Climbing. At last the characters manage to kill the inevitable T-rex that’s been threatening them, whereupon they declare themselves to have conquered this planet.

There are a few attempts at human conflict but they’re pretty watery.  The first possible b-plot has to do with the vice president of the space-shipping company, Mr. Baylor, who was along on this trip for some reason and is among the survivors. So they’re not just stranded on Dinosaur Planet, they’re stranded on Dinosaur Planet with their boss.  He’s a jackass and his secretary quickly gets fed up with him and quits, which doesn’t do her a whole lot of good since they are, as I mentioned, stranded on Dinosaur Planet.  The writers run out of things to do with Baylor about halfway through the movie and kill him off, to everybody’s relief.

The second involves the bearded guy, Jim, who’s starting to take issue with Captain Lee’s command style.  Lee is trying to keep them all alive and uninjured until help can arrive.  Jim doesn’t think help is coming and wants to go full caveman and start slaughtering things. It starts to look like he’s gonna foment a mutiny, but eventually he and Lee overcome their differences and come up with a plan to kill the T-rex.

Finally, of course, the survivors inevitably pair off in heterosexual couples.  Sure is lucky there weren’t more men than women or vice-versa.  Very fortunate nobody’s left with no-one to bone but someone they’ve never gotten along with.  Quite improbable that nobody on the entire command crew was gay.  When one member of one of these couples becomes a dinosaur victim, the other thoughtfully dies a few scenes later, not because he commits suicide out of guilt or something, but just by coincidence.

One thing the movie actually does pretty well is day-for-night.  It’s not great, in that you can still tell it was shot in the daytime through a filter, but they chose the right filter to cool down the warm tones of the sunlight, and had the sense to keep the sky out of shot.  It never looks like somebody just turned the brightness on your screen way down and called it ‘night’, and I’ve seen so much worse that I want to at least acknowledge their competence.

The other thing Planet of Dinosaurs does well is the actual dinosaurs, which are a lot of fun. They’re lumpy and out of date, but some real care seems to have gone into building the detailed puppets and their movements are fluid and sometimes very lifelike.  There’s a nice variety of them, too.  As well as the T-rex there’s a smaller therapod that might be intended to be an Allosaurus, a couple of little Ornithomimus­-like animals, a Brontosaurus complete with the wrong head, a Stegosaurus, a Centrosaurus, and some kind of ankylosaur.  In real life these are a jumble of Hell Creek and Morrison dinosaurs who never met each other, but eh, it’s supposed to be another planet, it’s cool.

Unfortunately, there are several points where the effects people try to show us something they probably should have implied instead.  I commend their ambition, but knowing your limits is a big part of making special effects work.  In the first episode of Walking with Dinosaurs, the Postosuchus attacks a Placerias… but we don’t see as much of this as we think we do because our view is blocked by the body of the prey animal.  They knew their CGI wasn’t up to making the attack look good, so they tricked us into thinking we saw more than we did.  In Planet of Dinosaurs, a character stabs an injured Ornithomimus with a spear, and it’s painfully obvious that the stop-motion creature was just superimposed on top.  They could easily have set up the shot so we didn’t have to actually see it go in, but they didn’t.

The dinosaurs are clearly what they spent their budget on, which was wise – as I said in my review of Twelve to the Moon, if you can only afford to show us one cool thing, best make it the one in the title. Sadly, when I say spent the budget I mean the entire budget.  The rest of Planet of Dinosaurs looks like it was made in somebody’s backyard using stuff from the garden shed.  The spaceship that briefly appears in the opening had a previous career as a vacuum cleaner.  When it ‘explodes’ it just flickers red and vanishes with no further attempt at an effect.

The costumes look kind of like if they made the original Star Trek series ten years later but on the same budget, with producers who didn’t think they wanted this to be a porno but preferred to keep the option open.  The designated Himbo, Chuck, doffs his shirt within the first few minutes of the film and never gets it back.  The blonde who goes for a swim and is eaten by some water monster was wearing a bikini under her uniform for some reason.  By the end, they’re all dressed in cartoon caveman garb and Chuck is still shirtless.

Besides the dinosaurs, the main effect we see is the laser guns, which are among the most ineffective sci-fi weapons ever committed to screen.  They fire a beam of very slow red light which does absolutely nothing to any of the dinosaurs, even when the characters observe that one has been injured.  I think this is supposed to show us that the animals are tougher than the technology, but for that to work we would have needed to see a laser used effectively, perhaps to destroy something blocking the path. Without that, we have no basis for comparison.

If this were all Planet of Dinosaurs did wrong, it would be a bad movie classic.  Even the abysmally bad acting has its funny moments. What ruins the enjoyment is the movie’s lack of a proper story.

Planet of Dinosaurs is supposed to be a Cast Away or Robinson Crusoe sort of a film, about unprepared people thrust into the wilderness and forced to survive as best they can.  Such a narrative doesn’t need an overarching conflict per se.  It can be a series of smaller survival stories strung together, but Planet of Dinosaurs doesn’t manage to do that.  The ‘plot’ with Baylor depends on him being a petulant fool, and the characters are not sufficiently well-developed for us to have any interest in the ‘love stories’ that don’t affect the overall course of events.

The rivalry between Captain Lee and Bearded Guy Jim turns on how to keep the rest of the survivors safe from the large predators in the area, particularly the T-rex.  Lee wants everybody to hole up on a rocky plateau behind a ridiculously flimsy stockade to keep the animals out, while Jim wants to hunt down and kill the dinosaurs, to teach them to fear humans as wolves do on Earth.  The main problem with this is that we just don’t see enough of the predatory dinosaurs to justify this treatment of them.

We see the T-rex fairly early in the film, and it fuels the humans’ decision to see high ground where they hope such a large animal will not go. The much smaller Allosaurus shows up at one point to make a woman scream, is ‘injured’ with a laser, and the T-rex then eats it.  And just before the climax, the T-rex breaks through the stockade to chow down on Baylor’s secretary.  In between these incidents, we do not see and rarely even hear about these animals.  If we’re supposed to imagine them constantly lurking around outside, the movie makes no effort to reinforce that impression.  The T-rex is treated as the Final Boss, but the movie just hasn’t earned that.

At the end we see the survivors a few years later.  They’re building a farm, making their own clothes, living off the land, and raising their children.  One of the women asks the other if she thinks they’re ever going to be rescued, and the other replies that she doesn’t think it matters anymore. The implication is that they’re now happy here.  This is really not a bad little denouement, and ends the movie on a warm, optimistic note.

If you want to see some ridiculous 70s mustaches and ugly 70s dinosaurs, you’ll probably have fun with Planet of Dinosaurs.  Unfortunately, the movie was a little too ambitious in some places and not ambitious enough in others.  If I’d seen it at the age of six I probably would have become immediately obsessed with it for the dinosaurs alone, but as an adult I’m afraid my standards are just a little too high.  Unable to afford to be good, and unable to commit to being bad, it’s just another meh.

[the-lightning-strikes-again]

Personal Thoughts on Pacific Rim: The Black (2021)

I watched season 1 of Pacific Rim: The Black, which released to Netflix on March 4! I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting much, after disappointments with the movie sequel. But the Pacific Rim franchise means a lot to me, so I wanted to give it a try. I’m very pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this new show and connected with it in various ways. And given how wild my own life has been lately, it was really nice to get lost in something that validated the importance of different kinds of connections, and to not close down when the going gets tough or hard to explain.

PRTB is a pretty emotional, angsty story, and it’s not afraid to explore that over the full 7 episodes. The stakes are high, involving the loss of friends and family. So the characters have a real investment in what they’re doing and why they’re fighting.

The grittier tone of the show is a deviation from the movies, which maybe some people would like or dislike more. I think the seriousness helps to balance out having (yet again) inexperienced teenage protagonists. But the show does still get some fun scenes and quips in, and our main jaeger has a snarky AI who provides both humor and critical thinking checks for our protagonists, which is nice.

I liked the 2013 movie because it showed all of humanity coming together to fight a common enemy. Here, there’s enemies and allies on both sides of the Kaiju war, and even some who are in-between. This is a stronger nod to reality while decreasing the fun fantasy violence of the 2013 film. I don’t think this is inherently a bad thing for this series to do, because a series has a lot more space/time to fill than a movie, and even the 2013 film showed that there were significant cracks in the so-called “unity” that the Pacific Rim universe outwardly celebrated. In the midst of the 2013 movie’s talk about countries setting aside old rivalries, we still had politicians who didn’t care, criminals capitalizing off pseudoscience and unsanctioned nuclear weapons deals, religious sectors rising up to worship the title enemy, people being forced into dangerous jobs to keep from starving to death, the rich and powerful experiencing minimal lifestyle impact vs. poor people being abandoned to die or surviving through precarious means, and even toxic hero worship and intriguingly, the glorification of violence for entertainment and toy sales. So in this new show, we’re really seeing the movie’s cracks expanded and focused on. It’s even more front and center, given that the rest of humanity sees Australia as a lost battlefront and has deemed so many left behind as worth less than the effort it’d take to rescue them. So maybe a part of me misses the cool concept of human unity from the first movie, but even that movie was trying to tell people that unity is an illusion. Here, it’s just so front and center that it can’t be ignored in favor of robot fights, and I actually liked that immediate boldness.

(review continued under the cut)

Some of the details feel AU or divergent from what I remember of the movies, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing to me, so long as the show itself can be internally consistent. Transformers franchise spent forever trying to created an aligned continuity to no avail, so it’s not a detraction for me if Pacific Rim franchise wants to just flail in its own playground too.

The animation style grew on me as time passed, as it worked well for animating jaegers and Kaiju even if humans seem a bit stilted. It better captured a sense of scale compared to the sequel film, and the jaegers felt actually integrated in the animated physical space (something I really struggled with in Uprising). The sense of scale is not as good as the 2013 film. But then this show has a significantly lower budget and is a very different medium, so it was easy enough for me to accept it for what it is and to be glad that we got anything halfway decent, really.

The pacing could have been better across the different points of conflict, but honestly if no adult questioned or tried to undercut a couple of teenagers piloting the last active jaeger on an entire continent, that would have felt even more jarring and unbelievable to me.

I think Pacific Rim as a franchise has never been about reinventing the wheel when it comes to characters. But I was definitely interested in the topical similarities between the movie’s Mako Mori and the show’s Hayley Travis. They both do things in want to help/prove themselves, which results in an incredible backlash that they have to emotionally work through and overcome. In comparison, Raleigh Becket and Taylor Travis are both fairly static supporters, but when their hope drops out, it’s Mako and Hayley who kick in with other options, more energy. If we get a season 2, I’d be curious to see how the show further differentiates and humanizes these new characters. 

The 2013 movie had main characters who were very significantly traumatized. So having protagonists in the show who are very significantly traumatized as well didn’t feel like a distraction to me but instead just a nod to the franchise and how it’s closely tied with struggles to obtain mental health and connection. I’d be more worried if the teenage protagonists were people who consistently don’t think of consequences or who don’t take an apocalypse or immense power from a jaeger seriously...

PRTB definitely earned its TV-14 rating. It can be gritty and dark at times, but coming out of several TV-MA shows, the way it’s visibly handled on the human side is a nice break and sometimes even more emotionally effective than if extremely gory scenes were shown. I’m a little hesitant to get too emotionally attached to any character for future seasons, though, given this rating.

Some scenes were more personally engaging to me than others, but I’ve watched several shows lately where I couldn’t stand to actually finish them or was checking to see how much more time was left. With PRTB, I kept wanting to see what happened next, and time really flew by with some episodes.

The Kaiju shown are incredibly diverse, with some really cool designs. There’s something in here I’ve been wanting to write a fic about/daydreaming about since 2013 and this show actually does the thing in its own way, so I was personally excited about that.

If this show gets a season 2, I’d love to see our protagonists meeting up with more people from all walks of life and exploring various ways people have survived and maintained or redefined a culture in this post-apocalyptic world.

There’s an element of “connective regret” in this show that really personally spoke to me, given that I’ve lost a lot of people in real life suddenly. Like, you assume people will always be there until suddenly they aren’t, and that fact of life can really destabilize a family or found family. This show doesn’t shy away from trying to validate that stress, or from validating how important healthy connections still are in the face of loss or decoupling from other toxic relationships.

Mental health relapses, trust issues, and survivor’s guilt are also a thing in this show, which I found really interesting, and that was something we really only had time to see in small measure in the 2013 film.

I still have some worldbuilding questions, but honestly I clicked on this show hoping for a good time to lose myself in—and I feel like I received that in this season. So I ended the show feeling like, actually excited to talk about it with other people.

There’s plot twists and characters I want to flail about so bad, but that would involve dropping very significant spoilers here, so maybe I better hold off for now. 

But yeah, if anyone else watches this show, please feel free to reach out and flail with me about it!

[sz-amare]

7. My Top 15 Anime List

I have watched a lot of anime in the past four years, but one thing that gives me great enjoyment is ranking my top anime. Here I will rank my top 15 favorite anime, along with some honorable mentions that couldn’t make it. However, I won’t be going too in-depth on the analyses; I just want to give you a general idea of why the particular anime is where it is on my list. In general, I rank my anime depending on a combination of factors: 1) how brilliant I find the anime to be written, 2) if the themes resonate with me, 3) if it is categorized in my favorite genres, and 4) my general enjoyment level. Anyway, to the list.

 Number 15

One Punch Man

When I first watched One Punch Man, it seemed nothing more than a mindless comedy anime. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed it and laughed a lot, but I found it to be forgettable. But one day, I heard that the genre of One Punch Man was seinen, which made no sense to me. It had no dark and mature themes, and as I mentioned, it was nothing more than a senseless comedy. But then one day, on a whim, I watched One Punch Man again. And I REALLY enjoyed it. I still laughed a lot, but something felt different to me this time. I actually felt like I had a deep connection with each of the characters. The story seemed to be more structured and enjoyable this time, and finally, I could actually see the themes that One Punch Man was trying to explore. It made sudden sense to me that One Punch Man is indeed a seinen and that it had a lot more to it than on the surface. Of course, the difference in experience is because of my new understanding of anime and the experience I gained.

Number 14

Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple

Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple is probably one of the most unknown, underappreciated, and underrated anime on this list. Someone recommended it to me, and I had never heard of it, so I assumed it was a mediocre anime. But when I watched it, I had so much fun which I hadn’t felt in many months. It is a training shōnen anime where the main character tries to learn martial arts. That is all I want to say for now because I don’t want to spoil anything, so go watch it. I highly recommend it.

Number 13

A Place Further than the Universe

I don’t see many people talking much about A Place Further than the Universe. But, I must say, it is absolutely phenomenal. It is, hands down, the most inspiring anime in existence. The basic premise is a high school girl wanting to do something significant in her high school life. I won’t say anymore because, again, I don’t want to spoil this anime, and I recommend you check it out if you need inspiration in your life. Let me just say that it is now an aspiring goal of mine to visit Antarctica.

Number 12

Plastic Memories

I made a whole analysis on the previous post so go check it out. But for a quick recap, the life lesson I learned from Plastic Memories has permanently changed my behavior for the better. I found it to be the saddest anime I have ever watched.

 Number 11

Steins; Gate

Once again, I have already made an analysis on Steins; Gate, but this time I only covered the first episode. I also ranked Steins; Gate a 10/10 so that must mean that the rest of this list must contain masterpieces. But to be honest, that is not really the case. You see, to me, even if I consider something a masterpiece, the enjoyment factor plays the most significant role in ranking high on my list. For example, I found Death Note to be brilliant, but I really struggled to enjoy it and therefore, it is not ranked that highly. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Steins; Gate, but I just enjoyed the rest of these anime way more. Anyway, if you want to see why I loved Steins; Gate so much and why I find it so brilliant, check out blog post 4.

Number 10

Berserk (Manga)

Almost everything I found In Berserk is brilliant (except its adaptations, that’s gas station toilet). Guts is a 10/10 protagonist, Griffith is a 10/10 antagonist, the cast is a 10/10, the story is a 10/10, AND THE ART!!! Holy shit!!! I can actually picture an entire museum dedicated to each panel of Berserk.

 Again, the only reason this anime is not any higher is simply because I enjoyed the others on this list so much more. However, I am yet to review any analyses on it so there is a possibility that it will bump-up several places higher when I truly understand the brilliance behind it. Great read though!

Number 9

Haikyuu

I LOVE Haikyuu. Each season gets progressively better and better. It has a lot of controversy around it because of its fan base and because it’s a sports anime. But to be honest, I find Haikyuu to be a better shōnen than My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, and most other modern shōnen anime. It has its amazing moments, its cast is amazing, the character development is amazing, the themes are amazing, and the antagonists are amazing. I am not bluffing when I say that the antagonists in a Volleyball anime are better than the antagonists in many shōnen anime (I’m going to develop haters before I can even develop fans). I plan on making an essay on what most shōnen strive for yet fail to achieve, and Haikyuu somehow delivers.

Number 8

Oregairu

Best romance. Hands down. Oregairu, or SNAFU, or My Teen Rom-Com is Not What I Expected (yes, so many titles) is a masterpiece in its own right. If you are a guy and you watched Oregairu, don’t act like you didn’t imitate Hachiman a couple times. He is a beautiful protagonist, which most of us guys relate to. His inner monologues result in us treating them as gospel. The sub-text is confusing as fuck, but end up making sense in all sorts of ways once decoded. Yukino is best girl, but man I love Yuigahama almost just as much. The general enjoyment I got out of Oregairu is so far through the roof that I once forced myself to stop watching it so that I could savor the show a little more. It is a little difficult to get into at first, but you will most likely end up enjoying it.

Number 7

Re Zero

This is the most recent addition to the list. I often don’t add anything new to my list; I just switch the places between some of them. But ever since season 2, Re Zero jumped significantly in rank. It is the best anime of 2020 (including sequels), and I enjoyed each episode to the max. I was considering adding Re Zero to my top 10 since the first half of the second season finished, but I was a bit hesitant because I am easily affected by recency bias. But my love for Re Zero would just not die down: my love for it grows after each episode airs. It is the only anime on this list that I watched weekly other than One Piece. I actually prefer watching a series I love weekly rather than binging it all, except for One Piece, pacing is constipation (slow and painful). Other than the vast enjoyment I got out of Re Zero, the main reason it made it to this list is because of the light novel comparisons I watch. Aninews is my favorite source. He compares the episode to the light novels, mentioning what was left out and further describing the emotions and thoughts of the characters. He tends to release the “Cut Content” videos a week after the episode airs, but the content and quality are incomparable. I found the videos to be so amazing I am basically just as excited for the weekly videos as the Re Zero episodes themselves. If you love Re Zero, the Cut Content series is a must watch.

The fantastic details and emotions the light novels are able to portray are stunning. I decided to read the light novels recently, but the only issue is that I am very short on time. But for each novel I complete, I will release a post on it.

Number 6

Mob Psycho

Although I said I found Haikyuu to be better than most modern shōnen, Mob Psycho is hands down the king. Its quality far surpasses all modern shōnen and a lot of older generation shōnen too. Funny thing is, I believe Mob Psycho’s primary genre is slice of life, not shōnen. I also believe it to be the best take on an overpowered protagonist. One of my favorite things is that Mob, who is the strongest esper we have seen, seems to be so weak. That is exactly how he should be portrayed; he is still a child with mental challenges that he is constantly trying to overcome. The themes that Mob Psycho explores are some of my favorites. The animation is a bit weird at first, but after watching it, you suddenly realize how brilliant it is.

(Honorable Mentions)

Attack on Titan

I am going to get a lot of hate for not including this in my top 5, let alone my top 15. Attack on Titan is still releasing episodes, so that opinion may change soon but let me be clear about one thing: Attack on Titan is a masterpiece. It is absolute greatness. The hype and enjoyment I get out of Attack on Titan are out of this world. But, a) the enjoyment feels a bit short-lived for me personally. It is a fantastic week after airing, but I tend to forget about it the next. b) Attack on Titan is simply not my type of show. Again, I do love Attack on Titan. Again, it is a masterpiece. And again, it may bump up a bit after a few episodes release, but as of now, Attack on Titan isn’t in my top 15.

(Honorable Mentions)

No Game No Life

Similar to One Punch Man, I thought No Game No Life was an anime for senseless fun and enjoyment. But then I watched the movie. The movie is canon to the light novels, but it is irrelevant to the plot and only contributes to the understanding of the world. However, since I watched that movie, I felt the world of No Game No Life to be more realistic. Of course, a world where games resolve all sorts of conflicts like war is ridiculous. But after watching the movie, that ridiculousness somehow turned to reality. The world of No Game No Life became fascinating to me, and what seemed like dumb games began to turn into political machinations.

(Honorable Mention)

Magi & Yona of the Dawn

All I have to say about these two anime is that they seemed to be very fascinating premises and concepts, but the anime sadly stops for both. I am considering reading the manga for both of them sometime soon, so this list may change once I do.

Number 5

Hunter x Hunter

If you like shōnen, I don’t see why you would hate Hiatus x Hai—I mean Hunter x Hunter. The only thing it slightly lacks is a strong main cast, which many people like anyway. Otherwise, absolute perfection. They have most of the best villains in all of anime: Hisoka, Chrollo, Meruem… How can you not love Meruem? And the way he parallels with Gon but in the opposite direction: just perfection. The arcs are hard to rank because they are all perfection in their own right. The best power system in anime is nothing short but perfection. If it weren’t for the Hiatus, it would be ranked fourth. I doubt it would scratch my top three.

Number 4

Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

I know I kept saying perfection when talking about Hunter x Hunter, but I actually believe that Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood is the perfect series (Note: I am not saying that no one can love it and that it has to be your #1; obviously there are preferences. I’m merely saying that it perfectly crafts what it is trying to portray). The only two arguments you can bring is that the beginning is weak. But if you watch the 03 version, there are no issues whatsoever, in my eyes. Keep in mind, when I say it is the best, I mean from a narrative standpoint. Yes, the animation isn’t the greatest, and the gags are kind of bad, but from a general narrative standpoint, it is the best writing I have ever seen. The plot was brilliant and well-crafted. The world is beautifully bound by their power system: alchemy. The philosophical discussions and themes it explores always have you thinking. The characters are very likable and are all top tier characters. The mysteries keep you in a cycle of confusion and excitement. Since I love science and chemistry, alchemy was so fascinating to me. This show is definitely well-deserving of the number one rank in My Anime List.

Number 3

Kill la Kill

After listing a lot of the best anime/manga with the best stories and narratives, I can see why someone would be upset that I brought up Kill la Kill. This one is certainly the odd one out. However, remember me mentioning that the enjoyment factor is the biggest decision maker in my list placement? Kill la Kill gave me the most enjoyment out of all the anime on this list, even more significant than the obvious #1. I didn’t find anything to be all that brilliant in Kill la Kill, and I can completely understand if someone hated this particular show. But there was something about Kill la Kill that made me feel nostalgic in a weird way. It also gave me one of the weirdest yet most immense feeling of satisfaction I have ever felt. I love Kill la Kill.

Number 2

Konosuba

           Okay yeah, this one is also the odd one out, but it is a little more acceptable. I find Konosuba to be the best comedy anime of all time. Not necessarily because it is the funniest anime (I think it is the funniest but comedy is subjective), but instead because, unlike most comedies, like Nichijo, the characters in Konosuba are absolutely brilliant. Kazuma is one of my favorite characters of all time, Megumi is best girl, but I still love both Darkness and Aqua. Their interactions are absolutely entertaining on both a comedic scale and a general enjoyment scale. Their assholeish-type relationship reflects my relationship with my friends (we are complete assholes to each other, but we also love one another).

Not only that but from the comedy focused anime that I have watched, the plot in this one is actually delightful. The Konosuba movie is my favorite movie of all time, right after A Silent Voice.

Number 1

One Piece

If you read a couple of my previous posts or recognized my profile picture, you probably knew that One Piece is my favorite anime of all time. My love for One Piece is so extensive that I would rather forget all my experiences with anime than forget my experience with One Piece. One Piece inspired me and changed my life. Not in the typical way where I learned a life lesson from the story like Plastic Memories, but simply because I found the writing to be so brilliant. So it was more that Eiichiro Oda, the author of One Piece, inspired me. The characters are the best I have ever seen, the villains are well crafted, the world-building is literally the best in all of fiction, the build-up is fascinating, the questions from the mysteries somehow keep piling over, the symbolism fleshes out aspects of the anime even more, the backstories make characters more relatable and understandable, the general dynamic flow of the world feels like reality, the themes it explores are great learning experiences, the originality never ends, the hype moments keep you energetic for more, the foreshadowing is so phenomenal to the extent where it shouldn’t exist, and the general planning of the story makes it obvious how amazing of an author Eiichiro Oda is.

This series has been airing weekly for nearly 22 years now, the manga for 25. How in the world is Oda able to create this monster of a story, planning certain elements a decade or two in advance? This is brilliance. This is beauty in writing. And I want nothing more than to create a masterpiece of my own.

Final Notes

Emotional, I know. I believe my list here is a bit diverse in terms of genre: shōnen, seinen, romance, comedy, sports, slice-of-life, and mystery. I think it’s a great thing to widen your horizons a bit by exploring various types of genres. Anyway, there are many anime I haven’t watched that could easily replace and dethrone some of the anime on this list. I plan on watching and reading Hajime no Ippo, Gintama, Vagabond, Oyasumi Pun Pun, I”s, etc. I heard these anime/manga are considered the best for their respective genres by many people, and I will probably finish reading and watching these anime/manga in about six months. So I will make a top 15 anime list once again around that time.

If you have any questions or you want to discuss something, feel free to ask in the “Ask Me Anything” tab on my Tumblr page.

[ramblingguy54]

Frank...Thanks. <3

We knew it was coming, but it still hurts to read. 

Straight from the big guy, himself. DuckTales 2017 is at last concluding, which I had a feeling was gonna be the case, but still the emotions I’m getting reading every word off this fills me up with so many feelings. Truly a bittersweet experience to take in here. DuckTales 2017 means so much to me, given its helped me through rough times for these past couple of years its existed. It was a bright spot I could look forward to making some of my days, being simply terrible, feel less shitty. That’s the quality of a truly special series. DuckTales managed to evolve its core traits from the Disney Afternoon 1987 iteration into something truly unexpectedly profound. It’s first season floored me with how profoundly it explored the ideas of family and how important it can be to someone’s life, overall. They introduced Della Duck into the fray, a character I didn’t think would ever get any love whatsoever from the TV adaptation Duck Family material, so I was beyond overjoyed. What they did for this, or rather what it did for reflecting at myself, helped so much in my own life. Seeing Della Duck’s struggles for ten years in solitude on the Moon helped me overcome feelings of terrible anxiety tremors I faced awhile back, allowing myself to better cope with those issues. They portrayed her desire to be the best parent in Season 2 to be so endearing and relatable, so much so I felt those feelings of wanting to become a parent again. I haven’t considered parenthood in a long time honestly, so that’s massive props to how they wrote Della’s arc. I started watching DuckTales back in the late 90′s of my childhood from reruns on Toon Disney, to where I am as an adult in my late twenties appreciating so much on what their reboot has evolved into a more mature exploration of that material.

Season 1 will hold a special place among my favorites in how excellently they tackled the dramatic conflict of the Spear of Selene, showcasing how the family fell apart, what it did to Scrooge & Donald’s relationship, and most importantly how they came back together to settle their complicated feelings in such a poetic fashion. Love this series to freaking pieces and nothing will change that for me. This reboot has introduced so many awesome new characters like Lena, Violet, and Boyd. While giving older characters such as Beakly, Webby, and Goldie a whole new personality benefiting them better in the long run. Frank, Matt, Tanner, Sam, and so many other people on the crew made this series into more than just a love letter, but a tribute to what they grew up with as kids, while adding layers to stuff, as seen with the main protagonist, Scrooge McDuck, transforming him into someone who’d do anything for their family, even if it meant spending his whole fortune to find one of them in the process. They created what I considered to be on of the most complex iterations of Scrooge’s character I’ve ever had the pleasure of viewing, period. Scrooge in their iteration embodied what it means to go above and beyond for your family, even if there is complicated feelings you might have with certain relatives, you still don’t want to lose them, if they can truly change for the better. That’s what this reboot makes a great point of sending homeward on toward me. It’s about strengthening the weak bonds in a family through understanding, forgiveness, and the obvious most important one being unconditional love. DuckTales 2017 made it clear that a family, even if they’re separated for so long, can return to an enjoyable life together, which means a lot to me. I’ve had a complicated family tree growing up, so seeing this idea be preached was a treat to watch. In a way, it too helped me feel better about my own life, despite its short comings, which is the highest compliment I could give any show. So, in short... All I can really say is, once more with every fiber of my being, thank you. Thank you for everything. Now go create more great stuff in your careers. <3

[degenerate-perturbation]

Viv Reviews: Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

As part of my quest to read every edgy Harry Potter knockoff, I read Wayward Son.

I liked it much better than Carry On. Carry On was a confusing mess and I don’t really remember anything that happened in it. Wayward Son is a much more tightly plotted, emotionally coherent book, with many good ideas.

Is it good? No.

But here are some things I liked about it:

The plot construction. Checkov’s guns are ably placed in the first act, and fired in the third. The twists make sense, without being telegraphed. The story clips along at a reasonable pace and there is a consistent sense of motion and dynamism throughout that made me want to keep reading.

The Americana. I love all magical Americana. However, it is possible to fuck this trope up (see: CW’s Supernatural.) Wayward Son does this trope without fucking it up, and I’ll give it credit for that.

The inherent hilarity of British people interacting with America and being completely befuddled. For the duration of reading this book I felt about 4% more patriotic. There is a scene where the main characters are gearing up to fight the villains with magical spells but this is America and the villains brought guns and they just shoot them. This is hilarious and exactly what would happen.

The villains. The concept of a bunch of Silicon Valley techbros becoming vampires as like a biohacking project is brilliant, because I know so many people who would do that. I would do that. Las Vegas being run by old-school vampires and the two groups hate each other for Vampiring Wrong is also brilliant.

I really enjoyed the new muggle character. Shepard is a muggle who knows about magic and just really likes it and wants to be around it as like, a hobby. I would totally be this guy. Between him and the Silicon Valleys vampires I feel like the American characters in this book are spot-on as types of people who would exist in a setting where magic is real. So few urban fantasy books get this right, and Wayward Son kind of does!

Most of the characters do have coherent, detectable emotional arcs. They aren’t well-executed. But they exist! This is more than I could say for the previous book. Draco/Baz struggles with existing as a marginal vampire in mage society, or abandoning humanity to exist in vampire society. Hermione/Penelope takes a long series of L’s and comes to realize that she can’t actually do everything herself and should really have asked for help. Harry/Simon is depressed about not being a main character anymore.

The fact that Draco is a vampire for no obvious reason doesn’t seem as weird in Wayward Son as in Carry On because vampires are a major element of this book’s plot.

Harry and Draco’s relationship in this book is on the rocks, and it starts out seeming like they are going to break up. They still bicker a lot, despite being boyfriends, which makes perfect sense for people who disliked each other for most of the time they knew each other. This creates a fine thread of emotional tension throughout the story (I love conflict!) that, unfortunately, goes nowhere.

Here is what I did not like:

THE POV CHANGES. 

Oh my god, the POV changes are fucking intolerable. Do you guys remember those old fanfics where there was a POV change literally every paragraph and every event got described from 4 different characters’ point of view? This book does this so egregiously that part of me wonders if in fact Rowell is making the book bad on purpose to fit with the fanfiction thing--because her other books are fine! I know Rowell can write a perfectly respectable love story, so really, what gives?

This is really just one thing because I think all of the book’s flaws boil down to this supremely irritating structure. Here are some issues that I feel arise from it:

Characters do not really develop their relationships to each other, because all of their emotional turmoil happens in their first-person internal monologue. Simon and Baz never really work through their relationship issues because they do not talk to each other until the very end of the book. They live completely inside their own heads, straightfowardly telling the reader how they are feeling, without having to tell each other.

Similarly, I thought Penelope and Shepard were going to be a developing couple. They would make sense as a foil to Simon and Baz’s established (and crumbling) relationship, they interact quite a bit, Penelope gets dumped at the start of the book by her boyfriend for traits that Shepard explicitly values, and on a meta level, it is sensible to pair the most magical mage with a muggle. But they don’t really interact much on the page. I think about how much more interesting this relationship would have read if Penelope had worked through some of her issues with this guy, but she didn’t.

As a result, the character’s arcs do not really go anywhere satisfying, because they are all so inside their own heads! Without playing off each other, they don’t have opportunities to develop in a natural way. She just privately thinks her to herself that she’s in over her head, and that’s the end of it. We don’t see anyone challenge Penelope on her overconfidence or see her confess vulnerability to anyone. We don’t see Simon and Baz argue about their relationship; we just see them mutually, separately worry about it.

The other problem I have with Simon and Baz is that their relationship takes place entirely in terms of dramatic overwrought romantic inner monologue. The one time they interact with each other romantically on screen--we don’t actually see it! We just see ping-ponging POV of “He means the world to me” and “I only ever wanted him," which is wildly inconsistent with how they actually interact with each other, which is mostly tense in petty bickering. And that would have been perfectly fine if, say, it had lead to a break up and subsequent make up. That would have been a good trial-by-fire for this relationship! But it doesn’t happen. I’m left asking over and over again, why do these characters love each other? Why does he mean the world to him? Why should I care?

This is related to another issue with the book is that, like a fanfiction, it seems to require the context of “canon” events in order to make emotional sense. Simon and Baz keep referring back to their dynamic as roommates that hate each other to contextualize their present love for each other. But we never saw any of that happen! I don’t feel attachment to their pre-existing relationship because the pre-existing relationship is an informed quality.

And this is the problem with Simon himself, as a character. His arc in this book is about overcoming his depression and the burnout of being an ex-main-character. He and Penelope keep referencing adventures they’ve had that we weren’t there for, so how am I supposed to feel a sense of bittersweet nostalgia for then? It’s like hanging out with a group of friends who keep making inside jokes I don’t get. It’s alienating, and does the opposite of make me relate to these characters.

If I was reading about Harry Potter’s ex-main-character depression, this would read totally differently, because I would have already read seven years’ worth of Harry Potter’s wild adventures. A fanfiction about Harry’s post-traumatic stress about all those events would be perfectly suitable fanfiction subject. A book about Crypto-Harry-Potter’s post-traumatic stress over events we weren’t present for does not work nearly as well.

Finally, the dynamic of this trio does not work. What really worked for Harry, Ron, and Hermione is that each one of them was the awkward third friend. In Wayward Son, Penelope and Baz both have a relationship with Simon, but not really each other. And since the characters stay in their own heads, a new dynamic doesn’t really have space to develop.

Also, the prose just, isn’t very good. J. K. Rowling was not a master of prose, but Harry Potter felt magical. It felt like a fairy tale. With Wayward Son, I am Once Again reminded of this Ursula Le Guin quote, from her essay, “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie”:

Many readers, many critics, and most editors speak of style as if it were an ingredient of a book, like the sugar in a cake, or something added onto the book, like the frosting on the cake. The style, of course, is the book. If you remove the cake, all you have left is recipe. If you remove the style, all you have left is a synopsis of the plot.

This is a recipe for a book. A good recipe, with many good ingredients, but it utterly lacks style, making it just good enough to disappoint me.

Apparently there is going to be a threequel. Obviously I am going to read it.

[sylver-drawer]

A prompt in class had made me realize something deep within me—my hate for physical books.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate books because they’re physical. I’d actually love it, but rather what I despise…

Is what is contained within those books.

Where I live, physical books you can only get when visiting libraries or book stores unless specially ordered online. Yet I am never satisfied with what is offered to me, simply because, I’m tired of it.

I am so absolutely tired of seeing the same exact things over and over again.

To give an example, my tastes aren’t that condensed nor diverse. I love thriller, I love Mystery, but what I find the most interest in, is Fantasy Romance.

And saying that should already tell you exactly what I’m talking about.

I am so tired of seeing the exact same tropes over and over again. This is a problem in all stories, physical or online, in general—however, it appears to me that published and physical books are almost always having these qualities. When searching online, I can always somehow find at least a handful of stories that is different from the others and gives at least a fraction of what I need. But in libraries? Book stores? I can’t do that, because they all follow the same pattern one way or another because those tropes are what people only ever seem to want, which is why a lot of authors who stray from those tropes aren’t as well known.

Frankly, I’m tired of everything being reused or rebranded.

I wouldn’t mind the wizards and demons, the werewolves and vampires, if ONLY they weren’t just there to be there.

Let me explain. Witches and Wizards tend to follow the same pattern. People who use magic, which is simple enough. But the problem is, is that it ends with just that. In most stories I come across, wizards are included in a very weak magic system in which they can use magic to do basically anything they want. Something fell and broke? Use magic to fix it. There’s a fire? Summon water to put it out.

It’s simple. But that repeated simplicity is what makes me tired.

There is never any depth. There is no expansion or lore that explains the nitty gritty details, nor makes it important. Magic in fantasy stories, is most commonly, cause and effect. Problem, and fix. Something bad, changed to good. Hurt, then to heal.

In fantasy, magic is simply one layer—magic people can use magic to do anything. There’s no limit, there’s no depth, there’s nothing that makes it unique. Magic in fantasy, all falls under the broad topic of just ‘magic’. Shooting fireballs, summoning a river, causing a storm to drive away your enemies, lightning bolts to fend them off—all can fall under just magic. Using this, it might be controversial to say, but Harry Potter is an extremely soft magic system. Wizards can cast magic through words, yes, but it’s exactly that. They can cast ‘magic’, and that magic is an umbrella term that essentially means, “With enough training, they can look up the words in a magic dictionary and use whatever magic they want to do anything they want”.

There is no depth. There is no extra layer, it’s simply ‘magic’.

And I’m not even done rambling. I haven’t even touched magical races in fantasy, which I’ll actually transition right into.

I am tired of race conflict in fantasy. Not because its bad, but because they’re more often than not, poorly written. Let’s take Twilight as an example.

Werewolves hate vampires. Vampires hate werewolves. Why? Because werewolves bad, and vampires bad. That’s literally it. No deeper meaning, no actual societal issues, just “ew, icky vampire/werewolf”. In fact, in twilight it doesn’t even appear they hate eachother. If Bella didn’t even exist, what would Edward and Jacob fight about? If you notice, they only use eachother’s race to appeal to Bella and put down the other rival. “Bella, you can’t love him because he’s a dirty vampire”, or, “Bella, you can’t love him because he’s a mangy wolf pup”. Setting aside the obvious racist undertones that’s never important nor addressed critically within the story, the only time dislike about the others’ race is talked about, is only ever addressed not because they hate that specific race, but as a petty remark to bad talk their love rival.

So, in theory, the two races aren’t even… against eachother. Thinking back, all the times it was vampire vs werewolf in twilight, it was all because of Bella wasn’t it. And not because of general dislike of the others’ race, but over a human girl…

I’ve trailed off from my original point, but basically, race vs race within fantasy plots aren’t actually because of the race. I think the only fantasy series I’ve seen that remotely does racial societal conflict well is Lord of the Rings. Elves hate dwarves because they’re greedy, crude, and brutish. Dwarves hate elves because they view them as selfish and always seemingly on their high horse. They stereotype one another, and when they look beyond those stereotypes is when they start bonding and actually forming friendships. They then realize that those stereotypes didn’t matter and were harmful.

That’s an example I would love to see more in fantasy in general. Make the magical races dislike and judge eachother because of their race, and then overcome it while addressing it. Don’t add in races that hate eachother when they’re all literally just the exact same. And also, make the races different! Even humans practice different cultures, and that’s what makes us diverse. In the LOTR franchise, racial bias and hate isn’t simply because, “they’re x race”. It’s because they stereotype people within that race, a stereotype that’s just an exaggerated version of qualities they all just happened to have. In Twilight, I’d argue that there isn’t anything that sets the werewolves and vampires apart other than their superhuman abilities. In LOTR, taking their races away the qualities the characters had were still eminent. Legolas was a bit proud and calm demeanor ed under pressure because he was naturally like that, as well as how he was raised as an elven prince. Gimley fights violently with an axe, and puts his whole body into his fighting style. His words also come off as rough and unfiltered, while Legolas’ voice is smoother and speech well spoken due to his background. The traits they found in eachother due to racial stereotypes still linger and remain. While yes, werewolves were heavily based off of indigenous people, there wasn’t any clear examples of them practicing it that was essential to the conflict and characters other than reminding the audience every once and a while. If Jacob were the only werewolf shown, the Jacob-Bella-Edward conflict could easily just be seen as two roleplaying white boys fighting over a girl. That’s how important their racial identities of vampire and werewolf mattered.

(And please!!! Remember lore. Generations and generations of racism impacts people who grew up with it. Some people change and break away from that stigma of unadultered hate, some can only partly break away even while educated with unconscious internal bias, and some continue to nurture themselves in it and even spread it. Not every person under one umbrella ends up the same, and that applies to characters too. Taking inspiration from real life, look at the time we live in now. Hundreds of years gone by, and while things are certainly better, the dark stains haven’t even gone away and most likely won’t even in the distant future. The past two years are proof of that.)

There’s no point in writing racial conflict in your story if there’s nothing that sets them apart from one another (I’m not saying people need a reason for real life racism because there are so many people who hate certain races just because they’re that race, but story wise, it’s easier to show what’s commonly hate due to stereotypes and stigma that people make for that race). It’s like the spider man pointing meme. How are you supposed to be antagonistic with someone who’s literally the same as you? “I guess you’re not like other spider men” coming from a spider man???

Prefacing, I’m not saying racism is good. I’m saying including race conflict for the sake of race conflict is very empty and purposeless, which is what I often find in fantasy or romance-fantasy. Racial conflict apparently doesn’t matter until the main character is directly involved, in which only then does it affect them that it’s brought up and only because it affects them. A similar example is including LGBTQ+ characters just for the sake of sexual diversity, in which—

That actually leads into my next topic.

Romance.

How many. How many published books must there be of romance that completely overrides the plot as well as the characters’ other relationships? How many stories must be made in which the fantasy aspect is completely pushed aside and no longer included in the plot because the story wants to entirely focus on the romance drama between the main character, love interest, and best friend? Or not even best friend, miscommunication in general!

How hard, is it to write a story where the couple is healthy, and love and don’t doubt eachother, who trust eachother entirely? Like really.

And! And!

The moment when romance is introduced, everything else doesn’t. seem. to. matter! At that point, it’s not even fantasy even more. It’s just a rom com, because watching the couple fight over nothing is hilarious because they’re in the middle of a war. And the other characters don’t seem to matter anymore either. I am so tired of plots being thrown away to focus on the drama between the two leads, and for once just want a fantasy boom of stories depicting healthy relationships with actually unique magic systems and logical well written conflicts.

And diversity! In Relationships! I am so tired of only ever seeing poorly written drama filled heterosexual relationships in romances. In fantasy romances. Give me my wlw wizards who explore their war torn world and have to defend the people they love with intricate, costly, magic systems.

Can we just have. A literary revolution, in which a rise of stories where characters can have relationships—non romantic relationships—with other characters. Can male and female characters finally love eachother to the ends of the world without romance. It’s so easy to write. Love is so easy to write between any gender or sex. So why does it seem to be there can only be one kind predominantly in media? In published media?

Occasionally I can find diverse stories like this on the internet, but never can I find these in libraries.

Like it’s. It’s so, so easy to write love and companionship between characters of diverse identities and cultures. Even in heterosexual fantasy romance stories, I want to be able to see relationships outside the romance being as strong as the main romance. Between the girls, between the boys, and those in between. Men can be in love with men, women in love with women, and men in love with women without needing to force their loves against eachother. A man and woman can be written to love eachother dearly without any romance ever between them, because that’s how it’s like in real life as well. So often do main characters in fantasy stories have some sort of dark past that rid them of any familial love, which in turn ruins them for the capacity of platonic love, which makes people believe the only way for them to find love is romantically. Even in children’s books, there’s always the princess abandoned or overly protected by her parents who eventually finds solace in the pressence of a dry, brooding knight or charming prince. They fall in love, and that’s the only thing that’s ever positively shown. The love between the main character and the love interest. Because to society, romance is seen as the strongest form of affection.

But, it isn’t.

People are different, and to a lot of people who do and don’t have romance in their lives, it doesn’t mean they can’t love anyone else. In society, the only love that seems to exist is romance. It’s the only thing people tend to promote, and yet, people forget what love is. It’s care, it’s worry. Love is painful and happy. It’s sometimes angry and frustrating, but sometimes its something you need. Love is stubborn, yet so easily broken. Love was never just romance, and it feels like the world forgets that.

It’s frustrating, because it feels like anything published at your local library follows the opposite pattern. Because it’s what people believe the public wants, and what the public will only ever accept. Sometimes, it’s all people only know how to write. Sometimes, its all editors and publishers will ever approve of. And sometimes, its all people ever look for. Because either they’re afraid, stigmatize and despise it, or just don’t care for it.

At some point, this had turned from a ramble about how physical books lack diversity, to how media in general lacks diversity.

I do believe that one day in the future, media will change. Literary media will change. But as of now? The majority of published and physical books haven’t diverted from that pattern, and most likely won’t for a long time. I know so many stories are beginning to change online now that the new generation has informed themselves and become interested in new ideas and topics, but as far as physical publication goes? The world won’t accept these changes, not for a long time.

[rpgmgames]

March’s Featured Game: acai cOrner

DEVELOPER(S): moca & Mitty ENGINE: RPG Maker 2003 GENRE: RPG, Adventure, Surreal SUMMARY: acai cOrner is about Mizuki, someone who has fallen into the sewers and who happens to find their favorite electric guitar! Upon obtaining the guitar, Mizuki turns into a magical girl who must defend herself against spooky sewer creatures using the guitar's magical powers.

Download the game here! Our Interview With The Dev Team Below The Cut!

Introduce yourself! *moca: Hi, I'm moca, a Starbucks barista aspiring to be a writer and game developer. I have been making RPG Maker games for about six years now, with my first two projects being a Pokémon fan-game and a Corpse Party fan-game. Those two happen to be my two favorite franchises as well! I have also created the RPG Maker game MOMOKA (IGMC 2018). I have founded a group called 'Team Shibu!' dedicated to making horror games! Our current project is a RPG Maker survival horror game named 'Katharsis'.

*Mitty: Hey there, I'm Mitty! I've been working with Moca on several games for a while now, helping with mostly graphics! Please support him, as he is very kind and hardworking!! I'm also the main developer of a game called "Marinette", so I hope you'll check that one out too, when the demo is released!

What is your project about? What inspired you to create this game initially? *moca: acai cOrner is an experimental spooky RPG Maker game that only uses 4 colors! You are a magical girl with a just-as-magical electric guitar that you use to fend off spooky sewer slimes and other weird enemies you find in the surreal sewer system. It's half exploration and half RPG battles. What inspired me to create acai cOrner initially was to actually get myself back into the groove of making games again. I had just recently came back from a hiatus and found myself having trouble getting back into the development of 'Katharsis'. That's when I decided to make a short, experimental game to get the juices flowing.

How long did you work on your project? *moca: acai cOrner was finished in just about under a month!

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *moca: I had always wanted to make a Yume Nikki-like game and thought this was the perfect opportunity to try. So for the more surreal parts of acai cOrner, I took inspiration from Yume Nikki and a Homestuck random planet generator. Gameplay wise though, I took inspiration from a RPG Maker game called Ghost Suburb 0! I really loved how unique it was, especially with the timer and no dialogue aspect. I knew I wanted to do something with a timer, so I tried a rogue-like approach with the gameplay.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them? *moca: If you played any of my previous projects, you know that acai cOrner is vastly different than anything that I have ever done. I'm so used to using words to describe the violence in my games, so when it came to making the story, I had a lot of trouble. It wasn't until I looked deeper into why people like these types of games that I had realized that people like to interpret the story on their own, guided by exploration, to enjoy these games. After that, I let loose a bit and made something more open-ended. Another challenge was the difficulty. I was the only one playtesting the game, and since I knew the game front and back, and had no trouble getting the ending. That's why when I sent out demos to friends, I was really discouraged to hear that the experience was mostly frustrating and rage quitting-inducing haha. I worked closely with their feedback and made changes accordingly to make the experience less frustrating but still difficult. *Mitty: I think I was going through a weird artblock during the development of the game, so for some of the illustrations and backdrops for each area's fights, Moca sketched out the basic idea of what it could look like, and I just put my spin on it! It made the work much easier and faster!

Did any aspects of your project change over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *moca: Well, the game was meant to be short so there wasn't room for any big changes. Sure there are a couple gameplay changes and enemy tweaks, but not anything mindblowing. I added in the idea of making four surreal worlds kinda last minute, if that counts, haha.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don’t have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *moca: In the beginning, it was just me! I didn't think I was gonna need any outside help since this was supposed to be a relatively easy project to release, but the further in development I got, the more I realized the game needed pizazz. The four color limitation wasn't enough for my lack of graphical talent. That's when I contacted Mitty about helping with the games battle backdrops and sprite animations! She is also a member of Team Shibu!, but we have collabed together even before that. Her art really made the project shine and I enjoy working with them on games! *Mitty: Moca contacted me, and I wanted to help! We are working together on another game called Katharsis, so we are quite familiar with each other. I like working with other people, especially if I'm not in the lead, it releases a bit of the pressure I feel sometimes ahaha

What is the best part of developing a game? *moca: To me, it's seeing everything come together and just... working exactly the way you envisioned it. As a game developer, you section the game off into parts to make development much more organized and faster but seeing it all come together in the end. Pure bliss *chefs kiss*. *Mitty: I like a bit of everything, but currently I've been enjoying animating and spritework, as well as map assets' designs a little more than usual!

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *moca: Mm... not really! I have an idea of what the engine can do, so when I do go out of my way to player other RPG Maker games, it's usually for writing inspiration rather than gameplay inspiration. Ghost Suburb 0 is something that I accidentally stumbled upon and immediately fell in love with it the minute I played it haha. (Fun fact: the developer of Ghost Suburb 0 is apart of Team Shibu! and is in charge of monster design!)

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *moca: There is a rat in the game that is internally called 'Ratthew' who leads you into a funky room. I relate them the most. *Mitty: I relate to the land sharks the most on a spiritual level. They are pretty much confused beans, and that's very relatable.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *moca: I wish I added more random spooky events and trap rooms. But the game was also supposed to be short and I knew that if I kept adding more and more things, development was never gonna end haha.

Do you plan to explore the game’s universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *moca: Well, by the time this interview comes out, there should be a new update for the game. The update should include 100% custom music by a talented composer, and a nerf in difficulty. As for sequels, who knows! The next time you see acai cOrner may be in 3D.

What do you most look forward to upon finishing the game? *moca: Definitely the fan reaction! The satisfaction of seeing your work being noticed by people and actually enjoying makes me happy. It's also the relief of just... finishing something! *Mitty: For this particular project I was obviously looking forward to seeing what people said about the little animations and such ahaha! I also was curious about the reaction to the timed difficulty mechanic, I had never seen anything like that before Moca presented it to me, so I had no idea on what people's feedback would be.

Is there something you’re afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game? *moca: How people will handle the difficulty. The game isn't supposed to be completed on your first playthrough, but in 2-3 playthroughs. There are rooms and places that are meant to waste your time that you should ideally skip the more you play. By later playthroughs, you should be shaving time and be better. I understand that it's not handled as best I could, but I think the experience should still be challenging and hopefully fun! *Mitty: I was a little conflicted on the timed mechanic, I loved it because it's pretty original and helps set an interesting athmosphere of worry and unease, and also seems to tell a bit of the vague story; and at the same time I don't like it much because I prefer more story-driven games and the vagueness mixed with the mechanic feels different from what I'm used to playing! I think it's more of a personal taste kind of thing, it was an experimental jam game, after all!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *moca: Take it easy! Take short breaks throughout development. And most importantly, have fun. If it's a hobby and it's making you overly stressed, just take a step back!

Question from last month's featured dev @ressurflection: What would you say is the weakest part of your game development? *moca: Procrastination. I'm so bad at sticking to my own schedule, it's something that I try to keep in check when working with a team especially.

We mods would like to thank moca & Mitty for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved!

Remember to check out acai cOrner if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum

[cali-holland]

Always You- Tom Holland Mini Series

Pairing: Tom Holland X Reader

Prompt: Your whole life has been leading up to you going to Cambridge, but Tom comes along and your plans start to change.

Word Count: 4500

Warnings: parent issues; mentions of anxiety and sex, angst :)

Loosely Based On: What Your Father Says by the Vamps

A/N: I’m American so don’t hate me for getting the British school system probably allllll wrong (i only know whats in harry potter lmao)

Masterlist   Tom Holland Masterlist

*Gif is not mine*

~~~

2010, Age 14

“Crookshanks, where are you?” You called out, walking along the wooded trail. Your cat, a bright orange feline just like Crookshanks from the Harry Potter series, had slipped out of your house before you could catch her. You walked along the path, knowing she loved to make her way towards the park whenever she escaped, which wasn’t necessarily a common occurrence, but it happened often enough that you knew where she would venture off to.

You rounded the corner of the trail and entered the small park that was nestled in your neighborhood. You surveyed the park and sighed upon not seeing any sign of her. You continued your way into the area, eyes still searching. There were a few other people out, but you weren’t paying any mind to them.

That was until you heard a dog begin to bark. You looked to find the source of the noise. You smiled, seeing Crookshanks laying about in the grass. Your face dropped as you saw a dog running towards her. You immediately rushed over to her, but it was too late. The dog scared her up a tree, and the dog pressed its front legs on the tree, continuing to bark at her. Before you could even try to calm the dog, a boy came running up and grabbed the dog’s leash. 

“Tessa!” He sighed in annoyance. He looked over at you and his eyes grew wide.

“I think your dog just scared my cat off.” You said, looking up at Crookshanks, who sat casually on a branching. The dog barked again and your cat let out a hiss.

“I’m so sorry. She’s just a puppy.” He apologized.

“Do you think you could help me get her down?” You asked, not knowing a reasonable way to get her out of the tree that didn’t involve you climbing the tree yourself. You weren’t particularly fond of climbing trees, especially since you were not at all coordinated.

“Oh yeah. Here, can you hold Tessa’s leash?” The boy held out the leash to you with one hand, the other hand rested on the tree. You took hold of the leash and he climbed up to grab Crookshanks.

“Thank you.” You smiled as he stood back in solid ground. You made a trade off, giving him his dog back as he handed you your cat.

“I’m Tom, by the way.” Tom held out a hand to you.

“Y/N.” You shifted to hold your cat securely in one hand and gave him a handshake with your free one. Before the conversation could go any further, Crookshanks began to squirm in your arm.

“I should get going, but thank you for helping me.” You stated.

“Anytime.” Tom smiled and waved goodbye as you walked away. Just before turning the corner back onto the trail, you looked back to see Tom once more. You smiled as he was taking a last look back at you as well.

~~

The next day, you decided it was a good day to read in the park. A part of you hoped that Tom would be there again today, but you didn’t want to get your hopes up too much.

You had been at the park for a couple hours already by the time Tom finally came with Tessa. When he saw you sitting on a picnic blanket with your nose in a book, he had to take a couple moments to work up the courage to talk to you again.

“Hey, Y/N.” Tom said, walking up to you. He cleared his throat as his voice came out squeakier than anticipated.

“Oh, hey, Tom.” You smiled, looking up from your book. 

“What’re you reading?” He asked.

“Les mis.” You replied.

“That’s a- that’s a big book.” Tom stated, making you let out a laugh.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty good book though.” You said as Tessa began to grow restless at Tom’s talking

“Do you want to walk Tessa with me? I know you’re allergic, but-“

“I’d like that. Give me a moment.” You put your book and blakey away in your small tote bag. You and Tom began your stroll through the neighborhood along the trails.

“Do you walk Tessa often?” You asked.

“Almost every day. She’s still a puppy, so I’m trying to get her used to walks.” He explained. “How’s Crookshanks?”

“Inside.” You joked, “She’s good though.”

“So where do you go to school? I feel like I haven’t seen you around.” Tom asked.

“I go to a boarding school, actually. I’m only really home in the summer.”

“A boarding school? I guess that makes sense then.”

“Yeah, my parents have this grand vision of me going to Cambridge to study law.”

“Cambridge? Wow.” Tom said, eyebrows wide with shock.

“It’s a lot to live up to.” You replied. “I really hope I didn’t scare you off by saying that.”

“No, no.” He shook his head, laughing a little, “Cambridge’s impressive. It’s good to know what you want to do.”

“Well, it’s what my parents want. I don’t know what I want yet.” There was a pause in the air before you spoke up again, “What about you? Do you know what you want to do, or have your parents already spoken for you?”

“I want to be an actor.” Tom answered quickly, so sure of his dream, “If that doesn’t work out, I’ll go to carpenter school or something.”

“It sounds like you’ve got more of a plan than me.”

It wasn’t long into your walk before you got a call from your mother, beckoning you home. Tom offered to walk you home, but you declined.

“It’s alright, really.” You insisted as you two stopped on the trail.

“Can I have your number at least? So I can make sure you got home safe?” Tom asked, making you smile.

“Yeah,” You both took out your phones and exchanged phone numbers.

“I’ll tell you when I get home.” You told him, before bidding him farewell and leaving back down the trail towards your house.

It’s not that you didn’t want to spend the extra time with Tom, walking back to your house. You just couldn’t have your parents seeing him. Your parents, especially your father, distrusted any boys around you, believing they would distract you from your studies. They distrusted almost anyone you attempted to be friends with. They placed more focus on your academics, on your path to Cambridge, than on your social life.

That summer was the beginning of several great ones. You and Tom stayed in touch while you were away. He supported you in your studies, and you supported him as he began to get movie roles.

~~~

2012, Age 16

Another year of boarding school was done, and you had managed to convince your parents to transfer you to a local school, where you could finish your education without having to live away from home for months. The main reason you wanted to transfer was because you wanted to see Tom more.

Tom was also the main reason why you were nervous to return home for the summer, and permanently.

You two had been friends for two years now and saw each other at every opportunity. You really liked him, more than a friend should, and you had let that slip while you two were on the phone a couple days ago. Much to your surprise, Tom told you he felt the same way. You agreed that when you got home, you two would talk about it all.

The phone call ended oddly for you as you hit the realization that your parents had never met him. You ended up telling them about him and they weren’t exactly fans. You didn’t tell them about his career choices or his schooling, knowing they’d throw out the “not intellectually stimulating enough” excuse to dislike him. In fact, you kept the details of his own life to a minimum in an effort to avoid conflict with your parents.

So now, here you were, waiting for Tom to arrive for a movie night with you, which would also be the first time he’d meet your parents and be at your house.

“Now, remember, the door stays open.” Your father reminded you of his rules as you sat on the couch, shaking your leg nervously.

“Yes, dad, I know. Tom’s just a friend.” You said, trying to convince him of the lie even though you assumed you and Tom were past the “just friends” part.

 You jumped up immediately when you heard a knock on your door. You opened your door to see Tom.

“Tom, I missed you!” You smiled, hugging your best friend tightly. After all, it had been months since the two of you had seen each other in person.

“I missed you too.” He squeezed you back. You stepped back after a moment, leading him inside. As you shut the door behind the two of you, your parents appeared in the entryway.

“Hello, I’m Tom.” He introduced himself, holding out a hand. Your parents introduced themselves and shook his hand in response. An awkward tension filled the air, causing you to speak up.

“We’re going to watch the movie now.” You said, grabbing Tom by the arm and leading him up the stairs.

“Sorry about that.” You laughed, awkwardly. You opened the door that led to your family’s movie room, complete with a large TV mounted on the wall and a few couches in the room.

“You have a movie room?” Tom asked in awe. “I thought we were watching a movie in your room or something.”

“My parents would die before they let me have a TV in my room. It’d ‘distract’ me from academics.” You said, mockingly making air quotes. You and Tom settled onto the couch with a strange space between the two of you.

“So, should we talk about-” Tom began to ask.

“Let the movie start first.” You cut him off before lowering your voice, “I don’t want my parents hearing.”

“Oh, okay.” He nodded. You shifted nervously as the movie began to play, filling up the room with loud noise.

“Did you mean it?” You asked, turning to him as you kept your voice quiet.

“That I like you more than just a friend? Yeah, of course.” Tom said, his eyes never leaving yours, “I can’t really explain it, but I know I really like you and I want to be with you.”

“I really like you, too.” You replied. After another paused moment, “So, what do we do now?”

“Can I kiss you?” He asked and you nodded. As he started to lean over, you felt the nervous butterflies overcome you. 

“Wait,” You spoke up and Tom paused his actions, half way leaning over to you, “I’ve never kissed anyone before.”

“I’ve only kissed one other person.” He laughed lightly at the awkwardness and uncertainty of it all. “Do you really want me to kiss you? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” “I want to kiss you too, but I just thought you should know.” You said, making him laugh a bit more.

“Ready?” He asked, reassuringly.

“Ready.” You replied. He leaned in faster this time, as if to not give you a chance to back out. You hate to sound so cheesy, but you really did feel fireworks when your lips met, putting all awkwardness aside. Tom rested one of his hands on your neck, delicately holding your cheek in his fingers, as he continued to kiss you. Just as you were thinking you never wanted the moment to end, he pulled away from you, just enough to maintain intimacy.

“How was that?” Tom asked quietly, his warm breath falling on your face.

“Perfect.” You smiled. He leaned in to keep kissing you, pulling you into him.

And that was how your relationship truly began, with awkward kisses that made your heart soar and secret touches behind your parents’ back. 

~~~

2014, Age 18

“I got in!” was all you had to say over the phone for Tom to know exactly why you were over the moon with joy.

“My girl’s going to Cambridge!” Tom cheered, happily, “I’m so proud of you, Y/N. I knew you’d get in.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you, you know.” You said, looking down at the acceptance letter in your lap. Sure, you had said years ago that studying law at Cambridge was your parents’ dream for you, but over time, it became your own dream. You wanted to go to Cambridge, you wanted to study law, and you wanted Tom there with you the whole way.

Though you two had been dating for 2 whole years now, your relationship was still a secret from your parents. You wanted to wait until you got into college, until you had some freedom, before telling them. Tom respected your decision and acted as your ‘best friend’ whenever he was over. It hurt you to keep it from your parents, but you couldn’t risk them ruining it all.

“Please,” He laughed, “You’re a genius, Y/N. You got in all on your own.”

“You supported me and helped me study for years. I really couldn’t have done it without you.” You said, before letting out a sigh, “I’m going to miss you, though. Cambridge is nearly two hours away. It’ll be like boarding school all over again.”

“But it’s Cambridge. It’s your dream school.” He stated, “I’m going to miss you, too.”

“You can come visit me when you have time, and I’ll come visit you whenever my work load clears up.”

“About that,” Tom said, “I got an audition.”

“For what movie?” You asked.

“Y/N, it’s for Spider-Man.” He stated, and you felt your heart start to race.

“Spider-Man? Are you serious?”

“Yes, and it’s the MCU. If I get this role, it’d be life-changing.”

“You’re going to get it, Tom.” You said, unbelievably happy for him, “This is your dream role; I know you’ll get it. I’m so proud of you.”

“You talk about me being your biggest supporter, but don’t give yourself enough credit in being my biggest supporter.” He chuckled.

“I guess we really need each other, don’t we?” You smiled at the sound of his laugh. Your mom called you from downstairs, telling you that dinner was ready.

“Oh, I have to go. Mum says dinner’s ready, but I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m thinking a celebratory breakfast is in order?” You asked.

“That’d be amazing.”

“I’m so proud of you, Tom.” You stated.

“I’m proud of us.” He said. “I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you, too.” You replied before he hung up the call.

The next day at the celebratory breakfast, you and Tom met at a small cafe and spent the morning discussing his potential new role and your academic future.

“I got you a present.” Tom reached into his pocket in excitement.

“Tom, you didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to. I was going to give you this for our anniversary, but I just can’t wait.” He pulled out a small, navy blue ring box. He opened it up and there sat a delicate silver ring with a pearl nestled on top of it. “Now, it’s just a promise ring, but I wanted to give you something special. I read that pearls are symbolic for pure love and happiness, so, Y/N Y/L/N, I promise to love you forever and to bring happiness into your life just as long.”

“You’re so sweet. I love you.” You leaned over the small table to kiss him. Tom took the ring out of the box as you extended your left hand out to him. He slipped the ring onto your finger and pressed a kiss to it.

“And I promise to love you forever and to bring you happiness, too.” You smiled, eyeing the new ring on your hand.

You were going to Cambridge, and Tom’s career was coming together; you couldn’t be prouder or more in love with him.

~~~

The next few months were some of the most stressful months of your life as you finished up with your schooling and prepared to leave for Cambridge. You had been accepted into a special program that allowed you to begin your first year over summer, leaving just a few weeks for you to really get ready. Tom was incredibly anxious; he still hadn’t heard back about the Spider-Man role, and you could tell he was beginning to doubt his audition.

“You’re leaving tomorrow?” Tom’s voice almost broke as he repeated your words over the phone. It was yet another phone call because your parents wouldn’t allow you over, despite you being 18.

“Yeah, it all came so quickly.” You said. Your heart was heavy at the thought of tomorrow being your last day home with Tom for who knows how long. You self-consciously began to play with the pearl ring as it hung from your neck; you thought it’d be too suspicious on your ring finger, and so it hung around your neck on a silver chain.

“Can I come see you? Before you leave?” He trailed off at the end, not wanting to fully say ‘leave’ because it’d make the situation all too real.

“Of course.” You replied.

“I have to go, but when do you leave? I’ll come by tomorrow before you leave.”

“11.” You told him.

“Alright, I’ll be there at 10:30.” Tom replied, “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Tom.” You hung up the phone with a sigh. You didn’t want to leave Tom, but this was Cambridge, this was your dream.

“Y/N, what was that?” Your father asked, stepping into your room. Your eyes went wide with horror as you turned to face him. He stood beside your mother in your doorway. Your father was red in the face from his anger, but your mother looked disappointed, disheartened.

“I can explain.” You squeaked out, clutching onto your phone tightly.

“It better be a good explanation.” Your mother said, sternly.

“Tom and I are dating.” You replied as your voice shook hesitantly.

“Tom the wannabe actor?” Your father questioned. “Think logically here, Y/N. He’s got no future-”

“That’s not true.” You argued.

“He’ll never amount to anything. If you care about your future, then you know he’s not good enough for you.”

“No. I get to decide who’s good enough for me, not you. Tom’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me and I love him.”

“And what of Cambridge?” Your father asked.

“What about Cambridge?” You questioned, frustrated and confused by his inquiry.

“Is he worth more to you than Cambridge?”

“What are you talking about? I love Tom, and I want to go to Cambridge.”

“Choose. Right now.” Your father stated, “You can either choose Cambridge, where you’ve planned on going your whole life, where you want to go to school, where your future will become infinite. Or you can choose Tom, who will never amount to anything.”

“I can’t,” You shook your head, feeling the tears form in your eyes.

“You will do well to remember who is paying for your college. If you choose Tom, you’ll have no means to go to Cambridge. If you choose Cambridge, I will continue to fund your tuition, but you can never speak to him again.”

“Dad, please, I can’t choose.” You began to fully cry now. You were too distraught to try to keep it together.

“Choose.” He repeated.

You closed your eyes, refusing to look at the man that you once called your father. You took a deep, shaky breath before whispering, “I choose Cambridge”.

“Then no more Tom.” He stepped towards you and grabbed your phone from your hands. He followed your mother out of the room, slamming your door and locking it from the outside.

You felt your heart breaking. There was no way out of this- you had made your decision. You had chosen your future at Cambridge; and yet again, you were left alone as you chose academics above all else.

You wiped away your tears and turned to your window. You had never attempted to sneak out before, but tonight, on your last night here, it seemed like a good time to try. With your room on the first floor of your house and your parents’ surprising lack of cameras, you opened your window and ran off into the night to Tom’s house.

You came to a halt just outside of his house. You weren’t even sure if his family was there- they’d been gone on holiday for the past few days, but you didn’t want to risk his family seeing you like this. You snuck your way over to the side of his house, just below his window. His light was on, and you could make out his shadow through the window. Grabbing a couple pebbles from the ground, you began to throw them up to the window. After a few finally hit the glass, Tom came to the window, opening it to see you.

“Y/N, what are you doing here?” He asked, his voice just loud enough for you to hear him.

“Can you sneak me in?” You called back to him and he nodded. You waited by the back door as Tom came to get you. When the two of you were finally in the safety of his bedroom, you hugged him tightly and he rubbed your back, soothingly.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” Tom inquired. His voice was soft and comforting, everything you needed.

“Is your family here or are they still on holiday?” You asked.

“They’re still gone. What’s going on?”

“I’m scared.” You whispered, starting to cry onto his shirt. Tom pulled back from the hug so that he could rest his hands on your cheeks.

“You’re going to do so well at Cambridge, darling. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, you don’t need to be afraid.”

“I’m afraid of losing you.”

“You’ll never lose me. I promise.”

“But I will. I’m going to Cambridge, and you’re going to be off acting.” You said. You wanted to tell him about your parents, but you couldn’t- you couldn’t say those words to him.

“We’ll always have each other. I love you, Y/N. I don’t plan on leaving you anytime soon.”

“I love you, too.”

“C’mon, it’s late. You should sleep.” Tom moved over to his dresser, grabbing out a t-shirt and some boxer shorts for you as make-shift pajamas.

“Tom,” You whimpered, reaching out for him.

“What is it, darling?” He asked, his eyebrows furrowed in concern.

“It’s my last night here. Please,” You couldn’t form the words you wanted to ask. You stepped toward him and rested your arms on his shoulders so your fingers could play with his loose curls.

“Are you sure?” Tom further clarified, and you felt like you were transported back to the night you had your first kiss, so much certain uncertain with such a step. You leaned up to kiss him and nodded.

“I want this. I want you.”

As much as you tried to sleep later that night, you just couldn’t. You just wanted to stay in his warm arms forever, but, as the sun started to rise, you knew you had to leave. You leaned in to kiss him on the lips for what would be the last time. He stirred a little, but remained in deep sleep. You untangled yourself from his embrace and changed back into your clothes from the night before.

“I love you.” You whispered to his sleeping form, before sneaking out of his house and back into yours.

That morning, you left with your parents two hours earlier than planned. You thought of Tom the whole drive up there. You wondered if he showed up at 10:30 like he had said he would, if he was trying to reach out to you at all. You knew it was no use for him to try to contact you- your parents placed a tracker on your phone and blocked his number.

As you moved into your new life at Cambridge, you couldn’t help but think about what you left behind in your old life.

~~~ Part Two

[volperion-moved]

i do agree that giving luka a "call boy" term isn't the most fitting.he is more like the typical second lead in Korean Dramas where he seems to be a better fit for the main character and sometimes gets to be with them for a while but they never get the girl in the end, but the difference is that The second leads on Kdramas are more expressive with their love and always take a lot of steps forward while Luka just stands there and is okay with being a second option and later dumped to the side

I feel like the trope isn't exclusive to Kdramas, the "love triangle where the secondary romantic lead is the better option" is in SO many things, lots of anime, lots of sitcoms, it's in Twilight, it's parodied in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend etc. Writers being set on one couple, introducing a rival just for drama when you know they won't win in the end, without realising that the inital couple has become/was always kinda toxic so it makes the rival look waaaay better isn't new. Luka does just share Lila's problem of being put away most of the time, brought out when the creators feel like utilising him, like, i cant tell if it's better or worse that unlike Lila, he doesn't have any arcs like teaming up with Gabriel going that should be followed up on instead of pushed aside.

Kagami at least has had some exploration into her aloof attitude, she's developed a friendship with Marinette despite both of them being very jealous (Kagami being shown to be jealous in Oni Chan). Adrien and Luka didn't really have any hurdles to overcome and just sorta got along immediately, so no focus on that is needed. Luka's relationship with his family is similarly pretty fine, I mean, I sort of hope the fact that he and Juleka both seem to have anxiety is explored some more with a message about Anarka being a fun parent doesn't mean she's not flawed and indirectly hurting her kids or something? Like the fact that Silencer showed he has trouble speaking up to authority could be part of that. But as of now, conflict between Luka and Anarka has been very minor while conflict between him and Juleka has been nonexistent. Silencer showed this issue Luka has, but it's not given enough time so fans still constantly say Luka has no flaws...

Basically what I'm saying is yes, Luka does resign himself to being Marinette's second choice instead of being more proactive, but I think this is an interesting character flaw that could be developed on. It just kinda looks worse than it is because he's not utilised enough.

[thisisallthehattersfault]

Writing Romantic Relationships

I get a lot of compliments on my chemistry and character interactions. A lot of my readers have expressed liking the way I write relationships, so since that’s an aspect of my writing that gets a lot of positive attention, I want to really make sure to hone and refine it as best I can. With that goal in mind, I did some Googling a couple months ago to try to find any articles or videos I could that had advice for writing believable, engaging romantic relationships.

Turns out, there’s not a ton out there.  The results that came up were all focused on the Romance genre, which I’m sure will be very helpful to those who are writing their first bodice ripper, but it’s not for me. There were a few lists of things to avoid when writing romantic relationships, but as with all advice telling people what not to write, they’re really only helpful sometimes.

So, I decided to sit down and try to articulate the way I approach romantic relationships in my writing, in the hopes that it might be helpful to someone, and also in the hopes that other writers would chime in and add some tips of their own. 

Right off the bat, you should ask yourself why you want these characters to get together. A romantic relationship should be an entirely character-driven subplot -- sure, things like an alien invasion or an eldritch cult will push people together through necessity, but if you really want your readers to be hooked on your characters’ relationship, you need to make it believable that these people would fall in love even if the Plot wasn’t happening. Basically, what do they see in each other? What do these people gain by being together? Why them, and not anyone else?

The main way I address this is through character flaws. A good relationship in real life should make you a better person -- within reason. No, getting a girlfriend isn’t going to solve all of your problems, but those problems should seem smaller and more manageable now that you have someone in your corner. A romantic relationship is life’s built-in buddy system, and fiction should reflect that. The two ways characters can help one another deal with their respective flaws are through Overcoming and Compensating.

Overcoming is typically how character growth works -- your character addresses their flaw, and decides to change it in order to become a better person. Having someone around to call them out on their bullshit, or encourage them to do better, or praise them for their progress can be a huge help in achieving that growth. Typically the easiest and most effective way I’ve seen this done is to have one character lead by example. 

An emotionally repressed jerk becomes more open and expressive because their S/O’s strong sense of compassion rubs off on them. A character who’s shy and insecure gains courage by watching their confident, self-assured love interest. These will likely be the first reasons your characters are attracted to each other. They should respect and admire things about each other, and want to emulate those traits -- even if it’s only grudgingly, and even if they never admit it out loud. 

Which brings me to Compensating. The thing is, perfect characters are boring and unrealistic. Even after a whole book’s worth of development, your characters should still be at least a little flawed. They’ll still have hangups, habits, issues that they haven’t worked through and probably never will because if they were cured of Every Single Flaw they’d be… just, unbearably boring. What I’m saying is: Not all character “flaws” need to be fixed. But, depending on what those flaws are, they could maybe stand to have somebody else compensate for them.

An impulsive character held in check by their calculating partner. A trusting character cautioned by their hesitant lover. A passive character with a temperamental s/o who stands up for them. This is the classic opposites attract -- the messy one adds excitement and spontaneity into their lover’s life, while the neat one keeps things reasonable and on-track. There should be a back-and-forth, with each character taking turns to show that neither of them are necessarily wrong, but there’s a time and place for quiet vs loud, aggression vs pacifism, logic vs emotion. Your characters should respect their s/o’s perspective, and be willing to listen and meet them on their level. This creates balance, and gives your readers clear examples of why your characters work as a couple.

These are the most important parts of your relationship to figure out, because they’re how you’ll plot out the romance. The major heavy lifting for your romance will be almost entirely done by showing how your characters help each other grow or come to rely on each other for help. If they don’t make each other better, and they don’t need each other to pick up the slack, then the relationship is shallow, and won’t work. 

Once you’ve got the bones of the relationship figured out, you can start to work on the fun meaty bits. Next up, Affection.

Way, way too often in media, we’re given two characters who are supposed to be madly in love, who… don’t have anything in common. No shared interests, conflicting goals. They barely talk to each other. But we’re supposed to believe they’re happy in their relationship? Look, your characters need to like each other. Yes, even while plot is making their lives crazy! They shouldn’t completely overlap, but they need to have hobbies and interests in common, or at least have complimentary senses of humor and priorities. Your character who has never touched a camera in his life can absolutely still fall for a photographer -- if he appreciates art, or at least appreciates the way his s/o lights up when they talk about their craft. Are your characters both passionate about animals? Do they do the same sports? Play video games? What do they do together? 

Again, they don’t need to share Every Single Aspect Of Their Lives -- in fact, it’s better if they don’t. Much like how you need your love interest to both Overcome and Compensate for a character’s flaws, their hobbies and interests should be a little of both -- things they share, and things they don’t. Hell, have your character who absolutely hates country music take their s/o to a concert anyway. Have your character who couldn’t care less about videography rattle off movie-making trivia because their lover talks about it so often. Show them supporting each other’s interests, even if it’s only to make the other happy. The things they do share should be a way for them to connect and have fun. That’s really what it comes down to. Romance should be fun sometimes.

Next up, I wanna talk about Love Language. I read somewhere that if you need your characters to kiss and say I love you for them to be in a relationship, you didn’t write a strong relationship. I agree with that, but I think it needs to be expanded on -- The Big Kiss and Those Three Words are a very loud way of expressing affection, but typically people say it much quieter, and much more often, than we acknowledge. 

The Five Love Languages are Words Of Affection, Giving/Receiving Gifts, Acts Of Service, Quality Time, and Physical Touch. Understanding your characters’ primary love language and showing them expressing their love in whatever way makes sense for them will make your readers go absolutely fucking hogwild. Your characters don’t need complimentary love languages either -- in fact, if you’re looking to add a little conflict in the relationship, giving them love languages that don’t add up can really help add some believably to the whole mutually pining trope. A character who’s love language is physical touch trying to cuddle up to someone who hates having their space invaded, or a character who’s love language is words of affection coming across as a flatterer to a love interest who’s been manipulated a few too many times, makes way more sense than two people who adore each other but aren’t together because [enter contrived excuse.]

Between your characters having Affection for each other and your characters speaking to each other in their respective Love Languages, you have the groundwork for a lot of really immersive Chemistry! We get why these characters are good for each other from a story-telling perspective, we know why they like each other, and we can see how they express their feelings in small, consistent ways that really sells the idea that they’re in love -- or headed that way. Now what we need is to feel it for ourselves.

Chemistry in writing is all about immersion. When you have a crush, your whole body gets involved. The sweating hands, the pounding heartbeat -- but it also shows in your body language, the way you stand near that person, the way you carry yourself when they’re around. It’s in your thoughts, the language you use to describe them, the way you view them compared to others. There’s really no trick to writing chemistry -- at least none that I’ve found -- other than to really delve into your characters and make your readers feel what they feel. Every quiet thrill when their hands brush, every subtle glance at each others’ lips. These are people who want to get closer like lungs want air. Attraction is a magnet, and both of them should feel it.

I don’t just mean sexually, either. A character hyper-fixating on the collection of freckles on their love-interest’s nose can be as much a method of ratcheting up the tension as a character who can’t tear their eyes away from their love-interest’s rippling abs. Likewise, it doesn’t even need to be physical intimacy at all that your characters are chasing -- the desire to know someone, their deepest thoughts and dreams and fears, can be just as if not more intense than the desire to see them naked. However your characters’ attraction manifests, you need to make your audience feel it. Use all five senses, have them be very aware of each other when they’re in the same room. Show them wanting each other. Make your readers want it, too.

As you’ve probably picked up on from my wording in this, the last big tip I can give you for writing romantic relationships is that they need to be Reciprocated. Loudly, explicitly, consistently. Too often only one half of the pair is fleshed out, while the other is basically cardboard -- a thin, lifeless collection of “attractive” traits with no substance beyond that. The Manic Pixie Dreamgirl is perfect and fun and sexy, and she’s here to drag this unfuckably boring sad sack out of his miserable life. Why? Why is the gorgeous Adonis with every girl in town fawning over him settling for the plain, bitchy protagonist? Wish fulfillment is great and all, but both of your characters need solid reasons to be attracted to each other, or the romance just won’t be good.

[brynwrites]

Let’s Talk about Querying!

(And why I stopped querying my novel.)

As some of you know, I was querying Iron From Fire on and off from March through May, and I recently decided to quit, despite it being overall a good story written in what one editor described as ‘on par’ for the genre.

And I think it’s important to talk about the process I went through, because my ill preparation hurt my mental health a lot, and you all deserve to know how to avoid the same fate.

First, this is the general process of querying, in case anyone is unfamiliar:

You finish the manuscript. And I mean finish it. Beta rounds, line edits, formatting, the whole nine yards.

You write the query letter. This includes a blurb meant to draw the agent in, a paragraph with stats and the names of a couple contemporary books that resemble yours, and a short bio about your previous book-related experience.

You send the query letter to a bunch of agents. A positive request rate right now is somewhere around 6 or 7%, which means if you have a stellar manuscript then 7% of the agents you query will want to read more of it to see if they’re willing to represent you.

You receive a mixture of rejections and requests, with a lot of silence in between. Most rejections are form rejections so you have no idea why they didn’t like your manuscript. Some requests turn into delayed form rejections. Everything hurts.

You either get an agent who signs you or you decide to quit. If you have a book you think will sell and are having positive responses from agents, the general rule of thumb is to keep querying until you’ve sent a letter to every agent you’d be interested in working with. This can mean anywhere from 30 to 130 agents.

Putting the rest under the cut.

Keep reading for:

Why I quit.

The things I learned from querying.

What I would have done differently if I’d known better.

[While this has some rather personal mental health things, please feel free to reblog it so other writers can learn from my experience!]

Why I quit querying.

This is going to get personal for a hot second so bare with me.

I was querying the first novel in an adult fantasy trilogy I had worked on for over seven years. All the work from the first five years had been trashed three years before, and the rough draft I built the final manuscript on was rewritten three times after, so the actual story itself was only a couple years old, but I had the emotional attachment of seven years of love and heartache.

This being a trilogy, I had already written the second book and poured a lot of energy into the third book’s brainstorming by the time I fully finished the first manuscript. So not only was there over seven years of emotional attachment, but nearly 300k words of fairly decent story written in the series.

I hit a bunch of road blocks right when I first began querying: 

My story, while it had all the things a query needs like stakes and conflict, was very hard to break down to a 200 word blurb.

The blurb I did end up with, no matter how I wrote it, sounded like a rather traditional fantasy plot, despite the story itself going places I’ve yet to read about in any other book.

I could not find contemporaries (books published recently which have elements similar to mine) to save my life, to the point where I was scrambling to read new books in hopes something would appear.

Most agents ask for the first five or ten pages, and I have fifteen pages of status quo before I got to the real plot, so that meant most agents would never even see the story I had outlined in my blurb.

On top of all that, I had a book which went a little over the word count most agents seek for a debut novel in its genre and it wasn’t even a standalone.

Those things compiled were a mess, and they should have clued me in that this wasn’t a book that would be worth the effort of selling as a debut. But this wasn’t what did me in. These things alone I might have been overcome by sheer determination. So why did I quit, then?

I stopped querying my manuscript because I realized I wasn’t just querying a manuscript, I was querying my baby.

I had put all seven years and many rewrites and an entire sequel I loved more than life on the line for this sale, and it fucked me over like a moon-sized meteor fucks over a planet.

My mental health, which I’d finally gotten under control after almost a decade of chronic depression and anxiety, plummeted back to levels it hadn’t reached in years. I hated everything I wrote. I cried over my writing. I cried over things that had nothing to do with writing. I became very negative and angry with my friends. Everyone else’s success felt like my personal failure. I began tipping into the realm of suicidal idealization.

That was what finally broke me; the knowledge that I’d been happy with my life, exactly as it was before I started querying, and now I suddenly didn’t find it worth living despite the query process being the only thing I’d added.

I adored and despised my manuscript in equal parts. I’d thought the mounds of critique I’d gotten for it in the past would make it easier for me to handle the rejections because I’d handled them all before from beta readers, and that the time between writing it and querying it would provide distance. It didn’t. 

It turned this manuscript into the single part of my life I’d poured the most love and attention and frustration into, more then college degrees and individual relationships and work; even more than the book I’d already indie published. And setting that out for agents to reject at their whims was not healthy for me.

Once I looked that in the face, I realized something else as well: I didn’t want this book to be my debut.

The story was publishable, yes, but it had a funky structure I had reworked countless times just to make bearable, and the second book was the real gem of the series.

The writing was adequate, but it was also kind of bland compared to the style it’d developed since I’d written it. I preferred the style I was currently writing in and I wanted to sell that instead.

I really, really didn’t want to edit this book again for an agent or an editor. I’d poured so much energy into it already and I was sick: sick with love, sick with hate. Every edit I had made through the querying process had been wrapped in a mixture of forced disinterest and panicky dependence, and that was not the way I wanted to feel when I edited my debut for traditional publishing.

And this is not to say that Iron From Fire and its trilogy will never sell, or that no one would want to read it if it did. I’m shelving it, not throwing it out. But sometimes we have to admit to ourselves that it’s not the right time, and let a project go for a while, especially when its the one project we don’t want to let go.

Things I’ve Learned.

I’m prefacing this with the note that there are exceptions to every rule. None of these things will stop you from getting an agent or selling a manuscript, it’ll just make it harder to do so. And querying is hard enough without stacking the cards against yourself.

These are a mixture of experience and things I’ve seen agents talk about at length.

1. Word count is important. 

It’s common knowledge that there are word count guidelines, but when most of the books on your shelf vary (sometimes drastically) from those guidelines, do they really matter? The fucking do. Agents will see too high word count and assume straight off that you don’t know how to create a streamline story and have wandering plot threads or useless scenes, and they’ll see a too low word count and assume you didn’t explore your world building and character development properly.

It you want to increase your chances of selling a manuscript, write it within the suggested word count guidelines.

2. Make your manuscript a solid, wonderful standalone.

You’ll hear ‘standalone with series potential’ thrown around a lot. This means you should have a first book which ends in a place that readers can feel satisfied permanently walking away from, but which doesn’t tie up so many threads that another story can’t come after it.

Less brought up but equally important is this: if you do have series potential, the rest of your series can’t be the better part of it. You aren’t selling a series, you’re selling a first book, so that first book must be able to stand for itself and say that it’s fantastic and more than worth reading on its own. It’s can’t be a gateway to a better book. It must already be the best book you can write.

3. If you have potential sequels, don’t write them yet.

From a writer’s perspective this is bad because it puts more of your soul into the series, and when it comes time to offer that part of your soul up to agents and editors, you want it to be as small as possible. Having six months of work rejected hurts. Having six years of work rejected kills. Be kind to yourself.

This is also bad from an agent’s perspective! Agents are looking for career oriented writers (even if that career is part time), who will write other books, with other plots and other characters, so if they sell your first book and its sales are mediocre they know they’ll have another chance with you on a different project. If you seem to be stuck in one world or series, that hinders their ability to market you as a writer.

3. Your first five pages are everything.

Five to ten pages is all most agents will ever see of your book. This is a lot less than many readers will read before putting a book down. Even if you’ve structured your opening to attract readers, it may not be fit enough to attract agents.

The first 2500 words of your manuscript should:

Display a clear narrative voice.

Introduce the world building and setting you described in your query with little to no exposition.

Introduce the main character’s personality and goals as described in your query with no exposition.

Show the main character doing the things you said they do in your query.

Show the inciting event you described in your query.

Show or at least hint at how the conflicts you described in your query will come to pass.

This is not always something you can edit into your manuscript at the last minute, so structuring your project this way up front is very helpful. If you can’t hit all these points with your story no matter how you rework it, you might want to consider querying a different project instead.

4. Young Adult is a harder sell.

The market is drenched in YA manuscripts. This doesn’t mean no one should write them, but if you don’t have a good reason why the story works best a YA (ie, it has themes targeted toward teenagers) then it might be worthwhile to adjust it to be MG and or adult (but not New Adult! NA is also a hard sell, because there are few editors actually buying it.)

5. The market matters.

On that note, it’s incredibly important to know what’s going on in the publishing market before you query. 

What types of books are selling? 

Is your manuscript a good twist on ideas, themes, or tones present in popular books from the last few years?

Does your manuscript align with what agents are asking for in their manuscript wishlists?

Is your writing style on par with the books what made decent sales in the last few years in your genre and target audience?

When you condense your story down to a few sentences, do you have a pitch that’s both unique and references popular contemporary stories?

In order to sell a book through traditional publishing, you have to first find an agent who falls in love with the book and has an immediate idea of how to sell it, and then have them find an editor who also falls in love with it and knows they and their marketing team can market it well.

Good writing makes a good book, but it’s the marketing which sells the book. If you don’t have a way to market your book in the current market, it’s not likely anyone else will.

What I would have done differently.

The top three things I would have changed if I had known what I know now.

1. Wrote the query letter earlier.

Writing the query letter as I wrote the manuscript would’ve helped me reformat the structure of the story up front. It would also have eliminated the desperate rewrites I did to both the query and the manuscript in an attempt to produce something concise enough to actually sell.

2. Followed agents well in advance.

There are tons of agents on twitter who routinely post tips, talk about what they want to see in future books, and boost resent publishing deals. Keeping tabs on them is incredibly helpful when it comes to figuring out where your manuscript fits in the current market and whether/how you should be querying it. 

3. Let my baby go in favor of a new, shorter standalone.

A standalone within the word count guidelines might have persuaded undecided agents to take a chance on reading more, but the important thing here is that I should not have tried to query the work I’d put my soul into. 

My mental health is more important than making my baby a best seller, firstly because there’s more to my life than just writing, and secondly because there are other great books left in my soul, and without stable mental health, I won’t be able to write and query them.

So, what am I doing now?

I’m writing a book with a strong contemporary I know agents are interested in, but with enough of a spin that it’ll feel fresh.

I’ve structured the story so that the opening engulfs the reader with the conflicts and world building that’ll be important throughout the whole story and the inciting event happens immediately. 

I wrote the blurb after only having written 20k words on the rough draft, and the blurb both contains all the necessary plot threads I need to describe the compelling heart of the story and reads as a unique and engaging manuscript.

I’m writing a standalone novel with series potential that fits perfectly within the genre’s word count guidelines.

I’m writing something that’s fresh for me and I’m madly in love with, but not dependent on. It’s a puppy I want to lather with attention, not a disappointing spouse I’ve been married to for eight years and now half loath but also can’t live without.

Annnd that is all the things I have to say! If you learned something here maybe support me by buying my fun, cheap indie book? It has sirens and a soft freckly pirate and lots of diversity, and comes in both ebook and paperback. Click here for links and things.

[ththrd03]

THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS: THOUGHTS

I've thought this since A Map of Days was released, but only now do I am sure that the Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series should have ended in Library of Souls.

Reading about how the peculiar children would live in actual America seemed like a really good plot for a book (or even a series of spin-offs), but Riggs wasted the opportunity. There were countless of ways that he could have used that, but what did he do? He decided to focus on the two main characters instead of developing the really good ones he had before. Besides, I'm still not entirely convinced by the plot. There hasn't even been a month (?) since Caul was "killed" and he's already back and looking for revenge. That just shows how uncreative Riggs has gotten. You got Leo Burnham, the protesters or the Council of Ymbrynes to use as your antgonists. I mean, there didn't even had to be an antagonist at all! Yet, he went for the safe bet.

The good thing of this book is that there was much more content of Hugh and we/he got Fiona back, but at what cost? I'm beyond mad at what they did to her. That was awful!

And then there's Noor and Jacob's thing...

At the end of Library of Souls Jacob is sitting next to Emma, the children are in his home, his parents have just found out that - after all - the peculiars were real and their natural clocks have been rebooted. Just think of all the possibilities! But, one book later all of that goes to hell and A Map of Days ends with Jacob and Noor about to start another life-threatening quest. Look, I don't really hate Noor, but for three entire books we've had this love relationship between Jacob and Emma just to be thrown away after an attack of jealousy and some bickering. All of those near death experiences where the trust on each other saved their lives, all of Emma's attempts at forgetting Abe... They were always trying to defeat the age gap and when they finally did, when they got the chance to be together and grow old together and live a happy life they break up just because some random girl appeared out of nowhere just in time to heal the heartbroken main character. Rubbish! That's not how it works. Love isn't always perfect and that's what makes it interesting and realistic. As a couple you both work together to overcome anything that life throws at you, not split after your girlfriend made some call to your grandpa and certainly not if she didn't even got a chance to talk at all. But did Jacob bother to ask? No, he just assumed.

Emma deserved better. She has gotten her heart broken by two men that run away at the first sight of conflict. Give her someone that cares deeply for her. I would love to read more content of her interacting with any of the peculiar children. After all they're a familly. I want her to be happy and get the love she deserves.

To be honest I'm dissapointed.

Very.

My expectations were far from what I got and I've grown so fond with those kids that now looking at their characters make me cringe. Those aren't the peculiar children I used to read about and the ones with whom I fell in love. But this is Ramson Riggs' story, not mine, and he can do whatever he wants with it and there's nothing I can do to change the fact that it's cannon. As I've been told there's no story wrong, but I don't think the way he handled things was the right one. Thank God we got Fanfiction to fix this.