#dumbed down to popular archetype with no nuance

[randomnameless]

What was Big B talking about ?

His fighting style based on the teaching of the goddess? He learnt to brawl from an official "sponsorised by Sothis!" manual, or Rhea once held a brawling seminar and she wrecked him?

Or maybe Chevalier - the apostle - passed down his brawling techniques to the people living in Kupala ?

Not nice for Pat to have vaporised that mention, but I guess Religion BaD?

Pat : "we will write this huge and burly guy as a comic relief, stupid, greedy and wanting to seize glory. He can't express other un-manly feelings like wanting to help people, or having remorses, or wanting to offer some tribute to a guy he previously respected."

Pat's Constance wants to scold and rekt Aelfric because he got what he deserved for "meddling" with a tool Sothis apparently "commissioned", but FE16!Constance wants to bring him peace and know that the Chalice wasn't "commissioned" by Sothis, but it she crafted it herself!

The "commissioned" thing is sort of relevant, because earlier Aelfie tells Billy that, from what he could research about the Chalice from the few records left, it was supposed to have been created by Seiros...

We know that's bull, and Constance has more "closer to the truth" intel about the Chalice than a Cardinal - again it highlights how House Nuvelle, being direct descendants of Noa, have more insight about Nabatean and Nabatean tools than even "trusted by Nabatean" humans - at least for the Chalice.

For something new :

"Openly work" for the Empire? What does he mean by "openly"? Is he doing merc work but cannot openly claim to be an Adrestian agent?

Is he suggesting that he already knows who will be his next employer? Given how Supreme Leader has been planning her invasion months before the events of the Holy Tomb, and his surprise, I wonder if Arun-Thales already made contact with Metodey saying that he'll be hired by someone who has even a higher rank than he has (higher than regent? it can only mean one or two persons) later on.

Yeah... not even want to chase him uh? Was she aware this clown was the one Uncle hired to assist her for the invasion of the monastery? Or realised it?

Bar Pat adding some "Religion BaD" for shit'n'giggles, JP!Metodey makes it clearer that he has already been hired - or knows he will be hired - for a grand mission : with all of his lines in this chapter, imo it's made clear that Metodey is participating in Aelfie's lil'scheme for now, but has already a contract with Arun-Thales where he will be incorporated/or at least recognised, as an Imperial agent.

Supreme Leader somehow knows it, and will not pursue him as he will later be of use during her own invasion of Garreg Mach.

"Thief Leader" in JP mentions some "oh so great noble's secret mission", imo it refers to Arun-Thales' mission (or even Supreme Leader? It's not the first time she has to fight someone she hired to kill a group of people including herself lol) and not to Aelfie's - Pat's mention of "infidels" might instead refer to Aelfie's mission (the one who organised this mess), Thief Leader wants to complete Aelfie's mission and he calls Aelfie's a noble, since the guy is a cardinal, obviously his enemies or the ones he wants dead are "infidels" after all!

Tl;Dr : more mumbo jumbo nonsensical stuff regarding Pat's Metodey, even if the script isn't that clear, JP!script highlights more how Metodey is actually biding his time until Supreme Leader becomes Emperor and marches on Garreg Mach.

[midnightsun-if]

Hi! I just want to say right off the bat that this isn’t a criticism or an attack on you in any way. I absolutely adore the world and characters you’ve created, and you seem like a delightful person based on how you respond to asks.

Anyways, I love Scarlett. My favorite archetype of all time is the Ice Queen with a hidden heart of gold. When I first found this if, she was the one I wanted to romance the most. Then I found out she’s gender locked and I’m not gonna lie, I was pretty disappointed. It just kinda sucks when one of the most popular romance options isn’t available to you, you know? It’s not like you can just ignore them either, they’re still gonna be present in the story and since they’re super popular a lot of the asks are gonna be about them too. I know I can always just create a female MC just to romance her, but it just doesn’t feel genuine to me.

If I had to guess, I’d say that that’s probably why a lot of people are simping for Cienna (even though I personally am not really interested). They share a lot of the same characteristics, and as far as I know, Cienna doesn’t have a set sexuality which means anyone can romance her (in this hypothetical game where she’s a romance option).

I guess at the end of the day I’m just curious why you decided to make only two of the romance options exclusive when the rest of the cast is more fluid. Again, I’m really not trying to sound insulting or like I’m attacking you, I’ve been following this blog since the very first post and I’ll still be a fan no matter what you do. I’m just a little disappointed and was curious to hear your thought process. Thanks!

A lot of my reasonings actually tie into her backstory (or a couple big ones, I should say)— so I can’t really go into that, but I will say that Scarlett, like Koda, just didn’t fit with the more fluid archetype like the other ROs. I knew that there’d be a possibility that same readers would either get turned off Midnight Sun because of that or grow annoyed due to it (not saying that you are, of course).

My choice mainly just boiled down to me understanding Scarlett, who she is, and what her sexuality means to her in a sense (I suppose). I settled on it because I felt, in my heart, that it was what was best for Scarlett, and what would make her character ring the most true (if that makes sense). Originally, she was going to be gender selectable, but I just didn’t connect well with the character and couldn’t figure out why— until I started writing for just Scarlett and fleshing out her backstory and the various nuances that make her who she is. In fact, the original character that Scarlett was is so far removed from who she is now that it’s almost a different person altogether. I’m happy with how much Scarlett has evolved and it may seem dumb to some people, but a lot of that had to do with figuring out her sexuality and what would overall work for her and for her involvement in Midnight Sun altogether.

I just decided to do what was best for the story, for Scarlett, and honestly for a lot of peoples reading experience in general, because if I felt disconnected from my character, I couldn’t imagine how you all would have felt interacting with said character.

And I know you’re not trying to be insulting at all! You’re curious, which is completely understandable. I hope that some of my reasons make sense in the grand scheme of things— I wish I could go into more of deeper ones, but I don’t want to spoil anything. Hopefully this’ll be enough to satiate some of said curiosity though! ❤️

[joys-of-everyday]

MXTX's women part 2

Let's do ✨discourse™✨part 2

This is a follow up to this post where the only conclusions I came to were vibes based... mainly because my opinions here are generally vibes based (except svsss - I am pretty firm on my view of svsss, but that's a separate post). I think there are strong arguments either way, and tbh I have nothing against vibes based conclusions, but for fun, I'm going to take a position and argue for it.

disclaimer: 1) this post is not my opinion. 2) nonetheless, this post is entirely unironic. I think these are compelling arguments.

Position 1: MDZS and TGCF are sexist.

To recap, I posed (dramatically, in bold face) that the most important question to ask are: What is the intent? How is that intent received? This can be summed up as: What is the message you take away?

Obviously, you can fight me here, but I'll expand. Firstly, the question doesn't fundamentally come down to what the work contains, even though this is important. Every statement on the lines of 'x is sexist because it contains y' has a counterexample. Is the Handmaid's Tale sexist because it contains men in power and women treated as objects? Well op, this is a dumb example, you might say, and you would be right. The message of the Handmaid's Tale is clearly different from, say, MDZS and everything it contains is a support of that message - that a woman's reproductive freedom is her right. And I would go, ah ha, yes. Intent. (You can still disagree with me lol. This came out of a conversation literally a week ago.)

But also note, the author's actual intent is secondary. It's a useful framing to understand what the message is, but due to e.g. unconscious bias, or internalised sexism, the message gained by the reader/audience can be entirely independent of the intent of the author. For example, (one of my all time favourite c-dramas) the Secret of the Three Kingdoms I think is trying to be empowering for women, has lots of cool female characters, but the ultimate message can be summarised as 'men plough, women weave'... which is :/

Another subtlety to point out is that trends and popular tropes/archetypes tell a very different story when looked at overall. 'Woman in the refrigerator' and 'bury your gays' isn't a problem about individual works (although it often is mixed into other problems), but it's prevalence and dominance spreads harmful messages. A work which is great on it's own can actually be contributing to a wider problem, thus making it a problem.

MDZS: Women as accessory

It's not that difficult to argue that MDZS has an exceptional cast of women. I have no intention of arguing that MDZS's women aren't well developed, because enough people have come up with compelling counterarguments and they aren't hard to find. I think MDZS's portrayal of sexism is both exceptionally nuanced and not something you see much of. I love the way MDZS uses and breaks down tropes. I would argue (have argued) that the way MXTX puts sexism into her works is (at least partly) very much deliberate, and not with the intent of being sexist.

But remember, death of the author: author's original intentions don't matter in the face of what can be read from the text.

Notable in MDZS is 1) the lack of female characters who aren't defined by their relation to a major male character 2) women in the refrigerator.

1) Jiang Yanli is Wei Wuxian's older sister. Yu Ziyuan is Wei Wuxian's adopted mother. Wang Lingjiao is Wen Chao's girlfriend. Madam Jin, Meng Shi, Qin Su. Now, there are notable exceptions. Wen Qing is Wen Ning's sister, but her character is substantial even without that. Luo Qingyang (mianmian). Sisi (arguably). But there are overwhelmingly more male characters, and perhaps more importantly, hardly any male characters defined by their relation to a female character. There are a few. Madam Mo and her husband. Jin Zixuan as Jiang Yanli's husband (arguably). This isn't an exhaustive list but you get the idea.

2) Well, firstly, most of them die. Yu Ziyuan ends up in an unhappy marriage and dies as her sect burns down. Jiang Yanli loses a husband and then sacrifices herself for her brother. Wang Lingjiao gets offed by Wei Wuxian. Qin Su is killed by her husband. Mo Xuanyu's mother and Madam Jin just die of 'heartbreak' for what? Plot convenience? More egregiously, all of these deaths are there to either a) plot reasons or b) to add to the development of a male character. This is precisely the 'women in the refrigerator' trope, but multiplied a million times.

The only female character who got her happy ending was Mianmian... who lives a simple life with her family in the middle of nowhere. And it's great that in being brave and pursuing the right thing, she found happiness for herself, but this being the only example is um...

Well, the message feels suspiciously like women exist only for men. Men are the protagonists of their stories. Women are accessories. Sounds pretty sus. Maybe this is all due to the sexism of the world, but the message is then that the only way for women to succeed is to leave the system altogether, which is a nuanced thing but not true and somewhat unhelpful as a message.

Now, arguably, MXTX is leaning into tropes in order to be critical of them. Her female characters are full of tropes, and subversions of tropes - they could act as a critique of female characters in BL (in the way the female characters in SVSSS are critique of female characters in harem). There are a few pointers to this - Mianmian standing up to sexism, or the depth and nuance of Yu Ziyuan finding power+influence through her marriage of Jiang Fengmian. But the point stands is that isn't the message most people take away, because of the way MDZS is framed. MDZS just works as a xianxia action/romance. It isn't a parody (or at least, you don't need to read it as one to follow it). It isn't explicitly critical of how the women end up, nor is the narrative centered around the experiences of women. It is very easy to take away the surface level messages, which I think many people end up doing.

Whatever MXTX intended to say with her female characters, arguably MDZS already adds to an existing problem in how media portrays women. Media plays a huge role in how we see ourselves and other people, and unideal representation of women can lead to unconscious biases and stereotypes which are harmful. This being the case, one could argue that any media that fails to either fix the issue or address the issue sufficiently is problematic. On this vein, MDZS falls short.

TGCF: women as secondary

While TGCF improves on the front of women in power doing well, and more explicitly calling out the sexism of the world, it fails at a different front: the lack of women within the core plot.

The structure of TGCF is very different to MDZS, in that it contains a lot of what I would call 'side quests'. This is not a bad thing (this is sort of the whole point of things like (old) Star Trek or Doctor Who). But the core story of TGCF is (arguably) 1) Xie Lian's two ascensions and in between 2) Meeting Hua Cheng at various points 3) Tonglu mountain. And within this core story, there isn't a single female character necessary for the plot.

Ling Wen, Xuan Ji, Banyue, Shi Qingxuan, Yushi Huang... are all exceptional female (and non-binary) characters in their own right, but the story doesn't require them. They could be swapped out quite easily with other characters, unlike e.g. main pair, Feng Xin, Mu Qing, Jun Wu... (Note this isn't about how often they appear, or how developed they are. Lang Ying (the old one) doesn't appear a lot, but is essential to the plot.) (Yushi Huang and Ling Wen are kind of required, but equally for like... quest and item giving purposes which is not really the same.)

It's almost like there is no female person in Xie Lian's life who is essential to his personhood. And the message might inadvertently be that women are part of side quests - they aren't necessary.

This is, in part, a Xie Lian problem. The narration is tied closely to Xie Lian's pov (but isn't third person limited, interestingly), and we get delights like this:

Aside from the fact that Xuan Ji went mad whenever she ran into Pei Ming, she was otherwise much more detail-oriented and cautious than Qi Rong - she was a woman, after all.

(btw, be exceptionally suspicious of statements like 'women are more detail-oriented and cautious'. They are often wrong, or with heavy caveats.)

This is not on it's own a bad thing - e.g. compare with Shen Qingqiu's narration in SVSSS. But it is arguably a bad thing if you pair it with the fact that Xie Lian is 1) presented as much more likable than Shen Qingqiu 2) is not as obviously bias. He comes across as a trustable character, and so we are less likely to question his biases... so we run into the same problem as in MDZS: we aren't led to question the surface level messages, so the message we take away is an unhelpful one.

I feel like the way around this is (somewhat paradoxically) to reintroduce female characters whose lives (from narrator pov) revolve around the protagonist. (e.g. get in an Jiang Yanli) (The 800 year time skip means they either need to 1) become gods, 2) become ghosts 3) die, all of which have their own potential problems but that's for the author to figure out :p) Making Xie Lian less sexist would be slightly unrealistic but not at all out of character. Having Xie Lian's biases explicitly called out and this be a big thing is another way to go. Or both.

To conclude

Both points fall down to something along these lines: although both MDZS and TGCF make attempts at commentary on the struggles of women, because this narrative is not at the forefront of the story they inadvertently give across only half the message, which is worse than no message at all. 'There are tropes within the genre which treat women badly and this is bad' becomes 'women are like what these tropes say they are like'. 'Women aren't given opportunities so end up worse off' becomes 'women end up worse off'.

Maybe something in between MDZS to TGCF would be an improvement, but also, if the focus on male characters meant these narratives were difficult to execute within a reasonable word count, it might have been better to just skip sexism altogether. (sci fi is usually where this is attempted seriously, but fantasy definitely has scope for imagining better societies.) (This is all much easier said than done btw. Part of a fan's job is to stand on the sidelines and complain, right? 😂)

[floof-writes]

Officially Declaring War On The Canon V Fanon Debate in DC (it's fundamentally flawed, they are interdependent)

"Actually in canon" "fanon always gets this wrong" "Dick's the golden child" "Jason's the golden child" "In canon Alfred's an enabler" "Actually Bruce is abusive" "Hate when people pretend Tim cared about Jason as a kid"

Look, if being in the DC fandom has taught me anything, it's that canon has so many retcons and reboots that they made up an in-universe mechanic for when the world resets. Why are we pretending that Fanon is anything less than another branch of this world? Golden Age, Silver Age, Pre-New 52, Fanon. Who are we to say that if Superboy Prime punched reality hard enough or Flash fucked up enough, we wouldn't end up here anyway? Comics as a medium are messy and worked on by hundreds of people across the decades.

DC comics is almost a century old. The Justice League wasn't always called that and Batman wasn't always part of it, there's a Batman rogue named 'Condiment King' and one of his most recent appearances was in a fucking LEGO movie, Dick is named Dick. These characters and their stories are living artifacts- time capsules of decades long gone, but also undergoing constant and soul-deep change.

Moral of the story: If DC canon is your golden standard then you're measuring against a piece of cooked spaghetti.

And we expect canon to evolve, to be inconsistent. When they made Dick they didn't know about Jason, when they made Jason they didn't know there would be a Tim, and when they made Tim they didn't know Jason would come back. These characters are inherently fluid because they weren't created with each other in mind, so when the Batfam is all together today, their characterizations are adjusted to make them a more interesting group for the given storyline and genre. Canon has always just been an attempt at expanding on and experimenting with what has already been built, and it has always been influenced by the fans of the time. The most famous example being the phone in vote on Jason Todd's death that literally defines canon today. Characters are killed and resurrected and given comic runs based entirely on popular demand. Fans and fanon have power- and rightly so.

DC canon is simply the constant interpretation and reinvention of the work of hundreds of artists and writers over the years, all compiled into this conglomeration of Stuff- and guess what? That's exactly what fanon is.

"Fanon loses their mind when they see actual complexity" Guess what? Storytelling is based on archetypes. Fanon isn't a 'dumb it down' machine- it's a purifier. It boils things down to their essence. It takes the contradictory, awful, beautiful mess that is canon and turns it into something usable. Fanon characters tend to be an approximate average of all the different interpretations, and they separate the characters into the parts that people find the most compelling. It identifies the pieces of a character that define it to the audience and gives canon something reliable to work off of the next time they decide to rewrite the universe.

And yes, often times Fanon doesn't make it out without a heavy dose of optimism. The erasure of certain abuses, the resolution of certain arguments. Because let's face it: moral grayness is Uncomfy. And people engage in fandom largely for comfort- that is one of the main functions of all entertainment. In other forms of media, problems are given finality. Complexity is given a rest with an ending, happy or not- but comic books don't do that, and in the next run with the next writer they may just ignore it happened at all. Fanon's rose tinted glasses aren't always rose, sometimes they're a sickly green- it's just that to write the next story with nuance you have to have a solid starting point.

I'm not denying the power of working within the restraints of a predefined timeline, nor the power of something being officially canon. Returning to the source material can inspire new nuance, new details, new opportunities- but using the source material to disqualify nuance made by fanon is counterproductive and frankly dumb. We're all building off of eachother- why are you retconning something that existed only as an experiment? It's important to acknowledge that an audience is half the art, and once something is published, there's no way to take it back and make it definitionally pure again. It is the property of all those who consume it.

TL;DR- 1. Canon is absolutely fucked anyway. 2. Fanon and canon have always been and will always be intertwined and interdependent.

[thetypedwriter]

A Curse So Dark and Lonely Book Review

A Curse So Dark and Lonely Book Review by Brigid Kemmerer

My gosh, I feel like I have enormous feelings about this book. 

So, I had seen this book for awhile bestow the shelves at Barnes & Noble and while it drew the eye, it also didn’t entice me right away. I must have read snippets of the backside summary a dozen times before I finally succumbed and purchased it when the store was having a buy one, get one 50% off deal. 

Lame, I know. 

That being said, A Curse So Dark and Lonely surprised me in a lot of pleasant ways and at the end of the experience it was a book I genuinely enjoyed reading, despite the flaws throughout. 

First off, somehow, in ways that I don’t even fully understand, I did not realize that this was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. 

You might ask, seeing the title, the reviews on the back literally calling it a retelling of a classic fairytale, the summary itself, and the basic premise, how did I not realize what the true nature of this book was?

I genuinely have no idea. 

I really don’t. 

It’s so flabbergasting that I don’t even have a proper answer for you other than Beauty and the Beast was not my favorite Disney movie growing up and that I probably should have spent more time checking out what bargain books to buy before I laid down the cash. 

Oh well.

That being said, retellings of classic fairy tales has been a fairly popular phenomenon in the YA literature scene (and popular culture as a whole, really) for the last couple of years and while I can see the appeal, it was never something that beckoned me. 

I’m not a huge fairytale fan to begin with so a retelling of the original doesn’t hold much sway in terms of intrigue and buy-in. 

If I had known what A Curse So Dark and Lonely truly was, I never would have bought it. Frankly, it’s a little sad because I genuinely would have missed out on a very fun and engaging read. Fortunately enough, however, my dumb actions actually paid off in good luck this time around. 

The whole premise is exactly what you’ve probably surmised up to this point: an enumeration of Beauty and the Beast with some modern fanfare and twists and turns along the way. 

Rhen is the current Crown Prince of Emberall, a country in some parallel world to the one that you and I currently exist in. With a series of twists, the main protagonist, Harper, is unwillingly hoisted from her homeland of Washington D.C. to the magical world of Emberfall, which unfortunately is not all that magical with a looming war on the horizon involving a neighboring nation, rumors of a savage beast that has wreaked havoc on the country, and a wicked witch that delights in torment and carnage to sadistic glee.  

Soon enough, a high school dropout with cerebral palsy soon finds herself in the imaginary role as the Princess of Disi, an allying nation that has promised aid and troops to Emberfall and potentially betrothed to the Crown Prince, Rhen. 

To make matters more complicated, Harper finds herself often in the company of Grey, the lone soldier of the Royal Guard and Rhen’s constant shadow, a figure she soon begins to trust despite herself. 

With a war on the horizon, the ever-present threat of the witch Lillith, the haunting promise of the beast’s return, and evolving feelings, A Curse So Dark and Lonely is a lovely concoction of both fast-paced action, romance, humor, and fantasy. This whole book gave me a pleasant buzz from start to finish. 

The plot itself, while recycled at its core, is fresh enough with the modern flare of Harper being from D.C. (Disi-this still makes me laugh), representation in the form of a character with a disability like cerebral palsy, interesting and complex relationships, and opposing enough with the threat of Lillith and future battles that it never seemed pithy or banal. 

While the world building is...mediocre, I don’t think it was amazing nor do I think it’s awful, it’s a useful enough background for the characters and their emotions to take place, which honestly is the real focus throughout the entire novel (although the author did take some liberties by inputting in things like the castle automatically regenerating food-how much more deus ex machina can you get?). 

  Kemmerer’s writing style is also fine. Nothing groundbreaking, but also not writing I find abhorrent or even unlikeable. She comes across as a typical YA author to me in terms of her vocabulary, her figurative language, and her writing style. 

The real focus, if you haven’t caught on by now, are the characters. 

I genuinely like all three main characters quite a bit, which, if you regularly read my reviews, is quite the anomaly. 

Rhen I find to be strangely complex. While he fits the mold of the brooding, arrogant prince that actually cares deeply for his people and his country quite well, I also found him more interesting than just the archetype of the royal son. 

He’s surly, dark, and quite temperamental. While he does care deeply about his people, he’s often selfish and petty. Honestly, he shouldn’t be very likable at all, but it’s for that reason alone that I do like him. 

I like that while he might be a good ruler he’s not necessarily a good person and I like the dichotomy and the conflict that implicitly comes with that struggle, a struggle often shown to the readers and the two other characters he’s closest with: Harper and Grey. 

In addition, often in YA I feel like authors constantly feel pressured to make romantic love interests “perfect” which to me, translates to being stereotypical and boring. Very often my favorite characters are the ones who are flawed and complicated-just like Rhen. 

Grey is also a character that I thought would be more simple than he actually turned out to be. I originally thought Grey was going to be the stoic, soldier type and while he is, I also really enjoyed seeing his lighter side, his sense of humor, his love for children, and the deadly loyalty that binds him not because of a curse or a spell, but because of his own stubbornness and dedication to the decision that he made and the refusal to break it.

I found this honor code fascinating and his adherence to it almost obsessive. His loyalty to Rhen is both baffling and intriguing and often it was the best part of the novel for me. 

Which brings me to my next point: Rhen and Grey’s relationship is hand’s down the best part of this book. It’s a complicated relationship and, therefore, really fascinating to read about it. They have a serpentine history involving Grey being the one to let Lillith into Rhen’s chambers which sets off the whole curse business in the first place. 

However, as Rhen says later on in the book, it was his choice to keep Lillith overnight and to pursue romance, not Grey’s. 

There is guilt, blame, affection, loyalty, ownership, friendship, frustration, anger, sacrifice and more to their relationship. Their history stops them from being true friends, as do their roles as prince and guard, yet they are the only companion the other has for seasons upon seasons. 

At the end of the day, Grey is all Rhen had for a very long time and it shows. 

Their relationship was always so engrossing to read about due to its complications and its nuances. Very few YA relationships, especially that of platonic male friendship, gets even near the level of depth and grey (I couldn’t help this pun) area shown between Grey and Rhen. Their relationship alone is a huge draw for why I found this novel so captivating. 

I did wonder for a while if perhaps there were more than platonic feelings involved, but I could never quite put my finger on the true nature of their relationship or their feelings towards each other, which I find absolutely amazing. Their relationship is messy and complicated, just like real life relationships are. 

That leaves the third piece of the puzzle: Harper. 

Out of the three main characters, I like Harper the least, but I do still like her. I like that she’s strong and tenacious, not in spite of her cerebral palsy, but in addition to her already present bravery and ferocity. She’s headstrong, stubborn, kind, merciful, and compassionate. 

My dislike from Harper stems from the fact that she’s a little too perfect, especially compared to Rhen and Grey, who I found to be much more convoluted characters. 

Again, harping (hahah) back to stereotypical YA, other than her cerebral palsy, I don’t think there’s anything in particular about Harper that makes her complicated, flawed, or especially interesting. 

She’s a good girl willing to give it all up for a country she’s only known for a few weeks even though her mother’s dying at home and her brother is most likely involved in some kind of gang violence. 

The best scenes with Harper are the scenes were she is struggling to choose between the two worlds and weighing her options, as at some points it does depict her as selfish and wanting to go home, even though she knows it would doom thousands of people. 

But of course, this is all taken care of later when she realizes D.C. isn’t her true home any more and that Emberfall has become where her heart lies. 

Lame. 

Kemmerer made Harper just a little too pristine for my liking, which is why she ranks lower than both Rhen and Grey when on paper she is by far the best in terms of personality and character traits. 

This especially grates on me when Kemmerer tells us that Harper is fantastic instead of letting us glean that for ourselves. I really dislike when an author tells me instead of shows me that someone is brave or kind or amazing or whatnot and I feel like there were enough instances of Harper being all of those things without having needed Rhen or Grey to point it out all of the time. 

I also do feel like there is some weird shaming regarding things typically seen as “feminine” in relation to Harper and why that makes her “better.” For example, Rhen talks often about how no girl ever has ever done what Harper has done, like attacking him. 

I’m sorry? You’re telling me that Grey has kidnapped hundreds of girls and not one of them before Harper tried to attack them? In any form? Really? 

I find that preposterous. 

Other instances of Harper being unique in this fashion is also sprinkled in, like how most girls apparently only care about the dresses and the jewels in the castle, but not Harper. Or how most girls would be crying from a scar on their cheek, but Harper is just upset that she misses her target.

 I get what Kemmerer is going for, but these force-fed characterizations really bothered me and were the most irritating thing about the book. 

Being feminine or caring about stereotypically feminine things like jewelry or dresses does not mean that someone can’t also be strong and brave and fierce. I dislike a lot of the subliminal messages in the novel in regards to that. 

In terms of romance, again I have to ask myself when the trope of the love triangle will die. Perhaps it never will. Perhaps it will live on for eternity, forever immortal and present in nearly 90% of YA literature. 

The love triangle between Grey, Rhen, and Harper doesn’t bother me so much in this novel as I feel like it isn’t truly focused on very much, which I appreciate. I understand that Harper has feelings for both Grey and Rhen, but her feelings make sense. I don’t feel like Kemmerer is just foisting a love triangle onto the readers for the sake of having a love triangle. 

It felt somehow...natural. 

In addition, most love triangles suck as they’re very one sided, usually in terms of the female’s POV. 

In this case however, the love triangle is influenced by Grey and Rhen’s relationship, where the lines are very blurry and for a good portion of the book I thought perhaps they were in love with each other and Harper. 

Frankly, I would have been ecstatic if this was the route Kemmerer had taken. Not many YA authors go down this route, but examples like Mark/Cristina/Keiran from The Infernal Devices and Niall/Irial/Leslie from Ink Exchange are actually the only examples I know from YA literature so this would have been so welcome and anticipated. 

If Kemmerer had gone down the route of looking into a polyamorous relationship I would have been over the moon. I don’t think she is sadly, but polyamrous relationships are still so few and far between in YA that it would have been utterly captivating, especially as she has all the ingredients to do so. 

Or, I thought she did. 

Until it’s revealed at the very end that Rhen and Grey are brothers. Or, at least half-brothers. 

Yeah. 

It’s super unfortunate. 

I’m genuinely disappointed that this is the route Kemmerer decided to take it as it seems so grossly safe. It’s almost like an intense male/male relationship can’t exist unless it’s romantic or they’re brothers and I despise that. 

Hence, why I have also decided that I won’t be reading A Heart so Fierce and Broken. I want to keep the memory and the interesting relationships between the three characters as it is: interesting.

 I have a very strong feeling that if I read the sequel that will all be shattered. 

When all is said and done, I really enjoyed this book. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to reading it and I wasn’t expecting very much, but it met all of my expectations and more. 

I am sad that I won’t be finishing the series as a whole, but I know that the direction it's going will only make me frustrated and annoyed and I would rather preserve the positive emotions attached to A Curse So Dark and Lonely than ruin it with a sequel that I know won’t meet the expectations I have. 

Perhaps that’s unfair to say, and rightly so, but I know myself and I can see where the sequel is going and I’m almost certain that I won’t like it. 

So in this case, I’m going to quit while I’m ahead and savor the moments I had reading this novel in all its fairy-telling glory. 

Recommendation: If you love Beauty and the Beast, fairytales with a modern twist, interesting characters and interesting relationships set in a fantasy world where the music never stops playing and a savage beast runs rampant, than this book is calling for you.

 I didn’t know that I needed this novel in my life and now I’m so glad that it is. Captivating from beginning to end, if you’re anything like me and a sucker for interesting romance and strong, nuanced characters you won’t be able to put this down either. 

Score: 7/10 

[popanalysis99]

The Rampant Toxic Masculinity in The Society (and do the perfect male characters exist?)

The Society was one of the most talked about series on Netflix before it got abruptly cancelled in 2020 due to COVID concerns. But one of the downer parts of the series was that how the female characters were shown to be complex while most of the male characters were shown to be two-dimensional if not, really really horrible. So let’s take a look at how each of the male characters were portrayed (except for Grizz, Sam, Gordie and Will because they subverted the toxic masculinity in the series so I am counting them out).

Campbell Eliot:

Campbell Eliot is first introduced as a typical bad boy character who doesn’t want to follow the rules (Think J.D. from Heathers). Though we see a lot of red flags about him in the first episode, like when we see him try to shoot Cassandra and kick his deaf brother Sam out of his house, calling him a really offensive name. And then he ends up having Elle all to himself. But later in the episode 4, Sam exposes him to be a psychopath with no remorse at all while Campbell drowns Elle, but Allie thinks it’s bullcrap and decides to free him. It proves to be a mistake at the end (which we will come to later). Campbell basically represents every abuser in real life and deconstructs the bad boy archetype we’ve seen in the media. Whatever he does isn’t romanticised for entertainment and it shows he is the ankle-biting, menopause-aching and cockroach-crawling worst.

Harry Bingham:

Harry is introduced as a popular rich kid, but all of that gets changed after he and others get shifted to New Ham. He is jealous of Cassandra and doesn’t agree with her methods at all and wishes that someone would shut her up. Unfortunately his wishes come true when Greg Dewey, a rampant psycho kills Cassandra, which drives Harry into guilt and eventually causes him to suffer from depression and isolate himself from others. Campbell takes advantage of this and uses Harry as his puppet for his reign of terror.

The Guard (Especially Clark and Jason):

Clark and Jason start off as typical dumb jocks in the series. They seem to want to play football and nothing else. Then when they end up in New Ham, they end up forming a police force known as the Guard (how there were no female jocks that could’ve been part of the guard, I’ll never understand.) At first they try to do the right thing and follow the rules of the Mayor (Cassandra and then Allie), but slowly and slowly they end up getting drunk with power and start abusing their prisoners. This even gets worse when Allie rejects their idea of joining the election to become the mayor and they join Campbell’s coup just out of spite against her. What is so realistic is that they even represent the police brutality that is rampant in some countries.

How these men ruined the ending?

What makes the ending worse is the fact that Allie, a woman leader and Will, a young black man were imprisoned by a psychopathic tyrant, a spoilt rich white kid and a group of angry young white men acting as the police. What makes this ending so controversial is the fact that this is taking place at the same time as the Me Too movement where the powerful people like Campbell are being exposed for their abuse against women and police brutality (like The Guard’s in New Ham) is getting exposed and protested against by everyone. And since the series got cancelled, we might never get a redemption to this controversial cliffhanger filled with abusive men taking power away from a female protagonist.

Breaking Stereotypes of Masculinity

While The Society failed most of it’s male characters, these days there are more nuanced portrayals of a lot of male characters on TV who have broken stereotypes of what men should be.

Elliot Alderson in Mr. Robot is the most popular example. He is a non-stereotypical male character who embodies all kinds of tropes that is usually applied to strong female characters such as the Broken Bird, The Independent Woman and the Gorgeous but Vengeful Female Vigilante who preys on abusive men such as perverts, cheaters, rapists, pedophiles etc. He is shown to be really sensitive and emotional but it doesn’t make him weak. He is even put through so much physical, emotional and mental trauma throughout the series, but he shows time and time again that he is strong and he is a true survivor. He even says that it’s his love and care for others that drives him to save the world.

Marty Deeks from NCIS: Los Angeles depicts the “Manic Pixie Dream Boy”, the role that is usually applied to female characters who try to lift a brooding male character from their despair. But the trope is gender flipped between Kensi and Deeks. Like every MPDG, Deeks also has the quirkiness, free spiritedness and vivaciousness and bursts into Kensi’s life when he first meets her. When he first meets Kensi, he makes it his goal to lift her from her brooding and jaded world and make her happy. And unlike the other MPDGs, he is even shown to have his own story. He also has his own struggles and flaws and is shown to battle with them from time to time, but still stays positive through all of it.

Din Djarin from The Mandalorian starts off as a tough bounty hunter, but after meeting Grogu, the jedi child, he becomes more soft and responsible with him and makes it his point to be protective of him. He isn’t afraid to show his feelings from time to time and to soften up a bit.

Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad is first seen as a manly small time gangster who teaches Walter White to roughen up. But as the series progresses, he is shown to be more sensitive and has more morals while Walter progresses down a very sociopathic path. His strength and weakness is that he cares a lot for a lot of people and loves a lot, which is what makes him human.

[gonewiddershins]

Romancelandia you don’t have to ask I’m just gonna say it anyway~

Original Post Here

Barbara Cartland: Favourite author?

Courtney Milan.

Alisha Rai: Favorite era? (i.e. when they were written, not when set)

Current! I’m ecstatic to see how much more punk the romance novel genre has become lately- so many authors explicitly talking about race and class and gender and mental health and neurodivergence in so many interesting ways. Independent publishing opening up entirely new avenues which were not recommended for traditional publications. It’s exciting and wonderful.

Eve Dangerfield: Favourite setting for historicals?

Not sure if my opinion matters here because I have read books from very few eras? I think my preferences have moved to mid-to-late Victorian era for England-based books, but what I really want more of is historicals on other (non North American) continents. I badly want to do a romance in Historical India that is not about Englishmen, for example. Like a Muslim and Hindu falling in love during the Aurangazeb era, maybe. 

Anne Mather: Favourite contemporary setting/sub-genre

Again, I haven’t really read enough to form a nuanced opinion- when I look for contemporaries, my first priority used to be “does this make me laugh?” Which is um- a relic of a bygone era, because that used to be the only thing I wanted from contemporaries. 

Right now, I try to get read more of diverse romance in contemporary eras. Again, including non-American/English nationalities.

Georgette Heyer: Third or first person tense?

Either will do. It’s not really a factor in how much I enjoy a story. 

Lisa Kleypas: Hero/ine you’d most like to date & Jane Austen: Hero/ine you’d most like to be friends with

Same answer to both of the above categories. I’ll take anyone who I think is a rational person who forgives misunderstandings ans does not try to actively make them. I’m not really that picky. 

Amanda Quick: Hero/ine you most relate to

At the time when I first read it as a dramatic early twenties person, Minerva Lane from Courtney Milan’s The Duchess War spoke to me. There was a lot in there about fear and having to push yourself down fro the sake of survival that was similar to my life back then. I cried a lot when I read that book. 

More recently, I really wanted to snuggle up to Verity Plum from Cat Sebastian’s A duke in Disguise because her feelings of independence and placing it above pretty much everything else her life is... yeah. A lot of what Verity says sounds intimately familiar. 

Julie Anne Long: Historical or contemporary?

Historical. Given a choice between two books which are similarly positioned in terms of tropes I like and hate, I’ll pick a historical every time. 

Mariana Zapata: Open or closed door sex scenes? & Anne Hampson: Erotic or clean romances?

Ninety percent of the time I’m thoroughly disinterested in the sex scenes, and sometimes I am actively annoyed at the many pages of boning happening while the protagonists barely have an emotional connection. That said, there are plenty books which have no sex scenes where I am reduced to gross sobbing because GODDAMMIT THERE IS TOO MUCH SEXUAL TENSION IN THE AIR GIVE ME BONING.

I am still thirsty about Jo Beverley’s The Unwilling Bride. There was so much sexual tension and growth and Lucien was hot as hell but there was no sex scene. //grumbles

Elizabeth Hoyt: Paranormal or science fiction?

I haven’t read that much SF romance, but I’m going to pick it anyway because the usual tropes associated with Werewolves/Vampires bug the crap out of me. 

Nalini Singh: Favourite tropes

Both the protagonists have problems with stakes, and one is not there to manic pixie the other. Protagonists have relationships (non-romantic) outside of the romance. Subversions and reversions of gender norms. Banter and Snark. Character tries very very hard to not be emotionally vulnerable, but goddammit there are these stupid feelings. 

Alyssa Cole: Least favourite tropes

Prolonged Miscommunication. Slut shaming, especially when coupled with I Have Had So Much Sex and I am So Experienced hypocrisy. Gratuitous sex with no emotional connection. Protagonists immediately throwing over all other friends/family/loved ones for the sake of their new romantic interest. False competence in female characters which immediately get thrown to the wind when the romantic interest comes on scene (Ahem. Never Judge a lady By Her Cover.)

Rose Lerner: Favourite / Least favourite series

Nope.

Sandra Marton: Favourite romantic non-romance or love story

Unspoken Trilogy, by Sarah Rees Brennan. It is in part a fascinating exploration of privacy in a relationship- most of the rest of it is about friendships and platonic relationships. There is also a cult of sorcerers trying to take over the world via human sacrifice but I continue to insist that’s mostly just setting information. 

Skye Warren: Any problematic faves?

I have a depressingly large soft spot for anything funny, and I will forgive a lot of despised tropes if a book makes me laugh. I’m easy.

Specific examples: Until You (Judith McNaught), Dragon Shifter Series (Katie MacCalister).   

Ainsley Booth: Position on HEAs

I’m cool with those.

Abby Green: Position on HFNs

I like these better than HEAs, because the characters I like tend to be difficult and also fighting various difficult scenarios so it’s far more likely that more problems will pop up in their lives than not. 

Kristen Ashley: Position on the “romance novels are feminist” discourse

Conflicted. I think many romances are feminist, but there are an equal number or more which are patently not. Like all other genres, it has to be judged on a book by book basis, not for the genre as a whole.  

Carla Kelly: Position on the “calling romance novels trashy is problematic” discourse

Yes. Outright dismissal of an entire genre is just dumb. 

Diana Palmer: Position on the “are romance novels porn” discourse

Ha, no. Porn is porn. 

Johanna Lindsey: Position on the “romance novels represent the female gaze” discourse

Yes, I guess? In many romances the way men are portrayed is markedly different from the way they are seen in other genres. Again, this is not a universal constant- all romances do not show men in the exact same way. 

Also, it is hard to find any other genre with a larger proportion of characters, viewpoints and conflicts centered around women so there’s that.   

Mary Jo Putney: Position on the “calling romances without sex ‘clean’ or ‘sweet’ is implicitly slut shaming romances with sex” discourse?

Yes. Just call them romances without sex. What are we, the moral police?

Cara McKenna: What’s your hot take on the “forced seduction” trope?

I understand the time and place where there scenes were popular, and the social norms which prompted them. I’m still uncomfortable with them and there are may things I’d rather read about so I avoid them.    

Abigail Barnette: Opinion of Fifty Shades of Grey

Never read it, don’t plan to. Like I said, sex is not really my thing.

Tessa Bailey: Opinion of Twilight

I gobbled these books like a maniac when I first read them and there is a lot of pure entertainment in there and there is so much emotion. That said, they are not quite as interesting on re-reads. :(

Kathleen E. Woodiwiss: Opinion of Pride & Prejudice

I’m not comfortable with the prose, which means i prefer to watch/read adaptations. Most notably the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. 

Lynne Graham: Opinion of Harlequin Mills & Boon

Meh. 

Tessa Dare: Opinion of bodice rippers

I mean, I would be fine if there wasn’t so much of people causing their own problems by refusing to talk to each other. 

Sylvia Day: Opinion of Fabio

I did not even know he was a real person till like- recently.

Roni Loren: Opinion of male romance authors

Yes please. Particularly if they are writing under female pseudonyms. With this, we are getting the exact same thing that female authors did and have to go through- a forced perspective from people oft he other gender. That can only lead to more nuance and acceptance and I am all about that.  

Courtney Milan: All-time favourite romance novel & Jana Aston: Favourite contemporary romance & Judith McNaught: Favourite historical romance

Nope.

Alexa Riley: Physical or digital books?

Digital. I tend to make a lot of highlights and notes and that holds up much better with ebooks. 

E.L. James: Internal drama or external drama

Characters who are not getting together/along because they can’t communicate with each other are better off not being with each other in the first place. So if that’s what internal drama is then I prefer the external type. 

Sarah MacLean: Favourite heroine/s & Maya Rodale: Least favourite heroine/s & Penny Reid: Favourite hero/s & Megan Hart: Least favourite hero/s & Stephenie Meyer: Favourite and least favourite couple/s

I have types rather than specific examples. Most of it has already been detailed out in the tropes questions.

Beverly Jenkins: First romance novel you ever read

Almost Heaven, by Judith McNaught.

Sabrina Jeffries: How long have you been reading romance novels?

14 years or thereabouts.  

Loretta Chase: Last romance novel you read

A Duke in Disguise by Cat Sebastian. I’m currently reading An Unconditional Freedom (Alyussa Cole) and Earthrise (MCA Hogarth).

Christina Lauren: Do you need to start a series from the beginning, or can you just dive in anywhere?

Anywhere is fine.

Chuck Tingle: How strong does your HEA have to be?

Not much. See the HFN answer. 

Julia Quinn: Underrated author/s & Mary Balogh: Most overrated author/s & Violet Winspear: Most overrated book/s & Sara Craven: Most underrated book/s & Susan Elizabeth Phillips: Best romance by a debut author? & Madison Faye: Favourite romance by a non-romance author

Error Report: Cannot Compute, not enough data.

Nora Roberts: Least favourite hero and heroine archetypes

Eloisa James: What are you reading when you’re not reading romance?

Fantasy, Science Fiction, YA, Comics, Mysteries, Fanfiction, Nonfiction. I’ll read anything. 

Teresa Medeiros: Other media property you wish was a romance novel

Idk what this means?   

Laura Lee Guhrke: Last romance novel you DNFed

I think it was Elizabeth Kingston’s A Fallen Lady? Which was actually a GOOD book and I skipped ahead to scenes I really wanted to see and those scenes made me cry but also... there was not much about the romance itself that I was really interested in. I loved the heroine to death though. 

Cat Sebastian: Alpha, Gamma, or Beta heroes?

Depends on how they are written, but I confess an Alpha is so easily made into an irredeemable dipshit.  

Jeannie Lin: Ideal hero and heroine archetypes

Family-minded hero stressed out about taking care of his family. Independent, business minded heroine. 

Helen Hoang: Sexually experienced or inexperienced heroines? & Lucy Monroe: Sexually experienced or inexperienced heroes?

Experienced heroines and inexperienced heroes. Play against the type!

Lorraine Heath: When you choose a book do you look for tropes, plots or authors?

Authors, then Tropes. I barely pay attention to plots. 

C.D. Reiss: Puns in titles: 👍 or 👎?

YES. I have picked up books purely because of punny titles. 

Emily Bronte: Favourite cover designs/illustrations & Maya Banks: Least favourite cover design 

I suck a remembering covers so this question is going to get skipped~

Penny Jordan: What would you like to see more of in romance novels?

Diversity and cliche subversions. 

Lauren Blakey: What would you like to see less of in romance novels?

Overplayed cliches played in the same way again and again. Relationships based entirely on sex. 

Betty Neels: What do you think are the high and low points of the genre?

Highs: Romancelandia is probably the most intelligent and nuanced fandom I have ever been a part of and I have been a part of many fandoms. The genre is very, very diverse and there are so many experiments going on in the fringes. Questions and stories about the emotional components of relationships can never get old because there are too many permutations to explore in a few lifetimes.  

Lows: The core of the romance novel industry is still trying desperately to hold on to tropes and themes of older days, many of which are regressive. 

Jill Shalvis: Finish this sentence: “Romance novels are__________”

complex social commentaries. 

[bananas-about-anime]

10 Reasons fans of ‘Daria’ will love ‘The Disastrous Life of Saiki-K'

“The Disastrous Life of Saiki-K” is an original anime that will make you laugh until you cry. The protagonist ‘Saiki’ is a psychic unlike any other in appearance and abilities. His natural hair color is pink, wears green glasses, and has pink round antennas jammed into his head. Saiki’s psychic powers are so strong he could destroy the world with a thought. A rundown of his powers include telepathy, psycho-kinesis, x-ray vision, precognition, teleportation, clairvoyance, pyro-kinesis, and I’m sure there are more that we haven’t even gotten to. Now why would anyone think that Saiki-K is anything like Daria? The tones of the show are distinct. Daria was grounded in realism with comedic moments interspersed within the show. “The Disastrous Life of Saiki-K” is top-notch comedy with a supernatural spin. The two animations however share similar tropes, characters, and nuances that I couldn’t help but notice when binge-watching Saiki-K. Without further ado these are my top ten reasons for why Sakiki-K will appeal to Daria fans.

1)    Saiki and Daria’s dry wit are the blood and bones of both animations. Saiki and Daria deliver their lines in a deadpan and at times sarcastic voice. Their boredom with the world stems from their deep unhappiness with their role in life, even if they live vastly different lives. Saiki even says in the very first episode “I’m the unhappiest boy alive. A boy who has nothing”.  

2)    Social Norms are both topics that the shows discuss at length. While Daria shows apathy for many social conventions Saiki adheres to them so that his gifts won’t become public.

3)    Although Saiki-K’s comedic moments are more upbeat both animations contribution to comedy is novel.  Saiki-K’s episodes are broken up in five minute segments but its cotton-candy addictive.

4)    No matter how much Saiki-K and Daria try to live normal lives drama seems to find them. Navigating high school is a minefield and neither comes out unaffected.

5)    Saiki’s parents have a hot and cold relationship. Saiki’s mom ‘Kurumi’ throws a table at Saiki’s dad ‘Kuniharu’ and literally feeds him a shoe as dinner. Their bizarre antics are played for laughs. Daria’s parents also had a tumultuous relationship. Jack and Diana Out of the two couples I would say that Saiki’s parents are more lovey-dovey.

6)    The classic pretty girl archetype strikes in both animations. Quinn Morgendorffer is the original perfect pretty girl from ‘Daria’. ‘Saiki-K’ has their version of this archetype with Kokomi Tetorashi who describes herself as the most perfect pretty girl because she is pretty on the inside AND the outside. Her obsession with being perfectly pretty is like a disease. Quinn changes a lot throughout the shows run. Hopefully Saiki-K allows Tetorashi to have further character development since she reads as one-dimensional. Both girls bring all the milkshakes to the yard. Although Tetorashi seems to be more popular.  

7)    Charles Ruttheimer personifies the stereotype of a hormone addled teenager. On ‘Daria’ he was often seen lewdly flirting with girls and getting shot down. Reita Toritsuka is Saiki-K’s hot-blooded egregious flirt. They would have a better chance with girls if they weren’t such sleaze balls.

8)    The jock type role is also shown on ‘Saiki-K’s’ and ‘Daria’. Kevin Thompson is the super popular football player who also happens to be dumb as rocks on ‘Daria’. Riki Nendou from ‘Saiki-K’s’ is their athletic and also classically dumb jock. Both characters are oddly likable in their gullibility and cluelessness.

9)    Saiki often talks about wanting to be invisible, not unlike Daria. He wants to be invisible because he fears the scrutiny of his peers. He purposely works to not be bullied or become popular. Daria also navigates high school trying to fit between those two categories of (a) not being bullied and (b) rejecting popularity.

10) The idea of the ‘heterosexual life-partner’ is a major theme in ‘Saiki-K’ and ‘Daria’. In ‘Daria’ Jane and Daria’s relationship is one of the highlights, if not the most important relationship on the show and they both identify as heterosexual. In ‘Saiki-K’ Nendou calls Saiki his heterosexual life partner which Saiki denies, but it is obvious that Saiki cares for Nendou and their relationship is instrumental in helping Saiki get out of his shell.  

[tirkarokujo]

Was making a writeup about single player in fighting games for my twitter, but it got way too long, so now it’s a blog post. Incomprehensible armchair game design nonsense under the jump

Anyway heres my long tweet thread about fighting games, namely the single player portion, from a guy who wants to make one himself. If this was an actual article it'd probably be called "what fighting games can learn from Cuphead" so yknow thank christ this is just a tweet thread- oh fuck, what do you mean this is a tumblr post now? Well I’m still gonna spare you from that motherfucking storm so you better be thankful.

One issue thats plagued fighting games is how eternally niche the genre seems to be, even when they have occasional bursts into the AAA space , interest tends to wean until they just cruise along by enthusiast hype, never reaching the same level of interest of other "esports" games. This lack of ongoing interest persists for obvious reasons, namely that losing in a fighting game just feels bad. Compared to something like overwatch or mobas, you can't blame your failures on your team, nor can they carry you, yadda yadda, u heard this before 

To a newbie, jumping into fighting games feels impenetrable just because losing feels so bad. But guess what? You gotta get your butt kicked to improve, just like most things in life. Often its just incomprehensible why you're losing so much, and while the clear course of action is to go online for some hot tips, the path of least resistance that we’ve seen exhibited by most players is to just give up after playing a while. This is of course mainly a problem if the first thing you do is hop onto online matchmaking, which ideally you really shouldn't. But is there an alternative? Well, the first solution is to find local peeps to play with, but if that's not an option? Why of course, there's the great beast known as

~single player modes~

Yes, arcade mode, story mode, training mode, challenge modes, you name it, as fighting games have progressed, so too has the multitudes of single player content become more complex and fleshed out. Nowadays it’s basically vital that your game has ample single player content, SFV stumbled out the gate without it, so you need yo single player fix.This is basically the entire subject of this blog post, so it pains me to say they also suck ass. all of them, every last one of them, they all suck. there isn't a single good single player anything in any fighting game ever made, no not even that one, nor that one, sit yo ass down, they're all irredeemable garbage and here's why 

To use an example of the archetypical fighting game single player mode, I'll go over the story mode from Street Fighter V; Things uh kinda happen and you do a couple canned matches against the CPU. ok i wow i dont remember anything from that story mode at all, what the hell. Ok I think FANG does stuff and Rashid is there and then Karin gets way more screentime than anyone expected and Ryu is also there sometimes. Hey, what happened to that Necalli guy, wasn’t he supposed to be important? What happened to that. Wheres Necalli. Where...where did he go....

But anyway, for the gameplay portions, you go through a bunch of uneventful and really easy CPU matches that are just sorta thrown in there, you're guy A, there's guy B, go fuck em up not like they're gonna attack back its so easy even a 6 year old can do it. And hey don’t think your favorite game is off the hook either; There's the single player mode of DBZ too: Go across the map, level up your characters, and fight a bunch of really easy clones. Blazblue? Really complicated plots happen and you do uneventful battles to spice things up occasionally.

Most of these story modes, despite their differences, all mostly follow the model of "plot happens, play a round in the game against the CPU to unpause the plot." So what's wrong with this picture here? Well let's break it down from the beginning: 

Fighting games have complex core mechanics, this is undeniable, but they're also just like any other game. In something like a platformer, level design is key. Surely you've seen all of Miyamoto's insight into the thought that went into level 1-1 of super mario bros. So much thought and effort was put into such a simple level bc the levels in platformers are strictly designed to work within the confines of the games mechanics, and require their usage as necessary. An important part of this is teaching the player through the level design itself, slowly and naturally. When you first boot up SMB, level 1-1 just assumes you know fuckin nothing about video games and you suck at life and everything, so it teaches you the mechanics through the subtle nuances of the level, there's a goomba, you better jump over it, if you try to touch it, you die, but thats ok bc little progress is lost, lesson learned, oh man i bumped by head on a flashy block now theres a mushroom, should I touch it, better jump over it, oh shit i cant better brace for impact aaaa oh wait i just grew bigger instead, mushroom good, etc etc 

My point is, the level is designed around teaching you the very basic mechanics without needing to bring up the manual or read a text box. This is generally considered fun to play. The game mechanics and the level designs love eachother and are in a healthy relationship

fighting game story modes on the other hand, do not like the fact that they're attached to a fighting game. They're the ritzy theatre kid while the mechanics is a guy who replaces a good shower with a can of body spray and wears 2 sets of sunglasses and skateboards everywhere. In my life I have never seen a fighting game story mode, or even arcade mode for that matter, that felt like it was actually meant for the game it was attached to. I mean sure, you get to play against the CPU on occasion, but so what? You're not gonna learn terribly much besides getting the basest feel for your character via peeking at the command list and finding what various ways u can dunk on the CPU that wouldn't work against a human to any capacity. The game doesn't teach you the mechanics, but thats ok bc u dont really need to learn them. They’re just kinda there. The single player is toothless and generally works independent from whatever game its a part of. They don't take advantage or do cool things with the games unique mechanics or moves, you're just left in a room to beat up a CPU for a while until the silly plot trucks on. (Guilty Gear in particular seemed to have realized this and just skipped the middleman by making the story modes just straight up movies with no gameplay at all, not that I can blame em.)

So yea the story modes suck ass, but hey, that’s not all! What about stuff like training modes and challenge/tutorial modes, this is where it's at! At thats, true, it’s usually in supplementary tutorials where the mechanics actually get to shine, so already it has that over the story mode. And yknow what, I get it. This is where most of the innovation tends to happen. With every new fighting game I always see some new bragging point about how incredible the QoL improvements are. Wow! the new UNIEL lets you record savestates in training! Wow the new GG has matchup data! Wow Skullgirls goes over high level concepts overlooked in other tutorials! It seems like every week there’s a new anime fighter that breaks new ground in terms of how helpful and advanced the tutorials are, and how they teach you the ropes in a controlled environment and everything. This is where the magic happens. This is where you learn practical setups and combos and situations and shit. And yknow what? All these new innovations are mindbogglingly good and impressive. So what's the problem here? Well it's all handicapped by a minor drawback...

it’s uh....well it’s all kinda boring, really. Also you can breathe easy now, this is the part where this post stops being a copypasted tweet thread, so maybe it’ll read a lil better.

But yea, main problem, all that stuff about super advanced tutorials, it’s just...it’s not very fun to play. Or really, it’d be more apt to say that they’re not -as- fun to play as they could be, and it doesn’t have to be that way. Because as they stand currently, all those tutorials on footsies and wakeups and combos and setups and mixups, no matter how basic and dead simple you make it, it’s not gonna change the fact that it’s not gonna hold the casual player’s attention for long. It doesn’t matter how much you dumb down the game or introduce comeback mechanics or what have you, it all doesn’t matter unless the player is continuously playing your content without it feeling too much like busywork. So what’s the solution here? Well, it’s gonna require taking inspiration from other games instead of other fighting games, for one. Speaking of other, non-fighting games, hey, I hear Cuphead is pretty cool! *Children cheering in the distance*

Cuphead is a run n gun shooting them all up game from last year and one of my personal favorite games of 2017. And yea sure, it’s nowhere close to the first game of its kind, but it does display something, and that’s HUGE breakout mainstream popularity, despite its foreboding difficulty. Most of this can be attributed to the impressive art style of course, but it wouldn’t have endured had the core gameplay loop not been up to snuff, which of course it is, or else I wouldn’t be talking about it here.

The reason I bring up Cuphead in my blog post about fighting games should be clear; Despite the entirely different genre, I’d argue it still bears much in common with fighting games, namely what the single player portion could be in a perfect world. While the gameplay loop in Cuphead and tutorial/challenge modes in fighting games follow the same mechanical loop, which can be grossly simplified to “throwing yourself at the wall repeatedly until you can climb”, in Cuphead this rarely gets boring and tedious, while hassling with fighting game challenges feels like pure busywork. While that seems anecdotal, I can 100% bet you that there’s more people who played Cuphead to completion than people who got even kinda decent at your favorite fighting game...well, accounting for ratios and all that.

So what’s the big difference? Well sure, you can say that Cuphead has the advantage of much simpler mechanics, but I think the real key to success is just simple presentation. When you get down to brass tacks, the weird and wacky bosses you face in Cuphead aren’t much more than patterns to learn and habits to form, not unlike any other fighting game tutorial. Just like a fighting game tut or combo challenge, you’re probably gonna fail and restart like 50 times until you get it right, and then you move onto harder challenges. By the end of the game, I became so good at parrying that the game felt it necessary to have a boss pattern that does little else but fill the screen with parry-able attacks, which I easily overcame like it was second nature. So what makes Cuphead so consistently fun and replayable while doing challenges in the lab has more, uh....niche appeal?

It’s all context, really. Sure, it seems superficial, but its just objective fact that fighting a dragon with its own health bar and everything that wants to kill you dead with its fire breath is gonna be more fun than beating on the same helpless CPU 50 times until you beat on them in this exact specific way. Just imagine if Cuphead worked the way fighting games did- There’s no big funny bosses to kick your ass, it’s just a series of separate execution challenges you pull off over and over again to a Mugman with infinite health, and the win condition is to pull off the required series of jumps and shots a boss fight would normally require of you. Doesn’t sound too fun, does it?

In essence, what I propose here is just slapping some story context and maybe a health bar onto what a normal fighting game would consider a “tutorial” or a “challenge.” Yeah, it’s superficial, but so what? It’s a god damned video game, giving some emotional attachment to practical concepts should be key here. 

Right now you probably notice my observations on “Story modes” and “Challenge/Tutorial modes” are two gigantic puzzle pieces that fit suspiciously well together, and that should be obvious; Take the meaningless fluff of story mode and the oppressive academia of the more practical modes, hold em up real close like and tell em

This is what I’d like to call the “fruits and veggie shake” approach to game design. For most fighting games, you have a direct segregation between these fruits and veggies, like to the point where they’re not even in the kitchen, the fruits are in the living room and the veggies are in the attic of the next house. So statistically while plenty of the playerbase will eat up those sugary fruits, they’re probably gonna ignore the veggies, which is a crying shame bc they’re good for you and will keep you healthy in the long run. Fruits are stuff like story modes, arcade mode, tekken ball, all that stuff, while the veggies are all the more practical shits that all the anime and indie fighters like to brag about.  And if you’ve ever made a veggie shake, you would know that the fruit flavor always overpowers the vegetables. The kids don’t even know they eatin they greens, it all just tastes like fruit!

This is a groundbreaking approach to game design as exhibited by a select few classics such as DAMN NEAR EVERY OTHER GAME GENRE EVER MADE which is a winning formula bc its fun, and fun things are fun, why do I even need to explain this? Getting at least moderately good at a fighting game shouldn’t feel like an academic course, it should at least be tricking my dumb as shit lizard brain into putting all that time into learning it so I can wipe the dumb grin off that Boss That Teaches You About Footsies’ face.

The only game I recall that came the absolute closest to this is, weirdly enough, the tutorials for the Darkstalkers Resurrection HD re-releases that came out a long time ago. It was an extremely minor touch, but every one of the character tutorials sorta contextualized the challenges you were about to take with a threadbare story, mostly having to do with a suspiciously similar recolor of your chosen character talking to you about needing to practice or whatnot. It only amounts to a few lines of dialogue in a text box, but it went a long way into giving me enough of an emotional connection that led me to 100% all of the tutorials, which is a lot more I can say for damn near every other fighting game trial mode. These trials weren’t easy either!

People also like to bring up the tutorial in Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator, which had you going through a very gamey representation of the core mechanics framed in the context of Sol Badguy vs Jack-O’s wacky cast of minions, which yknow, is a good step in the right direction. But I think we can go further.

For a basic setup here, let’s assume there’s a character in our hypothetical Good Fighting Game that has a crouching fierce that takes the form of a sweep, which in turns also chains into a standing fierce. Not much combo potential, but it allows you to recover faster so you can set up additional offense. The opponent will have to block low to guard, and the additional fierce will keep the chain safe on block. So sure, you could include that in a combo challenge, but we can also spice it up a bit for increased engagement:

So in this situation, let’s have a boss character that encompasses many of the core concepts inherent to a certain characters fundementals; For some convoluted reason, his brand of martial arts makes it so he’s invincible from all forms of attack besides down below, and if he does guard down there, he’ll immediately do a short ranged counter-attack unless you do the follow up standing fierce. After doing that enough times, Boss McAsshole will catch onto what you’re doing and adjust his strategy by acting defensively and crouching down. Thankfully, our character here can perform a very fast and near instant airdash much lower than other characters can; You can take full advantage of this and drain the Boss’ health quicker by doing this special airdash and attacking with an aerial fierce on the way in, which acts as an overhead, and finishing with a knockdown combo.

And yeah, this boss is rough and tough, but you’re at least slightly more likely to take up his challenges so long as you get the satisfaction of slapping that dude in the balls to his doom. It’s more satisfying to finally defeat that swamp-assed dragon in Dark Souls IIII than it is to just do the required canned inputs that would result in defeated said dragon but removed from its context. All it really takes is putting the flimsiest bit of context or story or whatever to what you already have in the trial modes, just reworked to be a bit more gamey. Take that GGXrd Rev tutorial and attach it to something with an actual health bar or something, or lock entire story content behind a combo trial contextualized as a dance recital or something. Imagine unlocking a new character, and the first thing it does is put you through a story sequence where they need to overcome a stage or enemy that requires using their specific tools in practical ways, so you have a good feel for the character if u ever feel like picking them up. Yeah fighting game mechanics are more complex than other games, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take those lessons from simpler games and apply it here. Your average Normie McBoremie is perfectly willing to get they ass whipped dozens of times over for the sake of seeing the next boss or lines of dialogue, people don’t dislike hard games, they just don’t like BORING ones. So stop being boring! FUN THINGS ARE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN

anyway, while this wouldn’t entirely solve the issue of newbies getting discouraged from getting bootybumped online, it would at least give them better frame of reference as to what needs improving when the supplementary content designed specifically to go over the core fundementals they need to improve on are at least mixed together with the mild amusement of the antics of your fighting game’s canonical universe, or I don’t know, SOMETHING. I dunno. Anyway don’t read this bc I plan on this being the main philosophical backbone for my own fighting game, which will take the entire world by storm and yours wont, so HAH.