#i liked everything except the plot i think

[andi-rigby]

PLEASE COVER RED WHITE AND ROYAL BLUE. I cannot stress enough how much people who have read and loved-- or even sort of enjoyed-- RWRB need to avoid that movie like the goddamn plague.

Don't watch the movie.

Don't even look it up. It's on Amazon Prime Video and is an Amazon Original. Don't look it up. Don't watch it. It's not fucking worth it.

For those of you who haven't read it, Red White and Royal Blue is a really cute MLM story about the son of a girlboss lady US president and the second son of the king of England. If you like MLM romance, it's a really good one. MLM rivals to lovers. Accidents and shenanigans. Bisexual awakening. It's GOOD SHIT. It's really really good. The audiobook is well done, too.

If you loved Red White and Royal Blue, I implore you to buy another copy of the book, or borrow it from your local library a few times, or buy the audiobook... because the movie horrifically misrepresented the entire core theme of the story.

The moral of the book is: it's okay not to come out until you're ready, even if "when you're ready" is "never". This is, ostensibly, also the moral of the movie, except that the movie completely fucks it up and the result is that the moral of the movie is it's okay to out your partner if you think they can handle it. I'll have to spoil some huge plot points so the rest of this rant is going under the cut.

In both versions of the story, Prince Henry is gay and still in the closet because he's, you know, the prince of England. He's not ready to come out. He and Alex have many, many discussions in which Henry explicitly says "I don't know if I'll ever be ready" and Alex tells him "it's okay, I won't say anything, it's okay if you're not ready now or ever". This is a CORE FEATURE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP.

After their private correspondence is leaked to the public, Henry and Alex are immediately banned from communicating with each other. They get their phones, laptops, tablets-- everything is taken away and they're not allowed to speak to anyone digitally but most importantly they can't talk to each other. The only news they have of each other is third hand through their PR people, while said PR people are trying to decide how best to go about managing the "scandal" (the boys wrote some unequivocally, unambigously gay shit to each other, and Henry's sexuality is still very much a secret even from his family).

This is where the two stories diverge.

In the books, Alex convinces his PR people to fly him overseas to see Henry in person. He shows up and has to practically swordfight the butler to let him see Henry (who's like, depressed in bed and shit, understandably). They get some time to talk alone together about the whole email leak and everything, and Henry tells Alex "I don't want to hide any more. I'm ready." Alex then makes like ABSOLUTELY sure Henry's ABSOLUTELY sure about this (it isn't exactly something you can put back in the box once it's out).

Alex gets immediately whisked back to the US--seriously they had like half an hour together but the important part is that they did in fact talk to each other--because he has to give a speech at a rally, like, the next day. During this speech--and with Henry's express permission that he got when they talked in person--Alex states that none of it is fake, it's all real, and yes they're in a relationship, etc. He then goes on to do a heartwarming little spiel about how if Henry had not been ready to reveal this part of himself, this speech would be very different, etc.

This is not how the movie goes.

In the movie, Henry and Alex are not permitted to talk to each other after the email leak, AND Alex doesn't fly overseas prior to his speech.

In the movie, Alex outs Henry during his speech without ever having the chance to speak to him and confirm that Henry is ready or that this is okay with Henry.

They don't even do any kind of third hand PR middleman note passing. There is no conversation between Henry and Alex. For all Alex knows in the movie, Henry still isn't ready to come out when he gives the speech that outs Henry.

And then

AND THEN

After the speech, Alex is allowed to see Henry and the movie NEVER ADDRESSES THE FACT THAT ALEX LITERALLY OUTED HENRY WITHOUT EVER TALKING TO HIM.

So anyway. Don't watch the movie. I watched it and I loved it until I realized what had happened and then I went back and left a SCATHING one star review that I am pretty sure got content moderated and never posted, so any time anyone brings up the book or the movie I go on a fucking rant because of how fucking horribly executed the fucking movie was.

Books by Queer Authors that Have Been Adapted for the Screen

Happy Pride Month! 🌈

This is an incomplete and ever growing list. Which book-movie pairing should we cover on the podcast?

[rocketbirdie]

it looks and sounds just like you, but,

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[kit-screams-into-the-future]

another post for @bttfjanaury! this one's @itsthemorph's mermarty au and very predictably i got carried away with it LMAO.

yap session and bonus stuff below the cut:

once again i came up with an entire backstory for this au, and if i were a fanfiction writer i would genuinely consider writing it since it's a lot less visually comedic than the weredoc au (and comedic in general, it's played a little straighter than "man turns into dog and is thoroughly inconvenienced by it") (unfortunate [in reference to visuals] bc i enjoy drawing mermarty a great deal more than weredoc GBJKGJ) bc i really like the premise but i'm pretty bad at fleshing out a narrative in enough detail to last the whole story so bullet points it is:

doc has decided to take a break from his time-travel-related research and go on vacation! the fresh coastal air might jostle a couple ideas into place, and while he is a nuclear physicist and not a marine biologist he wouldn't mind checking out some of the local aquatic life

and by local aquatic life he meant like normal fish and stuff. a nice mollusk or two even. so when he ends up fishing an entire boy out of the water instead he's understandably very shocked

before doc can move past the "where did he come from??" thought to register his more fish-like qualities, the boy makes a run (a swim?) for it. fortunately or unfortunately for doc, he ends up being able to register the fish-like qualities after all since he gets dragged into the water along with him. the moment doesn't last too long, though, and the fish-boy is gone as soon as doc realizes the guy has a fish tail instead of legs

doc gets back on the dock (haha), thinks about the whole ordeal for a bit, and decides that the best course of action is just to assume he hallucinated the whole thing in a fit of heatstroke or something like that. he's here to relax and get his thoughts in order so he can continue working on his time machine! there's no time to investigate fairy-tale creatures or whatever supposedly living off the coast of california!

it's not shown in the comic but i imagine doc has a little portable radio next to him as he was fishing, so some time passes before he catches a glimpse of something shining in the water underneath the dock

he looks through the cracks in the dock and lo and behold, it's the same boy from earlier! doc greets him, and the boy immediately disappears under the water. doc thinks he's scared him off until a few minutes later where he pokes his head out and says hi back

they get to chatting and doc learns a couple things:

1. his name is marty!

2. he was trying to get doc to realize that he forgot to put bait on his hook but got his hand caught on it, and was trying to get his hand unstuck from the hook without ripping it open before doc ever had the chance to see him, which he obviously failed at

3. both the being seen and ripping his hand open, because in his haste to get away after being seen by doc he ended up doing that anyways. so there's like a lot of blood coming out of his hand now? but like don't worry about it. it'll be fine. he thinks.

4. he really likes whatever it is that's playing on the radio

doc insists on patching up his hand and initially marty refuses but lets him do it eventually, and marty tells doc that for a land dweller he's actually surprisingly nice. doc says nah anyone would want to help out someone hurt, especially if they're the one's who caused it. and marty's kind of confused by that because his family's always warned him of how dangerous humans are, which he kind of never thought too hard about until now where his time off this particular coast has really proven them correct, because he's encountered a bunch of humans over the past couple weeks and they've all tried to kill him or catch him. doc's the only one who's actually bothered to say hi!

after learning that particular not-at-all-concerning tidbit, doc asks him to elaborate because there's a lot to unpack over there, but someone else walks onto the dock before marty can get a word in and he takes off

marty does not return, even once the other guy leaves, and when doc packs it up to return to the place he rented out for the vacation he overhears a conversation among a group of men about spotting something weird in the water earlier and that it kind of looked like a mermaid? and that if any of them manage to catch it they'll all be rich as thieves. and another guy in the convo goes no you're thinking of rich as kings, you're mixing it up with a different analogy. and the first guy goes no i'm not i said what i said

so now this vacation is doing anything but clearing doc's mind. he's really worried about that little fish guy

there's a couple more ideas i had but halfway through writing out this bullet list i've realized that if i were to actually write this as a fanfiction, i'd probably want to keep those a surprise. so what i just wrote out is kind of the equivalent of one chapter

edit after thinking about it a bit more: since most humans have been trying to kill him, marty really has no incentive to let a guy know that he's wasting his time fishing with a baitless hook. so a. he's still pretty optimistic that most humans aren't out to get him, even if his experience off this particular coast says otherwise, so he was trying to be nice anyway or b. (which i think is a lot funnier) he has started to pull on people's lines as a way to fuck with them. i think if i wrote this i'd change it to this one

i based mermarty off of a guppy fish! specifically this kind of guppy fish:

i was searching up kinds of fish and he just had the vibe of this thing. although now i think i should've made him a flying fish instead. for the pun

alternate ending to the mini comic:

the other one makes a little more sense since just approaching a guy whose species doesn't know about your existence unprompted is pretty stupid even for marty (and also i thought it was funny that the hook didn't have anything but doc ends up catching something anyways) but i still think this one's funny too

[morninkim]

As a show of good faith toward the remaining Decepticons at the beginning of a new, united Cybertron, newly appointed Senators Bumblebee and Soundwave allowed Shatter and Dropkick to enlist into Autobot City's Defense Team.

These two turned out to be... not the best choices.

The city may have fallen to Insurgent Decepticon occupation had it not been for young recruits Hot Rod and Arcee's accidental interception of Shatter's communication with the fugitive Starscream.

To replace the errant Defense Team members, Springer and Blurr were reassigned from Iacon to Autobot City in their stead.

[s0fter-sin]

it’s wild that raphael never found out that the “prophet” he was protecting was actually god. like he was the highest ranking angel that was in favour of destroying humanity, he’s the one who was certain god was dead bc why else would he have abandoned them, and after michael and lucifer are trapped in the cage, it’s raphael who leads the civil war to try and restart the apocalypse

he is the most outwardly hurt, the most humanly hurt, by god’s abandonment despite seemingly having the least connection with him - and his creation - of all the archangels. yet it’s raphael god either assigns to himself as his protector, his one son who he would conceivably interact with again, or it’s some divine irony that raphael, the one who feels god’s abandonment the most, was actually within reach the entire time and chuck never cared enough to tell him

[king-spite]

i know the red queen tv show is now less likely to happen than katy perry going to space BUT if it DOES happen i think they should pull a rhaenicent and make elara and coriane have a failed tragic homoerotic friendship before becoming "rivals". nevermind what actually happens in the books. i think that would save me actually

[phoenix-art-official]

dont ask me why i made this, its all my hand felt like producing

[longagoitwastuesday]

I am liking Jujutsu Kaisen, way more than I imagined I would, but I foresee it will let me down and it's keeping me from enjoying this as much as I could haha

I think the characters and dynamics are well set, and I think many of them have an incredibly good and deep potential, but I would be willing to bet they'll not get a proper development, enough for them to really hit. A well assembled set of gears is not enough to make the movement go, you have to wind the clockwork.

I think Gojo and Megumi have a fascinating and very complex dynamic, but I doubt it will be given the time and care that imo it needs to actually work. And it is going well enough for now! One could see the intimacy between them was deeper than the one Gojo had with, say, Yuji and Nobara ever since the very first few episodes despite the fact Fushiguro too was a first year. But the pieces forming what they have are extremely complex, and it just wouldn't be realistic if it doesn't show, even if in a not showing way, or if it doesn't have consequences or implications.

It's one of those dynamics that shape one's life, the way one regards the world, the way one establishes or not relationships with other people. It's one of those dynamics that could be full of fondness, gratitude, resentment, admiration, trust, and that imply intimacy, the good kind or the bad, even if in just the knowledge of someone who's been a constant through your life. It could, and would, imply a myriad of feelings, and probably in such a mix it could imply contradictory feelings too. Even the nothingness would weight, even the nothingness would be significant and meaningful.

Gojo took Megumi and his sister under his wing, the son of a man who murdered him, because of both selfish and selfless reasons. Megumi looks like Toji. What does Gojo feel about this? How does Gojo deal with this? How does Gojo go about taking care of Megumi? Would he walk him to school? Make him breakfast? Celebrate his birthdays making him blow candles? Did he take him to the zoo? Does the relationship between them feel professional or is it something more? Gojo appreciates his students, but is Megumi to him just another student? When Gojo faces Sukuna in Megumi's body, did he see the kid he raised, or does he just see Sukuna in one of his students' body? Did he have one faint wavering instant? And how does Megumi feel about this? Is he resentful of him? Resentful of the situation? Of the selfishness behind his actions? Does he feel like a pawn? Is he grateful? Does he resent feeling grateful? Would he rather not? Does he love Gojo? Does he feel nothing about him other than what he could feel about a teacher that sort of annoys him but knows he's reliable in his strength? Does he think it unfair, cruel or unfeeling that Gojo is close, closer perhaps, with Yuuji or Yuta, considering their story? When Sukuna slices Gojo in two, does the remnants of Megumi's soul tremble?

And not just Megumi and Gojo. Yuuji and Nanami, Gojo and Nanami, Yuuji and Fushiguro, Nobara and the boys, or Nobara and Maki, Todo and Yuuji or Yuta, Gojo and Yuta, Megumi and his sister. Gojo and Geto, even! If the pieces are well set, the dynamics are intriguing, interesting, and have potential to be deep, but then the characters have like two plot relevant scenes that punch you hard, but little more, it's not nearly enough. Especially not nearly enough for the enormity that is shonen dynamics and situations. And the potential existing at all, and then not delivering, makes it all the more frustrating when you're left with something mediocre that could have been so good.

The development of dynamics through not only a few plot relevant gut wrenching moving scenes, but also the smallness of life, is important. The friend who recommended this to me said that those things were just unnecessary filler, but I disagree. I think there's a big difference between a large amount of anime-only filler episodes whose existence is based on the fact they had run out of manga chapters to animate, and moments of quietness. The low stakes character-driven moments of quietness can be so telling and so insightful, and they are so satisfactory when brought back later in higher stakes situations. My friend teased me there was no scene of Gojo making breakfast to Megumi, that it would be an idiotic idea, but it would be so telling. How he makes breakfast, what they eat, if he tries hard or if it's all mechanised, if they have personal bowls or if they use whatever, if he just buys them some pastry on the way to school, if the way they have breakfast changes through the years, or if he doesn't make them breakfast at all! All that would be very insightful on their dynamic and its evolution. All that would give a glimpse on how they regard each other and why, even in the present. All that could become meaningful in tense situations and high stakes scenes.

These moments also let the plot breath; if a lot is happening all the time, if every character is always experiencing trauma after trauma, the entire story is so emotionally draining that at some point you don't even care all that much. Besides, these nothing moments or low stakes plot arcs, besides deepening and developing dynamics, also let some in-world time pass, which would make the intimacy and bond between characters more believable imo; between Yuuji eating Sukuna's finger and their last confrontation in December how much time has passed? A few months? Am I truly to believe these characters are so everything to each other in only a few months?

Without some smallness, some repetition, some daily life, some low stakes not plot-centric development, the dynamics don't hit, they don't truly feel fleshed out, and dynamics as complex as the ones Megumi and Gojo have, or as supposedly meaningful as the one Megumi has with Yuuji or his sister, should be fleshed out if they're going to exist at all. Otherwise they'd risk making the writing feel awkward and fake. Besides, if the dynamics felt well fleshed out and realistic, they would shape the way the characters interact and act, and how they deal with situations, thus being plot relevant.

The shonen genre has so much happening all the time, the stakes are so high, the dynamics are so rooted in big events and the relationships carry enormous weight and implications. Yet they barely get developed, and it feels so stupid, so plain, the absence of something so important noticeable like a constant void, a shapeless nothingness present in every scene. It makes the characters feel like cardboard figures. Jujutsu Kaisen is already getting a better job than many, but I doubt it will do enough for what I've heard, and I fear I am bound to feel let down, and bound to feel unmoved.

After all, if not enough time and care has been given to develop a dynamic, I am not going to feel pressured by the high stakes; if not enough time and care has been given to develop the dynamic between Megumi and Yuuji, as good potential as it has I am bound to feel little for this last confrontation between Sukuna and Itadori, and his effort in getting Megumi back.

[ljesaw]

it’s with depression that i fear i have to say, i think for a long time (too long really), zuko doesn’t reach out to his uncle during his retirement in ba sing se, not even for the much needed guidance he could use, because he considers it part of the exhaustive list of reparations the fire nation (and he himself) owes

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 4 :)

[itstimeforstarwars]

I feel like I've been seeing a lot more time loop posts lately but tbh I don't really mind. You know what they say about time loops and all...

[8cfc00]

augh who up feeling like they should be humanely euthanised for liking media the wrong way... sorry for fandomising certain characters but not fandomising others enough in the right way.

[mishkakagehishka]

stares at you. korka you like kny......?

I loooove kny so much i livetweeted about the final arc as it was going bc i got into it like just after s1 aired. I just never posted ab it bc i watched everything until infinity train, and then nothing bc i tend to lose interest for things if i have to wait too long for them. I restarted with it bc i suggested my bf to watch it with me, and he likes it so it was like "well might as well watch everything that came out til now" so now i've got someone to make sure i watch the final arc's adaptation when it comes out too🫡

But yeag. Kny. ♡ i actually really enjoyed it and the epilogue was very sweet. Cried too many times. Shed a tear again for Zenitsu a moment ago too.

[atlantis-just-drowned]

You know the movie is bad when it's supposed to be set in the early XXth century and they put pop-rock music at the gala

[villruu]

ohh what's your marble hornets sea au?

Im procastinating on studying so i'll take this as an opportunity to ramble lmao it's vaguely set in the age of sail but with a few tweaks and so.

My marble hornets sea au (name pending kekw) it's a psychological horror au focused on the isolation and paranoia that ravages a small ship (The Hornet probably lmao, I am NOT that original) after it's left stranded on the sea.

With the captain and most of the more experienced workers dead, Brian, Alex, Jay, Tim, Seth and Sarah are left adrift on the ocean for almost 5 months. The ship is eventually found by a whaling ship, however, only Jay is found aboard. passed out and hid beneath the deck between the empty wooden boxes that once held the cargo.

The only thing Jay is left with is the memories of the night before the incident that left most of the crew dead, a week of the isolation the new crew was left in and the incoherent ramblings of the logbook of the ship.

He remakes his life back on land, having gotten an intense fear of the sea for reasons he can't recall, and becomes a small journalist for a local paper in a whaling town. However, after 3 years and increasing curiosity, Jay decides to try and find out what happened to the ship, for both himself and in honor of the few memories he has of his friends.

However, as Jay starts joining different ships in search of the truth, following an old letter that claims to have been sent by his old friend Alex, he begins to feel increased paranoia and fear as each ship he joins has a tragedy happen upon it.

It's almost like he is being hunted by something...