#ill literally just read the dialogues to see if anything plot important is being said

[oifaaa]

Assumption: while you aren't against ship fics, you lean towards found family dynamics more often, with shipping and romance as background/afterthoughts.

True - tho it does sometimes depend on the fandom for the most part yeah I like the relationship to be in the background or atleast not the main focus

[balrogballs]

I’m curious how you “plan” your fics in your notes! If it’s okay with you to share your secrets ofc… I always face the trouble of wanting to write a story where “nothing happens” and its more an exploration of ones character. But then i never know when to start? I always feel like stakes need to be involved in order for me to write 😖

Of course, perfectly happy to share!

So sorry it took me a day or so to get to this, I was travelling and wanted to answer properly haha. Below the cut!

Just a note though this is just my chaotic little process and is by no means particularly expert/useful - I do put in quite a bit of work into them but I defo don’t take myself too seriously so this could fully just be me rambling! Also I am still in my cold tent hence forgive typos!

Have also attached some examples of my plan, from The Sword Tree oneshot but ofc no need to read that, its just an overview of the process :)

With the below re, planning, this applies to anything that isn’t in my Feral Children series - that series is a bit more loosely planned in that I centre them all around family/parenthood so its a bit more fun. I like to balance posting both kind of fics, and I’d say Cast in Stone would be the sole story where it’s both.

Normally I like to think of a few themes first, normally one or two for each, and theyre quite basic/expansive. In False Spring it’s an eldritch manifestation of sea longing as chronic illness in Elrond, and then in Rats of Valinor, the spiritual sequel, it’s how said illness isn’t ‘cured’ in Valinor, with a side of diasporic ‘reverse’ longing. Then I write, normally by hand bc I’m a dweeb, a general thematic outline of what I’d like the story to convey. Here’s an example that I’ve shared before from the Sword Tree.

Since with most of these stories, nothing very much ‘happens’ in terms of story beats, eg. climatic point of Rats is literally Elrond seeing a rat, the one for Sword Tree is Maedhros chopping down a tree, the “drive” is mostly emotional rather than action based. So I plan out the emotional arc, and then decide the best ways to convey each aspect of it. I don’t really write this out, but have a vague idea in my head.

However, and this doesn’t really apply to the lighter feral children stories at all as I dont plan those, I do spend a bit of time on the prose and symbols/elements for each aspect before I write the story itself — this is me being unimaginative actually, as I’m writing in a very similar style and process to my novel writing, where again, the prose matters more than the narrative arc. I actually find it a lot harder to write long plot driven stories, and hope to challenge myself on this front in the future.

But yes, here, I talk to myself a bit on Google Docs, think of interesting ways to say what I want to say, tighten some important bits of prose before I actually put it all together - here’s an example, again from The Sword Tree just to keep it consistent!

And then I just write it! Most of the dialogue, and definitely all of the humour/random observations/inserts are written as I go, and I’d say my general narratorial style is conducive to this as for the most part it follows a somewhat ‘storyteller’ style, which works well with said random inserts or fourth wall breaks so to speak - I actually very much played this up with Cast in Stone for narrative/plot reasons, as anyone who’s read it would know haha. I will say though, said storytelling style works nicely with Tolkien due to how the original books are written, and is probably why I’m so compelled to and enjoy writing for this fandom, but it’s not read too well when I wrote for, say, Naruto haha.

Anyway hope thats helpful and that I havent been just chatting out of my arse for such a long time! Sorry for the lateness as well, I wanted to answer properly and just really didn’t want to be the person that says “oh haha i just write xoxo” because wayyy too many people in litfic say stuff like that lmao

I also wanted to say this is by no means expert advice or even that this is very good advice even - it’s just what works for me!

[jayoctodot]

The Silent Patient vs The Maidens

I will start by saying that I understand the appeal of these novels as page-turners. They are easy to read and if you want a twisty reveal at the end, you will probably be entertained and satisfied. That being said, I am SO CONFUSED by the near-universal adoration of The Silent Patient and the reasonably positive reception of The Maidens. The weaknesses of the two are strikingly similar, as well, which doesn’t give me much hope of seeing improvement from this guy, though I am intrigued to see whether he keeps repeating the same (apparently successful!!) patterns. These books were at least super fun to hate.

(For context, I read The Maidens for a bookclub I'm in, because several of the members had read and loved The Silent Patient, and one of them gave me a copy of the latter to read on my own time. I loathed The Maidens and then read The SP for comparative purposes. And because I'm a masochist, apparently.)

SPOILER WARNING! Do not read on unless you've finished both books (or unless you care not for spoilers). Sorry if it gets a bit shouty.

Here are the similar weaknesses I noticed in both:

PSEUDO-PSYCHOLOGY

-> Weirdly similar “group therapy” scenes early on where a cartoonishly unstable patient arrives late, disrupts the meeting by throwing something into the middle of the circle, and is asked to join the group after the therapist(s) speechify on the importance of boundaries (HA! None of these therapists would know an appropriate boundary if it kicked them in the ass) and debate whether to “allow” the patient to join. Both scenes are so transparent in their design to establish the credibility/legitimacy of the narrators as therapists, but instead both Theo and Mariana come off as super patronizing. The protagonists are less and less believable as therapists at the stories progress (though at least Theo’s incompetence is explained away by the “twist” at the end; Mariana, on the other hand, is confronted in the opening pages of the novel by a patient who has self-harmed PRETTY extensively, and rather than ensure he get proper medical attention, she essentially throws him a first aid kit and tosses him out the door so she can pour herself a glass of wine and call her niece... and it devolves from there).

-> Ongoing insistence throughout the narrative that one’s childhood trauma entirely explains the warped/dysfunctional way a character behaves or views the world, which is why the books go out of their way to give EVERY potentially violent character a traumatic childhood; when Theo insists that no one ever became an abuser who hadn’t been abused themselves, I wanted to throw the book across the room. (That is a MYTH, SIR. GET OUT OF HERE WITH YOUR ARMCHAIR PSYCHOLOGY.)

-> Female murderers whose pathology boils down to “history of depression” and “traumatized by a male loved one/family member.” Because, as we all know, depression + abuse = murderer!

-> The “therapy” depicted in both books is laughable and so so unrealistic, mostly because neither narrators function as therapists so much as incompetent detectives, obsessively pursuing a case they have no place pursuing (or skill to pursue - both just happen across every clue mostly by way of clunky conversation with all the people who can provide precisely the snippet of info to send them along to the next person, and the next… until all is revealed in a tired, cliched “twist”). Their constant Psych 101 asides were so tiresome and weirdly dated (also, the constant harping on countertransference got so ridiculous that at one point during "therapy" Theo literally attributes his headache and a particular emotion he feels to Alicia, as though the contents of her head are being broadcast directly into his mind... and I'm PRETTY SURE that's not how it works???)

CHARACTERS

-> Psychotherapist narrators with abusive fathers and pretensions of being Sherlock Holmes, which results in both characters crossing ALL KINDS of ethical lines as they invade the personal lives of everyone even tangentially connected to their cases (and, in Theo's case, violate all kinds of patient confidentiality. Yeah, yeah, by the end, that's the least of his offenses, but before you get there, it's baffling that NO ONE is calling him out on this).

-> All female characters are either elderly with hilariously bad advice, monstrous hulking brutes, or beautiful bitches (except for ~MARIANA~, who is Bella Swan-esque in her unawareness of her own attractiveness, despite multiple men trying to get with her almost immediately after meeting her. I'm so tired of beautiful female characters being oblivious to their own hotness. Are we meant to believe all mirrors and male attention have escaped their notice? If it’s to make them “relatable,” this tactic really fails with me).

-> All characters of color are shallow, cartoonish side characters, and most of them are depicted as unsympathetic minor antagonists (the Sikh Chief Inspector in The Maidens continuously drinks tea from an ever-present thermos, and his only other notable characteristic is his instant dislike of Mariana, whom he VERY RIGHTLY warns to stay out of the investigation that she is VERY MUCH compromising… the Caribbean manager of the Grove is universally disliked by her staff for enforcing stricter safety regulations at the bafflingly poorly run mental institution, because HOW DARE SHE. There's a very clear vibe that we're supposed to dislike these characters and share the protagonists' indignation, but honestly Sangha/Stephanie were completely in the right for trying to shut down their wildly inappropriate investigations).

-> "Working class" characters (or basically anyone excluded from the comfortably upper-crust, educated main cadre of characters) are few and far between in both stories, but when they show up, he depicts them as such caricatures. We got Elsie the pathologically lying housekeeper in the Maidens, who is enticed to share her bullshit with cake, and then a TOOTHLESS LEPRECHAUN DEALING DRUGS UNDER A BRIDGE in the SP. I kid you not, a man described as having the body of a child, the face of Father Time, and no front teeth, emerges from beneath a bridge and offers to sell Theo some "grass." I was dyinggg.

-> There are no characters to root for. Anywhere. Partly because they’re all so thinly drawn — and because we’re clearly supposed to view almost ALL of them as potential suspects, so they’re ALL weird, creepy, or incompetent in some way.

-> The flimsiest of flimsy motives, both for the narrators and the murderers. Theo fully would have gotten away with his involvement in the murder if he hadn't gone out of his way to work at the Grove and "treat" Alicia and his justification for doing so is pretty weak; his rapid descent into stalking and murder fantasy and his random ass decision to "expose" Alicia's husband as a cheater with a spur-of-the-moment home invasion and staged attempted homicide is ONLY justified if the reader hand waves it away as WELP, HE'S CRAZY, I GUESS (after all, he DID have an abusive father and a history of mental illness, and in Michaelides novels, that's ALL YOU NEED to become a violent psycho). I guess we're lucky Mariana didn't also start dropping bodies (because the logic of his fictional universe says she should definitely be a murderer by now... maybe that'll be his Maidens sequel?). But she especially had NO reason to randomly turn detective - and she kept trying to justify it by saying she needed to re-enter the world or that Sebastian would want her to (??), even though she had no background in criminal psychology... or even a particular fondness for mysteries (really, I would've accepted ANYTHING to explain her dogged obsession with the case. WHY were Sebastian and Zoe so certain she would insert herself into the investigation just because one of Zoe's friends was the first victim? WHY?). As for Zoe and Alicia, their motives are mere suggestions: they were both abused and manipulated, and voila! Slippery slope to murder.

WRITING STYLE

-> Incessant allusions to Greek tragedy and myth, apparently to provide a sophisticated gloss over the bare-bones writing style, which opts more for telling than showing and frequently indulges in hilariously bizarre analogies. Credit where credit is due — the references to Greek myth are less clunky in the SP, and I liked learning about the Alcestis play/myth, which I hadn’t heard of before - but OMG the entire characterization of Fosca, who we are meant to believe is a professor of Greek tragedy at one of the most respected universities on the planet, is just absurd. His "lecture" on the liminal in Greek tragedy is essentially the Wikipedia page on the Eleusinian Mysteries capped off with some Hallmark-card carpe diem crap. The lecture hall responds with raucous applause, clearly never having heard such vague genius bullshit before.

-> Super clunky and amateurish narrative device of interludes written by another character; Sebastian’s letter reads like a mashup of Dexter monologues and Clarice’s memory of the screaming sheep, but by FAR the worse offender is Alicia’s diary, where we’re supposed to believe she painstakingly recorded ENTIRE CONVERSATIONS, BEAT-BY-BEAT DIALOGUE, even when she’s just been DRUGGED TO THE GILLS with morphine and has mere moments of consciousness left… and even before that, she literally takes the time to write “He's trying the windows and doors! ...Someone’s inside! Someone’s inside the house! ETC ETC” when she thinks her stalker has broken in downstairs. WHO DOES THAT?)

-> Speaking of dialogue, the dialogue is so bad. Based on his bio, Michaelides got a degree in screenwriting, which makes his terrible dialogue even more baffling.

-> HILARIOUSLY rendered voyeur scenes where the narrators spy on couples having sex. Such unintentionally awkward descriptions. First we had Kathy’s climax sounds through the trees and then the bowler hat carefully placed on a tombstone before the gatekeeper plows a student. Again, I died.

PLOT/"TWIST"

-> The CONSTANT red herrings make for such an exhausting read. Michaelides drops anvils with almost every character that are so obviously meant to designate them as suspects in our minds. There is absolutely no subtlety in his misdirections.

-> The “crossover” scene between the SP and The Maidens makes no sense - when in the timeline does Mariana’s story overlap with Theo’s? They confer just before Theo starts working at the Grove, obviously (though Mariana appears to be the one who alerts Theo to the job opening there? Whereas in the SP, Theo has been obsessively tracking Alicia since the murder and had already planned to apply to work there?), but then are we supposed to believe that while Theo has been psychotically pursuing his warped quest to “help” Alicia, he’s also been diligently treating Zoe, so invested in her case that he repeatedly reaches out to Mariana to get her to visit Zoe and even writes Mariana a lengthy letter to convince her to do so??? And then a couple days after The Maidens ends, Theo is arrested???

-> But the thing I really did hate the most is how Michaelides treats his female murderers (who are both also victims themselves) as mere means to deploy a “twist”; there’s no moment spared to encourage our sympathy for Zoe, who was groomed and manipulated by the only trusted father figure in her life, and even after spending a decent amount of time getting to know Alicia via her ridiculous diary, where it’s so apparent that she’s been demeaned, objectified, manipulated, gaslit, and/or used by EVERY man in her life, she’s sent packing to spend the rest of her days in a coma… HOW much more satisfying would it have been for her to succeed in exposing Theo and reclaiming her voice? But no, she basically rolls over when he comes to finish her off (SPEAKING OF — ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THERE ARE NO SECURITY CAMERAS IN THIS INSTITUTE FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE????), writes one last diary entry, and drifts off forever. And then a couple pages of nothing later, the story is over. GOODNIGHT, ALICIA!

Both books kept me rolling throughout (by which I mean eye-rolling but also rotfl). Maybe I will check out his next effort — I’m morbidly curious what he’ll turn out. It does leave me wondering whether I should give up on thriller novels entirely, though. Are many of the weaknesses of these novels just characteristic of the genre? Maybe I'm just holding these books to unfair standards? I'm mostly only familiar with thriller films — many of which I think are amazing — but maybe you can get away with more in a film than you can in a novel.

...I really only intended to write a handful of bullet points, but more and more kept coming to mind as I wrote, to the point where subheadings became necessary. Whoopsie.

[before-whatgod]

How I Would Fix the MCU Movies (in chrono order)

Black Widow is mentioned but there are no spoilers! also this is super long sorry lol

CA:TFA

--More time with the howling commandos- instead of a montage with their battles with sit with them and feel their struggles. we feel not only capt’s grief but everyone on the team when bucky ‘dies’. idk would have loved to see more of a band of bothers bond 

Captain Marvel 

--I saw/read somewhere that her story could have work really well with a similar structure as CA:TFA and i agree. they were so concerned with making carol look powerful that they forgot to give her the fiery/badass personality we were promised. there was too much telling not enough showing 

Iron Man 

--Literally Nothing. Perfect. Great Intro to the series. 

Iron Man 2 

--again really solid movie i wish the villains were a bit more developed by tbh this is my fav iron man movie 

The Incredible Hulk 

--babes i dont even remember this movie its super cool they keep rossi around from it tho. hes literally the only thing the mcu kept from this monstrosity i would keep a similar plot structure but with mark ruffalo and a better script and tbh a better evrything. cannot tell you where to start with this jesus   

Thor 

--would have liked to see of the personality thor has later on in the timeline line- but it is interesting to think maybe he developed his humor and friendliness from his time on earth, idk this movie was kinda dull? i mean everything is dull compared to ragnarok and better compared to the dark world so idk how to fix that- maybe less of chris’s weird screaming- definitely less of chris’s screaming 

The Avengers 

--honestly love this movie-great set up to the team dynamics wouldn’t change anything. i love the nostalgia i get from watching this  

Iron Man 3 

--another movie i dont really remember but? this is the one with the bunny right? i feel like after iron man 1 the quality of tony’s enemies has gone down hill but i could watch rdj do anything so overall good experience 

Thor: The Dark World  

--besties what even happened in this movie like, jane babes what are we doing. loki is as amazing as ever tho. but like ‘oh no lokis dead again whatever are we going to do’ i would simply through the whole thing away- keeping jane going to asgard, loki being dramatic, and the relationships of the asgardian gang we get to see. also the reality stone thats pretty important 

CA:TWA 

--I. Love. This. Movie. my fav in the whole timeline. can you tell im a capt girl? literally the best wow won’t change a thing 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1

--so! much! fun! i love their family dynamics and tbh i love peter quill (we all did until pratt was a dick but) 

Guardians Vol. 2 

--I wasn’t obsessed with this movie but I cant quite figure out how i would change it- it was visually beautiful and emotionally beautiful but idk something felt off until the very end 

Age of Ultron 

--hot take- i really like this movie. i like how it completely changes the direction of the series and makes the mcu feel so real, like the friend ship seen- i would have like more clint so his character arc in endgame would have been impactful i dont hate the farm family but man i sure dont love them jesus but yea i love the dialogue and the only thing i would really change is clint’s involve meant. also helen cho deserved to have a bigger part in the mcu 

Ant-Man 

--super fun! i feel like this movie is great the way it is- a familiar super hero movie when the series was starting to get pretty dense with the lore wont change anything 

CA:CW 

--i read somewhere this movie was originally going to be steve and sam and the rest of the squad finding bucky and i was robbed. over time the mcu starting telling us how great steve and buckys relationship was instead of showing us. like men can show each other affection marvel that is a thing that happens but tbh i loved this movie- i would change a lot but i still really enjoyed it 

Spiderman: Homecoming 

--its so cute i love it but I miss andrew garfields peter- he felt more like the comics but besties i love this movie and tom i would just change how ton is characterized to be more comic actuate but also maybe not idk 

Doctor Strange

-- tilda swinton owns my heart and sole. but imma be honest i saw this in theaters 3 weeks after a horrid concussion and i remember none of it and thinking about it makes me sick (love head trauma) so imma just leave it how it is 

Black Panther 

--nothing. its art. 

Black Widow

--I’m writing this around an hour after I watched the movie and tbh I dont know how I feel about it. I dont love it yet but im not quite sure why yet- its most likely the pacing it felt a little rushed to me but idk yet ill be able to gather all my thoughts in a later post prolly 

Thor: Ragnarok 

-- to think i can even dream to improve on anything taika waititi is putting bad karma into the universe. that man is a genius. you can feel just how comfortable everyone is in their characters which makes for a great performance

Ant-Man and the Wasp 

--the breather we all needed after iw but i dont think anyone really loved it- no idea how to fix it but yknow it was just bland 

Avengers: Infinity War 

--I loved it. I loved it so much. obviously there are some bad things here and there but i would not change a thing 

Avengers: Endgame 

--I hated it. I hated it so much. obviously there are some good things here and there but i would not keep a thing. 

(I have in fact written an essay about said topic bc i felt so passionate about it i did not know what else to do)

Spiderman: Far From Home 

--I dont know something was off for me with this one- again I think it was a pacign issues but I am not sure how I would change it 

I might do the tv shows in another post- but if i do those i want to include the netfilx marvel tv shows as well as the agent carter and agents of shield series(es?) 

anyway thank you for reading all of this if you did!

[therefractory]

The clown king: how Boris Johnson made it by playing the fool | Boris Johnson | The Guardian The Guardian · by Edward Docx The long-running German satirical show Extra 3 recently featured a sketch with the following voiceover: “From the people who brought you The Crown – the epic saga of the Queen – now comes the ridiculous story of this guy, a notorious buffoon at the head of a country … The Clown.” The word “clown” has often been used in a flippant or dismissive way with regard to Boris Johnson. But the underlying paradox is that it is only as a clown – a fool in the oldest and deepest sense of the word – that his character can truly be understood. What happens when you make the clown king is what we in the UK have been witnessing in real time. With the success of the vaccine, though, a new question emerges: can one archetype transform into the other? Can Johnson creep away from his clownish past altogether? Clowns, of course, are very serious and important people. At their simplest, they remind us of the silliness of things: that the world we have created is ridiculous. They reassure us in this observation by appealing to our innate understanding of the absurd. They relieve the endless tension and trauma of reality. At a deeper level, the clown is the mirror image of the priest. Both represent two ancient sides of our nature. Both elucidate what it means to be human. The priest summons, celebrates and interrogates the sacred; the clown does the same with the profane. The one is concerned with the eschatological, the other with the scatological. The priest propounds abstinence and fasting; the clown gluttony and indulgence. The one solemnifies sex, the other carnalises. As David Bridel, founder of the Clown School in Los Angeles, says, clowns are often roundly welcomed because they “remind us that we are as practised in falling over, shitting and humping, as we are in prayer and purification”. Would-be biographers of Johnson might do worse than to read Paul Bouissac, the leading scholar on the semiotics of clowning. Clowns are “transgressors”, he writes, cultural subversives who enact rituals and dramatic tableaux that “ignore the tacit rules of social games to indulge in symbolic actions that … toy with these norms as if they were arbitrary, dispensable convention.” Clowns “undermine the ground upon which our language and our society rest by revealing their fragility”. They “foreground the tension” between “instinct” and “constraint”. Bouissac could be writing directly of Johnson when he adds: “Their performing identities transcend the rules of propriety.” They are, he says, “improper by essence”. Observe classic Johnson closely as he arrives at an event. See how his entire being and bearing is bent towards satire, subversion, mockery. The hair is his clown’s disguise. Just as the makeup and the red nose bestow upon the circus clown a form of anonymity and thus freedom to overturn conventions, so Johnson’s candy-floss mop announces his licence. His clothes are often baggy – ill-fitting; a reminder of the clothes of the clown. He walks towards us quizzically, as if to mock the affected “power walking” of other leaders. Absurdity seems to be wrestling with solemnity in every expression and limb. Notice how he sometimes feigns to lose his way as if to suggest the ridiculousness of the event, the ridiculousness of his presence there, the ridiculousness of any human being going in any direction at all. His weight, meanwhile, invites us to consider that the trouble with the world (if only we’d admit it) is that it’s really all about appetite and greed. (His convoluted affairs and uncountable children whisper the same about sex.) Before he says a word, he has transmitted his core message – that the human conventions of styling hair, fitting clothes and curbing desires are all … ludicrous. And we are encouraged – laughingly – to agree. And, of course, we do. Because, in a sense, they are ludicrous. He goes further, though – pushing the clown’s confetti-stuffed envelope: isn’t pretending you don’t want to eat great trolleys of cake and squire an endless carousel of medieval barmaids … dishonest? Oh, come on, it’s so tiresome trying to be slim, groomed or monogamous – when what you really want is more cake and more sex. Right? I know it. You know it. We all know it. Why lie? Forget the subject under discussion – Europe, social care, Ireland – am I not telling it like it is, deep down? Am I not the most honest politician you’ve ever come across? Herein the clown’s perverse appeal to reason. Next, witness how, in the company of a journalist, Johnson’s whole demeanour transmits the sense of him saying: “Aha! An interview! How absurd! This is no way to find anything out! But, yes, if you want, I will play ‘prime minister’ and you can reprise my old role – if that’s what the audience is here for.” Notice how often he asks (knowingly) “Are you sure our viewers wouldn’t want to hear … ?” or “You really want to know this?” This is because the clown is always in a deeper relationship with the audience than with his ostensible subject. See how he rocks on his feet as if to lampoon a politician emphasising his words. Hear how his speech is not – in truth – eloquent, but rather a caricature of eloquence. The dominant mode is not fluency, but a kind of stop-start oratio interruptus; hesitancy followed by sudden spasms of effusion. The hesitancy is designed to involve us in the confected drama of his choosing the next word. The sudden effusion that follows can then be marketed as clinching evidence of his oratorical elan. You do not have to be a dramatist to recognise the clown archetype immediately. Johnson’s impulsiveness. The self-summoned crises. His attitude to truth, to authority, to every construct of law and art and politics, to power and to pleasure. His personal relationships and his relationship to the public. The self-conscious ungainliness. His blithe conjuring of fantasy and fairytale. The way he toys with norms – inverts, switches, tricks, reverses. The collusive warmth oddly symbiotic with a distancing coldness. Anything for a laugh. Everything preposterous. All of it richly articulate of the antic spirit that animates his being. Indeed, Johnson is an apex-clown – capable of the most sophisticated existential mockery while simultaneously maintaining the low moment-by-moment physical comedy of the buffoon. Recall general election Johnson of 2019. Think of the famous moment where he drove a JCB through a polystyrene wall on which was written the word “Gridlock”. His union jack-painted digger burst through the polystyrene with the legend “Get Brexit Done” written on its loader. His subsequent speech even mentioned custard: “I think it is time,” he said, smirking, “for the whole country – symbolically – to get in the cab of a JCB – of a custard colossus – and remove the current blockage that we have in our parliamentary system.” This scene must surely be as close to the actual circus as politics in the UK has ever come. Boris Johnson at the JCB headquarters in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, December 2019. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Consider what is actually going on here. The wall is a wall that he helped create. Now he wants everyone to join him demolishing it. And he’s the man to lead the charge. Why? Because he’s the only one who can smash through the nonsense that is … the wall. Yet, he built the wall. Most of this nonsense is his doing – figuratively, literally, in the studio, in the country. And why are the hazard lights on? Because, of course, this is an emergency, for the clown must forever be concocting drama. An emergency that he has conjured and staged – to place himself in the cab of the rescue vehicle. Which is not a rescue vehicle. But a JCB. (Paradox inside paradox; is he destroying or rescuing?) A JCB painted as a union jack. Why? To celebrate the flag? Not quite. To mock it, then? Also, not quite. But in order to toy with it – to clown with it – to move back and forth across the borders of the serious and the comic. “Time for the whole country,” he says, “symbolically – to get in the cab of the JCB.” Symbolically? Was ever a word deployed with so many layers of foolery? What – we thought he might mean we all get in the JCB? Of course, we didn’t. So who is he mocking with that word? He’s mocking everything – the stunt, us, himself – even in the moment of performance, he mocks his own performance. We cannot take him seriously and yet we must take him seriously. And note how that word “symbolically” steps up from the backstage of Johnson’s consciousness when talking of Brexit – which, as he well knows, is an act of symbolism at the expense of everything else. The JCBs, the polystyrene walls, the stuck-on-a-zipwire-with-two-mini-union-jacks, the hiding in fridges, the waving of fish, the thumbs up, the pants down, this is the realm of the mock heroic – to which Johnson returns again and again. This is where he’s most at home. This is where he’s world-king. And he urges us to join him there. Nudges our elbows. Offers us a drink. Beckons us in. Smirks. Winks. Johnson’s novel Seventy-Two Virgins is one long tour of the territory. The book is beyond merely bad and into some hitherto unvisited hinterland of anti-art. More or less everything about it is ersatz. Commentators who fall for his self-conjured comparisons to Waugh and Wodehouse miss the point entirely and do both writers an oafish ill-service. Because here again: Johnson is not seriously interested in writing novels at all. It’s not that he’s a fraud. Rather, as ever, he is a jester-dilettante peddling parody and pastiche. In truth, the attentive reader is not invited to take anything seriously about the novel – not its title; not its handling of character, dialogue, plot or point of view; not its dramatic construction, nor its stylistic impersonations. And certainly not its thematic dabbling. In fact, for more than 300 ingenious pages, Johnson manages to commit to nothing in the art of writing a novel so much as the attempt to be entertaining in the act of mocking a commitment to the art of writing of a novel. There is no heroic; it’s all mock. “To a man like Roger Barlow,” Johnson writes of his clownishly named hero in the book, “the whole world just seemed to be a complicated joke … everything was always up for grabs, capable of dispute; and religion, laws, principle, custom – these were nothing but sticks from the wayside to support our faltering steps.” Clowns have been with us through history. They turn up in Greek drama as sklêro-paiktês – childlike figures. During the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a clown-king was chosen and all commerce was suspended in favour of a wild cavort. (“Fuck business.”) In Norse mythology, the archetype is the figure of Loki – silver-tongued trickster and shape-shifter who turns himself into horse, seal, fly, and fish. (Note the echo of the reference by a close ally of Joe Biden to Johnson as a “shape-shifting creep”.) In the Italian commedia dell’arte, there is the character of Pierrot. There is Badin in France, Bobo in Spain, Hanswurst in Germany. And here in Britain: Shakespeare’s many famous fools. We need our clever fools, of course. Too much solemnity is sickly. We need the carnival. We need reminders of our absurdity. The culture should be subverted. The sacred should be disparaged. Institutions should be derided when they become sclerotic. We live in an age of posturing and zealotry and never needed our satirists and our clowns more. But the transgressor is licensed precisely because they are not in power. The satirist ridicules the government – fairly, unfairly – and we smile because (ordinarily) they are not in charge of the hospitals, the schools, our livelihoods or the borders. We laugh and clap at the circus, the theatre and the cinema because we can go home at the end of the evening, confident that the performers are not in charge of the reality in which we must live. Boris Johnson stuck on a zipline in Victoria Park, London, August 2012. Photograph: Getty Images Previously, of course, this was Johnson’s relationship to power. He was the clown-journalist tilting idly at straight bananas, Tony Blair, political correctness gone mad. When he was made mayor of London, he was in effect elevated to quasi-official court jester. There he was stranded on the zipwire (the buffoon parodies the circus trapeze act) but real power still remained elsewhere. Even during the referendum campaign, David Cameron and George Osborne were the government … whereas Johnson was continuing to perform the role of fool – holding up a kipper here, draped in sausages there, arriving in town squares with his red circus bus and a farrago of misdirection and fallacy. He was stoutly devoid of any real idea or concern for what might replace the structures he disparaged. His humour, his glee, his energy, his campaigning brilliance – it delighted and sparkled because he was free of responsibility, free to be himself, free to throw the biggest custard pies yet dreamed of in the UK. Vanishingly few people had any serious idea of what was involved in leaving the EU; and resoundingly not Johnson. But those who simply wanted to leave because their gut instinct told them it was right to do so would have failed and failed miserably without him. These men and women – the likes of Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis, Steve Baker, Nigel Farage, Mark Francois, John Redwood, Gisela Stuart, Kate Hoey et al – were never more than a dim congregation of rude mechanicals. And what they required to win was someone who instinctively understood how to conduct a form of protracted public masque. Someone who could distract, charm, rouse and delight with mischief and inversion and a thousand airy nothings. (The clown was ever the perfect ambassador of meaninglessness.) But even Puck sends the audience home with an apology and the reassurance that all we have witnessed was but a dream. We, however, have made our clown a real-world king. And from that moment on, we became a country in which there was only the mock heroic – a “world beating” country that would “strain every sinew” and give “cast-iron guarantees” while bungling its plans and breaking its promises. A country “ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles” and act “as the supercharged champion” of X, Y, Z. A country on stilts – pretending that we had a test and trace system that was head and shoulders above the rest of the world. A country performing U-turns on the teetering unicycle of Johnsonian buffoonery – A-levels, school meals, foreign health workers and more. A country of tumbling catastrophes. Trampolining absurdities. Go to work. Don’t go to work. A country proroguing parliament illegally here, trying to break international law there. Paying its citizens to “eat out to help out” in the midst of a lethal pandemic. A country testing its eyesight in lockdown by driving to distant castles with infant and spouse during a travel ban. A country whose leadership stitched up the NHS in the morning and then clapped for them at night. A country opening schools for a single day, threatening to sue schools, shutting schools. A country on holiday during its own emergency meetings. A country locking down too late; opening up too early. A country sending its elderly to die in care homes. A country unwilling to feed its own children. A country spaffing £37bn up the wall one moment and refusing to pay its own nurses a decent salary the next. A country doing pretend magic tricks with the existence of its own borders – no, there won’t be a border in the sea; oh yes there will; oh no there won’t; it’s behind you …. A country of gimmicks and slapstick and hollow, honking horns. This is Eastcheap Britain and Falstaff is in charge. It is in the two Henry IV plays that Shakespeare most clearly illuminates the gulf between his great, theatre-filling clown, Falstaff, and the young Prince Hal who will go on to become the archetype of the king – Henry V. At the mock-court of Falstaff’s tavern, we are invited to laugh and drink more ale, pinch barmaid’s bottoms, dance with dead cats and put bedpans on our heads while Falstaff entertains us with stories of his bravery and heroism that we all know are flagrant lies. Says Prince Hal to the portly purveyor of falsehoods: “These lies are like their father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” Meanwhile, the realm falls apart. Since we have no Hal and have crowned the clown instead, the play we are now watching in the UK asks an ever more pressing question: can Falstaff become Henry V and lead his country with true seriousness and purpose? Or is the vaccine-cloaked transformation now being enacted merely superficial – a shifting of the scenery? The lies themselves are the problem. The kingly archetype embodies at least the ambition of sincerity, meaning and good purpose at the heart of the state. Whereas deceit continues to be the default setting on Johnson’s hard drive. Rory Stewart calls Johnson “the best liar ever to serve as prime minister” but writes that “what makes him unusual in a politician is that his dishonesty has no clear political intent”. But Stewart does not quite see that Johnson is the purest form of clown there is – “improper by essence” – and that truth and lies are like two sides of the argument to him: equally tedious, equally interesting, equally absurd, both a distant second in their service of tricks, drama, distraction, invention, manipulation. He will write you two columns, four, 10, 100 – pro-Marmite, anti-Marmite; pro-EU, anti-EU. And then he’ll tell you all about them. All about how he couldn’t decide. Because not deciding is where all the drama is to be found and who cares about the arguments anyway? No, what the trickster wants is neither your agreement nor your disagreement. (For he himself agrees and disagrees.) What the trickster wants most of all … is for you to admire his trickery. Heinrich Böll, the German Nobel-prize winner and author of the truly great novel The Clown, answers Stewart’s question when he says: “You go too far in order to know how far you can go.”

The clown king: how Boris Johnson made it by playing the fool | Boris Johnson | The Guardian

[davidmann95]

Superman & Lois Pilot Script Review

I’ve been reliably informed that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and indeed as my laptop and everything on it have been unusable for a couple months after a mishap, I went from ‘maybe I’ll write something on the pilot script for Superman & Lois’ to ‘as soon as I can get my hands back on that thing I’m writing something up’. I’m actually surprised none of you folks asked about it when I’ve mentioned several times that I read it; I was initially hesitant, but I’ve seen folks discussing plot details on Twitter and their reactions on here, so I guess WB isn’t making much of a thing out of it. Entire pilots have leaked before and they just rolled with it, so I suppose that isn’t surprising. Anyway, the show’s been pushed back to next year, and also the world is literally sick and metaphorically (and also a little literally) on fire, so I thought this might be fun if anyone needs a break from abject horror. 

(Speaking of the world being on fire: while trying to offer a diversion amidst said blaze, still gonna pause for the moment to add to the chorus that if opening your wallet is a thing you can do, now most especially is a time to do it. I chipped in myself to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and even a casual look around here or Twitter will show people listing plenty of other organizations that need support.)

What I saw floating around was, if not a first draft, certainly not the final one given Elizabeth Tulloch later shared a photo of the cover for the final script crediting Lee Toland Krieger as the director rather than a TBD, but the shape of things is clearly in place. I’m going for a relative minimum of spoilers, though I’ll discuss a bit of the basic status quo the show sets up and vaguely touch on a few plot points, but if you want a simple response without risk of any story details: it’s very, very good. Clunky in the way the CW DC shows typically are, and some aspects I’m not going to be able to judge until the story plays out further, but it’s engaging, satisfying, and moreover feels like it Gets It more broadly than any other mass-media Superman adaptation to date.

The Good

* The big one, the pillar on which all else rests: this understands Lois and it really understands Clark. Lois isn’t at the center of the pilot’s arc, but she’s everything you want to see that character be - incisive, caring, and refusing to operate at less than 110% intensity with whatever she’s dealing with at any given time, the objections of others be damned. Clark meanwhile is a good-natured, good-humored dude who you can see in both the cape and the glasses even as those identities remain distinct, who’s still wrestling with his feelings of alienation and duty and how those now reflect his relationships with his children. The title characters both feel fully-formed and true to what historically tends to work best with them from day one here in ways I can’t especially say for any other movie or show they’ve starred in.

* While the suit takes a back seat for this particular episode, when Superman does show up in the opening and climax it absolutely knows how to get us to cheer for him; there’s more than one ‘hell yeah, it’s SUPERMAN, that guy’s the best!’ moment, and they pop.

* While the superheroics aren’t the biggest focus here, when they do arrive, the plan seems to be that they’ll be operating on an entirely different scale than the rest of the Arrowverse lineup. Maybe they scripted the ideal and’ll be pared-down come time for actual filming and effects work, or maybe they’re going all-out for the pilot, but the initial vision involves a massive super-rescue and a widescreen brawl that goes way, way bigger in scope than any I’m aware of on the likes of Supergirl. I heard in passing on Twitter from someone claiming to be in the know that the plan for Superman & Lois is that it’ll be fewer episodes with a higher budget, more in line with the DC Universe stuff if not exactly HBO Max ‘prestige TV’, and whether it’s true or not (I think it’s plausible, the potential ratings here are exponentially higher than anything else on the network so they’d want to put their best foot forward) they seem to be writing it as if that’s the idea.

* This balances its tones and ambitions excellently: it’s a Kent-Lane family drama, it’s Lois digging in with some investigative reporting to set up a major subplot, it’s Superman saving Metropolis and battling a powerful high-concept villain, and none of it feels like it’s banging up at awkward angles with the rest. There are a pair of throwaway lines in here so grim I can’t believe they were put in a script for a Superman TV show even if they don’t make it to air, and they in no way undermine the exhilaration once he puts on the cape or the warmth that pervades much of it. This feels as if it’s laying the groundwork for a Superman show that can tackle just about any sort of story with the character rather than planing its feet in one corner and declaring a niche, and so far it looks like it has the juice to pull it off.

* While the pilot doesn’t focus on him in the same way as the new kid, Jonathan Kent fits well enough for my tastes with the broad strokes of his personality from the comics, albeit if he had made it to 14 rather than 10 without learning about his dad being Superman. A pleasant, kinda dopey, well-meaning Superman Jr. - the biggest deviation, one I approve of, is that he can also kinda be a gleeful little shit when dealing with his brother in ways that remind you that this is very much also Lois Lane’s boy.

* We don’t know much about the season villain as of yet, but it’s an incredibly cool idea that I’m shocked that they’re going for right away, and I absolutely want to see how they play out as a character and how they’ll bounce off all the other major players.

* The way this seems to be framing itself in relation to the Superman movies and shows before it feels inspired to me: there are homages and shout-outs to and bits of conceptual scaffolding from Lois & Clark, Smallville, Donner, and more, but they’re all shown in ways that make it clear that those stories are part of his past rather than indicators of the baseline he’s currently operating off of. We get a retrospective of his and Lois’s history right off the bat with most of what you’d expect, and combined with those references the message is clear: this is a Superman who’s been through all the vague memories that you, prospective casual viewer, have of the other stuff you saw him in once upon a time, but this series begins the next phase of his life after what that general cultural impression of him to date covers. It strikes me as a good way of carrying over the goodwill of that nostalgia and iconography, while building in that this is a show with room to grow him beyond that into something more nuanced (and for that matter true to the character as the comics at their best have depicted him) than they tended towards. Where Superman Returns attempted to recapture the lightning in a bottle of an earlier vision of him in full, and Man of Steel tried to turn its back on anything that smelled of Old and Busted and Uncool entirely, perhaps this splitting of the difference - engaging with his pop culture history and visibly taking what appealed from some of those well-known takes, while also drawing a clear line in the sand between those as the past and this as the future - is what will finally engage audiences.

The Bad

* This is the sort of thing you have to roll with for a CW superhero show, and that lives and dies by the performances, but: the dialogue varies heavily. There are some really poignant moments, but elsewhere this is where it shows its early-draftiness; a decent amount is typical Whedon-poisoned quippiness or achingly blunt, and some of the ‘hey, we’re down with the kids!’ material for Jon, Jor, and Lana’s kid Sarah is outright agonizing. I suspect a lot of it will be fixed in minor edits, actor delivery, and hopefully the younger performers taking a brutal red pen to some of their material - this was written last January and the show’s now not debuting until next January, they’ve got plenty of time for cleanup - but if this sort of the thing has been a barrier to entry for you in the past with the likes of The Flash, this probably won’t be what changes your mind.

* There are a few charming shout-outs to other shows, but much moreso, Superman & Lois actually builds in a big way out of Crisis. Which is a-okay with me, except that what exactly that was is rather poorly conveyed given that lots of people will be giving this a spin with no familiarity with that. Fixable with a line or two, but important enough to be worth noting.

Have to wait and see how it plays out

* The series’ new kid, Jordan Kent, is so far promising with potential to veer badly off-course. He’s explicitly dealing with mental illness, and not on great terms with Clark at the beginning in spite of the latter’s best efforts, the notion of which I’m sure will immediately put some off. Ultimately the commonalities between father and son become clear, and he’s not written as a caricature in this opening but as a kid with some problems who’s still visibly his parents’ boy, but obviously the ball could be fumbled here in the long term.

* Lois’s dad is portrayed almost completely differently here than in the past in spite of technically still being her military dad who has some disagreements with her husband. There are some nice moments and interesting new angles but it seems possible that the groudwork is being laid for him to be Clark’s guy in the chair, and not only does he not need that he most DEFINITELY doesn’t need that to be a member of the U.S. Military, especially when one of the first and best decisions Supergirl made when introducing him was to make clear he had stopped working with the government any more than necessary years ago. Maybe it can be stretched if his dad-in-law occasionally calls him up to let him know about a new threat he’s learned about, and maybe they’ll even do something really interesting with that push-and-pull, but if Superman’s going to be even tacitly functioning as an extension of the military that’s going to be a foundational sin.

* As I was nervous about, Superman & Lois has some political flavor, but much to my delighted surprise, there’s no grossly out of touch hedge-betting in the way I understand Supergirl has gone for at times. As of the pilot, this is an explicitly leftie show, with the overarching threat of the season as established for Lois and Clark as reporters being how corporate America has stripmined towns like Smallville and manipulated blue collar workers into selling out their own best interests. Could that go wrong? Totally, there’s already an effort to establish a particular prominent right-wing asshole as capable of decency - without as of yet downplaying that he’s a genuinely shitty dude - and vague hints that some of the towns’ woes might be rooted more in Superman-type problems than Lois and Clark problems. But that they’re going for it this directly in the first place leaves me hopeful that the show won’t completely chicken out even if there’ll probably be a monster in the mix pulling a string or two; Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder’s Action Comics may justify Superman punching a cop by having him turn out to be a shadow monster so as to get past editorial, but it’s still a story about how sometimes Superman’s gotta punch a cop, and hopefully this can carry on in that spirit of using what wiggle room it has to the best of its ability.

So, so far so good. Could it end up a show with severe problems carried on the backs of Hoechlin and Tulloch’s performances? Absolutely. But thus far, the ingredients are there for all its potential problems to be either fixed, subverted, or dodged alright, and even when it surely fumbles the ball at junctures, I earnestly believe this is setting itself up to be the most fleshed-out, nuanced, engaging live-action take on these characters to date. And god willing, if so, the first real stepping stone in decades to proper rehab on Superman’s image and place in pop culture.

[whatkindofnameisella]

2,4,6,8

ok first of all going to cry bc i wrote this out in a very long and non-succinct way and accidentally hit the back button on my mouse and it. all got deleted. and im writing this again. but here we go.

2. What do you do to understand the characters better and get into their head space?

i think this depends on the kind of fic! i do one of two: for moment-specific fics, i rewatch the clip. and rewatch it again. and again. and then rewatch it and get all of the dialogue and voice inflections down. and then rewatch it and look at all the space BETWEEN the words and analyze that. that’s really more on the understanding side than the headspace side, but it’s pretty helpful to me!

for any fic (even the moment-specific ones bc if ur just writing down what u see on the screen its like. just go watch the show why are you reading this.) i will literally just imagine the table & liam and laura (+ any other ppl) & their body language & voices (an important one for me! bc i am pretty aurally inclined which is a blessing but also a curse when you’ve been watching something with a specific accent all day and then u start writing and its like why does this sound like scottish in my brain). it’s super useful when i don’t know what comes next, as ill just pretend like what im writing is a cannon moment and think, “okay, what would they say next?” i try to strike the balance between “this is fanfic i do what i want” and “would they actually do this if this was in an episode?” and if it strays too far from the later i rewrite it into something more simple or less direct, instead directing that emotion im trying to convey into the space between the dialogue/action (as seen above when i am analyzing actual episode clips, aha do you see the pattern). i like keeping somewhat close to possible cannon. 

anyways this is long because i am incapable of being concise and like expanding on things oh well

4. How does your writing happen? Do you visualize scenes playing out in your head, or do they come out in words as you type?

ok. as i am typing this for the second time i have had even MORE time to think about this question which curveballs on you the more you think about it. i think my process boils down to a really solid visualization of the scene & a strong sense of what the characters are feeling, which my brain then boils down into sentences & to which my aforementioned aural brain goes hey this is going to Sound Like This with This Specific Rhythm, good luck finding some words that fit to it. 

i think like anyone i do really have to have some sort of verbal plan going in, like A Scene or A Sentence that i am building to, or else i just end up really frustrated. i find that my fics that are all just built on some visual scene are harder to get out of my brain and onto the page, which is why an idea will usually float around for a day or two before my brain will go ‘hey look at this sentence’ and ill say OKAY YES I WOULD LIKE TO WRITE THAT and i try to start writing something just so i can write that one thing (although Buttercups is an exception to this. a brilliant, miraculous exception).

6. When you write emotional scenes, do you feel what the characters are feeling?

this is a toughie. in some ways i do, but it’s not in the more plot related stuff, or things like... crying, per se? the more i write the more i’ve figured out it’s all just projection and meta and yourself in one big pot, so i think a lot of the emotional arcs i write come from my own experiences/emotions. of course, not to the t, because i don’t have such intense self loathing as caleb, or am not currently falling in love! but like. caleb noticing the flowers and sun so specifically in Buttercups was me missing spring in January, jester finding joy in being clumsy in Viscaria is something i’m figuring out & trying to embrace more myself as i go through life, the rib bursting feeling in pretty much all of my fics is just from those every day little experiences i have of that, finding something beautiful and feeling fulfilled, just redirected for a different context. i think i feel what the characters are feeling in that way. 

8. What are three things you’re proudest of when it comes to your writing? Dialogue, descriptions, humour, romantic fluff, kisses, action, pacing, worldbuilding, setting, anything! Even small things like sentence structures and the way your characters banter counts!

oh jeez. i think i’m good at writing all of that in between stuff mentioned above, those little descriptions in between the dialogue or in between what the characters are doing, really using those to show the implications behind what is being said and done and how that’s affecting the character. i also think i’m pretty good at building to an emotional climax within each little fic, though most of the time it’s rather unintentional - that rhythm and plot (???) combined to have that moment of oh. that moment of revelation for the character. and lastly... i think i have quite perfected that knife that is caleb pining. for now at least. i’ve learned how to twist it real good.

thank u for the qs! ask and u shall receive very long answers that i will accidentally delete and have to rewrite again.

[millllenniawrites]

millllennia’s frequently asked questions

Last Update: November 19 2021

Who the heck are you?

I’m Mack (though there’s a couple people on here that have called me Milli which I thought was adorable and that is also a perfectly fine thing to call me) I’m a full-time uni student from Canada that’s been writing on here since 2016. I use she/her pronouns usually but like really what is a gender. I used to be fanfiction-trashpile (which is still my user on ao3). 

Can I translate your work? 

Short answer: no. 

Long answer: still no, but it’s more complicated than that. No one has permission to repost or translate my work. Even if you message me and offer to give me credit, I will say no. If you want to create for fandom, you should do it yourself and I will stand by that. 

I welcome fanart, podfic, and fanfic of my fics, and I’d love if y’all would message me/send it to me/tag me in it so that I can hype you up! 

If you decide to write with my original characters (the Helix universe or Dear Love of Mine) I will ask that you give me credit for the characters, but I don’t mine anyone else writing them. The only canon content created for the Helix universe belongs to myself and vampy ( @vampirewithbedsidemanners) but even we write alternate universes of the Helixverse, so it’s totally okay for other people to do that too.

Why are you so darn specific about the style you write in? 

Okay so there are a few things about this that I’m really picky about: 

I never use y/n or any other derivatives of the term (y/e/c or the like). For me, it’s much harder to avoid using those kinds of stand-ins for terms, so I like to challenge myself by never ever using them. If the fic calls for the reader’s name to be directly said, I’ll just give the reader a last name (like in dear love of mine where the reader’s last name is Dean) 

(NOTE: this is not to say that people that use y/n are taking the easy road or whatever. it’s entirely a personal decision and writers that use it are still good. it’s just not for me)

All my sfw fics are completely body/gender neutral unless otherwise specified

All my nsfw fics are with an afab reader (because I only know my own biology and I’d hate to try to write something for another biology type and end up getting it wrong and just alienating everyone)

I’m specific about these things because I do not look like the skinny/blonde/straight-haired/blue-eyed/wattpad version of a reader in RI fanfic. It alienated me back when I read on that platform and I’d hate to make anyone feel like that. I’m still learning, and I’m not perfect, but I really want people who read my content to feel like they can actually be immersed in the story, no matter what they look like. 

That being said, I do not write readers from specific backgrounds/with specific features because I am whiter than white and that’s not my place (though I have reblogged some stuff that has specific readers so there definitely is some on my page! check out the recommended tag) 

My own personal tastes obviously affect my writing (because everyone writes from their own experiences) so there is often dancing/hair touching in my fics because I like that stuff. There will be warnings for basically anything that could alienate the reader including but not limited to: hair mentions, the reader getting picked up, the reader’s clothing being mentioned, and abnormal physical activity (dancing, swimming, etc). If you

Are requests open?

Requests for moments, headcanons, one-shots and drabbles are open! please send me headcanons i love hearing what y’all are thinking! with that being said, i reserve the right to not write or respond to requests that i don’t want to do because at the end of the day, this is my space and my writing makes me happy. 

What fandoms do you write for?

I am currently writing for:

Star Wars (literally any character including rebels/CW) 

James Bond (Craig era) 

Dune (I love the books and the film so I write based on both!) 

Marvel (including all movies and the Punisher)

But I will generally write for any content I have consumed in the last 2 years (so I'd be super down to write for mortal instruments/shadowhunters, for example, it might just take longer). If you request something I am not currently writing for, I will keep your request until I recirculate that fandom/character/concept because I am basically a garbage disposal for fandom. 

Do I need to give you plot details in my requests?

Requests can be as simple as “Fluff with Poe Dameron!!” but can be as complex as you would like. Some formats include:

dialogue prompts (ie. “I missed you” with Jace)

type of fic (ie. I would love some Billy Russo angst)

relationships with canon characters (ie. can you write some reader x kylo ren where the reader is Rey’s sister?)

any amount of plot details (ie. thanksgiving at the Weasley’s where you and Percy get stuck hand washing dishes)

Moments Collection prompt (ie. I read your Poe “The moment they first saw you” fic. Can you write one with Dani from Prodigal son?)

Headcanon prompt (ie. how do you think Poe finding out you’re alive after thinking he had lost you would go?) 

Or any combination!! I like writing what you guys want to see and challenging myself with your ideas. 

What “out of the box” ideas are you willing to write?

Many writers will not write the following, so I wanted to be clear that anything on this list can be requested and will be written without being altered (assuming it’s in my lane). If any of these things are used in a work, they will be listed in the Warnings category at the top of the post.

graphic descriptions of violence (including but not limited to: injury, torture, emergency surgery)

death (major characters and reader included. I just won’t write drowning for my own personal safety) 

homophobia 

nightmares/night terrors/forced dream sequence/drug trips/things like in spiderman: far from home before peter gets hit by a train 

lemon/smut/that kind of thing (but I’m very new to this so take it easy on me folks)

panic attacks

dubcon/noncon/dark fic 

I will also write the following things that are not “warning” related but not all writers will dabble in: 

alternate universe (though I usually prefer canon-compliant work) 

crossover content 

polyamorous relationships 

What don't you write?

I absolutely will not write: 

suggestive content with underaged characters (I’ll age them up)

the act of self-harm (I will write post-getting clean or talking about self-harm vaguely, but won’t write the action or witnessing the action for my own safety)

drowning/water boarding/violence involving water (I know, very specific, but I don’t write this for my own safety)

readers that deal with transphobia/racism (I am blessed to not have experienced either of these things and it’s absolutely not my place to think I can write about these struggles. I will however reblog content I find and enjoy because it is so important to talk about these things and bring awareness to these communities)

mental illness other than anxiety/depression/ptsd (outside of canon determined elements)

specific pronoun requests. all of my sfw work is gender neutral. the reader insert/imagine space has been historically very heteronormative and I want everyone to be able to enjoy my writing, no matter how they identify and which pronouns they use. if a fic is requested with pronouns, I will still write the request. it will just be gender neutral

real life people. non-negotiable. this makes me feel icky. no judgement to those that do it. I just won’t

abo!AUs. not my jam. 

magic AUs.

I hope this clears some stuff up! I’m looking forward to hearing from you guys! my inbox is always open so feel free to come chat! 

[bughead-fic-request]

I would like to thank @leaalda for making these amazing banners.

This is an effort to spread the word about all fan fiction writers in our little fandom. If you would like to be featured or nominate a writer, please contact me. Please reblog this post if you can and check out some of @believe-that-you-can-my-friend work!

1. First things first, if someone wanted to read your stories where can they find them.

My tumblr account is believe-that-you-can-my-friend and anyone can find my masterlist by clicking on the menu button (the three parallel lines at the top of my sidebar) and then choosing “My Bughead Stories”. You can also find me on AO3.

2. Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m Vera, I’m from Greece and I’m currently on the 23rd decade of my life. I’m a Classical Studies graduate and I’m considering doing a Master’s too. I’m a major foodie, a fashion and style enthusiast, an avid dancer and an old school rock lover. A quite sarcastic human being trying to make it in this world with the attitude of your average clown-friend.

3. What do you never leave home without?

Probably my phone, as true to our 21st century standards. Plus, my headphones and my sunglasses.

4. Are you an early bird or a night owl?

I’m a night owl for sure. I hate early mornings and I love sleep but I also can never go to bed before 2 or 3 am.

5. If you could live in any fictional world which one would you choose and why?

I would want to live in the Pokémon world or the Harry Potter universe but during the Marauders era. Witty and utterly smitten James Potter, rebel with a cause Sirius Black, the First Wizarding War, this is a true fantasy right there that I’ll never ever outgrow.

6. Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met?

There are a lot of Greek people that you guys, obviously, won’t know. Not many international celebrities in my resume, I’m afraid. But I briefly chatted and took a picture with Jim Chapman from YouTube while I was visiting London two years ago.

7. What are some of your favorite movies/TV?

I enjoy a lot of different movie genres but I guess an old Hollywood one, some good old Hitchcock or anything drama are my typical choices most times. Out of the top of my head, definitely Gone with The Wind, Casablanca, Pulp Fiction, The Breakfast Club and such. As for TV shows, Lost is always first in my heart. Current favorites would be Sense8, Stranger Things, Westworld, Riverdale.

8. What are some of your favorite bands/musicians?

That’s a question that would take me pages to answer. Long story short, I’m a cultural chaos regarding music. I listen to almost everything, my Spotify has a tone of personal playlists and my vinyl collection is reaching a terrifying extend. My favorite genre is definitely classic rock but I also really love alternative rock, indie rock, and rock ‘n’ roll. On an average day, I’m usually blasting something along the lines of The 1975, then Pink Floyd, then Frank Sinatra, then Tchaikovsky, then Kanye West, then The Killers and so on and it’s a miracle that I still manage to stay a somewhat sane person.  

9. Favorite Books?

Anything Jane Austen, Bronte Sisters or Dostoyevsky can get me going. But for the level of angst and devotion and truly wicked love my favorite one is Wuthering Heights.  

10. Favorite Food?

Chicken curry with rice. I also really love shrimps.

11. Biggest pet peeve?

Probably people that chew very loudly. Or ignorant and uneducated people, not in the academic sense of the word, but ill-mannered and rude.

12. What did you want to be when you were little? What do you want to be now?

For many years I wanted to be an architect. This plan though sunk because my sketching skills are equivalent of a two year old. So, I ended up studying the Classics (basically the study of the Greco-Roman world, particularly of its languages and literature, but also including philosophy, history, and archaeology.) This field and area of studies is something I very much enjoy and value but I don’t really see it as my lifetime job. What fascinates me and makes me passionate about is Journalism so I’m thinking about extending my studies in the journalistic field as well. And then of course there is writing; the ultimate dream.

13. What are your biggest fears? Do you have any strange fears?

I’m scared of wasps, only because I’m allergic to a lot of things and, seriously, I don’t wanna push my luck. Another one would be my odd phobia of getting nauseous and being sick. For some weird reason I associate vomiting with death. Other strange fears, no, nothing comes to mind. As for more fundamental ones, it’s the fear of ending up alone; loneliness is something that scares me deeply. Also, disappointing my inner perfectionist by being average or not good enough at any aspect of my life.

14. When you are on your deathbed what would be the one you’d regret not doing?

Live more. I have a very composed and rational mentality, I always think first and then act and generally I’m more of an observer than a doer. I regret, for example, not being a crazier teenager or a more reckless college student or generally a little bit more “loose”. Hopefully, my introverted self will stop watching stoically life passing her by and take more chances by the time I reach that final moment, haha.  

Okay… let’s talk about your writing!

15. Which is your favorite of the fics you've written for the Bughead fandom?

Where The Wild Roses Grow – Angst is the air I breathe, enough said.

16. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?

Up until now I used to write only Bughead prompts and one-shots so, plot wise, I can’t think of any of them causing me too much headache. I could say Fruit Punch Lips & Leather Jacket Dreams, only because of the length of the chapters and the hurricane of ideas I had in my mind. Right now I’m trying my hand at my first multi-chaptered fic for the Bughead fandom and I can definitely say that it is proving to be quite the task in terms of planning and prioritizing.

17. How do you come up with the ideas for you fic(s)? Do you people watch? Listen to music? Get inspired by TV/movies?

For me, it’s mostly TV and movies. I always make parallels between plotlines and couples so a lot of ideas do come from stuff that I have seen on the big screen or during a marathon of an old show. But they also come from everyday life, I mean I could be discussing something with my best friend or doing groceries or driving and something along the way would strike me and demand from me to write it on paper.

18. Idea that you always wanted to write but could never make work?

I really really wanted (and still want, to be honest) to write a Dancing With The Stars Bughead fic. I know it’s crazy and totally random but the idea had stuck in my head while I was watching some dancing videos on YouTube and instantly I had everything planned; the roles, the plot, the dancing sessions, the choreographies, the drama, everything. I gave up on the idea merely because it’s quite difficult to portray such show on paper and I was afraid that the scenes in my head would turn out totally different if I attempted to write them, so I’ll treasure this story in my heart and think fondly about it whenever I listen to a song I had picked for a Bughead dance-off. But you never know; maybe my muse will be more confident about helping me give life to this idea in the future.

19. Least favorite plot point/chapter/moment you’ve written?

I wouldn’t say it’s my least favorite but I don’t feel very confident about Heliophilia, the second chapter of Fruit Punch Lips & Leather Jacket Dreams. There are a lot of things that I like in the chapter obviously, but I find the beginning a tad cheesy and then at the part with Betty’s and Jughead’s date I believe that I just ramble on and on with no purpose whatsoever. I was very inspiration-deprived while working on that chapter so, to me at least, it feels like not my best work.

20. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment you’ve written?

Jughead raised as a Serpent in my latest fic. I like the dynamic the gang element gives to his character and I really wanted to explore it in my own little universe. It just adds another layer to his personality and diverse characters are always the most fun to work with. Also, #GirlNextDoor was very fun to write. Being in Jughead’s shoes as an accomplished writer and envisioning future Bughead in their own adult apartment had me overwhelmed with lovely feelings.

21. Favorite character to write?

Jughead, for sure. Maybe because I relate more to his quite nature or maybe it’s the fact that I appreciate the writer in him and his old soul, which are again qualities that I have too as a person. He has so much potential as a character, so many layers to peel off. Yeah, Jughead Jones is a delight for me to write.

22. Favorite line or lines of dialogue that you've written?

I don’t think I have something specific in mind. If I go back and read any of my stories, I always find something that I feel pretty confident about, either that’s a sentence or a whole paragraph. I guess that’s why it takes me so long to update; I always check and double-check and reread and erase and add until I feel positive that what I’m putting out is something I’m quite satisfied to present to all of you. That and the fact that me, a Victor Hugo wannabe, doesn’t know the usage and the importance of a full stop!

23. Best comment/review you’ve ever received?

Every single one. Literally. The fact that somebody takes the time to write even a single “great work” means the world. Yes, the long, commentary-like reviews are always an extra delight; every author would agree on that, because, we love receiving feedback that shows the emotion and the reaction our words brought to each reader. It’s very direct and on-point. But even just a thumb’s up or an incoherent array of vowels can literally make my day!

24. How do you handle bad reviews or comments?

I’m one of the fortunate ones that never got any bad reviews or hate comments. I hope it stays that way because, on a good day, my confidence as a writer (and as a person in general) is beneath zero! But constructive criticism is always welcomed and wanted.

25. If you could change anything in any of your stories, what would it be?

The occasional typos! They drive me nuts, I hate them and I hate myself for them. Also, I’d like to remind myself to put a damn full stop every once in a while, not only a plethora of commas in insanely long sentences!

26. What is your favorite story you’ve ever written? Any fandom?

I was very into Spaleb (Spencer and Caleb from Pretty Little Liars) for as much as it lasted and, amongst a few other stories, I’ve written an one-shot titled The First Cup of Coffee about the four times Spencer gets the first cup of coffee in the morning and a fifth that she realizes she wants Caleb to have that privilege. Basically, it’s five snapshots of their life together and the growth of their relationship through the years and I really enjoyed writing it and generally envisioning a future about that couple. I also had a great time writing about Klaus and Caroline from The Vampire Diaries. But none of my previous fanfiction experiences amounts to the utter excitement and joy writing for Bughead fills me with.

27. What are you reading right now? Both fan fiction and general fiction?

Fanfiction wise, I need a lot of catching up to do. I have so many fics that I either want to continue or start reading and so little time but I’m getting there. It’s personal at this point! As for general fiction, I’m reading Uncle Vanya by Chekhov and some various poetry.

28. Do you have an advice for writers that want to get into this fandom but might be scared?

Just write. Open a plain document and write. Write whatever you have in that brilliant head of yours, write what you would read if you were about to search between genres and plotlines. Don’t think about note numbers or people’s reaction; just write what your heart desires and your muse urges you too. If you enjoy what you write then, trust me, everyone is going to enjoy it too. Don’t doubt yourself and don’t try to change your style or adjust to any norms you might consider as successful. Writing is personal, a kind of identity, and it’s unique and mesmerizing so proudly present your own identity to the world. Also, be sure to support your fellow writers. We are all a team here, a group of people that enjoy the same passion, and love and recognition is always a must. So applaud your fellow Buggies and applaud yourself for everything that you put out in this fandom, either that is a 40k fic or just a fifty-word paragraph. What you write matters and it might change somebody’s day. So share it and never second-guess yourself.

[you-did-well-my-love]

Drama Review: Hwarang

The biggest disappointment of 2016 and probably 2017, screw you writers.

Rating: 2/5. If I’m being generous, 2.5.

OST: I wasn’t the biggest fan, but that might have just been my hatred for the drama boiling over onto everything else. When you listen to the album, there are some good songs. But they kept playing the same two bland songs over and over again. I personally recommend It’s Definitely You by V and Jin, and Memories of a Miracle by Jeon Woosung. Hyungsik’s song is really nice too.

Genre: Romantic Comedy, Historical

Synopsis: History is often made on the backs of truly passionate, talented young people. During the Kingdom of Silla, a group of elite youth known as Hwarang (literally "Flowering Knights") would wield great influence. These dashing, talented knights – Moo Myung, Sam Maek Jong, Soo Ho, Ban Ryu, Yeo Wool, Han Sung, and maiden Ah Ro – could outsmart and outfight anyone as they pushed for justice in Seorabeol, the capital city. One of them would become King Jin Heung of Silla and change the course of history.

Thoughts/Review: (spoilers)

This drama was a mess, and I’m going to rip into it. If you don’t want to hear what I believe are legitimate reasons this drama was bad, then don’t read further. 

I’ll get what I liked out of the way in the beginning because there’s not much. The actors were all great. I thought the actors who played the Hwarang embodied their characters to the T and you could really feel the bromance and how well they got along off set. When their was comedy, it was great. I loved how Ah Ro called Sam Maek Jong out after the forced kiss. “If kissing me against my will wasn’t a mistake, then was it a childish tantrum?” was the best line of the entire drama. Plot-wise: I loved the romance between Ban Ryu and Soo Yeon. 

That’s about it.

This drama was an overwhelming disappointment. I waited so damn long because they kept pushing the air date back, which only built up the hype more. Then they had all these promotions with the six boys, and I was SO excited.

That is my first complaint. The synopsis is bullshit. The drama is not about our lovely “dashing, talented knights” rather it is about a pathetic love triangle with a female lead who does nothing but get into trouble and cry.

This drama was about the Hwarang. It was called Hwarang. There was not enough Hwarang.

It started out very promising, and with a great cameo from Lee Kwang Soo, and the comedy was pretty great. But the more you watch, the more it goes to shit. The reason I kept watching is because I wanted to see how things turned out. I’ve been a fan of Hyungsik’s since High Society and enjoy watching his dramas. Minho and V are my babies. And I fell in love with Do Ji Han and Ban Ryu’s character.

The first mistake was making Ah Ro think Moo Myung was her brother. The two of them did not have chemistry, and I think that just sort of killed anything that could have bloomed between them. There was no development in their romance, there was a weak attempt at internal conflict with Ah Ro and her feelings, and then they were all of the sudden in love with each other.

Also, there was literally no point for them to lie to her. This wasn’t like That Winter the Wind Blows when he was trying to scam her. They should have just told her “Hey, your brother died, this is his friend and I want to take care of him out of respect for your brother.” and then given her her right to mourn her brother’s death. Looking back, that was the first sign to get out while I could.

Their romance wasn’t the only romance I had a problem with. It was Soo Ho’s crush on the queen. If they had cast someone else as the queen, it might have been tolerable. But I could not stand the queen. Could not stand her. The actress was expressionless and emotionless unless she was screaming over something stupid.

Second thing I disliked, the first being the romance lines, was the editing. It was really jumpy, and made the whole thing seem weird. For example that one scene in like episode 7 or 8 where Moo Myung fell off the horse. He hadn’t shown signs of any problem for the past like five episodes and all of the sudden he blacked out and fell off his horse with no pulse, and suddenly Ah Ro regrets all of the terrible things she yelled at him literally three seconds before in a different scene. SPEAKING OF WHICH did they ever explain why he passed out? I don’t think they did? Add that to the list of problems...

The third thing I disliked was Ah Ro. She was so boring. I don’t blame Go Ara (entirely... some things she did and certain lines she delivered annoyed me) but the character was really poorly written. She was really shallow with barely any background or personality. All the writers had her do was run around between the two boys and cry. Her most interesting scenes were when she was acting as a physician, and there were hardly any. When they did happen, they lasted for merely seconds. Then she went back to crying and moping about Moo Myung.

It was so damn repetitive. Moo Myung gets his dumb ass injured and Ah Ro cried about it. Or Ah Ro got her dumb ass in trouble, and cried about it.

Which leads me to my next problem.

My biggest issue with the drama: terrible writing.

Such poor writing. It took them forever to set up the story, the Hwarang weren’t formed until episode four. A drama that was supposed to center around them didn’t. We got to episode fifteen and the plot hadn’t progressed one bit. Episode 19 was literally a waste of time. And boy did they twist history.

First, I want to talk about Han Sung’s death and how it showcases the terrible writing. I remember before the episode aired, a ton of articles came out saying “BTS’s V’s character revealed to play a key part in setting the final conflict into motion.” 

It’s a common trope when you have a group of friends; killing off the youngest, the purest, the last person who deserved to die. It’s used to really rip into that raw emotion of the main characters, and as the Hwarang writers were trying to do, set the final conflict into motion.

But they fell so flat. They spent less than half an episode killing him off, spent half the episode talking about him. Yeah I cried, but it was because of the emotion delivered by the actors. Taehyung did so well and so did Yoon Woo with his tears, but the second they opened up their mouths and delivered the dialogue + the editing of the scenes absolutely killed the suspense.

And his death was supposedly so important, but then they don’t even mention him again save for that one line by Yeo Wool in episode 19. Nobody even told Ah Ro that her precious friend died.

Now, about how badly they twisted history:

Someone on twitter explained this better, and I’m sorry if I butcher the facts, but the main thing is that they twisted history too much. I know that it’s necessary to do in historical dramas, but this was too much. History should be used as a guideline. 

To explain: the Bone Rank system was a very real thing, and the writers twisted it to give Moo Myung a fictional character an illegitimate claim to the throne. As the person on twitter explained it, when the queen’s brother gave up the throne (i believe it was because of his illness) he gave up his entire family’s line to the throne. Meaning Moo Myung was not a sacred bone and had no right to the throne. 

The pathetic two-episode “battle” for the throne was the worst thing they could have done for the drama. It was weak in intensity, dialogue, and emotion. And it was just plain stupid. Especially when you look at how historically significant King Jinheung was/is.

History aside, it’s still stupid. The writers spent 85% of the drama pushing Sam Maek Jong’s struggle against the queen and pushing that he is the rightful king, and then all of the sudden Moo Myung, who is supposed to be his friend, comes along and tries to steal the throne from him? Moo Myung is the main character, and the viewers are supposed to support him, but after all of the build-up behind Sam Maek Jong’s struggle to claim the throne, all I felt was sympathy towards Sam Maek Jong and resentmore towards Moo Myung for betraying his friend. That is not what I want to be feeling as a viewer.

Seriously, that is not how you sell a product to a consumer. That’s what dramas are: a product. The viewers watch dramas and support them with their money because they are captivating and enjoyable, not because it makes them feel like shit. 

Did they not have editors? Did nobody really stop and think, “Hey this concept here doesn’t push the plot forward, rather it drives it backwards”???

You could tell through the OST the mood they were trying to set. They were trying to make Jinheung the enemy, but they absolutely failed.

And the ending.

I liked the swearing of the allegiance to Jinheung. It delivered the emotion it was supposed to and was exciting. That’s the only thing I liked.

The montage basically proved that Sam Maek Jong was the real main character.

And then, oh get this, they NEVER TOLD ANYBODY ELSE THEY WEREN’T RELATED. I get that everyone probably made the connection on their own but like the viewer has to assume since nobody ever actually put it into words and it’s like jesus you can’t just drop a plotline like that. SUCH. MESSY. WRITING.

And what pisses me off the most:

Ban Ryu and Soo Yeon’s had a half-assed resolution.

Soo Ho had no resolution

BAN RYU AND SOO HO HAD NO RESOLUTION

LITERALLY THE LAST THING SAID BETWEEN THE TWO WAS SOO HO TELLING BAN RYU TO STAY AWAY FROM SOO YEON OR SOMETHING STUPID

where the fuck was Yeo Wool

And then they had a riding into the sunset, THEY RODE INTO THE FUCKING SUNSET, without Soo Ho.

I mean I understand if Minho had SHINee activities and couldn’t make it, but like they could have done something different to include him. At least say that he left and went of to travel or something.

This drama was pathetic and I’m glad it’s over. I feel bad for the actors whose hard work was wasted in bad writing, editing, and directing. I look forward to seeing them in other projects, but I am never watching anything from this writer again.

---

Finished 02/21/17

[sol1loqu1st]

yknow hes just asking me to change like. entire character motivations????? like i understand some of his complaints; i hardly ever describe anything and im too focused on dialogue, my book lacks subtlety while simultantiously being so goddamn subtle that a MAJOR THEME went completely over my dads head, none of my characters are all that likable*, i tend to focus on unimportant things while ignoring the elephant in the room, etc. like i fucking get it. im a bad writer. but he cant just??? stop criticizing things like character motivations????? like he acts like i havent put FOUR GODDAMN YEARS OF THOUGHT INTO THIS. he acts like i havent written and rewritten this and constantly thought about it for four years. he treats it like its a Great Starting Point!!! With Hard Work Someday Youll Be A Real Writer!!! like i GET that it needs work. but its not just some first draft that i churned out in a month and my dad doesnt see that for some reason *he said they werent likable, but interestingly enough he specifically attacked characters that 1. have obvious mental illnesses (e.g. nightfall's depression is a huge part of her character; a lot of her arc has to do with the fact that at first, shes just going through the motions and she's too beaten down to really /try/ anymore, and my dad COMPLETELY IGNORED THAT and acted like shes just some whiny bitch who never changes anything even when it seems obvious) or 2. dared to have morally ambiguous/selfish motives (e.g. solar, he acted like she just completely got off the hook for everything she did even though she literally NEVER got off the hook, it haunted her in so many ways for the rest of the goddamn book and my dad will literally only accept "put her in jail and write her out of the plot" or "remove a HUGELY IMPORTANT PLOTLINE FROM THE BOOK ENTIRELY") my dad assumes that i dont have anything to say with this book. he assumes im just writing some shitty hollywood sci-fi that has no depth whatsoever and he assumes that im just writing whatever the hell pops into my head first just because i sometimes have trouble properly conveying my ideas. he assumes i dont know my characters' backstories or any of the world's history outside of what i say in the book just because im stubborn about revealing certain things (certain things which, by the way, he couldve figured out if he just read between the lines) idk im just. really frustrated and kind of angry bc he really ruined it for me i think? like. i dont want to write this book anymore. idk

[yukithesnowman314]

Editor’s Note: These are the mere free-flowing, raw, and unedited thoughts of mines on the first three or four episodes of the Fall 2018 anime “Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai” and my first impressions on it.  There is no structure nor order on how I talk about this show.

A boy wakes up next to a girl around his age sleeping peacefully in his bed.  He looks at her as she awakens and treats her with a “good morning” in which she returns the greeting back.  As they slowly wake up and indulge in playful teasing and banter of their lack of sleep I am taken by surprise at the fact that the first episode has opened with our lead male and female characters in bed: suggesting to the viewers that they are in a relationship.

In addition, the male lead looks and acts like an alpha; a rarity in anime today as most male teenage leads are doormat simps (just like 90% of male anime fans globally). Finally! A young male anime hero with balls! This is great!  Too great.  Too great to be true.

No, really, it was.  I accidentally downloaded the third episode, not the first.

Because I decided to get stoned out of my mind before watching this anime, I unwitty download episode 3; thinking it was episode 1. Sure, I spoiled myself by seeing Mai and Sakuta (our leading characters) together in bed. However, it was a spoiler I welcomed: as I assumed they got together by the end of episode 2.

I went back to KissAnime to download episodes 1 and 2.  Episode 1 starts to play and its opening shot was the same shot from episode 3, except with different dialogue.  Mai asks Sakuta if he is going to kiss her. Even if Sakuta was merely imagining things, it ’s written in stone that he got her in his bed as early as episode 2.

I shouldn’t be surprised at how bold of a move that was.  After all, Rascal Does not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai was written by light novelist Haijime Kamoshida (notable for his works The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, and the beautifully written original coming-of-age high school drama anime Just Because! from Fall 2017).

Hajime Kamoshida

While I’ve never read The Pet Girl of Sakurasou, I’m a huge fan of Just Because! due to Kamoshida’s approach towards clichéd high school anime archetypes. Example: Rather than to write main character Eita as a new mysterious transfer student who enters a new school during the middle of his first year (like almost every other high school anime), Eita is a senior who transfers back to his hometown’s school district during the second semester (Eita moved away from his hometown during middle school).  Eita’s “new” classmates at his “new” school district are actually a few of his friends from childhood.  Komoshida effetely kills the “mysterious transfer student” idea off and replaces it with a character that’s already established and known by his peers in his city.

Komoshida is a clever writer in that sense, and Bunny Girl Senpai is no exception.

Before discovering that Kamoshida wrote Bunny Girl Senpai,  I had no intention of watching it. Even hearing the show’s name alone made me (foolishly) believe that it was going to be, yet another, fanservicery, run-of-the-mill, below-average light novel anime adaption with a disposable trash waifu. A trash waifu wearing a skimpy bunny girl outfit that Cleverworks will produce figurines of her in said outfit for the fanboys of her to jerk off to and nut on.

Anything to pander to lonely otakus to get that second season.

These untrue, biased, stupid assumptions were slaughtered once I ran across Mother’s Basement video analysis on the show, explain that Kamoshida wrote the original novel, and discussing the themes of the show (such as bullying, facing rejection, social norms, etc.) So I figure I would give this show a watch.

Glad I did.

The first episode truly proved my earlier assumptions wrong.  I was an idiot to think that this show was going to be garbage!  Why did I allow myself to judge a book by its cover? In my defense, this current era of light novel anime adaptions is stale and bland.  This is not the mid-2000s anymore when we had hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and creative light novel anime adaption coming out left and right.

Remember when the iconic juggernaut The Melancholy of  Haruhi Suzumiya came along and kick everyone’s asses in 2006? That was a light novel anime adaption that not only define light novels and light novel anime – but it was the start of a generation of otaku culture. The success and global cultural impact of Haruhi Suzumiya laid the groundwork for other light novels to be adaptive into TV anime.

I miss those days.

(Of course, that Haruhi laying the groundwork for light novel anime statement is up to debate)

Currently, light novel anime adaptions are a mess. The Goblin Slayer anime spat in the face of its light novel ancestor with its ugly CGI, lack of character development that was found in the original, removing important story plots from the light novel, and a controversial brutal violent scene that was not necessary for a first episode.

Every year, we’re “treated” to another boring, uninspiring isekai (another world) light novel adaption that just has a different gimmick that doesn’t change anything or do anything groundbreaking.

Sword Art Online needs to be taken to the backyard and get shot in the back of its head so it can be taken out of its misery already like the dying, useless dog it is.

10/10 Photoshop skills. I have a Ph.D.  in Graphic Design from the highly educated university St. Louis Community College Forest Park 

Oh, how the era of the great light novel anime adaption has ended …or so I thought. Bunny Girl Senpai’s first episode changed my mind.

Off the jump, we see the heroine parading herself around in a public library in nothing but a skimpy bunny girl outfit.  Such a daring, lewd, and perverted act performed by any woman would certainly create attention for her.

But for Mai, – a well-known and beloved actress – there’s no way anybody could ignore her. Questions and comments such as “is she doing this for clout?”, “is this for a movie?”, “is that actress secretly an exhibitionist?”, and “she has fallen so low…” are gonna be said and asked. Everyone is glued to their phones.  Everyone is addicted to social media. Indisputably, people seeking likes, views, and money for viral moments are going to document such an event on their smartphones.

Alas, she goes unnoticed.  No. For real. They don’t notice her. She even bends herself forward towards a salaryman in a way that her breasts are in his face. But since the salaryman doesn’t have the time or the love for these hos, he doesn’t give her an ounce of attention.  You know, maybe they’re just playing pretend.  Mai has done this so often at this library that everyone decided to act like she doesn’t exist because they don’t wanna give her any attention.

Except they’re not playing pretend. Mai doesn’t exist – both figuratively and literally. She isn’t doing this for cheap thrills; it’s a legit cry for help.

Her existence is at risk and unless people notice her, she will die.

Moments later, Sakuta uses his main character powers to spot her walking about and confronts her. Mai, in return, copies Hitagi Senjougahara’s mannerism that she got from the Monogatari playbook and threatens him; demanding that he forgets what he saw and to never associate with her. And because the Monogatari playbook is public domain, Sakuta decides to steal moves from the Koyomi Araragi section and explains to Mai that he knows about her condition (due to personal experience) and that he can help her.

The condition? Puberty Syndrome: a rumored illness that causes sensitivity and instability among youths infected by it.

Mai believes him and accepts his help; thus starting the latest installment of the Monogatari series! Kidding, of course. (That joke is getting old).

As mentioned (and me making fun of it) earlier, Bunny Girl Senpai (audaciously) borrows ideas from its influences (such as Monogatari) and other classic anime/light novel tropes, stereotypes, archetypes; using them to its advantage to add layers to each character personality. Therefore, the characters are more third dimensional compared to most others in anime that follow said archetypes and stereotypes.

Sakuta is your typical brash, blunt, and bold protagonist who doesn’t give a shit about following the rules, values, and order of society and freely operates outside of them (think Yusuke from Yuu Yuu Hakusho or Travis Touchdown of No More Heroes).  Because Sakuta is an outlier, he is outcast by his peers – even to the degree that his homeboy’s girlfriend tells the man to stop being friends with him; because it would ruin his and her’s high social standing in school (granted, Sakuta tells the girlfriend to fuck off).

This could be seen as social commentary, as Japan is a nation of conformity and holds value in being non-confrontational. Standing out and being a person who enjoys confrontation in Japan will get you mocked, ridicule, and disowned: three things I’m sure Sakuta has experienced in his young life due to his mannerism, but I doubt he cares.

“To be quiet, and do as you’re told…that’s the cowardly choice.” -Gearless Joe, Megalo Box

His sister, Kaede, plays the annoying imouto, or little kid sister role. Kaede affectingly hugs her big brother often, loves getting him out of bed or get in his bed (even if he’s trying to sleep), and she is almost always at his side. She’s soft-spoken when around strangers but truly shines and becomes herself when Sakuta is around.

Pretty annoying, right?

Kyon’s Sister

Well, Kaede is a victim of (cyber) bullying at her school. She received death threats from her former friends and cruel messages from her classmates telling her that she needs to kill herself. The relentless bullying and vicious messages caused Kaede to withdraw from society to the degree that she became a shut-in. She hates social media and modern technology; as we see her freezing up out of fear when she hears Mai’s phone rings in one episode. Because of her trauma,  Kaede sees Sakuta as a protector of sorts which results in her being close to him.

She finds comfort in her brother.

All she had to do was walk away from the computer and close her eyes.

Mai, as we saw in the first episode, is clear fanservice bait. Even in the anime promotional art, she’s wearing her bunny girl outfit in public. For this, I can’t blame anyone for thinking Mai does this for attention or thinking that she was designed to be trashy waifu bait. The fanservice and waifu material bits are turned on their heads once you understand the grave reasoning behind Mai’s acts (and character design).

Haruhi Senjougahara

Mai must do everything and anything within her power to court attention at all costs. Initially, the actress loved the peace and quiet that came with not being in the public’s limelight: something she had been under since childhood. Like any aspiring child actress, she was in “everlasting” bliss that people knew who she was thanks to her  TV and movie roles.  But, over time, the toll and stress of childhood stardom got to Mai and she wanted out of showbiz.

Her breaking point came about at the hands her manipulative manager and agent – her own mother.

During a commercial shoot for cereal (correct me if I’m wrong I don’t remember the full details), Mai’s mother and the video producer suggested that Mai should wear a revealing bikini. Mai refused: as she was in middle school at the time and was understandably disturbed by the idea. Her mom snapped on her; calling her own daughter a disappointment.  It was at that point where Mai decided to retire from show business and stray away from the limelight.

She got her one true wish – at the cost of her existence.

“The limelight. The actor who steps into this brilliant light attains a heightened presence. All eyes are on him.  There is room for only one actor at a time in the limelight’s narrow beam; do whatever it takes to make yourself its focus. Make your gestures so large, amusing, and scandalous that the light stays on you  while the other actors are left in the shadows.” –Robert Greene, “The 48 Laws of Power”

(It’s ironic to think how Mai desperately worked hard to avoid any form of publicity and attention after her semi-retirement from the entertainment industry and yet, she was hunting it down once she realized that she could die if nobody acknowledges her.  Maybe I’ll do an analysis essay on that one day.)

Watching the first episode (and parts of the second), I’m reminded of the golden era of the light (and visual) novel to anime boom.  Text-based tales coming to life through animation.  Stories crafted by otaku who dare to explore deep themes and issues about society, cultural norms, and life. There weren’t just mindless cartoons that otakus would simply watch and enjoy.  They were shows with layers, messages, themes, and meaning.

It’s refreshing to see Bunny Girl Senpai bring such classic writing back into otaku marketed TV anime.

At the time of this writing, I am currently on episode 3. Sakuta is desperate to keep Mai’s existence alive. He has even gone as far as sacrificing his health by not sleeping (since anyone who’ve sleep after seeing Mai in her “invisible” state will have traces of her existence erased). Mai slips a sleeping pill in one of his caffeine drinks (probably deadly, but okay). She knows that this will erase her existence for him, but she doesn’t want him to put his health at risk – because of the fact she loves him.   In tears, she thanks him for all he has done for her, and fades out of existence.

She’ll come back of course; thanks to Sakuta’s no-fucks-given attitude, however.

Bunny Girl Senpai has been an interesting anime to watch so far.  The mystery of Puberty Syndrome keeps me wondering about how it impacts people and how it shapes society .  The cast has wonderful chemistry with each other, as Mai and Sakuta have amazing banter with one another that helps keep fans interested in their relationship.  Komoshida blending real-world issues such as bullying and blending in with sci-fi and supernatural elements is genius and I can’t wait to see how the writers of the show take his writing style to the next level.

I do hope this anime becomes a hit because I want to see more like it that is otaku driven and uses themes from anime to build layers for its characters.   With people praising it online I sure my hopes will come to life.

…even if it does borrows from Monogatari. A lot.

-Yuki The Snowman.

  P.S.

I’m actually caught up with the show and currently waiting for episode 8. I have a theory that the main narrative theme of Futaba’s arc is accepting yourself (as Futaba has to deal with the fact that the second Futaba is the personification of her repressed but true self and she needs to understand it’s a part of her personality). I’m lazy as hell so I didn’t feel like rewriting the bit about episode 3 or whatnot.

Shadow Futaba

P.P.S

The most real shit I’ve seen in anime in a while love how Sakuta speaks excellent game on standing out and being your own person:

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Rascal does not dream of a better title for an deep and thought provoking anime and light novel series. Editor’s Note: These are the mere free-flowing, raw, and unedited thoughts of mines on the first three or four episodes of the Fall 2018 anime “Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai” and my first impressions on it.