#ill probably do some kind of 'where they are now' epilogue but for the interactions adam and Steve have with everyone | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

prettywordsyouleft · 4 years ago

Text

To Be Continued - Part 3

Summary: As an author, you had created Brian Kang for your current trilogy series to represent the ultimate man that everyone would love, along with Charli Evers - your female protagonist. What you hadn’t expected was for him to find a way out of the story and begin shaping up your world instead

Pairing: Brian Kang x female writer (ft. Park Sungjin)

Genre: writer au / romance / fantasy

Warnings: fictional characters coming to life / a bit of angst here and there / Sungjin as a cop (or does that only affect me?) >_>

Word count: 2288

Preview | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Epilogue

“I know it seems ridiculous,” you stated as you led the constable to your home office, pointing at your desk where both the pen and message waited for him to inspect. “However, I didn’t hear a thing and yet this is all here.”

Sungjin quietly investigated the space, looking to the window and then went over to jiggle the catch. He stepped all around the room, searching for clues, his hand rising to his mouth to cover it as he processed his thoughts.

And then he turned to you. “I don’t really know what to say. This makes no sense.”

“I feel like I’m going insane!” you admitted emotionally, dropping to a crouch and holding onto your legs. “How could someone get in and out without my knowledge whilst everything is still locked?!”

When you glanced up at Sungjin, who came to your side, you noticed the look of scepticism within his eyes. There was nothing factual aside from the second fingerprints, which in your mind, was enough to convince you that someone else had been here. For a moment, the trained professional looked at you and assessed something before smiling gently. You realised then Sungjin was questioning your well-being.

Standing up suddenly, you took a step back from his proximity and looked out the window. “I might have proclaimed just now about feeling as if I’m going insane, but I can assure you, Constable Park, that I’m not already insane.”

“I know,” he answered, trying to catch your attention. When he gained it, he nodded genuinely. “I’m sorry, my brief thought was too brash.”

“I can understand why,” you breathed out with a sigh, shaking your head. “It would be easy enough to plant such evidence, right? I’ve watched enough spy movies and read enough novels to know that it’s relatively simple enough to obtain someone’s fingerprint.”

“Yes, but I believe you haven’t done this on purpose either, Y/N.”

There was comfort in the way he spoke your name and you nodded softly, tears spilling down your cheeks. Sungjin stepped into your space again, patting your shoulder gently. “What do I do?”

“We need to catch the person in the act,” Sungjin suggested and you stared at him curiously. “Have you tried messaging the person back?”

“No… I mean, how does that work? It’s not a social app they’re writing on but Microsoft Word. Even with a cloud sharing system, it would show me that another user is signed in.”

Sungjin shrugged. “Still. Worth a shot, don’t you think?”

“Do I try it now?” you asked and Sungjin shook his head.

“Nothing will happen with me here,” he guessed and you sighed, defeated. You kind of liked that nothing would happen with Sungjin here. But he had a job to do and you did want to solve this issue too.

If it was simply a fan, you would thank them for nursing you back to health that night and ask them to stop this. That seemed simple enough to request. Surely, if they cared that much about you, they would comply.

You didn’t want to consider that their fan status was anything more than just that. Once again, movies and books you had perused with obsessive stalkers cropped up and you shuddered.

Sungjin noticed and rubbed at your shoulders to relax you. “You’re going to be okay. You have my number and I’ll make sure to check in on your regularly too. Let me know if anything happens with the messages, okay?”

“I will.” Leading the constable back out to the front door, he turned and rubbed at his wrist.

“Did you need a lift to get your groceries?”

“Is that allowed in a police vehicle?” you wondered and Sungjin grinned.

“I could write it off as protection services.”

“I’m touched, really,” you responded, trying to rein in the smile you knew was splitting your lips all too obviously.

Sungjin nodded and chuckled back. “Knowing you would take the offer if my car wasn’t government-funded is all I need, Y/N.”

“You best get back to patrolling the streets for proper crime,” you suggested and he nodded. You then laughed. “And I have a date with the fruit and vegetable section to help improve my immunity after dealing with this cold.”

“Take it easy. First dates can be hard to deal with.”

You grinned. “I will. And if I’m in trouble from it, I’ll know who to ring.”

You could tell Sungjin wasn’t usually one for this type of banter, and despite his ears turning red, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Which was no doubt why he was reluctant to step off your front porch right now.

However, he finally did so with another wave and you stepped back inside, locking the door before going to write out your list. It felt weird to use the pen that reappeared so you put it away before reaching for another and jotted down the groceries you needed.

“Have you tried messaging the person back?”

Sungjin’s suggestion lingered in your mind as you prepared to stand and fetch your bag. Relenting, you looked at the screen and inhaled a deep breath before you began to type.

Thank you for returning the pen. And for helping me with my illness.

It felt odd to type anything more and you shook your head to loosen off the feeling, getting to your feet and taking the list out with you.

The words you had written then disappeared without your knowledge, reaching the person they were intended for.

You had almost forgotten all about the incident that led to the constable ending up in your house again today, but the interaction by your front door had replayed so much in your mind that you were too giddy to focus on anything else. As you put away your groceries, you contemplated what Sungjin was like to go grocery shopping with.

It was juvenile. You felt like you were back in high school crushing on a student you liked. You entertained the idea, all the same, slipping further into more domestic actions, swooning over your hypothetical relationship with the man.

You were destined to be a writer. You were far too much of a dreamer for any other profession.

By the time you had eaten a late lunch, you had already jotted down on your phone’s notes app more information to add to your police officer document once back at your desk. You did some house chores before stepping back in there, and before you could even sit down, there was a knock at your door.

It wasn’t Sungjin, however, but your mother, armed with an arsenal to help your illness improve.

You grinned even though you whined out loud. “Mum, I’m basically over it now.”

“You had me worried sick about you. Especially when you mentioned someone broke in!”

Taking what she held and helping the woman inside, you shook your head. “Well, there’s no evidence that’s solid enough to say someone broke in.”

“Should I stay with you tonight?”

“Why tonight when I was more frightened last night?” you asked with a teasing tone and the older woman swatted at you in distaste.

“I’m your mother! I’m allowed to be worried.”

“I’ll be fine! I’ll have the doors all locked, and my favourite police officer’s number saved into my phone. Besides, I’ll no doubt spend my night writing and-”

“Forget I’m even here. Yes, I know how you get when you step out of reality, Y/N.”

You grinned again at her understanding and then were gathered up in a hug. “At least let me cook you dinner. I’ll leave before it gets too late for your creative juices to start rolling out.”

“You’re the best, you know that?”

“Of course I do. I have to be the best to be your Mum!”

After watching two feel-good movies from your childhood and your mother had fed you your favourite dish for dinner before wrapping the night up with fussing over you sufficiently, she headed back home and left you to your own devices.

So it surprised you to finally sit back down after hours away from your laptop to find the screen still active.

Peering closely at it, you blinked slowly at your message or lack of it. Where had it gone? You knew you written the two sentences and pressed enter.

Just as you were about to close the document, your eyes rounded with shock as words began to appear on the screen before you.

“I’m going insane after all,” you said jarringly, reading the sentence as it was typed.

I hope you will stop fearing me and calling that police officer. I’m really not that scary. You know me.

Instead of reaching for your phone, you felt compelled to reply.

Do I?

Again words started to appear before you. Of course. You know me better than I probably do.

How?

You created me.

“Maybe I’ve had too much coffee,” you tried to rationalise but it didn’t make any sense. Looking around yourself to see if someone was remotely plugged in somehow to your laptop, you even searched the connection settings before coming up blank.

So you challenged the writer of the messages.

If I know you and created you – which sounds absolutely absurd by the way – why won’t you show yourself?

You laughed when there was no immediate response and hovered the mouse pointer over the exit button to Microsoft Word, intending to then power off the device. The screen flickered then and you looked back at to see new words forming.

Don’t turn off the laptop.

“What would that have anything to do with this?” you murmured, feeling exasperated from chatting with some strange person within a word document in the first place.

More words appeared. Because the world you created was made on this.

“Okay, it’s getting too late for me now. I’m going to save this document and-”

The screen went blank and you sat back in your chair then, watching it to see what would happen next. Nothing did and you hit the power button on and off, laughing at the predicament. “My battery must have died. Great.”

Searching on the desk for the power cord, you plugged it in and the machine brightened up instantly, blinding you a little with the sudden change.

And then it opened Captivated again.

You watched as the story scrolled down at an unbelievably fast rate, reaching the bottom of the manuscript where you had changed the words back to The End for the third time. They disappeared and were replaced with To Be Continued once more, infuriating you.

“Leave my work alone! This is an intrusion on my intellectual property! You have no right interfering with--”

You weren’t sure if you were hallucinating or not. You weren’t even sure how it happened. One moment, whilst you were ranting to whoever may be listening in about your rights, you were all alone.

The next, a man was leaning against your desktop beside you.

“What the… how did you get in here?!” you cried, not looking up at him properly, reaching into your pocket to retrieve your phone.

“I really don’t think you need to call for him. But if it makes you feel safer, by all means, ring your hero.”

His voice, although you had never heard it before, felt familiar, as if you had imagined that’s how someone would sound. You glanced at his hand resting on the table beside you, wondering why it looked as if you had written about this hand so often it almost felt intimate. Following your gaze up his arm, you ran your focus along his shoulder and up to his face, hearing your phone clatter to the floor beside you.

As you looked intensely into his warm brown eyes that watched you back, and then took in the sharp slant of his nose that was definitely a characteristic point, before finally moving to his lips, you knew exactly who you were staring back at.

Brian Kang.

He grinned, scrunching up his nose a little in the process and it made you gasp. This seemed to please the man. “Well, I guess it works on more than just Charli Evers, huh?”

“You’re… wait… how can you… I mean, this is exactly how I pictured you but… it’s impossible.”

Brian nodded, glancing back at your laptop and tapped on the screen. “I guess it would seem like that to you since my world is created from your imagination.”

“Sungjin’s right, I’ve gone mad.”

“Darling, you’ve been mad for some time but I wouldn’t go thinking this is a hallucination.”

“You’re not real.”

“Well, I guess I’m not meant to be real. I’m not really sure how I figured this all out either. I’m still learning about the outside world so forgive me for scaring you with all this.”

“The outside world?” you repeated incredulously, grasping your head as you felt faint. “Why am I talking to my imagination?! This is an all-time low for me; even I have to admit it.”

“Y/N,” Brian stated, capturing your attention once again. His expression was resolute. You knew without him saying anything else that he believed in what he was about to say wholly. “Whilst you are my maker, I do exist. I’m real.”

“I bet I can’t even touch--” A whimper left you then as he reached out to take a hold of your wrist with the same hand you had inspected. And then he slipped it down so he was holding yours, marvelling at the connection.

And like any normal, logical person who just met their creation in the flesh, you completely blacked out from the experience.

_________________

Part 4

[DAY6 Masterlist] | [Main Masterlist] | [Request Guidelines]

#kwritersworldnet #young k #young k fiction #young k fanfic #young k fluff #young k romance #young k au #day6 #day6 fiction #day6 fanfic #day6 fluff #day6 romance #day6 au #pwyl; to be continued #kpop fiction #kpop fanfic #kpop fluff #kpop romance

84 notes · View notes

cntrspll · 4 years ago

Text

this is a love letter to my own fic

hi hello hey, this is an essay about my own fic and the feelings i have about it. fic can be found here.

i am going to try so hard to keep this organized but i don’t know how well that will work soooo let’s go!

on the fic overall:

i just... like magnus. i think he is a fan fave for a reason, but i think there’s a lot of missing discussion of his post-canon situation and the development thereafter. when i finished listening to balance for the first time (in february-ish this year, i think?), i remember being super frustrated with where parts of the fandom had landed their focus. this isn’t an uncommon fandom thing, and i totally get where it comes from. some characters are just super relatable and a lot of fun to write about and have like absolute piles of stuff to unpack, so it’s totally fair that some characters get more focus than others, but where i felt that some of my faves got a lot of fandom focus, others... didn’t.

so this fic was in part an attempt to rectify that, because i wasn’t finding the unpacking of magnus and his emotional / mental state that i wanted. that being said, there are a couple fics that i did draw a little bit of inspiration from, the biggest probably being patterns of migration by goodnicepeople. the depiction of magnus as this big strong dude who also has these quiet vulnerabilities that he doesn’t like admitting to people is like, in part just really accurate to canon, but also something that i really wanted to see explored more, and i didn’t find a whole lot of other fics that fit that, so in part i just wanted to set out to put a little more into that.

also, like, i work in food service, and we are in a pandemic, and i moved in the middle of this year and i started hrt this year and have been dealing with the fallout of coming out and just kind of everything, and this fic was a really good way of just like, distracting myself from everything and sitting down for a little every day and thinking about something else and not so much about everything that was happening around me. so there is a good part of this fic that is just like, me coping with everything and trying to reorient myself a little. and it worked pretty well for that!

on process:

ok first things first, this was never meant to be 133k long. when i first sat down to write this, it was going to be a handful of snapshots set across [undetermined amount of time here] of magnus dealing with isolation and insomnia, and it was only meant to be like, maybe a 20k oneshot? that obviously did not happen. i think my original estimate once i accepted that this was gonna be multichaptered was like 60-70k, but then the chapters started getting longer with each one i finished, and then i wanted to add in an interlude, and then i decided i needed an epilogue, and here we are.

i’ll talk about this in other sections too, but as i wrote, i just kept finding more and more things that i wanted to talk about. i was also in the process of relistening to balance i was writing, and i kept running into little things that happened over the course of the show that i was like... oh shit! and that would inspire another scene or an interaction i wanted to write or something i wanted to focus more on, and the whole thing just kept getting more and more and bigger and bigger.

i’ve said it like 50 thousand times now, but i have never written anything this long before. i tried really hard to be regimented about the way i did it, because from the beginning i knew this was going to be an emotional journey for me to write, but i knew that if i let it slide for a week or so then i would never finish it. so to get through it, i wrote almost every day for a minimum of an hour. the process that i’ve found works best for me when i’m writing is using word sprints, putting on some music, and then forcing myself to tune out of social media and everything else for 25 minutes. i try to do between 750-1k words in that time period, then the site gives you a five minute break, during which i usually check twitter or fact check if i need to, and then i go back in and do another sprint. this works really well for me because i wasn’t trying to hit a specific word goal in any given day, just like... trying to sit down and write. i also tried not to guilt myself too much if i missed a day, or if i only did one sprint instead of two, or anything like that, and that’s kind of what helped me get through the whole monster without instantly dropping it as soon as i had another idea.

on mental health and recovery:

so one of my big personal pet peeves in fiction is the idea that trauma recovery is like, a one time single event deal. like, someone has this big horrible thing happen to them or they have some pressing mental health issue and then someone else walks in and they have one conversation and bam, everything is fine. i was exposed to a lot of [fan]fiction when i was younger that kind of supported this kind of narrative, and i get that there is a certain sort of wish fulfillment thing to that, but it also sucks, being an adult and having Problems(TM) and knowing that it absolutely does not work like that.

so when i set out to write a fic about trauma and mental illness and recovery, i felt kind of a responsibility to not fall into that trap and write it like, okay and then magnus and taako talk about it and taako’s like hey dude you’re depressed but it’s okay and then magnus doesn’t have nightmares anymore. also, because this is taz and the canon of like, historical accuracy is complete bullshit, i can put therapists and psychiatry and psychiatric medications in my fic and no one can tell me i’m wrong and it doesn’t exist. elevators exist, so i can make ssris and anti anxiety pills exist.

but also, magnus as a character is not going to jump into that right away. it is canon fact that he doesn’t like accepting or asking for help with stuff like this, and yes there are a couple big moments where he does, but like i bring up a couple times in the fic, mental health struggles are a big jump from like, a physical fight using swords and axes and shit. and this i think is really accurate to a lot of people’s struggles with mental illness, just taking that first step and admitting that you don’t feel okay, and that you need someone’s help to deal with it. that’s super super scary even to admit to like, your closest friends.

so that’s why magnus kind of shies away a number of times from some of the conversations that people try to start with him about mental health. taako and carey and lucretia and pretty much everyone else approach him at some point about opening up about this stuff, but he pulls away because admitting that kind of vulnerability to someone else is super scary, even if you’ve maybe admitted it to yourself already.

i also wanted to make sure that at the end of the fic, he wasn’t magically better. this is something else that i think people kind of forget, like... trauma and the problems that it causes don’t go away just because of therapy and medication. those things help, they help you reform the ways you think about yourself and about the world, but they don’t change the struggles you’ve been through or the sometimes biological problems that are causing whatever issue you’re having. and i remember reading a lot of fic when i was a kid where someone would be depressed, and then they’d fall in love and get magic dick or something and then they’d never be sad again, which... isn’t great.

but at the same time, i didn’t want it to end on this note like, oh everything is still bad even though he worked so hard to open up and get help, because that sucks, too. so it was really important to me that the fic end on a hopeful note, like, magnus isn’t cured. he still has bad days and bad weeks and sometimes he is just as low as he was before, but he also has like, normal days, which is something that i think you kind of forget can even exist when you’re depressed, or when you’re dealing with any mental illness. but like, i really wanted it to be obvious that things did get better and even if he’s still coping with it and it’s not going away, he’s okay. he’s gonna be all right.

on an unreliable narrator:

this kind of plays into some of the mental health stuff, but one thing that i love about taz that i really wanted to play into with this fic is the idea of limited perspective. griffin does some really cool fucking things with this, specifically in relation to the ipre and the big reveal in the last lunar interlude, with the idea of like... a character can only know the things that they know. like, magnus knows that there is a picture of him depicted as a red robe, and barry knows that they’re all red robes, and taako knows that they found the umbra staff next to a red robed skeleton and that the umbrella spelled out lup at one point, but none of them necessarily know all the things that the other person knew, and none of them know all the things that lucretia knows or that fisher knows or junior knows, etc etc.

unfortunately, just because the pace of the story picks up so much in that last lunar interlude, there isn’t a whole lot of space to explore that like, disconnect between all these facts that they each have as individuals. and given the perspective of mental health and the way that plays into your perceptions of yourself and your perceptions of other people’s perceptions, i really wanted to delve into like… magnus’s misunderstandings.

this is not a strictly straightforward unreliable narrator situation, but i did bring in some elements of that. i really wanted to explore the disconnect between how magnus sees and how everyone else sees him and his issues. there are also a couple moments where he flat out completely misinterprets their intentions, which unfortunately i didn’t delve into as much as i wanted to so they ended up mostly being fun easter eggs for, uh… me? i guess?

one of those moments is the scene in ch 4 where barry and magnus are sitting in the kitchen and barry starts to ask magnus something. magnus assumes it’s going to be about his mental health, and that this is barry stepping up as representative for everyone else to talk to him about it, but it’s really meant to be a precursor to their conversation in ch 6 where they talk about barry and lup and marriage and proposals.

magnus gets a little perspective on this later, i think in ch 7(?) where he’s thinking about how maybe their lives don’t completely revolve around him and he’s missing some of their perspective. but like, they all have their own shit going on, and they all love him and they’re worried about him, but also, barry is thinking about lup. lup is thinking about taako. taako is thinking about lucretia. lucretia is thinking about davenport, and davenport is thinking about his own issues, and so on and so on and they’re not all just like… waiting to pounce on magnus the second he shows weakness.

a lot of that plays into the hypervigilance of ptsd, too. magnus is very aware of any perceived threat, and he sometimes treats the people around him as threats, when all they’re doing in reality is thinking like, man i wish he didn’t live out here by himself all the time.

on a more meta note, i also have a tendency to make every character i write just like, a super good judge of character. i don’t think magnus is that, and i really wanted to lean into that. magnus does not read intention super well, even when that intention is genuinely good.

on the ipre and their relationships:

so i… really don’t write gen fic a lot. even when i do, it is almost always tinged with a little bit of background shipping, and there is some of that in this, but whereas in most fandoms i end up being a multishipper, for some reason with taz i’ve ended up pretty much only caring about the canon ships (sorry…). that being said, the platonic relationships in taz (and especially in balance) are some of the most compelling and important fictional relationships that i’ve ever encountered. like, they are just really well fucking done.

this being the magnus love letter that it is, i really wanted to focus on magnus’s distinct relationships with every member of the ipre crew. i don’t know how obvious this is in the actual narrative, but with the exception of the interlude and the epilogue, the story is broken down into one chapter for each member of the starblaster crew (in order, magnus, taako, merle, davenport, barry, lucretia, lup). i did this specifically because it was really important to me that i dive into all of them and their particular issues. i didn’t quite get the deep dive with merle or davenport that i would’ve liked to, but hopefully in the future i’ll get more time to explore that.

anyway, in case it isn’t obvious, lup is probably my favorite fictional character literally ever in any media created by anyone in the history of time. i say this only because a lot of this fic was set up to build to the conversation between her and magnus in ch 8 out on the mountain where he finally opens up for the first time. there are some really incredible unexplored parallels and relationships in taz (unexplored mainly because like, where would it even fit in canon), and while some of them are super self indulgent (ie, lup and mags, barry and mags), i really really really wanted to dig into those a little more. things like the conversation where taako is talking about everyone brushing over his trauma to rush to forgive lucretia, or lucretia talking about trying to learn to love writing again and recognize happy moments, davenport almost admitting that he’s not completely sure about stepping back into the family in his former role… i could write an entire fic on any of these, really.

but ultimately, this being a magnus fic, i tried to filter those conversations through a perspective of two things: first, how does this affect magnus and his mental health journey, and second, what can magnus do to help this. those scenes where magnus is trying to help someone with something and they’re like, backhandedly helping him are some of my favorite interactions in the fic.

the other thing i really really really wanted to explore that i never see enough of in fic is magnus and carey’s relationship. carey is canonically magnus’s best friend, and yet in fic i feel like she gets pushed to the side a little in favor of the starblaster crew. which i get, they’ve got a hundred and ten years of shared trauma, but also, travis flat out states that carey is magnus’s best friend, so… i mean, there is also a little bit of self indulgence here, because i am also a man who is exclusively best friends with lesbians, but you know.

that being said, i really wanted to emphasize that relationship in particular, which is why carey doesn’t have her own dedicated chapter and instead kind of slides in and out of each one and slowly helps magnus along the way. her personality i also feel is like, the exact kind of thing that magnus needs to push him into accepting / asking for help and moving towards recovery.

on real life parallels:

ok, i swear to god i did not intend to make this a holiday fic posted during the holidays. i started writing this in june, and again, it was only meant to be like 20k and not necessarily entirely set during candlenights. that kind of happened, anyway? candlenights just seemed like the best vessel to get all these characters whose post-canon situations i wanted to explore into the same room, and i finished the first draft around mid october and i wanted to give myself plenty of time for editing, so it honestly just ended up coincidentally aligning with the holidays. go figure.

that being said, isolation ended up featuring pretty heavily in this fic. that i think is to be expected to a certain degree given the nature of mental health and recovery and blah blah blah, but i probably unintentionally ended up leaning into it a little more because like… this year. and the holidays tend to be a time that a lot of us feel really isolated, and this year especially, but one of the big things for me this year is that like, all of my friends live out of state. the closest one to me is still a good 2-3 hour plane ride, which i am absolutely not risking. i had like a hundred plans to go see people and do things this year, and those obviously got cancelled.

probably the biggest one of those things was seeing a friend who i have kind of started a new years tradition of seeing, but we ended up calling that off out of safety considerations, of course. and it sucks! it’s not fun! i also moved out this year and i have my own place and in june i was really hoping that things would be okay by now and i could have all my friends come in from out of town for new years and that didn’t happen. and i wasn’t intending for this fic to be a kind of wish fulfillment of like, here’s my new place post-[saving the universe / coming out and becoming a real person], let me show my found family around my hometown and let’s make new holiday traditions together now that we’re no longer [fighting the apocalypse / literal children] and everything will be fun and happy and good, but that is kind of what happened anyway. [insert joke here that goes like “do you project your real world problems and mental health issues onto fictional characters or are you normal?”]

but yeah, magnus’s mental health struggles did kind of accidentally become a little bit of a pandemic / quarantine life parallel. i did not mean for that to happen, but it did help me tease out a little bit of what it is that i feel like i’m missing and what i want in the future when things are better, and i hope it helped some other people figure that stuff out too, maybe?

and in conclusion:

i said this a little bit in the final notes in the fic, but i am so so so grateful and emotional over the comments i’ve gotten from some of you. i’ve said it already, but this was such an emotional rollercoaster for me to write. i put a decent amount of my own mental health issues into the stuff i wrote into magnus, and it was genuinely therapeutic and like… super helpful and important. it was also a big struggle, and there were some scenes i came out of feeling incredibly drained and like i needed to not write for a week.

so that being said, those of you who have commented things about how this fic helped you deal with your own emotional turmoil or helped put something in perspective for you, i am genuinely so happy to hear that i’ve impacted you in that way like, at all. that is so incredible to me, and not necessarily what i set out to do, but it means so much to hear someone say that and also to know that someone felt comfortable sharing that with a stranger on the internet. thank you so so so much.

again, this fic means so much to me. the fact that it’s impacted even a handful of people in that way is absolutely amazing. some of the things you guys have said have had me seriously choked up. i am so glad that anyone even took the time to read all 133k of this, let alone that it affected people like that.

i don’t know if i’ll be writing more about magnus in this universe. i would love to! but i’m also super happy with where i’ve left his story. i have plans to explore the calen thing in the future, but only kind of tangentially in a side mention and not fully, so who knows? there is more though, a lot with taako and kravitz and lup and barry and hopefully one day i will find the motivation somewhere in me to flesh out everyone else’s situations a little more, too. who knows!

anyway, i just want to say thanks again to everyone for reading, and even more so if you are reading this dumb essay. you’re super cool.

#txt #fic talk

14 notes · View notes

creamypudding · 5 years ago

Text

Suddenly my writing schedule has filled up?

I signed up to that WIPS big bang and the first check in is like... End of this week and I'm silently freaking out over it.

I mean... It's not like I have NOTHING written for it. I've got 97k spread out over 11 chapters so far. I think I only need to write two more chapters to finish the story? but it's been an intensely daunting task, hence why I signed up to the WIP BB but... Like... Now I actually have to read through those 97k words, and do so by the 1st check in?

I thought I'd be productive and like, schedule in what fic I work on what day of the week. Today was supposed to be the WIP BB fic day (Clack fic) but I spent it going through my Fleeting Moments playlist, enjoying the feelings, and getting halfway through writing the very last chapter.

It was a productive day, esp since I feel so excited about finishing the last chapter, but, like... TODAY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE CLACK FIC DAY!

*smacks self*

Like, those 97k won't read themselves. I was also trying to remember why I abandoned the fic. And... I'm like 80% sure I know what was bothering me (it was a significant rewrite of some kind). So, like, I could be fine reading through 89k and then BAM, get hit with the chapter I got stuck on and... Get stuck again.

Sigh. I mean, this is why I signed up for the WIP BB, to complete this. It's my precious baby and must be finished. But it's daunting. Also exciting. Like, I really want to finish it so I can publish. Especially since the Clack fandom has come back alive from being presumed dead and shot out into space. I'm so happy about the revival and want people to read this story because... It's just... So near and dear to my heart.

The amount of hours I've poured into it alone astound me. Hours researching medical procedures and military ranks and illnesses. All for what? Details no one will even perceive. Oh well, I do the suffering for myself so I can create something I'm proud of. And maybe get some nice feedback. Feedback makes the suffering worthwhile.

What was my point again? I'm rambling. *scrolls to top*

Oh yes! Busy writing schedule. So I now have this massive motivation to finish the epilogue of Fleeting Moments, which is great because for 90% of the time I spent writing this fic I never contemplated or felt motivated to give it a happy ending. And now I figured out what exactly I want to have happen and how and I just want to churn it out.

But I also have this Big Bang going on. And on top of that... I have fucking discovered the Omegaverse and have so many god damn story ideas!

Like... Omegaverse is so full of POTENTIAL?!?! I had a story in my head for probably a year now that just never sat right. It had to structure. No purpose. The world was... What world?! There was none. It was just smutty depraved Roxas getting rooted crap and now... And NOW I have Omegaverse to wrap it up in and give structure, world building, and a purpose to it.

It's like having this one utterly useless thing at home you don't know what to do with, and then you finally figure out how to make it work and it like becomes the most useful thing at your disposal and how did you even live without it before now? That's what Omegaverse feels like to me. A key.

So I'm super excited about that. But also conscious of having WiP BB and Fleeting Moments that need to be done. Plus I also really want to finish The Anomaly this year as well, and I still owe a friend a fanfic. So... Like... Busy busy busy.

At least working from home and not being busy with that because of PANDEMIC gives me more time for writing. And now that my writing mojo is back (thanks to all you stellar people who gave me the feedback juice on Fleeting Moments) I feel motivated and driven to write again, where before I was very dead inside re making the words. I was like that since February this year. So... the change is great. The shift into my old way of being is great. Though I also notice that I am becoming unresponsive to other things (people, responsibilities) because just FUCKING LEAVE ME ALONE TO DO MY WRITING. I gotta work on that. But oooo it feels good to be writing again and excited about sharing that writing.

So, to anyone who got through my rambling, thank you for listening, and the support. If you've ever commented on anything I wrote and/or interacted with me, you honest to God give me life.

Thank you!

8 notes · View notes

flutteringphalanges · 5 years ago

Text

Condemned to Motherhood

Summary: Maze finds herself in a troubling situation when she learns she is expecting. Nowhere in literature has it been said demons make good parents. With the help of her friends, both human and supernatural, can she pull off such a feat? Start the nine month countdown!

Rating: T

Read on AO3 and FFN

A/N: I've gotten requests on Tumblr for Deckerstar babies, Ella and Dan babies, but I think the baby fic writer in me has found a muse in a different character. That's right, Maze, I'm coming for you now. Welcome to parenthood you feisty demon you! There will be ten chapters, one for each month, and a final one as a sort of epilogue. If you like this story and find it interesting, please let me know and I will do my best to do frequent updates!

Month One, First Trimester

Cambion. A creature in late European mythology that was said to be the offspring of a human and demon. Except, Maze didn't quite remember which human it was she procreated with. Orgies were irritating in that way. Until now, she never fathomed the idea of being able to conceive. Maybe she should've been more attentive when Amenadiel managed to knock up Linda. But the demon lived on the wild side of life, and such actions were the reason she ended up in her current position.

"I'm not taking that," Maze hissed weakly, wiping her mouth with her wrist after vomiting another bout of back vile. "Go away. It's probably just the plague or something."

"I doubt that," Chloe said, holding out the pregnancy test.

Sometimes the detective could be so aggravating, it took everything within her not to embed one of her knives in her chest. No. No, she'd never do that to her. What was wrong with her? Everything hurt. Mouth burning from stomach acid. It was bitter, sour. Even though she didn't have a soul and would go nowhere if she died, Maze was beginning to wish death would take her.

"Take the test," the detective insisted. "Prove me wrong if that'll get you to take it."

"Fine!" Maze finally snapped, Chloe jumping a little as the demon snatched the pregnancy test from her roommate. "If it'll make you shut up."

Humans and their strange little inventions. She sat on the toilet, lips pulled into a frown as she read the directions. Urine. How truly pleasant. Maze did as the box asked, removing the stick and providing the bodily fluid it required. Now to wait. One. Two. Three minutes. She tapped her foot, almost nervously as she finally found the willpower to look down. Two lines. Positive. Fuck.

"It's broken," she shouted, storming out of the bathroom. She beamed the test at Chloe, the detective jumping out of the way in time. "There is no way that I am pregnant. It's impossible! I told you this was stupid!"

"If you are concerned about accuracy, we can always go to the doctor?" Chloe suggested, using a napkin to pick the test up from the floor.

"Who? Linda?" Maze inquired, narrowing her eyes.

"No, a real doctor-well, one for someone who deals with these kinds of things," the detective said, reaching her phone. "I have a gynecologist myself. Maybe she can make a recommendation."

"No," the demon grumbled. "I'm not going to any doctor. This is all so stupid. I'm staying right here until this...whatever human illness I have is over," her expression darkened. "I'm not going to the hospital."

XXX

"Congratulations, Ms. Smith, you are in fact pregnant!"

Maze glowered at Chloe as the doctor peered down at his paperwork and then at the demon. Blood tests. First urine, and then blood. She didn't dare think what else they might be able to use from her body to confirm she was pregnant. Chloe rested a hand on Maze's knee and the demon shied away, arms crossed heavily over her chest. This was not happening. This was a mistake.

"You're around five or six weeks, it may be a little too early to hear the heartbeat, but we can still do an ultrasound scan to just take a peek, see how things are looking. Are you interested in that?"

"Yes," Chloe cut in before Maze could decline. "She'd be very interested."

"Wonderful, if you'd lay back for me, we can get started," the doctor smiled, pulling over a piece of equipment that Maze thought looked more like a toture device she'd use in Hell than something to locate a baby. "Now, this might be cold."

The demon stiffened as the doctor lifted up her shirt just enough to expose her abdomen. As he rolled on his stool to adjust the transductor, the detective moved to the demon's side. Maze just stared forward towards the nearby wall. Anger was melting into anxiety and she hated feeling weak.

"Now let's just take a look around," the doctor mumbled, moving the device across Maze's stomach. "And...ah, here we go!"

An unmistakable whooshing sound filled the room. Maze looked over at Chloe, feeling a little horrified. The detective stared back and smiled, taking the demon's hand and squeezing it.

"It's okay," she assured her. "That's just the baby's heartbeat."

"And a strong one too for being so small," the doctor chuckled. "There's the sac, you can look now if you'd like, Ms. Smith."

She didn't want to look. She really didn't want to see. But something within her pulled her gaze over to the monitor. There, sitting in what looked like a tiny bubble, was a strange little blob. Maze frowned, squinting her eyes.

"What is that?"

"Your baby," Chloe exclaimed, rolling her eyes. "It's still very early, they don't exactly look like much right now."

"Is it...okay?" Maze ventured, still unable to decide how she felt about the little parasite growing within her.

"Well, based on your tests, it measures right. The heartbeat sounds good. All and all, I'd say you are on track. Which is good," he replied, noting Maze's still uncertain expression. "I can print you some images for you to take home. People like them as a keepsake."

"I don't think I have much of a choice," the demon said, eyeing Chloe. "Fine. So, I'm done here? I don't have to come back?"

"Oh of course you do!" The doctor exclaimed, looking a bit alarmed. "We need to track your progress and make sure you and the baby are healthy. If you go up front, they can schedule your next appointment. It'll be in a few weeks. You'd be surprised how much development occurs between now and then."

"Great," Maze muttered, hoping off the cot. She snatched the pictures from the man and handed them to Chloe. "I'll be going now. Come on, Chloe."

"Congratulations again," the doctor waved. "See you in a few weeks!"

The detective made the next appointment, Maze choosing to lean against the wall uninterested. How could see have been so stupid? Pregnant? A baby? Those words sounded so wrong. So foreign. When they made their way back into the car, the demon grabbed Chloe's arm before the other woman could start the engine.

"No one can know about this," she growled.

"You're going to have to tell people eventually," Chloe commented. "You can't hide this forever."

"Well, I will as long as I can," she muttered. "And for your sake, I'd keep my mouth quiet. I have hormones, I can't exactly predict my behavior. Or control it."

"And you have no idea who the father is?" Maze flinched at her words. "Sorry, I didn't mean…"

"I don't know and I don't care," the demon mumbled. "Look, I just want to go home and forget about this. Have a drink and…"

"You can't drink," the detective said firmly. "Not while you're pregnant."

Maze froze, her eyes growing wide. "Excuse me," her tone was low, frightening. "What do you mean I can't drink?!"

"It's bad for the baby," Chloe said, finally pulling out of the parking lot. "Don't worry, it'll be easier than it sounds."

The demon stared out the window, her head pounding from the overwhelming aspect of it all. Pregnant. Unable to drink. Motherhood. God smite her where she stood-or sat for that matter. The only interaction she ever had with kids were with Trixie and Charlie. Now she was being forced to have her own. What else could go wrong?

Lots.

#Lucifer #Lucifer on Netflix #Lucifer Morningstar #Chloe Decker #Mazikeen #Maze #Deckerstar #Condemned to Motherhood

9 notes · View notes

bulletdove · 5 years ago

Note

if u could change anything about aoaf what would u change?

AAAA this is such a good ask, thank you, i spent Way Too Fucking Long on this

(disclaimer: i don’t exactly support RPF, but i think it’s fine to consume it critically. it’s part of fandom, whether we like it or not. and fandom is an area of academic interest for me, so... you can’t understand something without researching it. yeehaw.)

so here’s AOAF: the extended cut. ideally part of a critical edition, because i have academic aspirations.

AOAF stands on its own really well as original fiction, because it didn’t get into heavy speculation and based itself off of “what if”. but the plot was more emotionally loaded than the characters were, i think? (so as far as RPF goes, it’s not that scandalous or ethically dubious.). extended cut would be an Original Fiction type of deal, the same basis as the original one but taking the characters in a different direction and obviously renaming them

the ship plot was good, but that’s extremely Fic (which is a draw of the genre, but also seriously limits the development of non-romantic relationships) so that’d be changed. more family interactions in the present that aren’t for the sole purpose of advancing the ghostf*cking plot, flashbacks to frank and his mom and frank and ray and frank and dewees. other friends hanging out, getting to know mikey. (i need to do a reread, but ray and bob and co. weren’t really that memorable...)

higher stakes. the kidnapping scene fell flat because you knew nothing was going to happen, mikey couldn’t die because he’s mikey, all that stuff. higher stakes for the dead character, too - i need to do a reread, but plausible risk of permadeath would help intensify things.

mikey subplot is of utmost importance. barely anybody who writes RPF seems to know what to do with him as a “character” - since his public persona is/was awkward, super quiet, but still super well-liked? and nobody really wants to figure out the why and how for a minor character, since he always ends up being a minor character - but i’d like some in-depth exploration. bringing out the parallels and differences between him and frank, the dead kid and the maybe-dying kid (assuming heightened stakes), and having them hang out more, is something i’d really like.

i’d have mikey and frank be friends, but also butt heads a lot and rub each other the wrong way - mikey’s a kid and he’s terrified of dying, doesn’t want his mom and gerard and his friends back home to go on without him, wants to explore this freaky town that feels like it’s breathing down his neck [it’s creepy, but he has a good feeling about it], wants to get the chance to be a kid again but also doesn’t want to die before he has the chance to grow up, and keeps having these freaky dreams about a marching band dressed in black. frank has (mostly) made his peace with being dead, thinks his family and friends have moved on without him and been pretty okay, wanted to get the fuck out and grow up but not sell out (gay punk rights), and he knows everything about this shithole and hates that it kind of feels like home. he’s a perpetual kid who knows he can’t grow up until he leaves; mikey’s too grown up already but he’s younger and moodier and both more and less at peace with life and death. they have a lot in common, but they can seriously butt heads.

i’d give mikey a heightened awareness of the supernatural, more mobility (definitely an ill-advised wander through the woods or three), and have him and frank have weird effects on each other.

i liked the sense of weird-hazy-small town that exists out of time, and not wanting to be there but also not really being able to leave (in different ways - frank’s literally trapped, the ways are just waiting and don’t know how long they’ll be stuck there, and their estimates keep changing.) deliberately developing that by having the teenage characters thinking about college and stuff or mrs. way thinking about plans for when they move away again and finding that those plans don’t feel pressing, that they might end up there forever, and maybe that might be liveable? (there’s definitely something wrong with that town, and it’s not just frank) good shit, more emotional depth, frank freaks out but they don’t know he’s a ghost at that point and don’t get it, fuck yeah

a more complicated plotline. more subplots. i think bringing in a different mystery than frank would make it more of a traditionally Literary work, and bring out unexplored dimensions in the characters and the worldbuilding. this time maybe it’d be donna? things around town are pretty strange, the police department is definitely corrupt, her kids keep vanishing in and out of the woods and not telling her the whole truth, gothic etc etc. haven’t thought that part out very much, tbh.

more character depth and development for gerard - AOAF would be the perfect time for him, a depressed kid with a sick brother and dead ghostfriend, to get really fucked up about life and death and his relationship to them, and stop feeling like an early death is some kind of romantic inevitability and realize oh god he really doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want mikey to die it’s not fair, frank being a ghost is cool on the surface but really it’s just awful, and is it really fair for him to be dreaming about his plans for after he graduates when frank is trapped here forever, and mikey might be too? (could bring this in in the kidnapping bit, idk. and some late-night chats with donna.)

more explanation of Why Frank Is The Way He Is. more flashbacks, more backstory, more insight into how he has seriously mixed feelings about his undeath and is trying to be okay with being trapped in the woods forever but really fucking isn’t but also feels like him and the water washing over his bones run at the same frequency - it’s part of him, but he wants more. more detail about that part.

ray and frank interactions. frank looking in on ray’s family, years later.

frank exploring more of the town than the woods - he has to have stood at the edge of the woods and stared as far as he could, he must have been curious, he must have wanted to know what was going on. he gets out of the woods, runs around town, is proud of it for changing and getting kinda-sorta-better? in parts? but hates it for moving on without him.

better ghost mechanics - i really disliked how it felt so easy and handwaved. blegh. the tree-phone was cute tho... (frank would gain mobility in degrees, not all at once, i think. and there would be side effects. more thought needed.)

the epilogue/sequel/whatever was cute, i wouldn’t change that except to make gerard’s eventual successful career a bit more ambiguous - and maybe mikey would die instead of your suggestion of gerard dying, i think that could work maybe. might be between the main plot and the epilogue, though.

showing more of frank’s unlife, and more of the other ghosts - absolute must. mikey spends a weekend at home, sneaks out, sees a dog in the woods that isn’t there, dreams about guitar lessons.

i swear there was other stuff that i talked about with you but i don’t remember... i didn’t mean to make this a whole Manifesto but i’m trying to get everything in in detail sfdklkfsdl rip

slower development of the romance plot, slower realization that frank is a ghost (but less over-the-top oblivious gerard), more developed main and side characters, more side characters (this story was a dudefest! where are the girls.), making the ending feel less contrived (all of their friends are suddenly there, and everything is okay? it needed a more drawn-out conclusion)

this wasn’t supposed to be this long, or take this much time >.

7 notes · View notes

paladinsnevergiveup-blog · 6 years ago

Text

An Open Letter to Voltron: Legendary Defender and DreamWorks

AUTHOR: @astralsheith

SOURCE: https://twitter.com/astralsheith/status/1074317099730919424

READ ON WORDPRESS

What happened to Voltron?

Back in October, screenshots from the final episode of Voltron’s eighth and final season were leaked online. The fandom split down the middle regarding who thought they were real and who thought they were fake and bad behaviour sprung up from both sides. I tried to maintain as neutral a stance as possible, waiting for an official statement to be made but none ever came and confirmation on the leaks came when the final season dropped on Netflix on December 14th. I had always remained hopeful that the leaks were fake, because the implications of them were troubling to me, such as Allura dying and Shiro’s last-minute wedding. My trust in Voltron’s showrunners (Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim Dos Santos) and creative team’s storytelling kept me going and I was, ultimately, excited (if sad about Voltron ending) to see the last season of a show I hold close to my heart.

Lo and behold, here we are, and it is somehow worse than I thought possible.

I can’t say that I hated Season 8. They were some stunning and powerful moments, to be sure, and as always, Studio Mir’s animation was incredible and breathtaking. The documentary episode was clever, dynamic, and brilliantly animated. Honerva’s arc as the show’s final villain was, in my opinion, one of the strongest points of the season. But when the dust settled after I’d finished watching I realised how disappointed and hurt I felt by this season. How, in the end, Voltron’s final season largely felt...hollow. As if the passion and heart that had been put into the previous seven seasons had been lost or smothered somehow. And the air of silence from the showrunners, the cast and crew that has bookended both the build up and response to Season 8 feels not only deafening but damning to how this final season ultimately turned out. Both the cast and crew and the fandom should be celebrating. The show ending may be bittersweet but ultimately, we should be celebrating the successful final season of an incredible show that has given so much to so many people.

Instead, people are crying - out of disappointment, hurt, a sense of betrayal. People are physically sick. Unable to eat. Unable to sleep. Children (Voltron’s supposed target demographic) are upset and confused by what transpired in Season 8.

What happened? What happened between SDCC of this year - when the cast and crew seemed so alight with passion and love for the show and the fact that they’d achieved the momentous feat of having a queer main character like Shiro - and now, with a final season that has left fans in pieces and its showrunners seemingly running as fast as they can from what their beloved show ended up being? For what purpose is this the outcome? Did LM and JDS get tired after working for so long on this show? Did they bite off more than they could chew? Did DreamWorks and other IP holders decide to, ultimately, take matters into their own hands and mold the final season into the Voltron they’d wanted all along? Robot action, transformation sequences, power-ups - those are all amazing if there’s some meaning behind them. That did not seem to be the case in Season 8. Season 8 was something separate in terms of its story and its characters than what had been developed in Seasons 1 through 7.

What happened to Voltron?

There are several things that are wrong with Season 8 that I could discuss. How about I start with Shiro? Shiro is my favourite character in Voltron and has been from since I started watching the show. At first glance, he might seem the prototypical hypermasculine and stoic leader type but there was such a kindness to him, a willingness to look out for his team no matter the cost, that made him different. An ambition to explore the universe and a passion to help people in need. A sense of humor that was dorky and dark in equal measure. He dealt with trauma. He faced immense adversity. Yet he survived. More than that, by the end of Season 7, he seemed to be thriving. Former Black Paladin of Voltron and current Captain of the IGF Atlas. And he was a gay man - a gay man not defined by his sexuality by any means. There has always been so much more to Shiro than meets the eye. Except in Season 8 - in Season 8, for the most part, all that made Shiro so wonderful as a character in a so-called kid’s show was...gone. He was “Captain”. He shouted orders and directions and rarely did his personality get any real chance to shine. The arm-wrestling in the episode Clear Day was probably the most engaging Shiro was as a character in the entire thirteen episodes. He didn’t have to be the focus of the season - that was clearly Allura and Honerva and that’s great - but he should still have been the character we’ve come to know and love and admire over the last two years or so. But he wasn’t. He just wasn’t.

Furthermore (and I am well aware I might just get written off as a “spiteful shipper” for this), the relationship between Shiro and Keith in Season 8 all but vanished. Putting aside the question of whether Shiro and Keith being canon as a romantic couple was ever on the table for Voltron, their strong friendship was all but erased from Voltron’s “canon” in Season 8. This is a relationship that has been a pillar of the show since the very beginning. Keith’s introduction to the show was him saving Shiro. His first bit of dialogue on the show was Shiro’s name. They’ve had near-entire episodes dedicated to their relationship - Across the Universe, The Blade of Marmora, The Black Paladins, A Little Adventure. What other duo in Voltron can boast that? Maybe Zarkon and Honerva but not even they - as two of the main villains of the show and the catalyst for the entire war that takes place throughout Voltron’s story and plot - have that much plot and character attention as Shiro and Keith have had regarding their bond. Shiro and Keith have soundtracks specific to their relationship.

What could possibly have happened to warrant the kind of erasure they faced in Season 8? How is it I can point to several moments throughout Season 8 where Shiro and Keith’s relationship could have continued to shine yet there was almost nothing there? Was it censorship? Was DreamWorks and Co. unable to handle a gay main character having a close relationship with his male best friend? Because it certainly feels like that’s the case - a fear of what Shiro and Keith could have been by the end of Voltron (even as best friends) and a desperation to backpedal. Was it “think of the children”? Yet how are you “thinking of the children” when Lotor’s melted corpse is allowed on screen? Is body horror and violence “safe” for children but meaningful relationships involving queer main characters are not?

And then there’s Shiro’s wedding in the “epilogue”. I won’t deny that the image of a gay main character such as Shiro, marrying and kissing another man, isn’t (on the surface) powerful in its own way and could perhaps prove to be a gateway to more male queer representation in Western animation. Yet when that man is a man I only the know name of because I watch Voltron with captions, when that man is mistaken for Shiro’s dead ex partner by Netflix’s audio description, when that man is marrying Shiro at the seeming expense of Shiro’s entire character, it can’t help but feel cheap. A PR stunt for “representation points”. A quick-fix due to the backlash Voltron faced after Season 7 and Adam’s death. There’s no weight or true meaning behind it. No development. The fact that Voltron’s supervising producer last work for Voltron that he posted on his Instagram was him drawing and animating Shiro’s wedding weeks (September 13th) after said backlash kicked off (mid-late August) does not feel unrelated or coincidental to me. It doesn’t feel genuine. It doesn’t feel true to the story Voltron’s been telling these past 2 ½ half years.

Allura. Oh, Allura.

I can’t think of a solid reason why the decision was made to kill Allura off. I’d like to think that the original idea was to have Voltron be sacrificed but DreamWorks was reluctant to let go off the eponymous robot and Allura was the only character close to powerful enough to be convincing of rebooting all realities, along with Honerva. But who's to say that’s even close to the truth? And why not have it be solely Honerva? I would have believed that if they were truly committed to a “redemption in death” for Honerva. Why Allura? Why go against Allura’s character of arc of moving away from destructive self-sacrifice, learning to trust her team, finding a new family in the paladins? Why have the paladins so readily accept Allura’s decision? “We are always stronger together” - yet Allura is the only paladin to sacrifice herself? She faced so much loss as a character - why have her lose her life, too? Allura was never meant to be a martyr. She was meant to live. To move past her father’s legacy and help rebuild the universe. Lead her people. Experience Altea again. And the relationship between Allura and Lance in Season 8 was wonderful and sweet but in light of Allura’s death can’t help but feel somewhat contrived for maximum emotional impact when they say goodbye. Allura’s death, ultimately, felt unnecessary, unfair, and ill aligned with what I thought were Voltron’s primary themes. Power of love, of friendship and family, of teamwork. What’s the point of a team if, in the end, they do very little to help save the universe and the burden is left on one person alone?

And the rest of the team in Season 8 suffered, too. Pidge barely interacted with any of the other paladins. Hunk displayed some great moments with his love of cooking and how that helped people but the heroics he displayed in Season 7 seemed to fall to the wayside. Lance’s signature goofiness seemed to get lost in his constant worry over Allura. I am grateful for his newfound maturity but it shouldn’t come at the expense of what made these character so distinct in the first place.

I have loved Voltron. I still do, even if I am currently working through these difficult emotions regarding its final season. I have defended it in the past from irrational “critique”. Seven seasons of great storytelling does not vanish in the wake of a troubling and disappointing ending. At some point, I will continue with my rewatch. Right now, I think that would be difficult. I’m not trying to point specific blame at any one person or party in particular, as I don’t know the truth of what happened during Voltron’s production (as much as I would like to). I just know that Season 8 felt like a lie. Not only a lie but a bad lie. A transparent lie. And I and so many other dedicated fans would greatly appreciate the truth. I don’t need to see what Season 8 would have originally been, if there is such a thing. I can honestly quite easily imagine it, because Voltron’s previous seasons had set it up so thoughtfully. But I would be grateful for an explanation, for a break in the silence, for someone involved with the show to come forth and help the fandom move forward in the wake of Season 8.

What happened to Voltron? Tell us, because we’re ready to listen.

#freevlds8 #vldaudience #voltron #voltron legendary defender #sheith #shiro #takashi shirogane #allura

32 notes · View notes

musingsofamurderess · 4 years ago

Text

Being an Activist Against Mental Health Stigmas

Social and cultural stigmas held against those with mental illness as a whole is going down generation by generation, albeit slowly. Likely in response to the recent practical application of the scientific observation that the efficacy therapeutic counselling (individual and group) in combination with effectively prescribed medications has caused such a large scaled impact on those with mental illness that society as a whole is being forced to accept that we can and will continue to live and function productively alongside those without mental illness, often without them even being aware of their neighbor's lifelong struggles in this regard. Myself, being one of these.

Many, I would even venture to say that nearly all, people with mental illness are misdiagnosed at various points in their lives and sometimes underlying causes are overlooked over altogether. People who do not have mental illness or have not struggled with various bouts of depression or other abnormal psychological events are more likely to hold strong feelings about particular symptom sets that they'll associate with a common diagnosis such as schizophrenia, sociopathy, or bipolar disorder, to note some of the less favorably pervieved conditions. It's hard not to see the worst in those being treated for those disorders in particular as they are commonly associated with destructive thoughts, actions, and attitudes toward other people, even by definition. Other illnesses such as depression and anxiety present themselves less extrovertively, and thus, those with these disorders are more socially and culturally accepted as the nature of their issues presents them as a much lesser threat, comparatively. But, lest we forget...those diagnosed with all these disorders, and many more (including autism spectrum disorders) were lumped into designations as "unfit for society" or at best "peculiar" category well into the 1900s. Sanitariums housed a few of these misunderstood human beings, and they did so as a last ditch effort. Most were simply forced to cope with the help of loved ones in the best way they could. Society as a whole had neither the tools, nor the wealth of communication and the ensuing understanding that humanity's globization (due greatly to technological advancements) has cultivated and grown upon us in our current modernized society.

The past holds many lessons on "what not to do" but where does that leave us now in the relationship between society and mental illlness? We no longer see it as an immediate death or imprisonment situation, for one. I consider that a huge start but simply studying those with mental illness raised new ethical concerns regarding human rights, and that coupled with a documented pattern of minimal efficacy for the combination of medicines and EST treatments would make any clinician of that time doubtful of the success of any long term recovery for people with mental illness as it pertains to their becoming a functional and accepted part of society. Clinicians began to see that medications alone were not resulting in long term success. Fortunately, the rise of "talk therapy" and counselling as therapeutic treatment, coupled with the "rehabilitation" concept led tofurther studies of the long term safety and efficacy of medications and therapeutic counselling being published and available for society to reach out in natural curiosity and read about what others were going through from a scientific perspective, eventually developing a kind of "social empathy" for those with certain mental illnesses this allowing us to expand our understanding of their "treatment".

Emergence of combination "treatment plans" by which qualified prefessionals develop some guidelines to help better their patient's lives by prescribing medications along with encouraging and sometimes requiring participation in non-medication driven therapeutic processes (individual, family, and/or group therapy), has shown much more positive responses than medications alone. Just in the last 15 years, the focal switch to therapy as the primary treatment and medications as an auxillary treatment has shown much more helpful results than the past model still. In the advent of more intensive therapies such as psychodrama, we, as a society, have begun to accept therapy as a useful and effective tool in many aspects of life, even for those without mental illness. Grief and Divorce counselling are now very popular and they don't often cause those "looking in" to make presumptive negatory judgements about those who seek help in either of these regards. We have seemingly found that certain combinations of treatments work for symptom sets of certain etiologies, and much of our society today has accepted grief and certain types of familial counseling as valid practices without presupposed judgements for those involved. I believe this concept is key to increasing understanding of how mental illness affects society as a whole, and how we process our relationships with it as individuals.

Mental Illness is rarely a constant as people grow and change all the time, just as society advances in it's scope of understanding of the importance of human rights and their application and practice in regard to those with mental illness, especially when they're coupled with cultural standards and expectations. The single best thing individuals can do to advance fair treatment and sentiment of and fir those with mental illness in our society today is to refuse to judge the value of a human being by his/her/it's/their diagnosis. It doesn't hurt me to try and understand another person's situation or condition, as long as I do it respectfully and in light of a way that effevtively communicates that respect to the other part. Put simply, diagnoses are based on a person meeting several points on a broad spectrum, and the points that a doctor determines qualifies one person for said diagnosis will vary for that person in their frequency and severity, and differ from person to person. Each person's symptoms, treatment, and ongoing features of each of the illnesses are different, changing, and people are affected by their interactions with others. Being supportive and positive may seem impossible at times, but please remember that we are people too. Viewing or treating us as being "lost causes", being scared of us or thinking that being diagnosed or treated mental illness makes ANYONE worth less than you are IS in invalidation of that person's basic human rights. When you truly wish to show your love for another person, some basic understanding and compassion are imperative. Judgement is not. I love all people. I may not agree with or understand how or why they are who they are, but I can be respectful, especially if I wish to be respected in return. Respect makes a fantastic foundation for new mutually beneficial relationships. Go try it!

EPILOGUE (i.e. the point)

Such is it to say that disbelief and further, cynicism, is a natural response to seeing mentally ill people not behaving mentally ill. Having never been exposed to mental illness oneself, it would seem almost logical that an effectively treated mental ill person would seem to be "faking it". To those, I say: it's not my fault I do well most days! Just 100 years ago I would have been locked away for the ready of my life for "debilitating emotional disturbances" of various varieties (to put it lightly). The scientific, medical, and therapeutic communities have worked hard to allow us to live the lives we want to live and I for one am so grateful for that! I may not have it together all days, but I'm here, I'm mentally ill, get to used to it!

This is only a test.

This has been a brief examination of the relationship between mental illlness and society as told by someone who has mental illlness and perfectionism. It's not perfect and the switching perspectives thing bothers me probably more than it bothers you but I'm just one person and I AM NO EXPERT. I feel like I got my point across enough such as to quell the nagging feeling of imperative self-expression. I wish to understand and to be understood, as perception, knowledge, and learning allow. If you would like to talk to me about this piece, please write me privately. For the sake of my sanity, I will choose to not to engage with negativity. Feedback and error correction are appreciated, albeit directed to my inbox. If you find difficulty in reading or understanding the content their in due to my error, adjustments can be made. If you need assistance understanding my syntax and/or verbiage, please let me know privately.

Jul 2, 2018

#mental health #mental disorder #mentally ill #mental instability #mental breakdown

0 notes

weekendwarriorblog · 5 years ago

Text

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND October 11, 2019 - THE KING, GEMINI MAN, PARASITE and More!

Having barely recovered from this past weekend’s double whammy of New York Comic-Con and New York Film Festival, I’m starting to question whether I should continue doing this column… again. It’s a lot of work putting it together each week, and it’s really tough to balance this with my paying writing work.

It certainly doesn’t help matters that I never got around to finishing last week’s column, because I got too busy with other stuff, but this week, I haven’t seen any of the three wide releases for various reasons, so there might not be as much to write about. Since I’ve already reviews Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite for The Beat, I want to talk about another amazing film getting a limited theatrical release.

That movie is David Michôd’s THE KING, which Netflix is giving a limited theatrical release before its streaming debut on the service starting November 1.

Set in the 15th Century, the movie is loosely adapted on Shakespeare’s King Henry IV and Henry V but it’s handled in a lot less stodgy way than other Shakespeare films like Michael Fassbender’s recent turn as Hamlet. Henry IV is played by Michôd regular Ben Mendelson, but Henry V is played by Timothée Chalamet who has zero interest in being king even after his father dies. But the performance that really grabbed my attention was that of Joel Edgerton (who co-wrote the screenplay with Michôd) who I didn’t even recognize as the younger king’s trusty colleague Falstaff until about an hour into the movie. Robert Pattinson (who appeared in Michôd’s The Rover) plays a smaller but absolutely hilarious role that I won’t reveal, although it’s hard to forget it since it’s such a different character for Pattinson. Much of the film deals with how Henry handles becoming King of England, especially when he’s pushed to go to war with France. I don’t have a lot more to say about this movie is that it surpassed all my expectations, especially in the battle sequence in the last half of the movie which is on par with anything in Gladiator or Braveheart, but then there’s an equally terrific epilogue that really shows Chalamet to be at the top of his game. I also should mention the amazing turns by Sean Harris from Mission: Impossible - Fallout, Lily Rose-Depp and Thomasin McKenzie as Henry’s sister.

This is just a great film that I hope people will make an effort to go see in theaters, even though Netflix really isn’t giving it as big a theatrical or awards push as some of their other movies. I know it’s playing at the Landmark 57thStreet in New York, but that’s the only theater I could find.

That aside, the big movie of the weekend is Ang Lee’s GEMINI MAN (Paramount), starring Will Smith and Will Smith. You may already know the general premise that it involves an older hitman played by Smith being hunted by a younger Smith, or maybe it’s vice versa. I don’t know since I had to miss the New York press screening due to illness, but I’ll probably try to see this when it opens this weekend. I might even give it a look in 3D at 128 FS, as maybe the third time’s the charm in that format.

U.A. Releasing is attempting their second animated release of the year with THE ADDAMS FAMILY, which I’ll be seeing on Wednesday night and reviewing over at The Beat. It has a pretty amazing voice cast, and I’ve been a fan of the comic strips and TV show, enough to hope that the filmmakers behind Sausage Party can do it justice and still be funny with a PG rating.

I’m a little bit dubious of CBS Films’ JEXI, starring Adam Devine, since the studio decided not to screen in advance for critics, and that’s VERY rare for a populist comedy like this one, which basically has Devine falling for his Siri-like smartphone assistant, or maybe it’s vice versa. If I can find the time, I might check this out, but I don’t expect it to do very well with so little advance promotion.

You can read more about these wide releases and how they might fare over at my weekly Box Office Preview at The Beat.

LIMITED RELEASES

I’ve already reviewed Bong Joon-ho’s new film PARASITE (NEON) over at The Beat, but it’s an intriguing enough film that I certainly could talk more about it. It’s an interesting look at the Korean class system through the interactions between a family living in poverty and the rich family they dupe into letting into their homes. The movie looks incredible and Bong’s cast is top-notch in creating a dark comedy dealing with rather serious issues, and honestly, you should go to see it without knowing too much about it, so that’s all I’ll say. Interestingly, the movie has already sold out about seven preview screenings on Thursday night and a few more Friday at the IFC Centerwhere Director Bong and a few of his stars will be doing QnAs after the shows.

I had been tracking Michael Goy’s MARY (RLJE Films) for some time, mainly because it has an impressive cast including Gary Oldman and Emily Mortimer, but also it mostly takes place on a haunted boat, and I’m generally a fan of boating. Mary is actually the boat’s name, one that’s spotted by Oldman’s working class captain David who wants to make a better life for his family, something he thinks the boat can help with. Once David and his family are out at seas, they begin to turn on one another and lose their sanity as the boat drifts off-course.

Opening in New York and L.A. on Wednesday is Eric Notarnicola’s Mister America (Magnolia), and if you’re in New York, you can try to get tickets for the Metrograph where Notarnicola will be appearing with stars Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington aka “Neil Hamburger” for three shows tonight! It’s a faux political documentary following Heidecker on his campaign to depose the incumbent San Berarndino D.A. who tried him for selling e-cigs at an EDM festival, killing many. If this is even remotely as weird as the last few films I’ve seen with Heidecker and Turkington, it’s probably best that I haven’t seen this, and probably won’t, although the premise sounds intriguing.

There are some interesting docs this weekend including Fantastic Fungi, directed by time-lapse photographer Louie Schwartzberg (Wings of Life and the 3D IMAX film Mysteries of the Unseen Worlds) and “written” by Mark Monroe, who has been involved with some great docs including this year’sThe Biggest Little Farm. As you can tell from the title, this one explores the ground beneath our feet and how the fungi kingdom offers ways to heal and save our planet. It’s opening at New York’s Village East Cinemason Friday and in other theatersdown the road. Oh yeah, it’s also narrated by Brie Larson.

Also opening at the QuadFriday is Robin McKenna’s documentary Gift (Matson Films), based on Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World,” exploring the relationship between art and the “gift economy.”

Opening at the Cinema Village Friday is Killing Zoe writer Roger Avary’s new movie Lucky Day (Lionsgate), starring Luke Bracey, Nina Dobrev, Crispin Glover and Clifton Collins Jr. It’s about a paranoid safe-cracker and his family who have to face a psychotic hitman out for revenge. I’m guessing that Glover is playing the psycho.

As far as sequels, there’s Along Came the Devil 2 (Gravitas Ventures), the sequel to Jason and Heather DeVan’s Along Came the Devil, which I’m honestly not sure I saw. Laura Slade Wiggins plays Jordan who receives an unsettling voice mail and returns home to her estranged father (Bruce Davison) only to learn that a demonic force has attached itself to the town.

Lastly, there’s Broadway star Michael Damian’s High Strung Free Dance (Atlas Distribution), the sequel to his 2016 movie High Strung, which I’ve never seen. It follows Thomas Doherty’s young choreographer Zander Raines as he gives a break to a talented contemporary dancer (Juliet Doherty) and a pianist (Harry Jarvis) by putting them in his Broadway show “Free Dance,” that becomes more complicated by a love triangle between the three. It also stars Jane Seymour, who was also in the previous film.

LOCAL FESTIVALS

The New York Film Festival is finishing up this Friday with Edward Norton’s new ‘50s detective film MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN, which I quite liked and have also reviewed for The Beat. Also playing is Mati Diop’s Cannes prize-winning Atlantics, which will be on Netflix in November.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Before I get to the regular Netflix releases, I do want to draw special attention to Abe Forythe’s LITTLE MONSTERS, which just received a one-night nationwide screening on Tuesday but will debut on Hulu this Friday. It’s a very witty zombie comedy set in Australia starring Alexander England (Alien: Covenant) as Dave, a slacker musician who develops a crush on his nephew’s beguiling kindergarten teacher Miss Caroline (played indelibly by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o). When he finds out that the class is being taken on a field trip to a petting zoo, Dave volunteers as a chaperone, only for things to get complicated when they get there and a famed child entertainer called Teddy McGiggle (and played by Josh Gad) starts showing interest in Miss Caroline. Oh, yeah, and I also mentioned zombie, didn’t I? The class arrives at the park just as a zombie outbreak begins so Dave and Miss Caroline have to protect the kids.

I generally liked this movie, which I found quite witty and a much stronger zombie-comedy effort than something like last year’s Anna and the Apocalypse. I loved what Lupita does with her characterization in this and I even kind of liked Josh Gad, although he took his character a little too far at times. Either way, if you have Hulu-- as I now do -- this is a fun watch and you can do worse with your time.

Although Vince Gilligan’s EL CAMINO: A BREAKING BAD MOVIE with Aaron Paul reprising his role of Jesse Pinkman is streaming on Netflix starting Friday, it’s also getting a rather limited run in theaters for those who would prefer to see it that way. I personally haven’t seen it yet, but it’s supposed to be a direct continuation from that amazing final episode of Breaking Bad. A few places where you can see it live with other fans including the IFC Center and Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn. Also on Netflix Friday is the psychological thrillerFracturedfrom Brad Anderson, starring Sam Worthington – I wonder where he’d gotten – and Lily Rabe from American Horror Story. Worthington plays Ray, who is driving across country with his wife and daughter when they stop at a rest area where his daughter falls and breaks her arm. Once he gets her to the hospital, Ray passes out from exhaustion and when he wakes up, his wife and daughter are missing with absolutely no record of them having ever been there. I haven’t had a chance to see this but I’m always interested in what Brad Anderson is up to since I’m such a huge fan of his earlier movies like Session 9 and The Machinist.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Shirkers director Sandi Tan returns to the Metrograph to screen Leos Carax’s 1999 film Pola Xin 35mm on Saturday night, and the Metrograph continues its “NYC ’81” series this weekend with Andrew Bergman’s So Fine, a series of New York shorts from 1981, Peter Yates’ Eyewitness, Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andreand more. This Saturday, Welcome To Metrograph: Reduxwill screen Martin Scorsese’s 1974 filmAlice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, starring Ellen Burstyn and Kristopher Kristopherson, which I believe was the inspiration for the TV sitcom “Alice” but I could be wrong. Late Nites at Metrograph has the greatest movie in the series so far, John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, starring Kurt Russell, which is also a part of “NYC ’81.” Playtime: Family Matineeswill screen Miyazaki’s Oscar-nominated 2004 film Howl’s Moving Castle.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN(NYC)

There’s still a few tickets for tonight’s “Weird Wednesday” movie, Lucio Fulci’s The Devil’s Honey. Thursday night the Alamo is showing Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer from 2014 as his new movie Parasite opens (that one’s almost sold out as of this writing). Sunday afternoon, the Alamo is screening a 35mm print of the 1960’s Korean film The Housemaid, which inspired Parasite. Monday night (and already sold out) is a screening of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligariwith a live score (sorry!). Next week’s “Terror Tuesday” is Ti West’s House of the Devil, a fantastic chiller, and next week’s “Weird Wednesday” is the 1987 British film Born of Fire, presented by my good friend and filmmaker Ted Geoghegan.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

The Dolemite series continues with a double feature of Dolemite is My Name with the Dolemite movie The Human Tornado (1976), then on Thursday night, the Eddie Murphy double features with Disco Godfather (1979). Wednesday’s horror movie is Robert Wise’s 1963 film The Haunting while Friday’s horror matinee is Hello Mary Lou: Pro Night I I(1987) Tarantino’s Death Proof is the Friday night midnight offering, while Dolemite Is My Namewill screen Saturday night at midnight. (Listen, the Eddie Murphy is not really repertory but it’s a great movie to see with an audience, so take advantage of this chance being given to you by the New Bev, and go see it!!!) This weekend’s “Kiddee Matinee” is Jules Bass’ Mad Monster Party? from 1967 and starring the one and only Boris Karloff. There’s also a Halloween Edition of “Cartoon Club” on Saturday AND Sunday, but they’re both sold out online. Monday afternoon, there’s a matinee of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996)

FILM FORUM (NYC):

I’m pretty excited about the Film Forum’s upcoming “Shitamachi” series starting next week, but in the meantime, the Forum will be screening a 50thanniversary 4k restoration of Yôji Yamada’s Tora-San, Our Loveable Tramp (It’s Tough Being a Man), which is part of a long-running series that I personally have never had a chance to see even though I’ve loved Yamada’s Edo-period samurai films from a few years back. This weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is A Boy Named Charlie Brown, and the Film Forum is also screening a 4k restoration of Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity, both of them also from 1969 and celebrating their 50thanniversaaries. Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl will end Thursday while the Yves St. Laurent doc Celebration will continue through next Tuesday. The “Shirley Clarke 100” will continue through the rest of the month but only her 1962 doc Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World screens this weekend on Saturday.

AERO (LA):

Looks like a planned James Ivory double features for Thursday and Friday have been cancelled, but they’ll be showing the excellent doc Love, Antosha about the late Anton Yelchin in a double feature with Drake Doremus’ Like Crazy. Saturday begins a “Béla Tarr Revisited” series showing films by the popular Hungarian auteur with The Turin Horse (2011) on Saturday night and the new 4k restoration of Sátántángo on Sunday. Just FYI, the latter is 450 minutes or about 7 and a half hours long. There will be an intermission and an extended break but hopefully, you REALLY love Tarr’s work. (I don’t.) Tuesday’s free “Tuesdays with Lorre” screening is The Beast with Five Fingers from 1946.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

“See It Big! Ghost Stories” continues this weekend with Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice on Saturday and Ti West’s The Inkeepers on Sunday, both worthwhile movies to see on the big screen. MOMI is also starting a new series called “No Joke: Absurd Comedy as Political Reality” kicking off with a Weds. night screening of Mister America (see above) and then Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers on Saturday and “An Evening with the Yes Men” (political documentarians) on Sunday. On Sunday afternoon is the “Sesame Street Short Film Festival” screening a bunch of live action and animated shorts commissioned by the popular PBS show.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Francis Ford Coppola’s restored and remastered Cotton Club Encore, which just premiered at the New York Film Festival a couple weeks back will get a theatrical run at the Quad, as will Serge Gainsbourg’s Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus(1976), starring Jane Birkin as a truck stop waitress who begins a friendship with Joe Dallesandro’s garbage truck driver, making his boyfriend (Hugues Quester) jealous.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Not sure what’s going on with the IFC Center’s ongoing weekend rep series but George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road(2015) will screen just before midnight on Friday and Saturday, and then the Coens’ 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski will screen as part of Late Night Favorites: Summer 2019as will Satoshi Kon’s 2006 film Paprika.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

The Egyptian is pretty busy this weekend with “German Currents 2019” i.e. not repertory, but on Saturday, they’ll show a “Retroformat” screening of the 1928 film The Spielerwith live accompaniment.

BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):

This Sunday’s “Beyond the Canon” is a double feature of Claudia Well’s Girlfriends (1978) with John Cassavetes’ Husbands (1970).

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

Oddly, the Roxy is screening the 2015 horror movie Unfriended on Wednesday and then David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me(1992) on Thursday, but really you should go there to see Lulu Wang’s excellent The Farewell – my #1 movie of 2019 so far – if you haven’t seen it yet.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (LA):

This Friday’s midnight movie is John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic Halloween.

And great news... MOMA should be back next week!

Next week, Angelina Jolie returns as Maleficent, Mistress of Evil, but the movie I’m really looking forward to is Zombieland Double Tap.

#WhatToWatchThisWeekend Movies Parasite GeminiMan TheKing AddamsFamily Reviews Jexi

0 notes

redorblue · 7 years ago

Text

Book 16/2017 - Look who’s back by Timur Vermes

I think I might just start with the ending. Because it’s creepy as fuck and it perfectly captures the atmosphere that this book has built up over the past 400 pages. And because I’ve heard those words before, in real life, which makes it so much mure realistic and so much more terrifying. It goes like this (in my inexpert translation, because it’s a German book):

I could now use the momentum of publishing a book and broadcasting a new TV show to start a propaganda offensive and then found a social movement. My publisher has already sent me some designs for posters [...]. I like them. I really like them. The slogan reads: “It wasn’t all bad.” I can work with that.

Those are the last words of Adolf Hitler after 400 pages of inner monologue during which he is resurrected in Berlin in 2011 and then proceeds to once again win the hearts and minds of millions of Germans by ways of a media landscape ever hungrier for clicks. The book ends with him in the hospital, recovering from an attack by neonazis (who think he’s Jewish, ironically... Not even they realize he’s the real deal, although he’s as unapologetic as ever), getting calls from all the major parties in Germany, a book publisher and various media outlets - and just leaves it at that. No epilogue, no comment on how the story continues, on how he’s finally brought low because someone must have noticed, someone must have seen the signs, someone must have recognized the abyss looming behind his words - only no one has. And worse, no one will. Because just like last time, in spite of his machinations, he has been nothing but straightforward with his intentions and worldview. It’s just that no one takes him seriously. Just like last time. I guess this is why there’s such an open ending: the author doesn’t need to be any more explicit. Everyone who picked up this book and read it already knows where it’s going. Maybe not with the war, because the international climate has changed during the last 70 years, but the rest? It sure seems like it.

It’s actually kinda funny. There’s this huge contrast between the story itself, which is incredibly realistic, and the beginning, which isn’t realistic at all. This is not supposed to be a critique, I love fantasy and science fiction and all that, so I obviously don’t mind unrealistic events as long as they are logical in the universe they take place in. Admittedly this particular beginning doesn’t make much sense in the universe it takes place in either, which seems to be ours without any magical or scientific upgrades, but in this case, for the sake of contrast, it’s okay. The book starts with Hitler waking up on some kind of yard in the middle of Berlin, where his bunker used to be. Just like that - no explanations, no justifications, no similar events with other people, it just stands there like a run-down shack wedged between skyscrapers. This wildly unrealistic event gets handed to you on the very first page, and maybe it makes you believe that this is some kind of alternate universe thing, or some dystopian thing, or science fiction - something that doesn’t directly apply to us human beings living in a universe where things like that don’t happen - but this story is not any of those. From then on it gets awfully realistic, because we all know how TV shows work, we all know how twitter and youtube work, and we all know that we usually don’t see things as they are, but as we are, to borrow from Anais Nin - which means that we hear what we want and expect to hear, and just ignore, misinterpret and excuse all the rest.

I just realized that I make this book appear more sinister than it is. It’s very, very creepy, yes, but that alone doesn’t do the book or the author justice because it’s also so funny! That really doesn’t happen often, but I laughed out loud a few times while reading it, and this was my second time through, so the jokes weren’t even new. Some situations are just so absurd (and luckily innocent enough to laugh about), like when he constantly spells modern names like Mandy (Menndi), Cindy (Sinndi) or handy (the German word for mobile phone = Henndi) wrong in his head, or when he’s absolutely convinced that elderly women who pick up their dogs’ poop with plastic bags are mentally ill. Sometimes it’s so funny I even forgot whose inner monologue you’re listening to, which is terrifying in and of itself, and most times I couldn’t decide whether to roll on the floor laughing or run around outside screaming with terror. Spoiler, I went with laughing and ignored the other urges. How very human of me. But this paradox is great, actually, I think the humorous part is what really hammers the message home: For all our engaging with our past and looking for wrong turns and swearing that something like Hitler will never happen again, we are not safe. And we won’t ever be, which is why we will always have to be on the lookout for people like him, for rhetoric like his, for patterns like 80, 90 years ago.

I’m talking mainly Germany here because I’m German and I know German society best, but we’re not the only ones who have experienced populist and exclusive dictatorian regimes rise to power, and especially these days we all need to be extra attentive. The people that Hitler interacts with are mostly not even stupid uneducated and exploited, but reasonably successful and sometimes even university graduates (so here’s to stereotypes of your typical neonazi) and they still support and enable him. Because they profit off him, because they think they can contain him, because they ignore the parts about him that make them uneasy. Point is, they’re not safe from his charisma in spite of 16 years of education, give or take, because he doesn’t look like a monster but like a guy with a slightly antiquated vocabulary and a weird thing for old suits who happens to have a baffling resemblance to, but none of the monstrosity of the person they’ve been taught to fear. At least not with regard to manners and behaviour, which is all that seems to matter. What he says is not all that important, then, and obviously he can’t mean everything literally because of course we’re way past that dark chapter in our history - only that apparently we’re still vulnerable, and it’s enough that he puts on a normal-looking suit instead of a military uniform to get our attention (which he full well knows). He doesn’t even have to lie, his misanthropic worldview is just as much out in the open as it was back then. And I’m thoroughly creeped out by how realistic this is presented in this book, especially with regards to the US where the current president boasted during his campaign that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still get away with it. Because I guess he could, if not juridically then at least in the eyes of his followers, which is all that matters, in the end. He’s said awful things during his campaign and done/tried to do awful things during his presidency, and it does not matter. I know you can’t directly compare the two without devaluing and ignoring the millions of lives Hitler destroyed, but... the pattern is there.

I’m sorry, I’m ranting, and I’m not even sure this makes much sense any more, but I’m getting... passionate, one might call it. For the lessons it contains I’d definitely recommend this book, but I’m not sure how understandable it is for someone who doesn’t speak German and doesn’t know the society and political system here. There’s a lot of inside jokes and references which probably don’t make sense without footnotes and/or some thorough research, and I honestly pity all those translators who’ve tried to get the language of this book across in another language. Because the writing is superb. The dialogues feel realistic, all the main characters have distinctive speech patterns including dialects and local expressions, and Hitler’s inner monologue itself feels incredibly authentic. I can’t imagine the amount of research that must have gone into this story. But I’m so glad that Timur Vermes put in all this work, and I’m so glad that it was very successful in Germany and abroad, because it raises awareness in an entertaining way and asks important questions about society, the media, and how the human race just never seems to learn from history.

#books #2017 #look who's back #er ist wieder da #timur vermes

8 notes · View notes

blaperile · 6 years ago

Text

Homestuck Epilogue(s) - Prologue (page 3)

#Homestuck #The Homestuck Epilogues #reaction #John #Roxy #Calliope

1 note · View note

nahret · 6 years ago

Text

Dark Secrets

Ichthys is my unexpected other favourite. I love him. I know I love people who are a little bit like him in real life, and I know they also exasperate me. But there is something so irresistibly pure about Ichthys, something so innocent – there’s great beauty in that.

Since I recently decided to read all of his stories, the obvious place to start is his sequel, which I viewed with a measure of trepidation, because apparently somebody is trying to kill my darling. That’s what the blurb says, but, as we’ve discovered frequently with Voltage, that’s not entirely true. Ichthys is just collateral damage, as the real targets are his parents. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Synopsis

After a long day at work, the MC wishes she could see her boyfriend, Ichthys, but they haven’t made any arrangements, so she resolves to simply go home. On the way, she hears a rustling in the bushes, from whence a figure suddenly jumps her. This is, of course, Ichthys, who is apparently unaware of rape statistics everywhere, and who thinks the MC’s panicked face is hilaaaarious. I will let that slide; while I think that somebody who works in the Department of Punishments should know what happens to mortal women on a regular basis, he’s not more unaware than most men out there.

Nothing much happens; they talk, Ichthys takes his leave. He doesn’t want to stay over at the MC’s place because he would not be able to allow her to go to work the next morning, such are his appetites. The MC blushes prettily and they agree to meet up on her next day off.

Ichthys is a very attentive boyfriend, basically showing up every day just to say hi. On the other hand, what is a man to do who does not own (or understand) a cell phone? After a fun date on earth – what date with Ichthys is not fun? – the MC goes to see him in the gods’ mansion on the following weekend. There, however, she is informed that Ichthys is in his room in heaven, having contracted an illness while on earth. Earth, it turns out, takes a toll on the gods’ physical well-being, and they become more susceptible to disease. Of course, this triggers the old fears regarding Ichthys’ mortality. Teo is quick to assure her, however, that it’s nothing serious; Ichthys has the gods’ equivalent of the common cold. Even so, the MC wants to be with Ichthys to help him recover, wherefore she talks Teo into taking her to heaven. In theory, mortals are not supposed to be in heaven, but you know, she is a former goddess.

Very happy. And blushing. Aww. I love a guy who can just come out and say the words.

Grievously affected by a cold as only a man can be, Ichthys is still very happy to see the MC. While she is tending to his needs by his bedside, he has more surprise visitors, however: his parents show up unannounced. Ichthyo (I know, right?) and Irina are delighted to meet the girl Ichthys loves, and invite the both of them to a party the King of Heaven is holding for them. Apparently, Ichthys’ parents are very powerful and important gods; nobility in the heavens. We never even knew what an illustrious parentage Ichthys has!

At the party, Ichthys is approached by a young man he hasn’t met. The god is about Ichthys’ age, and easy to talk to. He looks like somebody Ichthys could be friends with. What is weird is how his parents react to the stranger. Insisting that they do not know him, either, it is clear that they are hiding something. Another shock comes when suddenly, a chandelier falls towards Irina and Ichthyo. Disaster is averted only because Ichthys manages to stop it in mid-air, thus saving his parents’ lives. The King proclaims the incident an unfortunate accident due to a rusted chain, but something doesn’t seem quite right. Is someone attempting to kill Ichthys’ parents? And why?

Ichthys’ Point of View

His PoV provides us with more introspection. There are cute little moments when the other gods are highly suspicious and subsequently more than a little worried when Ichthys does not prank them. A lot of his inner monologue, however, is concerned with his feelings about his fate, his parents, and most of all, the MC and their relationship. It’s all pretty sweet, if a bit uneventful. It serves to show us how Ichthys is wired, and how is regarded by the other gods. What can I say, I love that the boy has such good friends.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Epilogue

The MC’s event proposal from Ichthys’ main story is accepted by her boss, and she suddenly has a huge event to plan. This results in her being tired and also unable to spend any reasonable amount of time with Ichthys, who still shows up after work every day. When he offers to help with the work, she insists that she has to do it all by herself, because anything else would be cheating. As a result of being completely overworked, the MC ends up falling ill. Now it’s Ichthys’ turn to nurse her back to health. Which he does, even if some of his methods are… unconventional. When a bathtub was mentioned, I feared the worst, but fortunately, she, er, manages.

The Chemistry

The Japanese are well-documented for not talking about their feelings. I believe they hold the position of World Champions on this, albeit closely followed by the Swiss and the English. Believe me, I’m Swiss, I can tell. Now, Ichthys takes it, as we all know, one step further, because not only does he not talk about negative feelings, he does his utmost to not feel them in the first place. Which is often dangerous and can get people killed. The MC on the other hand enables this kind of behaviour by not forcing the issue – as she is probably conditioned to do by the society she lives in. Consequently, there is a lot of not talking here where there should be talking.

What I do like between the two of them is all the sex. Considering what a Big Deal it is in the main story, in other gods’ stories, and apparently in Japanese culture, Ichthys’ relationship to physical intimacy is refreshingly simple: every opportunity is a good opportunity. As usual, the lady doth protest too much, and again, while this trope still gets on my nerves, I didn’t roll my eyes half as often reading this story than I do when bathtubs are involved. There is one, by the way. I know. I had my reservations, too.

Notably absent are the other gods. While the danger was never really great enough to require the intervention of Zyglavis and company, Dui, Teo, and Scorpio were shown to be very concerned about Ichthys. Giving them a more significant role would have made the story more interesting.

The Love Meter

Solidly Blessed, as always. Not quite Zyglavis-level Blessed, but so very close. Makes me think that a healthy mix of Zyglavis and Ichthys might just be the perfect man.

Bottom Line

Well. I liked the story for all the parts that aren’t primarily the story, in a way. Because, quite frankly, nothing much happens. There are, of course, that first incident and then confrontation in the end, but honestly, it’s super boring, way too easy, and all in all just not very dramatic. Nothing like what other gods had to put up with. And apart from that, it’s a lot of talking and introspection. Which I don’t mind per se, but there needs to be a balance. Also, compared to other stories, the other gods are just too absent. There is endless fun to be had with interactions between Ichthys and Scorpio or Zyglavis, and not using this dynamic feels like a wasted opportunity. And does them an injustice, because they would have wanted to help. I like the outcome and the personal development of Ichthys, and honestly, I love the boy to bits; but overall, this is a pretty mediocre effort.

Star-Crossed Myth, Sequel: Ichthys Dark Secrets Ichthys is my unexpected other favourite. I love him. I know I love people who are a little bit like him in real life, and I know they also exasperate me.

#game review #Ichthys #otome #otome game #otome review #review #Sequel #Star-Crossed Myth #Voltage game

0 notes

throw-books-around-like-con-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Other Award Winners (not ALA) – Children’s and Young Adult Blogger’s Literary Awards (Cybils Awards) – http://www.cybils.com/2013/02/the-2012-cybils-awards.html – “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews, published in 2012

Finding a book that was a non-ALA award winner was more difficult than I never expected it to be. I never realized how many ALA awards there were, so I was relieved when I found the Children’s and Young Adult Blogger’s Literary Awards (Cybils Awards). Cybils Awards are very unique because they are awarded by people who blog about children’s and young-adult books. When I looked through past award winners, I was excited when I saw that Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was an award winner. Conveniently, I already owned the book. I saw the movie on campus last year and bought the book soon after with the intent of reading it, however, I never got around to reading the book. This semester blog project has allowed me to read for pleasure, but also gave me the opportunity to read books I’ve wanted to read for a while but haven’t gotten the chance to; Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a perfect example.

This book, published by Jesse Andrews, is a story written from the point-of-view of a high school senior named Greg Gaines. In the beginning of the story, Greg goes to the extremes to ensure he stays invisible, even going as far as avoiding being a part of any cliques or having any real friends. While he spent the majority of his high school years at the periphery, his life was brought to the forefront when his childhood friend, Rachel Kushner, was diagnosed with leukemia. Greg found out about her diagnosis from his mother, who then forced him to start hanging out with her because “Rachel is going to need her friends now more than ever” (pg. 36) and “The more time you spend with her, the more difference you can make in her life” (pg. 37). Throughout the story, Greg and Rachel’s friendship blossomed, and the reader was eventually invited into Greg and Earl’s (his only friend) passion for film making. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a story about friendship, illness, and stepping out of your comfort zone and embracing all of the obstacles the world throws at you.

My favorite thing about this book is Greg’s interaction with the reader. Greg interacts with the reader throughout the entire story because he is a character in his own story. Before the story even begins, Greg introduces himself to the reader on pg. 1 with a headline of “A Note From Greg Gaines, Author of This Book.” Despite the fact that Jesse Andrews wrote the book, the entire story is told from Greg’s perspective and it’s almost as if he really is the author of the story because of the way he interacts with the story. Some of the things he says that show his interaction with the reader are “Can I just be honest for you one second?” (pg. 1) and “I do actually want to say one of thing before we get started with this horrifyingly inane book. You may have already figured out that it’s about a girl who has cancer” (pg. 2). The words “you” and “we” are frequently used in this book which shows Greg’s direct interaction with the reader. My favorite lines in the book is featured on pg. 125. Greg was just finishing telling the reader about all the film’s he and Earl have made, when he said “I have to say this: In that moment, Rachel was awesome. Meanwhile, I guess I probably have to describe the films to you. You’re being less awesome than Rachel, you stupid reader.” Greg was so deep into his interaction with the reader that he called them stupid! The line “you stupid reader” made me laugh and I also thought it was unique because I have never read a book where the main character’s interaction with the reader is so prevalent. Another section of the story I enjoyed was “So that’s Earl. I’ve probably missed a bunch of stuff and will have to describe Earl in greater detail later, but there’s no reason to believe that you’ll still be reading the book at that time, so I guess I would say don’t worry about it” (pg. 67). I loved Greg’s interaction with the reader because as a reader, I felt more connected to the story and I felt like I understood Greg’s mind more-so than anything other character in the story because I could experience what he was feeling while reading along.

Besides loving Greg’s interaction with the reader, I loved how he interacted with himself throughout the story by critiquing the way “he” was writing the book. Throughout the story, he would often get mad at the way he wrote something and write his anger in the story. In the story’s introduction, “A Note From Greg Gaines, Author of This Book,” he starts it by talking about how he was originally going to start the story with “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times” (pg. 1). When he decides that is a terrible idea, he asks himself “What the hell does that even mean? Why would you even think to do that? You wouldn’t, unless you had a fungus eating your brain, which I guess I probably have (pg. 1). Another example is on pg. 157 when the text says “Little did I know that I would soon be joining her (Rachel) in the very same hospital. Actually, what the hell is this “little did I know” business. I didn’t know at all that I would soon be joining her in the very same hospital, because I can’t see into the goddamned future. Jesus. You can take pretty much any sentence in this book and if you read it enough times, you will probably end up committing a homicide.” Despite the fact that Jesse Andrews wrote the book, his interaction with the reader and his interaction with himself throughout the story can actually make the reader believe that Greg actually wrote the story because of how present his feelings, thoughts, and emotions are in this book. I absolutely love how this story was written and the writer’s style was probably the most interesting I have read thus far.

Something I found very unique in this story is that the story was written in two point of views. While Greg’s point of view is dominant throughout the story, some of the story was written in third person, but not just any regular third person; some of the story was written like a film script is written, signifying the importance of film making to Greg and to this story. I could tell when the point of view switched to third person because it was written like a film script is written, with terms like “INT.” and “EXT.” and it was also written in a different font. At first, I thought the shift from first to third person was annoying, but I enjoyed it as I kept reading the story because it mixed things up and like I said before, it showed the importance of film making in this story. When the story was written in first person, I felt like I was inside Greg’s mind, but when the story was written in third person, I felt like an outsider looking in.

Throughout the story, I enjoyed the little quirks and text that wasn’t necessarily needed, but added humor and depth to the story. Some things that stuck out to me was pg. 22-27 when Greg described his past failure with girls and why relationships are a waste of time. He follows that text with a chapter titled “Where Are They Now?” (pg. 28-29) where he told the reader what happened to the girls involved in the failed relationships mentioned beforehand. One of the girl’s he had a failed experienced with, and was also mentioned in the “Where Are They Now?” chapter was actually Rachel Kushner. For her follow-up, he said “Rachel Kushner got acute myelogenous leukemia our senior year” (pg. 29). While describing his failed relationship with her when they were in Hebrew school together, he was in a way, foreshadowing the fact that she would play an importance role in this story. Another character he mentioned was Madison Hartner; while her character wasn’t as significant or present in this story, she still played an important role when she became friends with Rachel and eventually Greg.

One of my favorite, if not my favorite parts about this book (I feel like I’ve been saying the word “favorite” a lot, but I just really love this book so it’s hard not to) was in the epilogue when Greg said “Although let me also say this: Just because I’m un-retired doesn’t mean I’ll be making a film out of this book. There is no way in hell that is going to happen. When you convert a good book to a film, stupid things happen. God only knows what would happen if you tried to convert this unstoppable barf-fest into a film. The FBI would probably have to get involved. There’s a chance you could consider it an act of terrorism” (pg. 293). I absolutely love this paragraph because Greg foreshadows the future, even though he doesn’t even know it yet. When this book was published in 2012, the rights to the movie hadn’t been bought yet (the movie didn’t come out until 2015). It’s ironic that Greg talked about how much of a disgrace and terrible decision it would be to convert his book into a film, and it’s funny that this book actually was converted into a film despite the character’s hatred towards the idea. It’s also ironic because in my opinion, the movie did kind of suck (I even fell asleep during it if that tells you anything). I plan to re-watch the movie at a later date and write a blog post about how it compares to the book, but from what I remember, I didn’t enjoy the movie and thought it was quite boring; I was very disappointed with the film overall. It’s interesting that I love this book after watching the film because it seems that most people read the book before the watch the movie, and if they have already seen the movie, either don’t read the book or read the book and don’t enjoy it as much as the movie. I am the opposite because I saw the movie, didn’t enjoy it, read the book a year later and absolutely loved it. After reading the book, I am excited to re-watch the movie (and hopefully not fall asleep!) and compare the two; maybe I will enjoy the movie more than I did the first time because I have read the book. Reading this paragraph about Greg’s disapproval of the thought of converting this book into a movie makes me wonder what he would say now that there is a movie. Would he hate it or love it? Considering he hated the book he wrote, an example being “I have no idea how to write this stupid book” (pg. 1), I assume that he would absolutely hate the movie. Seeing his hatred towards the idea of creating a movie from his book makes me wish Jesse Andrews would write another book, or at least a short opinion piece from Greg Gaines himself, telling the world exactly how he feels about the movie.

This book was absolutely amazing and I couldn’t take my eyes off it once I started. I read this entire book while I was on a cruise to the Caribbean so I especially enjoyed reading the book while out on the deck in the Caribbean air, laying in the sun, and getting a tan! I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading a humorous, but sad story about a coming-of-age teenager who has to come to terms with his emotions and leave his little bubble and truly experience the world for the first time. I can understand why this book won a Cybils Award; it’s a winner in my book.

Source: http://www.cybils.com/2013/02/the-2012-cybils-awards.html

0 notes