#i just very rarely am interested in romantic subplots in media

[plusultraetc]

whats your fav flavor of erasermic … there are honestly so many options. friends to lovers … highschool sweethearts … enemies to friends to lovers …. then u throw shirakumo in and it can be a million times angstier or a million times sillier … smth abt aizawa disappearing for years to be an underground hero and mic pursuing fame (early morning radio host😭😭😭) u have it all … idk why i even asked what ur fav is when i dont know My fav. nine lives erasermic is probably up there though bc of how goofy they are. everything but married emic … wow …

ANY FLAVOR BESTIE I AM SO SERIOUS. married for ten years. pining for fifteen. friends to lovers. ENEMIES to lovers (I've had a villain Mic/vigilante Aizawa (+pro hero Shirakumo!!) AU percolating for literal months that I can't wait to share). they are THE most versatile ship on the planet. the angst. the silly. the LAYERS. (basically I feel this post kind of ways about them <3)

I'm not much of a shipping person in general but every once in a blue moon a ship will come along and bonk me over the head with the brainrot mallet and erasermic is one of those ships. when I DO do the shipping thing, I've always had a soft spot for friends to lovers and oblivious/mutual pining, so that's probably why I love canon compliant erasermic fics so so much. Nine Lives (by machiroads, for anyone who has not read it, in which case I cannot recommend it enough) will always be The Erasermic Fic to me. It's canon idc. but!!! there is room in my heart for so much erasermic. I will never run out of space for them. most long-winded way of saying any flavor but I mean it when I say I enjoy pretty much every iteration of this ship.

thank you sm for the message!! feel free to yell about Them w me literally any time!!

[besttropeveershowdown]

The Most Annoying Trope Showdown: Quarterfinals, Poll 4

Found Family Breakup

When you have the found family, but then at the end of the story they all just leave and go start nuclear families with random love interests and live in different places and rarely talk to each other, or otherwise seem to completely lose the found family closeness they had during the story

Propaganda:

It’s literally getting rid of the found family, taking away the best trope ever

Pair the Spares

Every or nearly every character who did not get together with someone during the story is paired off in the epilogue or very end. The characters are often shown having kids together as well

Propaganda:

This may just be my aromanticism talking, but it's annoying seeing everyone getting shoved into a relationship at the last minute. It doesn't even make sense most of the time. Let! People! Be! Happy! Single!

I am aroace and I hate this. just let them be happy on their own, don't just pair up characters for the sake of pairing them up, even if they have zero chemistry. this happens so often in all kinds of media, and fandom is also guilty of this. not everyone needs a partner! leave them alone!

I love romantic subplots but this is just amatonormative bullshit. It has all of the "romantic partner=happy ending" bullshit that fucks people up in real life, with none of the fluttery crush feelings or the angsty decisions. It doesn't add anything to the character arcs and is only detrimental to the themes of a work as a whole. It can cast a shadow over other romantic subplots in the series I might have enjoyed up until this point, because I start to wonder if those romances were really about the character/themes/plot, or if the writers simply think "leading lady goes with leading man, sidekick with sidekick, etc. etc."

It's fucking stupid. A lot of the characters that end up together either barely interact, make no sense or both. It also implies the only happy ending requires love and marriage. It makes no sense for some of the characters to want to settle down and have kids even if they are with someone they love.

[ghost-shipping]

By the way, did you know that Tim Burton himself and the creators are also the shippers of Beetlejuice and Lydia? Those who worked on the animated series drew porn with them. If you're interested, you can ask Ray (xxx-theartofsucide-xxx) or other BeetleBabes.

So this actually doesn’t surprise me for two reasons

1. Burton, for all of his incredibly apparent flaws as an irl person, valued making/overseeing art with dark themes featuring bizarre romances up until the mid 00′s when it was pretty rare in mainstream media everywhere else and not only is this artistically valuable but I think it’s a defining trait of his strongest works. Both questionable age gaps and living/non living pairings are a common thing in stuff he had a hand in making. In Edward Scissorhands the girl is unquestionably pretty young and is in a romantic subplot with a weird much older? (albiet living) artificial man. Corpse Bride has yet another necrophilic wedding story where the feelings aren’t requited and the living persons age is ambiguous (but this seems to not get as much flack from shippers because the pushy dead one in this scenaro is a woman...) The closest thing to vanilla Burton properties get is Jack/Sally, where one of them is at the very least portrayed as being much younger and very sheltered. Cartoon creators running with this is like super smart because it’s just one of the foundational things that makes a lot of these works stand out even if it had to be toned down for younger audiences.

2. Beetlejuice kinda fucking sucks and is a creep? He like immediately gropes at Barbara and peeks under her skirt when he meets her. He is, in canon, abated temporarily by a brothel being placed near him and I can guarantee you he isn’t the kind of guy to hold a normal level of respect and patronage to sex workers. One of his most solid character traits in the film is that he is a horndog with little moral backbone. Why would he care if Lydia is of the local age of consent????

Disclaimer/Update: uhhh xxx-theartofsucide-xxx is actually maybe a wee bit racist and has branded herself as an anti sjw in the past. I love this ship obvs but try to be careful who you follow if you are new to the community like I am!

[aquaburst3]

Well, NaNoWriMo is coming up soon, so I want to write my two cents on something writing related. So...My thoughts on the whole sUbVeRtInG eXpEcTaTiOnS writing trend. 

Honestly, I don’t like the sUbVeRtInG eXpEcTaTiOnS for reasons I’ll get into in a bit. However, to me, there’s a difference between Subverting Reader Expectations and sUbVeRtInG eXpEcTaTiOnS. 

To simply put, sUbVeRtInG eXpEcTaTiOnS is throwing inexplicable plot twists at the audience just for the sheer shock factor. These often hinge on incosient in-universe logic and characters acting OOC to make the twist happen, but not always. These make me and many others groan, because they make little sense and come straight the hell out of nowhere without any foreshadowing or buildup. 

Case in point, Game of Thrones. The show started off strong. Soon as the show ran out of source material, it started to go off the rails. The worst offender is the last couple seasons. Dany becoming the “Mad Queen” in the matter of a couple episodes is super rushed and makes no sense. All of the Starks are isolated from each other, despite them wanting to be closer together. Bram became king because...potato. None of these things are alluded to or make any logical sense for these characters. They are just tossed in for the shock factor.

Subverting Expectations is averting stale cliches in an emotionally rewarding manner. Sure, cliches exist for a reason, but there are still many instances where actively avoiding a cliche plotline is a great choice and can make a story more interesting. 

An example I can think of on the top of my head is if a show with a male protagonist had the female lead get together with a reformed villain or antihero. This would be an interesting flip on the trite “hero gets the girl” script.

Look, sometimes the the whole “hero gets the girl thing” is done well and is pretty satisfying. Other times, the heroine involved is reduced to the hero’s prize for male wish fulfillment. Either way, it’s often the roll that the main female character gets, especially in stories with male leads. Villains don’t usually get the girl.  Even redeemed villains rarely end up in  healthy, well-written relationships and live to tell the tale in media. (The only one that I can think of on the top of my head is Vegeta.) 

Flipping the script on that could make things a lot more interesting. For one, by its very nature, the story would have to develop the villain and heroine to a degree where a romance between them would be believable. The heroine and villain would also get a lot of great interactions with each other and apart.  A subplot where a reformed villain gets the girl would prove that none of us are beyond saving. That people who make bad choices can still change into better people. You can break free of your toxic environment and find a supportive group of friends. That romance isn’t a reward for young men for being a good person. That heroines have options. 

Don’t mince my words. I’m not saying every story should “Subvert Expectations” and cancel its romantic subplot between the hero and heroine, of course not. I like some romances that fall under that trope like Izuocha, Ed/Winry and Saber/Shirou to name a few. If done poorly, a villain getting the girl could come off as “she can change him” bs. But I am saying that it would be pretty refreshing to see something else for once if its done correctly.

This is only one such example. There are plenty of other stale cliches that can be subverted to make a more interesting product. The whole “Strong Man/Muscle” position on the “Five Man Band” structure? Make them a little girl. The whole “Token Girl”, who is a pacifist in a team structure? Make them a dude, who is seen as a badass by his teammates and is never looked down on for being more feminine. The whole “Evil Overlord” trope that we see in countless fantasy stories? Make them a girl. I can go on. 

Point is while  sUbVeRtInG eXpEcTaTiOnS is terrible writing, because twists need to be foreshadowed and add up in the narrative. But don’t be afraid to buck tropes in interesting ways if they are foreshadowed. Bucking cliches can sometimes make a story better if done correctly, and you can have fun while doing it. 

[echodrops]

I really like your shipping posts and how they discuss that people get invested in relationships where the characters have a strong impact on each other‘s individual storylines outside of romantic intentions. But what if the main storyline IS a romance, or the main drive in the characters interactions are based on a romantic connection? Is there a way to write that really well too?

Pretty much everything I’ve written about shipping relates to the shounen genre, since it is very rare for me to read stories where the main plot is the romance in and of itself. I don’t think romance stories are bad by any means, they just aren’t my typical reading/viewing material.

That said, the “rules” are obviously very different. If you’re writing a romance, then it just makes sense that the primary conflicts and tensions in your story would revolve almost entirely around that romance, and the major interactions between the romantic leads would be primarily about their relationship itself, with not too much focus given to non-romantic plot elements. If the readers are going into your story expecting the main plot to be purely about “Will they fall in love or not?” then you’re not leading anyone astray or letting them down if the major character development and conflict in your story is strictly related to the romantic plot line. We’d probably be a little annoyed if it wasn’t, actually--if your readers go into the story expecting it to be about two characters falling in love and instead it’s about giant robots beating each other up, you might hear some complaints. Writing a romance, focus almost entirely on the romantic interactions. Just logical.

The problem with poorly written romances typically occurs in stories where romance is not the main focus; the actual “story” is about something else, and a romance gets shoehorned in on the side because sex sells or just because some writers seem convinced every piece of media needs a romance plot to be complete. That second situation you mention (“or the main drive in the characters interactions are based on a romantic connection”) is the one more likely to cause you trouble, I think. If you’re writing a story where romance is not the #1 focus, and you have two (or more) characters whose interactions are primarily based on a romantic connection, you are at risk for falling into the pitfall I outlined in that long shipping essay.

Some questions I would ask myself, as the author of such a story, are:

If my story has a plot other than a romance going on, why do I need this romance subplot here? Am I investing my time--and the readers’ time!--in this romance because I believe it really is central to the story or these characters? If it’s not central, how do I make it central but not overwhelm my original plot idea? What is this romance adding to the story that will make it worthwhile and fun for readers?

Why are these two characters primarily focused on falling in love? Is there not anything more serious and immediate for them to be worried about? Does my non-romance plot have enough going on in it? (If romance isn’t your main plot AND your romance doesn’t directly impact the main plot, that’s a problem. You should never put a high-stakes main plot on hold to deal with drama that doesn’t feel urgent to the readers.)

Even if you REALLY want the romantic subplot to be the focus of some characters’ interactions, that’s fine, but you should still probably be asking yourself “What do they have going on outside of the romance?” If your characters have no similar interests, habits, lifestyle choices, goals, plot events, etc. to relate to each other outside of just a romantic context, then you probably have a case of either shallow characters or a mis-aimed romance. These people need to exist outside of their relationship with each other. Unless you’re like... writing about a creepy incel whose only fixation in life is getting a girlfriend, most people don’t spend every single moment thinking about romance. Even two people who like each other eventually have to do and think about other things while interacting with each other. If two characters interactions in a (non-romance) story relate entirely (or even almost entirely) to their romance, eventually they’re going to stop feeling like living, breathing human beings, and start feeling like robots built specifically to act out a mandatory romance subplot.

Long story longer... If you’re not writing a story where romance is the main plot, please give your romantic leads something else to do and think about. Please give them meaningful interactions that aren’t related to their relationship. Give them interests, personal goals, conflicts, quirks, and challenges that don’t revolve around the other person. Or, at the very least, let the two (or more) characters do things with each other that aren’t just geared toward getting together or having relationship drama.

Think about real life. I feel like many of us have experienced a friend who is WAY too obsessed with their significant other. The person who drops their normal friends to spend all their time with the boyfriend/girlfriend. The person who gets together with others and does nothing but talk about their relationship. Think about how annoying that person is. That’s what you will do your characters if all their interactions relate back to their relationship.

Some things to think about for this situation:

Why did I want these characters to be together in the first place? Do they have commonalities? Interesting differences? Did I explore those commonalities or differences enough before jumping into the fluff romance scenes?

Do these two characters have anything to teach each other, as people? Can they help each other grow in any way? Is every interaction based strictly on romance, or are some of their interactions based on overcoming personal challenges, learning something new, changing their minds about old prejudices, overcoming past hurts?

Are these romantic interactions contributing anything to the main plot? If the answer is no, why not?

Have I given these characters enough behaviors, thoughts, actions, and plot events that separate from each other for them to feel like three-dimensional, “real” people outside of their romance?

If I took their romance away for a second, would these characters even have anything to say to each other?

Essentially, I recommend applying real life logic to any relationship you attempt to write. People who have nothing else going in their lives except their significant other/their relationship are often deeply unhappy people, and such codependent relationships tend to fall apart. Just like real people, your characters’ relationships should add value to their individual lives--not serve as a replacement for that individual life.

[residentlesbrarian]

You get rep! You get rep! Everyone gets rep!

Not Your Sidekick by C. B. Lee

This was another book I discovered during the Queering YA panel of ClexaCon 2018. That panel really was where these reviews and my current mission to shine a light on the queer fiction that is present in the library world started. I was blown away by this book! Literally squealed so many times, you’ll see down below. Now onto the review!

Unicorn Rating:

Blurb:  Superheroes? Paid internships? Pretty volleyball players? Oh my! This book is one you will not want to put down and then be sad when it ends, because you just never want to leave the world of Andover and the cast of characters that C.B. Lee has created.

Disclaimer: I will try my best to not spoil anything from the book, but my book loving rambles may give more away than a traditional review. Here we go! Ramble time!

Review:

Have you ever read a book where it was physically painful to put it down? That was exactly what it was like reading this book. The characters are immediately real in your mind the moment they are introduced on the page. The world draws you in and just doesn’t let you go.

One thing that is always hard to swallow in stories with superhuman abilities is how those abilities come about. Who gets them and why? C.B. Lee did a fantastic job of establishing the world that these types of abilities are not only possible but recognized and strictly regulated. There wasn’t a single moment that I, as the reader, had to go beyond a normal suspension of disbelief to make the world work. On that note let’s take a closer look at the plot.

I know I already mentioned how much I loved this book and I am gonna reinforce that statement here with the plot. It was the kind of story telling that pulls you in but also keeps you guessing. Even when you think you’ve figure it out you really haven’t...or at least not all of it. I love the feeling of unraveling a story and spinning theories to see if I’m right and this book was no exception, but usually when I figure something out easily it takes away from the story in the end cause I’m not surprised, but with Not Your Sidekick I was delighted when theories panned out or when I was taken by surprise. A huge part of what made that possible was an outstanding cast of characters that you fall in love with immediately.

Jess, our main character, was an utter delight to read. From her first moment on the page she felt real and vivid. Her sarcastic wit was refreshing and brought some of the best laughs of the book. One thing that was nice to see was that her sexuality was figured out long before the story takes place so it is just part of her character and is mentioned in a passing description. Her bisexuality is just part of the many things that make her who she is but isn’t at the forefront, which gives her that authentic feeling that some queer characters lack. Her attitude towards her family and how she didn’t have any abilities was a truly interesting dynamic. She didn’t have over-the-top resentment that a lot of characters in her position tend to have in today’s media. She wasn’t stoked about being the only ‘average’ member of her family, but she decided she would do the best with what she had. That kind of mindset is rarely seen in heroines, because most we see are created to be even more extraordinary than a typical hero to make sure no one can say this girl isn’t the hero of the story. There was never any doubt who was going to be the hero of this story even though she had no abilities that anyone knew about.

The dynamic between Jess, Bells, and Emma was very fun to dig into as well. These are three friends who just function through their lives with each other. If one is involved the other two are just a given. Watching as that dynamic changed into one of a less codependent nature but still didn’t change how intrinsically important they were to each other was fabulous. It was so true to real life (super powered shenanigans aside) that as the book progressed they each had different things that required their attention, like jobs and family and school projects, but at the end of the day they were still close and wanted to be around one another after the dust settled.

Now on to one of the unexpected but brightest spots of this book. My baby boy Bells Broussard. He is precious and deserves to get pampered every day and told how much he is loved. From when he was introduced he was a rather literal definition of a colorful character, with his hair and out-loud personality, but you could immediately see the depth under the fabulous hair. Then one line took him from the usual sidekick/comic relief character into a whole new dimension. Finding out he was a transman resulted in uncontrollable squealing and hand-flailing. The fact the reader has no idea that Bells is not a cis male from the beginning is something completely out of the norm. Usually a trans character is defined by that gender identity but he isn’t at all! This is the kind of trans representation that has been so badly needed. I could go on for ages but I’ll save that for the sequel, but when we get there I make no promises!

I won’t say much on Abby as a character, which doesn’t mean I didn’t like her (quite the opposite actually), but I have a hard time discussing her without going into spoiler territory. I will say that the most refreshing aspect of her character was that she wasn’t just the token love interest. She had an entire story and purpose and drive that had nothing to do with Jess. Even though her first mention was as Jess’ long time crush, the moment we actually meet her on the page she doesn’t fit the mold of the bland love interest that is nothing but a pretty face for our heroine to ogle at. The romantic subplot was so well done and woven into the story that it flowed naturally and never took away from the actual plot. I’m gonna wrap this up before I give myself any more chances to spoil this masterpiece of a book.

Something must also be said about the racial diversity in this book! Of the core group we meet, only one is Caucasian, which I have never seen in my life time of reading and it was awesome! Overall, this book and the world it brings you into through Jess, Bells, Abby, and Emma is so engaging that you don’t want to leave when the book ends. It is a brilliant example of how you can have queer characters be the center of your story but not have it focus on that aspect of them. This story is about superheroes and villains and everything that comes with that. It just so happens to be happening to some awesome diverse queer teenagers.  

Queer Wrap-up: This one wracked up quite the tally at the end of the day. We have the main character who is openly bisexual and pining after a cute volleyball player and her friends pick on her about it like you would expect in any other teen book. We also have my BABY BOY BELLS!! He is the best trans rep I have ever read! I literally tossed the book down to call my brother because I had to talk to him about this precious bean. This is also a case where I will count the love interest as an additional queer character cause Abby definitely qualifies, but again I am incapable of talking about her without spoilers, so if you want details then send me some asks. That is why this book not only gets a five unicorn rating but will also be the first inductee to the Sparkly Unicorn Hall of Gay.

Links:

C. B. Lee Website

Goodreads

Amazon

If you love superhero books and are looking for some queer rep wrapped up in excellent racial diversity and a truly enthralling world this is definitely the book for you. I will eventually be doing a review of the sequel Not Your Villain and will link it after it’s posted. If you guys want to discuss anything please don’t hesitate to send me asks. As always if you want to read this but don’t want spend the money without knowing for sure you are going to like it, go to your local library. You’d be surprised what they have on their shelves just waiting to be discovered. Trust me, I’m a lesbrarian.

[weasley-detectives]

Brave and Merida in a Trumped up world

It's a little surprising to me that the Disney fandom went absolutely apeshit over the "Disneyfication" of Merida in their merchandise - something Brenda Chapman even spoke out against, calling it a cheap ploy to sell merchandise - yet there hasn't been any commentary on other Brave spin-offs.

Merida's a Disney/Pixar heroine who, in Chapman’s own words, was created to be a different kind of Princess. Now, I don’t think it makes me a good feminist to sit here and pit Disney Princess against Disney Princess; I think popular perception of the “Disney Princess” is a different beast altogether when compared with the actual source material, which has both positive and negative aspects. But when it comes to Merida the writers intentionally set out from the start to try something new. She has a fuller, rounded figure, a nuanced relationship with her mother, and romance plays no part in her story. You could argue there’s evidence of a romantic interest, but that’s not the same thing as a romantic subplot, and it’s not overt enough that you can say with any certainty. The writers admit the original idea was to have Merida walk off into the sunset with Young MacGuffin, the suitor who briefly catches her attention early in the film, but that epilogue thankfully only exists in the artbook and deleted scenes.

And let me be clear, there's nothing wrong with Merida having a romantic interest. In fact, I came to love that Merida is subtly shown to be a little interested in Young MacGuffin. 

I was watching Mulan the other night with a @pale-silver-comb​ (who is 100% responsible for my newfound love of Disney- well, that and the fact I need bright happy escapist animation as the rest of my time is spent neck deep in miserable politics). We were cackling over the scene where Mulan ogles a shirtless Shang and later wound up ranting over how rare it is to see women checking out guys in films. When women do make their attraction known, they tend to run the risk of being framed or labelled as shameless, or worse, sluts. On the flipside, how often do we see guys ogling girls in media? Yeah, exactly. It's a shitty myth that women don't own their sexuality in the same ways men do. That's one of the things I love about Mulan and Merida as heroines - they're not "strong female characters" (god I hate that term, can we please kill it?) just because they kick large hairy man arse. They're great characters because they are so relatable. They're funny, they're giant dorks, they stuff their gobs, they check guys out, they can be crass, proud, and make mistakes. These are all things women do, but aren't shown to do nearly as often as men are in mainstream media.

I’m glad the Brave epilogue with Merida and Young MacGuffin didn't make the final cut, because the story wasn't about Merida finding romance - it was about Merida's relationship with her mother, and the two of them confronting their pride, opening their minds to new ways of thinking, and admitting their mistakes. The epilogue had no place in Brave’s narrative. To have included it would have harmed the message of the story by adding romance for the sake of romance, rather than for any narrative purpose. But at the same time I don't want to downplay Merida showing even a subtle interest because yay women owning their own sexuality. One of the things that has driven me crazy since I was a kid myself is the patronising infantilization of girls. A crush is normal, you can pretty much get them at any age, it does not mean you’re not enjoying your childhood to the fullest. Fuck that noise. I had massive crushes from the age of 4 and still managed to climb trees, get into fights and battle Captain Hook and Shredder on my T-Rex with imaginary best friend Gollum at my side (what? fuck you we had a bond). That Merida might have had a bit of a crush on Young MacGuffin reinforces for me the fact she’s a character who doesn't want to get married because she doesn’t bloody want to, not because the suitors are conveniently horrible people she vehemently dislikes. I actually find that even more inspiring. So yes, Brave is a great film with a pretty amazing heroine.

Which is why it pisses me off when spin-off writers take something so progressive and shaft it.

This isn't a ship shaming post at all - fandom is a ship & let ship space, ship Merida with her bow for all I care, it's all good. This critique is aimed at crappy spin-offs and I’m taking Once Upon a Time as an example. Now, OUAT isn’t all bad. Sometimes it takes Disney canon and transforms it into something really interesting, progressive and original. Or, well, it used to. Recent seasons not so much. The actress who plays Merida is the only good thing about OUAT's Brave arc. The rest is unbearably lazy (HA! pun.) writing. The gravest injustice has to be King Fergus, who looks like he's wearing a wig knitted from a highland cow's pubes.

Don't get me started on his accent. I’m scottish. No Scotsman sounds like that. Not unless they’re squeedging out an enormous post-curry-hangover shit. I love Fergus, but honestly I was relieved OUAT!Fergus was bumped off before my ears could go on strike.

The suitors are also sexist pigs. Dingwall and MacGuffin don't even say anything, they just play the lazy mindless followers/minions to MacIntosh who’s probably the most unlikeable aspect of the arc. Really says something about OUAT when the original animation, aimed at a younger audience, portrays its characters as more nuanced. In Brave, Young MacIntosh is all bluff- he’s a show off, a sore loser and generally a bit of a prick, but there are also glimpses of genuine empathy. He's also the suitor Merida is openly put off by in the film. So yeah, in Brave, Young MacIntosh is a bit of a lanky fucktrumpet, but he's not anywhere close to being the scabby sexist cockwomble he is in OUAT. This would be fine if it had some sort of clever narrative purpose, but who am I kidding, it’s OUAT. OUAT!MacIntosh is a proper dickhead and there’s no reason for Merida to like any of the suitors, because unlike in Brave, they’re all fucking assholes. And yet the OUAT arc still ends with Merida giving him the smitten googley eyes. Because romance or something. cool.

Another Brave novelisation published by Disney Random House ends with Merida confirming to the reader that yes, she did eventually marry. Well thank fuck for that! My frail girlish heart couldn't possibly entertain the idea of Merida never marrying. Thank you book, you've reassured conservative parents everywhere.

In addition to that bollocks is.. probably one of the worst offenders. I recently picked up a couple of the Merida chapter books by Sudipta Bardham-Quallen, again published by Disney Random House. They're for wee kids, but I wanted to see more of @gurihiru​​ 's lovely art which I’m fully smitten with. The writing isn’t great, but the stories involve challenging enough themes for very young readers. To the author's credit there's a bit of an effort made to retain a Scottish feel to them and there’s a nice focus on female friendships as Merida encounters new characters. It’s a bit cutesy-poo BFFs!!, the kind of thing I hated as a kid, but hey, we need more female friendship stories. The new characters are even quite likeable, so thumbs up there.

Then I picked up the second book, The Fire Falls (also written by Sudipta Bardham-Quallen), and cringed. Basically bad Merida and Young MacIntosh fanfic involving some classic tropes like: 'I'm not jealous, I’m just better than all those shameless slags flirting with him' and 'arg he's such an asshole but i'm inexplicably attracted to him though there's nothing to show in the story why I should be!' and my favourite - ‘He’s a bad guy but I can change him!’

Here's my main issue: why is it when a female character shows or says she’s not interested in a guy's advances this all too often becomes a springboard for their romance? Why do these stories have such an obsession with positioning the sexist hyper-masculine asshole as the romantic lead? (I'm sure that couldn’t have any dire implications for the worl-oh fuck). And in Brave's case, when the source material and original epilogue show Merida taking an interest in the big fat guy, why don’t any of the spin-offs build on that? Young MacGuffin also happens to be the only one in the entire film to vocally stand up for Merida’s rights. That’s pretty cool! So why don’t spin-offs celebrate that? The cynic in me says we all know the answer - much like Merida had to be “sexed up” to sell Disney merchandise, the fat suitor had to be swapped out for the skinny. 

Really, in a film that revolves around Merida's frustration that people aren't listening to her, it sort of amazes me that these spin-offs don't realise they AREN'T LISTENING TO HER.

And yeah, obviously I know it seems really silly picking on kids books and OUAT, neither of which are ever going to win awards for great progressive writing, but considering America just elected a vile celebrity as President and populism is on the rise, maybe it’s time we all said screw that academic snobbery and paid more attention to popular media. This stuff is common, these tropes are common, and it’s consumed mostly by young kids who internalise these crappy messages.

I make a big deal of it because these coded messages have a profound effect on us as we grow. These messages tell us to ignore a girl's decision and choice: that when she says 'I'm not interested' what we hear is 'I am'; that the most "attractive" and most "masculine" guy will always be the “natural” choice; that being fat or shy or awkward are inherently negative qualities and will always be overlooked by the loud wanker distracting everyone by waving his tiny hands around.

I'm now a published historian and I plan on publishing children's books in the near future; I work part-time in a bookshop, so I talk to kids about the stories they read, the stories they want to read, and their frustrations with the stories they HAVE read, all the time; I studied child psychology as part of my degree in Social Anthropology: this is why it matters to me and why I know all too well how much these coded messages affect us. I know it from my own experiences as a half-Moroccan kid with a dead father, growing up in a classroom of white kids who all came from middle-class households with two parents. This was all brought back to me when I rediscovered some of my old journals and stories I had written for class where I portrayed myself as being blonde/white and talked as if my dad was still alive, because I desperately wanted to be *normal*. I never got to encounter a character like Merida growing up, and I wish to god I had.

Children's authors and publishing houses have an enormous responsibility to make their readers feel included and heard. They also have a responsibility to challenge toxic ideas - not reinforce them. We have to keep pushing boundaries, not limit them.

[supified]

A long winded introduction

Who am I and why should you care?  To say that I’m a nobody is a pretty big understatement.  There are over seven billion people in the world and everyone is a perfect snowflake.  And when everyone is a snowflake no one is.  Clearly, I’m not important in the grand scheme of things and yet, you’re reading this.  That is the only thing I can be sure of is if someone is reading this than they’re reading this.  So why should you care?

 The first thing about this blog that I ought to make clear is what the point is.  This is a blog entirely built around reviewing and discussing the craft of writing and story books.  I am not an author, at least not when I wrote this, but I do read a lot of books and try to help other people filter through the endless mass of books to find the ones they will enjoy.  Think of it as a service I provide for the satisfaction of sharing my passion.  If you’re reading this blog then you should be interested in either my point of view on books or reading books yourself at the very least and maybe writing, although there are probably better blogs for that.  Probably better blogs for all of this.

 Now to the million-dollar question still unanswered, why should you care who I am. What books someone enjoys will depend on several factors and quality is only one.  The fact is a very high-quality book may yet still be unenjoyable to you specifically as determined by your taste.  I can go into what I think makes a book quality and for the sake of argument, let’s pretend I’m right.  Does that mean you will enjoy the book…? Not necessarily.  Taste matters.  Take any genre and there is going to be master works in those genres and people who won’t enjoy them.  I for one do not enjoy the romance genre at all, or the regency, so books like Jane Austin, who is unquestionably a master writer, wouldn’t particularly interest me. While my reviews are aimed to express my point of view while exposing the lens I view it through to help anyone reading them to know if they share my point of view and may enjoy the same sorts of things I do.  The fact remains my lens and point of view matters if you are reading my review.  It matters because without knowing what that lens is you won’t know if the view you are getting is distorted to your taste. It’s kind of like eyeglasses that way I guess.

 That isn’t to say a good reviewer who likes stuff you do not won’t be useful. I will express why I dislike something or like it and then if you’re already reading my review you might be able to say, huh, they didn’t like that but I like that in books so maybe this book is for me even.  I have a friend who loves romance for instance, and she doesn’t particularly mind if a book sub plots to include it.  She’ll enjoy stuff I won’t and I try to keep that sort of thing in mind when I critique a book.  So if I’m going to include that explanation, why then again should you care who I am? Well because if a book is Jane Austin, whom I recognize as good but not down my alley I simply won’t read it to begin with.  So that is why it matters who I am.

 Now that I’ve got that out of the way, who am I?  Well, I’m not actually going to tell you that.  Rather I’m going to tell you what I like and appreciate and look for in literature.  This is where you put your taste against mine.  First, I like female inclusion if not female protagonists.  Media is over whelmed with male leads and male oriented stories. Most fiction, games, movies, tv, ect. . will include this magic number of thirty percent or less female inclusion. Just count the characters and you’ll see it is this bizarre trend that for whatever reason goes across lines, even cultures.  It is like all content creators got together and agreed on this in advance.  Obviously, it isn’t -all- media, but it is very pervasive. So one thing about me is I try to find the stuff that doesn’t follow that.  For me to want to read something I will generally look for fifty percent or greater female inclusion (because to make up for all the times the opposite was true we need to head in the other direction).

 Second, I care a lot about stories telling the truth.  What is telling the truth?  In a nutshell, it means an action or event shouldn’t happen that doesn’t fit the world that the story already established or character motivations.  Dues ex Machina (hand of god) are great examples.  When the author forces an outcome and it just doesn’t fit this sort of thing bothers me and I will always attempt to call them out. Why this bothers me is because to put it simply it isn’t any fun to read about something with shifting rules.  You can’t speculate about the world if there are no criteria with which to speculate on and if the author demonstrates willingness to break rules they themselves set then there is a problem.  Examples might include having a character cliff hanging involve falling into deep water in full armor and somehow swimming to escape anyway.  If you don’t want your character to die, don’t put them in a situation they can’t escape, it cheapens the experience and the story.  

 Third I care a lot about guiding principal.  I realize story telling is an art and not a science really, but I think everything should be built on something.  If you are designing anything you should have a purpose in mind and stories are no different.  Sub plots are a great example of a violation of this, something tossed into the story that doesn’t belong or have anything to do with what the story is about.  The most common subplot is romance, many stories will include this for the sake of a quick fix for the reader, like taking a drug. Instant gratification may sell, but it rarely makes for quality.  I find sub plots to be distractions and often detracting from a story.  Since this is the third thing on my list I’ll also mention these are in order of importance to me.  Generally, I’m more willing to forgive something farther down on the list than earlier.  Rules are made to be broken, right?  Just make sure if you’re breaking them you know what you’re doing because if you just think rules don’t apply to you than you’re probably just a bad writer.

 Lastly, I prefer there to be modern elements to the story, like LGBT awareness. This isn’t to say everyone in every world has to be gay or what have you.  No, this is more a comment on the author themselves.  If the author is homophobic I probably won’t read their stuff. If their work simply doesn’t touch the subject, okay, but I would rather that in some ways it is at least acknowledged. Once again, this doesn’t have to be by making a character non-het norm, tokenization can be worse than exclusion, but for instance same sex characters should be able to have meaningful friendships with each other.  For me the LGBT issue goes beyond simple sexual preference but it goes into gender identity and comfort with members of the gender which someone is not attracted to. A great example of being anti-lgbt in my view is if a character only truly interacts with potential partners and ignores everyone else and treats same sex characters purely as romantic rivals. In those hyper het-norm settings I find my interest quickly wanes.

 So now in a nutshell you know what kind of books I’ll be considering.  The last thing to touch on is genre.  The only one I don’t particularly like is romance. Why don’t I like the romance genre? Mostly because I feel it focuses a little too heavily on one aspect of human nature.  Stories usually exclude description of the main character when they shower.  Most people shower every day, see themselves naked every day.. ect.  These things are not parts of stories, why?  Well one it doesn’t usually have anything to do with the guiding principal, but two it’s just gratuitous.  I feel many or maybe most romance novels to be gratuitous. There is probably lots of good ones in the genre, but I’m not prepared to dig through the others.  It is unlikely I will review many, if any, romance novels.

 Now that you have a feel for me, you can keep reading my blog, or you know, not.  Also, my reviews are available on Amazon.  I try to review everything I read, though the stuff that is already reviewed to death I may just skip.  Happy reading!