#if you leave likes and comments at YT I think the author will be happy

[helenvader]

Watch "Galadriel & Halbrand || Deep End" on YouTube

I really like this one. If you feel like me, feel free to leave likes and comments on YT.

[tylerdashart]

(spoilers for TDP season 4)

OKAY. so i dont really do these kinda posts but id like to say a few things about season 4 cus ive seen some things and the fandom making theories, i just like to write about my own thoughts. ive watched s4 only one time due to not having netflix so i dont really remember many scenes.

"season 5 when?" are you good?? the season 4 just dropped 3 days ago! Im serious when i say ive seen multiple people already posting this question mostly on YT comments or Insta. also the fact that they're not artists OR a fic author makes sense honestly. they have no idea how animation works.

"rayla's acting weird" this is what frustrats me the most. NO she's not... ok maybe a little. but like. come the fuck on, she was gone for 2 years. ofc she's not the same person we saw in season 3. people change. plus, personally, i dont see any difference on her except this one time when callum asked her to...kill him. yes rayla acted a lot calm in that scene- not just that scene really. she was so calm most of the time, but i can see why? she's trying to get callum warm up to her, she's giving him space, she's being gentle as much as she can cus she knows how much she hurt him. she's grown up, she's not the same hot-headed, irritated elf anymore. and we all know how she hides her feelings. Im pretty sure she's gotten used to it, or managed to cope her feelings well so that she can stay calm. lastly about rayla, all i have to say is people change, so does rayla. and no she's not fake at all.

firstly, if rayla's acting weird, what about Viren being supportive with Terry? isnt that weirder? he didnt even treat his own son better, but he's supporting a trans fella? sus.... secondly, what about opeli being so chill about Ez going with Zubia. in that case most of the characters in s4 were out of character. and that's okay cus it's been 2 fucking years!

personally i think the "Zubia in Katolis" scene was a bit rushed. they couldve done it better but Im not saying it was bad at all tho! i loved the scene with the whole callum doing magic thing and the dragon sized jelly tart? xD

"why is rayla back?" why not really. she realized it was useless to find viren and came back home? she realized she wanted to see her mage? "we had something so special. but I became so obsessed with revenge, i.. risked losing the best thing ive ever had... you" she CLEARLY missed him yall. ofc she came back.

"where's the rayllum kiss" Im glad we didnt get a rayllum kiss. I know this is a cartoon show but at least the animators made it similar to how an in-real-life relationship works. people dont just go "you were gone for two years but its okay, i forgive you, lets kiss". Callum needs time to get used to being around rayla again. he's happy but also angry, he needs to see how hard rayla's trying to win callum's trust back. it was so clear that callum got a bit comfortable with rayla again in the last few episodes, especially the last one. That hug was enough sign for us to know they're gonna be okay and that they're still deeply in love.

Stella isNT EVIL YALL. leave my poor baby girl alone >:c

the fart joke was......nuhuh. idk if it's just me but it was gross. i dont wanna remember how much i cringed.

claudia was a bit- no fuck it- she was too much this season. especially in that scene where she tricked rayla with pebbles. god that hurt so much.

Lastly, Season 4 was amazing!! i loved season 4, and all the new things we saw. the arc is building up, it's so interesting, im so excited for season 5.

[effervescentdragon]

i agree that you seem great for fic recs so I wondered if you have any nico r fic recs? i’d really like to see him as more than just a background character as Lewis’ toxic ex <3

hi anon! thank you so much for this ask, i was gonna do it yday but i was way too drained, so thank you for waiting! i do have some nico fic recs, coming under the cut! as usual, mind the ratings and warnings yourself, bcs i'm mostly providing my own feedback and feelings about these fics! :) i'm picking the ones that stayed in my mind pretty much rent free. <3

-

again, first, ultimate, absolute winner about characterisation in my eyes is @kritischetheologie and Everybody Wants To Rule The World. it's the fic that made me completely unhinged, one of the best, morally grey, insanely well written fics out there, which i adore with my whole heart. it's a Seb/Nico, which i was very sceptical about, but damn was i proven wrong! some of the best, most in-depth characterisation and understanding of subject matter i've ever seen in my life. C's blog is also generally a well of Nico content, with musings and writings, and i have been getting my Nico fix there for quite some time now. it helps that C is very much Nico-like and i love her for it <3

kelogg's frosties & video games by @georgerussells - brocedes my beloved, alt '22 season, absolutely insanely well written (all of their fics are, ive read ALL of them, i should do it again). i love how nico is here, it's all told from lewis' pov but its raw, and just so in character, and wonderful. its the first brocedes fic i found and one of the reasons i fell down the rabbit hole. i adore it and rec it with my whole heart <3 (check out their crown series and the yt au series, i love those!)

high speed weekend survivor by @denialricciardo - nico/danny ric. may be one of my all time favorites, EVER. its an university au, and it's perfect. like, absolutely perfectly written, the author manages to literally effortlessly paint nico's character and all the little nuances, the technical talk is fascinating, everything about this fic just makes me so, so happy. i love it. <3

the torture of small talk with someone you used to love by finedae is a nico-focused fic ive read like 3 days ago and can't stop thinking about. i promised to leave them a comment soon when i get my brain right, but what i can say is that its. effortlessly funny and tragic in the same breath, lovely writing style, absolutely adore everything about it, how much they show despite it seeming to be just tell, it really isnt. peak characterisation. wholehearted rec. i love it. <3

the weight of the world we are holding by fadeoutslow is a 5+1 kisses fic with jenson/nico endgame that i think very much manages to perfectly encapsulate the characters of every single one person mentioned despite being so short (this is me wishing for more not a criticism) which is so fucking admirable. i love it. also, the world is changed because you are made is peak perfection (as is nico's ass, that's all im gonna say). :)

hot as hell by vandoorne is one of the hottest things i've ever read, and it's so effortlessly funny and just manages to get both nicos and jensons characters through. i love it very, very much. it's a witch/succubi&incubi au btw, so mind that :)

Roseberg's vs Haminkton by dearest @jean----ralphio is a florist/coffee shop au that made me laugh out loud when i thought i was never going to laugh (dramatic, i know), and something i re-read whenever i just want to feel warm around my heart and be happy. (thank you for that again friend!) <333

and finally, I'm going to put my own fic here - Vielleicht, Vielleicht. a jenson/nico angst fest (which is getting a sequel from nico's pov due to popular demand and me being incapable of shutting up sometime soon i think) about their relationship throughout the years, non-linearly. because i can :)

thank you for asking, i hope these help and that you like them!

[marimopeace]

there's a limit on how much you can be an isekai intellectual...

a bunch of analyses have been popping up before me all day so i wanted to throw my hat into the ring. all love to ppl who are exercising their creative minds + ppl like geoff here who just talk about these things because of fan interest but i feel like there reaches a point where exploring the "types" of isekai is pointless? i've seen ppl list out the different types of villainess revenge isekai or fantasy mmorpg isekai but eh why fit them all into separate boxes like that?

i think it's easier to think of isekai as a "type" (genre) of itself with only two categories: 1) a focus on isekai (lit. another world) 2) tensei (lit. to be reborn). this allows for a variety of applications and thus tropes that ppl see so many trends of!

with isekai - in another world

you see everything from:

pure fantasy (inuyasha, digimon wait maybe not the best example but in my childhood mind i count digimon as pure fantasy, fushigi yugi)

mmorpg inspired fantasy/adventure (.hack//legend of twilight, sao ugh, log horizon, overlord (LOVE OVERLORD!)

otome game-esque worlds >>> this is where it gets complicated with "villainess routes" since i admit there are multiple villainess tropes but this is why it's nice to not think of this as a "sub-type/genre" bc it frees you from those complications! (the saint's magic power is omnipotent, the white cat's revenge as plotted from the dragon king's lap soso cute!, the savior's book cafe in another world, i'm a villainous daughter so i'm going to keep the last boss wait i can't remember if she's reborn in this one lmaooo see this is why rules make everything hard)

with tensei storylines - being reincarnated/reborn in another world as *insert character/role*

you see...

the same tropes!!

pure fantasy (a returner's magic should be special, reminiscence adonis, the lady and the beast, light and shadow, i can't think of a manga off the top of my head for this ah)

mmorpg inspired fantasy/adventure (so i'm a spider so what i stan kumoko so hard, her majesty's swarm, can't name another off the top of my head ah i hate lists shorter than two things...)

self-insert based games/novels (fiance's observation log of a self-proclaimed villainess, who made me a princess, death is the only ending for the villainess, the villainess wants to marry a commoner, honestly games vs novels are different applications but i'm not in the headspace to try to remember a bunch of both lol)

*insert line break to give random ppl a break from scrolling but tl; dr just enjoy things for what they are no need to micro analyze*

similar variations occur in both genres (if ppl want to be super technical i guess i'm arguing that isekai itself is a massive genre that has the "another world" subgenre and "reincarnation" subgenre tl; dr) so i think it's honestly a huge pain to try to separate all these trends into so many different types of stories. for me personally it's easier to not get overwhelmed by this gigantic umbrella of "isekai" that spans light novels, manhwa, manga, and mobile games by just stripping each story down into its trademark tropes (aka character archetypes, story structures) and slapping "oh this is a person going to a world that's not ours" and "this person gets reborn as blank in another world". none of this "omg this power fantasy is such a this kind of isekai moment" or "there are 14 different types of villainess revenge stories and this series fits into this" bc AH labels! limitations! circle-jerks via ppl trying to compartmentalize everything and sound smart for leaving a comment on story analysis instead of ooh-ahhing over a character's face! dividing things into light novel manga vs manga vs korean manhwa ft. female characters!

the last bit is mainly why i feel frustrated by ppl's insistence to group everything?

the video linked at the beginning of the post (honestly good video essay, i enjoyed it, i just kept thinking in my head the whole time "marimo these are tropes do not take the genre talk literally") has a baby comment thread talking about "korean isekai manhwas" as a genre featuring nothing but reincarnated villainess' and i can't.

like i cannot acknowledge that as a genre of any sort. the energy i felt reading through some of those insights takes me back to 2012 when all yt americans discovered k-pop and deemed all korean music k-pop from then on! (ppl still do this now, yes you are seen and don't talk to me pls i don't like you. k-pop is korean pop music and nothing less and nothing more. take a few seconds and try to parse apart aspects of korean culture instead of slamming everything into a monolithic label that has the letter k and a hyphen.) it feels so odd to see a bunch of young ppl on ig and tiktok acknowledge korean media that happens to be in the form of a webtoon as "oh stories all about young girls becoming villains in stories they made/played" bc it feels so reductive u.u

(positionality disclaimer that i'm praying isn't actually necessary: i am a 3rd-generation korean of japanese descent do not fite me i am exhausted irl of ppl asking for validation/verification bc massive shove off.)

breaking news! korean manhwa...is just as multifaceted as japanese manga...bc how can comics as an art-form not have multiple genres...huh such a shocker?!?! same likely applies to media in other parts of the world like chinese manhwa and french comics--not my place to explain either of those i just know those industries exist bc of wakfu and donghua shows by Tencent.

at the end of the day it's not like analyzing any kind of isekai is wrong--absolutely not!! i think it can be super fun to think about how isekai elements complicate a story (MCs trying to go back home, ppl from the og world, reincarnation plot-twists) or maybe even bash a series for including some kind of other world element when they could have just written a super fun fantasy.

insert marimo's brief ramble that hey you can get sick of truck-kun's hitting disillusioned guys who happen to be super duper smart or girls who happen to be master chefs/craftsmen but transporting a fully-grown being into a fantasy setting is the ultimate cheat code for making mundane modern technology seem cool and overpowered, and being reincarnated as a fully grown person in a world with a pre-made story/game set-up completely bypasses the need for an author to slowly flesh out world-building in a natural progression so isekai is actually a really smart writing tool it's just that there are some series where the author didn't use it well at all and it's cheesy or clearly isekai was misused as a vehicle for character/story development and it was pointless *DEEP BREATH OUT*

in this essay i will argue...lol i am such a culture studies major!! if i were an english major i would be talking all about writing but here i am having a side-tangent about world-building via someone being reborn wow i love this for me (don't get me started on when an author has someone reincarnate as a baby and the story is mostly them having warm fluffy moments with their family--typically father figures--and getting lots of powers i could and would and probably will rant about east asian toxicity)

but anyway am i crazy????? like yes for being passionate about the technical use of a word like genre (i am a scorpio rising let me be fussy pls) but i don't think it's a lot to ask for ppl to not unironically see "villainess revenge isekai" as the definition of korean manhwa.

idk as someone who resonates with why japanese isekai is so popular domestically + why a lot of korean manhwa feat. the same tropes (it's not for great reasons lads it's actually depressing tbh) i'm just starting to feel kind of pained by the generalization and need to separate "cute japanese girl in an otome game"/"japanese boy finds a harem in another world" from "korean girl dies and comes back as a villainess" bc they are just! applications to the same story device!!

recommendations for any who makes it this far down below <3

// also gladly recommend any of the examples i've listed in the above rant as i've read/watched all of them and adore them v much! //

save me princess

super refreshing fantasy manhwa ft. a princess and her ex-boyfriend having to save the world!

the beginning after the end

an AMERICAN web novel turned into a comic (but see it being not korean/japanese doesn't really matter when you just consider isekai as a genre...isn't it nice to not overthink it?) ft. a super-powerful wizard king reincarnated into another world and starting from scratch--gives mushoku tensei vibes but huge twists!

the reason why raeliana ended up at the duke's mansion

love love LOVE this story--read the title and you'll learn how this girl reincarnated as the character raeliana in a book gets married to a duke!

trash of the count's family

such a good novel!! a guy gets reborn as a lazy oaf and he takes the hero of the story under his wing...plot twists come up later on!

this time i will definitely be happy!

v good and refreshing for a shorter series! she's been reborn 3 times and remembers every time the hero's stabbed her in the back, and now she just wants to break up with him!

silver diamond

older manga but v good adventure w intrigue! a boy who loves plants get sucked into a desert world with demonic lizards and a mysterious bodyguard by his side. shonen-ai not BL but wonderful vibes nonetheless + great side characters!

the princess imprints a traitor

adore everything in this from the world (not in that way this society makes me so angry) to the machinations at play and the dynamic between the fl and ml

[excelsi-or]

just a little sweeter (pt.9)

Heeelllooooooooo, friends~ It’s been ages since I’ve had a chance to post on here. I hope you’re all well and being safe. For those of you who also went back to school, I hope it hasn’t been horrible. And if it has been, God, I know the feeling. I’ve had to rearrange my schedule and reevaluate some things so that I have more time for writing. Not just this story, but the two big personal projects that I’ve been working on for most of the year. 

BIPOC rec (because hell yeah we’re still doing this): A couple that I found who do workout videos (I’ve been slacking on the exercising because I hate home workouts with a passion), MrandMrsMuscle. Check them out on YT. I’m currently doing their 30 day workout challenge, just to ease me back into consistency. Anyway, byyyyyyeeeee. (and good luck to my American readers. This election has been a rollercoaster of a ride to follow.)

w.c. 1.7k (fluuuuuff, I just wanted to write them interacting more. lol they touch a lot, but my love language is physical touch and those are just my favourite moments)

pt.1; pt.2; pt.3; pt.4; pt.5; pt.6; pt.7; pt.8

“So, it’s getting pretty serious,” Seungcheol comments.

Eunha shows Jihoon a picture that she’s working on. Jihoon kisses the side of her head. “I’m sure she’ll love it. I’ll let her know you’re making it so she can be excited about it.”

Eunha smiles up at him and he takes the opportunity to kiss her forehead. He straightens and addresses Seungcheol’s statement. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? It’s been a few months. You bring this woman with you when you go and do things with Eunha on your day off. How is that not serious? Your daughter spends time with her instead of at your parents’ when we go away for a few days.”

“That’s just a convenience thing.”

“Bumzu hyung lives in the area,” Seungcheol points out. “And he has definitely spent more time with Eunha than she has.”

“He’s not as good with Eunha as she is,” Jihoon answers. He slips back into his shoes. “Hyung, I don’t want to set my expectations too high. A few months really isn’t that long.”

“It’s long for you,” Jeonghan comments. He’d been sitting in the kitchen having a snack. “We can’t deny that fact.”

“Okay, yes, fine,” he groans. “Since Yeri, this is long.” He buries his hands into his pockets.

“You like her,” Seungcheol states.

Jihoon rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”

“Love?”

He feels his cheeks warming. The word has been floating around in his mind for a while. He hasn’t had the guts or the heart to mention it.

Jeonghan chuckles and meets Seungcheol’s gaze. “Wow. No wonder his love songs have gotten so good.”

Jihoon turns to the door before the boys can get into the brunt of the teasing. “Can you please just call me when you put Eunha to bed?”

Seungcheol huffs.

“I can bring her downstairs to Seungkwan if you’re going to be like this.”

Seungcheol sighs, following Jihoon to the door. “Yes, yes. I’ll call you.”

“Minghao said he’d be home later. So, if you can’t handle her, he said to pass her off.”

“Jeonghan and I can take care of Eunha for an evening,” Seungcheol insists. He gives Jihoon a nudge out the door. “Go. And be in love.”

Jihoon can’t be angry at them. Instead, he rolls his eyes once more and heads to her place.

He meets her in front of her apartment, and she has a wide smile ready for him. She’s bundled up in her winter coat, the collar covering nearly half her face. She bumps him lightly with her hip, hands buried deep in her pockets, and then loops her arm through Jihoon’s.

“What’s our plan this evening?” Her voice comes out muffled and Jihoon finds it oddly adorable.

He tips his head. “Well, I was thinking.”

“Good start.”

He snorts. “Shut up.” He starts over. “I was thinking about what you said last week.”

“Vague and mysterious,” she cuts in.

Jihoon pauses before continuing. “You didn’t get a chance to chew out a bad customer today, did you?”

She tips her head up to look at him. “Shit, you can tell?”

Jihoon throws his head back with a laugh. “You like a snarky remark, but not this many.”

She touches her head against his arm in endearment. “You just steal my heart more and more, Lee Jihoon.”

He ignores the flip in his stomach. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Sighing, she shrugs. “This guy was just chewing out my girls when I was about to leave for the day. I had to ask him to leave the establishment.” She frowns. “I haven’t had to do that before.”

Jihoon feels a protective switch flip on despite the fact that she’s clearly okay and is an adult woman who can handle herself. “Did he lash out?”

“He told me I didn’t have the authority, but a few guys helped out. I told the girls to call me if he came back.” Her hand goes to her pocket. “I can’t stop checking to see if my phone is on sound.”

Jihoon glances down at her. All he can see is the top of her head. Her gaze is to the ground, unaware that he thinks she’s one of his favourite people he’s met in a while. And he’s met a lot of people in his short 24 years of living.

“But enough about my work, I’m here to spend the evening with you.” Jihoon looks away, anticipating her eyes to look up at him. “What did you have planned? Something about something I said last week?”

“Yes.” Jihoon pauses. “Pottery class,” he meets her eyes, “are you down?”

Her eyes widen and a smile blooms across her face. “Oh my god, you’d come to an art class with me?”

“You said you would love to see how artistic I actually am. I told you I’m not. You said something about pottery. And I heard it’s fun.”

Jihoon laughs when she starts to wiggle excitedly next to him. Despite both their thick coats, he can feel her happiness emanating off her. They wait at the bus stop, talking about anything and everything.

Jihoon has picked her up in a company car before, but she hadn’t liked the idea of someone waiting on them. She’ll do it if Eunha is with them, since her suggestion of using public transit almost made him throw up. But he’s willing to do it on dates if it keeps her this happy.

Jihoon pulls a mask from his pocket and hooks it around both ears. She tugs him after her onto the bus and he taps his card at the card reader. They stand near the door, holding the same bar. She grins up at him.

“What?” he whispers.

She stands on her tip toes and whispers back, “I’m so excited.”

Jihoon snorts. “Good.” He pecks her forehead through his mask.

They continue the ride in silence since the bus is quiet. When they get off at their stop, they gravitate towards each other and her arm automatically loops through his. She looks both ways.

“Where to?”

Jihoon leads her left and reads the names of the storefronts. He knows it’s between a café and a bookstore. Another reason why he’d chosen this specific pottery store for their lesson.

“This is us.”

She’s basically skipping towards the door. The bell trills overhead as they enter, a warmth passing over them from the heat of the space. Jihoon goes to the counter, taking off his mask on the way, while she admires all the pottery on display. The air smells like clay and peppermint.

“We have a lesson booked.”

“Lee Jihoon?” the woman at the desk asks, her eyes on the computer. “Ah, the teacher said he was expecting you. Come this way.”

“Yah,” Jihoon hisses.

She’s at his side in an instant. Her hand reaches for his and he leads her to the backroom. One of his teachers from a Going Seventeen episode stands before them. Jihoon had recalled that the man dabbled in pottery and he was familiar to Jihoon. He still kept the man’s painting of him on display.

“Hi, ssaem.” Jihoon bows and the teacher bows in response. “This is my…”

She looks to him expectantly, letting him fill the blank.

“Girlfriend,” he says, turning back to the teacher. “She’s the one who’s excited about pottery.”

The man bows to her and she bows in response. “Come in. Take your coats off; it’s going to get really warm in here.”

They get a private lesson. The two of them are sat at their own pottery wheels with the teacher correcting their form and giving them pointers. They each make three pieces. One vase, a bowl, and a figurine each. Hers are significantly better, but Jihoon chalks it up to her artistic hands. They laugh, joking with the teacher. She peppers him with questions between all the banter.

Their pieces will be put in the kiln once they dry a bit more and Jihoon will receive a text when they’re ready to be painted.

“That was the best date I’ve ever been on,” she says as they walk out of the store.

“Well that’s a bold statement.”

“I’ve been wanting to do that forever and it was so much fun to do it with you,” she sings.

Jihoon guides her into the bookstore next door without saying anything. Her eyes dart towards the books as they walk up and down the aisles. She picks books off the shelves and reads the synopses while they chat.

When Seungcheol calls because Eunha’s about to go to bed, she and Eunha talk about different books. By the time they all say goodbye, she has a stack of three children’s novels that they’re going to read together. She goes to the counter to pay and Jihoon beats her to the card reader.

“Jihoon,” she sighs, a smile on her face.

Jihoon shakes his head, tucking his wallet away. “This is still a date.” He’d kiss her if the employee wasn’t watching them. “I haven’t taken you home yet.”

She laughs and takes the brown bag offered to her. As they wander out of the shop, she thanks him.

He kisses the side of her head. “Now come on. You need to read me those books before you read them to my daughter.”

Her gaze lifts to meet his, an eyebrow raised in question.

“She talks about the characters from the stories you read and I can’t talk about them with her, because I’ve never read the books.” He leads her into the café. “So, what would you like, jagi?”

Both her eyebrows raise at the nickname, but she seems pleased. “Mint tea.”

“Go sit.” He nudges her towards the tables while he heads to the counter. “I’ll bring it to you.”

She yanks him back and whispers in his ear, “Best date ever.” Then she pecks him on the cheek before finding a table by the window.

She misses the deep blush that spreads across his face.

[shipcestuous]

Don't know if you're into games, but I recommend you check out Assassin's Creed Syndicate for the relationship between the main protags, the Frye twins (brother/sister). They're not "canon", but the game has so much subtext/chemistry between them that I prefer shipping them over the sister Evie's "canon" love interest. Hell, the database implies she eventually leaves him to raise her brother's granddaughter in her old age, spending the rest of her life with him. Just check out the vids on YT!

Anon #2: Hello! I love your wordpress blog -- I can spend literal hours slowly going through your blog, and even read pairings of shows I've never watched because your posts are entertaining! I see that you're still active, so may I ask some things? 1. What do you think of the Frye twins from Assassin's Creed: Syndicate? Once I found out about them this year, I just had to look for your opinions on this but alas you had none -- you only had an ask about it a long time ago!

You are so kind, Anon! It makes me so happy to know that you enjoy the posts on this blog, even the ones about fandoms you aren't in. I'm so sorry you had to wait so long for a reply to your ask!

Anon #3: I don't know if anyone recommend this to you, but if you're into the Assassin's Creed video games, in one of the games called Assassin's Creed Syndicate, the main protags are a pair of twins (brother/sister) and their relationship is AMAZING! It's not canon, but their relationship was one of the best aspects of the game. Even if you're not a gamer yourself, I recommend checking out the cutscenes on YT. There's a lot of us in the fandom who love them as a couple.

Anon #4: If fans recommended Assassin's Creed games, so I also recommend you check out the novelizations for them, particularly the ones for Brotherhood and Syndicate. They don't contain a lot of insights for the pairings (and the author's writing isn't the best), but for Syndicate's novel titled Underworld, there are a few scenes focusing on Evie and Jacob, and there is A LOT of subtext. For example, the books says the Frye twins share a preternatural bond.

It makes me so happy to see so many Evie and Jacob shippers!!!

I haven't played the game so I don't have any comments of my own, but I would like to watch some cut scenes some time. (I'll take video links if anyone has recommendations!) I'm very intrigued by these novelizations, which are probably the most approachable form of Jacob/Evie's story for non-gamers. Twins with a preternatural bond ? That's my jam. Plus, look at them. Just look.

[jinjojess]

As I was tagging the last reblog I was thinking of adding a playful "meet me in the pit workshop" joke but it occurred to me that… I have actually encountered someone similar to these folks in the wild during my MFA program. Not exactly the same, but a related phenomenon.

(Cut for length, don’t worry there’s a tl;dr at the end)

My degree was a 2 year fiction writing one, and every semester you had to take mandatory lit courses as well as a workshop course. For those of you who aren't familiar, a workshop is generally run like so:

person/people submit a piece to the class to be read and then critiqued the following lesson

during the crit phase, everyone in the room except the author discusses the work: what worked, what didn't, how they felt about it, etc.

the writer cannot say anything until the very end of the critique; it's usually encouraged that they only answer any direct questions and/or reply with "Thank you for your comments."

writer reworks the piece according to whatever input they deemed helpful and resubmit again later to repeat the process

As you can imagine, it's a VERY good way to thicken your skin and learn to tell helpful critique from stupid nonsense (i.e., the guy who insisted you always needed more talking animals). My first workshop in undergrad started off with a girl calling my opening paragraph "so pretentious [she] wanted to slit [her] wrists more than continue". I'm still grateful to her to this day, because hot damn was that what I needed to hear.

Anyway, by the time I got to grad school, all the people in my year were already workshop veterans, and so we were generally polite in our feedback, even if it was firmly critical.

Then, in my second year, we got an influx of new people, along with some…unique personalities, one of which was a girl clearly raised on YT film critics (and maybe fanfic sporking, but I suspect that might've been before her time).

When my friend TK submitted a story about a Latina sex worker conflicted over whether or not to marry her white boyfriend because of her complicated feelings regarding her work and heritage, this girl ripped into it. Nothing in this story was salvageable. It was misogynistic, it was tropey, it was racist, it was too idealistic, the characters were all horrible people. (In reality I wouldn't say it did any of those things, thanks in most part to the degree of nuance my friend gave the protagonist and the focus on her relatable human struggles regarding work vs love life vs public image vs personal community etc.) The story was stupid and Bad the writer should feel ashamed.

Understandably everyone was a bit ??? at this read, and even the eccentric professor known for tough love asked her to tone it back a bit, but we treated her critiques as valid like all the others. TK was kind of shell-shocked for a bit after, choosing instead to work on a different story of hers.

When the time came around for the hyper-critic girl to submit, we were pretty intrigued to see what she thought great work would look like. If TK's story was entry-level schlock, then this girl must have some serious avant-garde ideas about narrative. My buddy J, who exclusively wrote in meta-textual symbolism, was particularly excited.

Here's the synopsis of hyper-critic girl's story:

White Anglo-American girl is told she cannot date white Italian-American boy because he's new to the neighborhood. They sneak out and go on a date to a 50s-style candy shop, after which girl decides she's in love and will see the boy again no matter what.

Cue ??? from all of us Part II.

We were pretty gracious in our feedback, since no one wanted to be That Guy and sink to her level, but we did bring up the distinct lack of…oh, racial minorities, queer people, realistic tensions or conflicts, and anything new or unique.

What we discovered was that she had panicked when it was her time on the chopping block, and had resorted to writing the safest thing possible. Ironically, her story in all its blandness was more offensive to good writing than TK's could ever hope to be. (Not to mention pretty exclusionary to anyone but the most mainstream of audiences.)

In the end, her writing improved a lot after that (she had a weird dud about intra-family melodrama that had the depth of a soap opera, but following that one she started coming up with much better stuff) and she got way better at giving thoughtful critique.

Obviously this isn't a 1:1 comparison with the purity types, but it strikes me as similar because I see a lot of "writing advice" on Tumblr centering on this idea that you should only address the safest of topics or risk doing A Bad Thing. If you try to include anything but the most mainstream of ideas or subjects, then it must be 100% perfect or else it will be the sole downfall of society. It explains the viciousness aimed at works that do try to be more inclusive, while leaving other things that don't try alone. This paralyzing fear of feedback is where the Every Ending Must Be Happy people come from, since tragedy and pathos will often take a more delicate, deft touch and they’re terrified of being written off as edgy or cynical.

Basically the only rule of writing is that you can write whatever you want, just do it well. Not everyone will like it, and that's okay. You will write things that can be interpreted in a problematic way, and that's just an occupational hazard. Despite what purity types think, a writer cannot control what a reader will take away from their work. 

So here’s the point: treat all feedback like you're in a workshop. The stuff you can use, use, and don't be intimidated into sanding off everything that makes your writing unique and interesting. Sometimes the weirdo telling you that you need to eliminate children from your stories or include more talking snakes has no idea what they’re talking about either.