#im not done yet but the lgbt rep is super good

[crunchycrystals]

shout out to The Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester for making sam's single, adoptive dad aroace. as in sam sends him a link about asexuality and aromanticism after hearing him talk about his feelings about romance and he goes "yeah that's it" i read it when i was a little too tired to feel excited and the feeling just sat in there but i really wanna talk ab it

EDIT LOL I STARTED READING AGAIN AFTER I POSTED THIS AND SAM'S ALSO ON THE ACESPEC I IMMEDIATELY RAN HERE

[theinyshlobster]

this fatal kiss by alicia jasinska [review]

read from july 11th - august 4th

warning:

please be aware this was an ARC ! ive removed some spoilers in my review, if you still would like to read my full review, please check out my goodreads :)

review:

thank you NetGalley & PeachTree Teen for providing me with a copy of this ARC! 

this fatal kiss follows gisela, an undead water nymph (a rusałka) who dreams of returning to the mortal world, which can be done if she receives a kiss from a mortal. but its kind of hard to get someone to kiss you when you’re freezing at the touch. in comes kazik, the town’s exorcist, who cant stand the spirits that run the town he lives in. after flubbing gisela’s exorcism, he agrees to get a mortal to kiss her. insert hijinks!

so, right off the bat, i loved this book’s LGBT+ rep. the fact both the MCs are bisexual is so beautiful i loved to see it. the fact gisela and kazik are unapologetically bi is so refreshing to see. the lgbt+ rep ate in this book. no notes there.

spoilers redacted

the chemistry between kazik & gisela was great. gisela is such a funny, charismatic and easy character to empathise with. kazik’s growth was great to witness, and his interactions with gisela are so good. their chemistry was off the charts. 

as a fellow slavic (dont ask from where specifically nobody knows) i LOVED the seamless integration of slavic culture within the story. yapping about kefir & goulash made my little balkan heart sing, and the way the general vibe of the story managed to balance its setting to be contemporaneous yet also holding true to its slavic nature was so nice to read. its rare to read a book featuring eastern european culture and god i couldnt get enough.

the book also has some GREAT humour. this book does not take itself seriously, and it was such a good book to read. it had a nice lighthearted vibe which made the atmosphere feel so cozy whilst managing to still crack me up with funny one-liners or even just how the characters were acting. like im sorry gisela is a comedy queen. kazik and other characters did have some humorous moments, but gisela solo’d.

now.. you may be wondering why this is only a 3-star. 

for starters, i think the biggest thing holding this book back for me was the lack of tension. i wasnt truly worried for the main characters, even when they were in “concerning” or “dangerous” situations. there werent too many situations where they were in danger, but even then, the tension was resolved super quickly.

spoilers redacted

the situations they were placed in werent too serious, so i knew the characters would make it out ok, therefore i had no motivation to actually… read this. and ive read lighthearted low stakes stories with no tension (like legends & lattes), but the plot was still interesting! it felt like the story really floundered in the middle, was gripping for the first 50 & last 100 pages. 

the world building at times suffered from exposition dumps, especially surrounding the other spirits in the area and certain lore. i am by no means a fiction writer so i imagine i would do a horrific job at explaining fantasy elements if i were to hypothetically write a story but. a lot of times the exposition or lore dumps were literally just “insert creature. they do xyz, and beef with abc”. it did get a bit annoying by the end where something was only explained once it had been introduced. sometimes it went nowhere, and sometimes the worldbuilding was addressed there & then (like the spirit just introduced was staring gisela or kazik straight in the face). idk i got tired of the repetitive way lore was conveyed.

the ending was a bit of a letdown im not going to lie. i expected a lot more to happen, especially in the epilogue. the plot has mostly been resolved, but yet everything is kind of left super open? gisela’s family is just touched on after that being her motivation for the entire plot.. kazik’s story still being open… aleksy doing literally who knows what. idk i would’ve liked a chapter with a bit more of a flash forward & with a more conclusive ending for the characters.

spoilers redacted

overall, i will say i had a good time. although i wasn’t reaching for this book quite often due to there being a lack of tension to pull me in & have me worried for the characters, once i was reading i was having a ball. the atmosphere and world created by jasinska was fabulous, and really gave a cutesy cottagecore meets mythology vibe. i will always give extra points for hitting me in the Culture Feels™️, but the ending was a bit disappointing :(

i can’t wait for this book to come out so i can oggle at gisela fan art 

[swatato]

Same anon as before. Its pretty obvious that bumbleby will be canon. I like both, both are super cute but blacksun would feel forced now. Like the natural progression for a romantic relationship has passed i think. I also really like sun as blakes best friend and hope we see them being bros in vaccuo

Yeah, bb is likely to be canon now, but i definately do not think it was because of good writing. The entirety of the blake love plot has been handled so ,,,weird?? No matter what they do now its gonna be anything but natural because of how screwed up v7 made everything.

I dont want to sound jerky with this but to be 100% with you anon, i feel like its bb that is incredibly forced. Ive ranted about bb a few times in my rwde ask responses so i dont wanna blab for too long, but i think they had a good thing going with blacksun. Their relationship-and the romantic side of it- had been on an incline since they met in v1, and they were not subtle with it. They have yet to show blake and sun lose their attraction to eachother on screen. Its as if ppl think in order for A to like B, A has to be simping and frothing at the mouth over B at all times. I dont think blacksun was written flawlessly, but when i compare it to bb, i feel like it just had way more effort put into it, way more meat on its skeleton. Plus, In-universe, the menagerie arc did not happen that long ago, so for blake to suddenly start getting all fluffy with yang when she was *very recently* flirting and bonding with sun, and having only thought about yang ONCE on screen during that time (where she equates her love towards yang as the same as her love for ruby and weiss) and having shown zero romantic interest in yang before the v3 finale, makes everything seem very unearned. Its just rly hard to buy that these two have had pent up, blossoming romantic feels for eachother the whoLe time which are now at long last getting to explode now that theyre finally together again because Adam died, and cuz sun left the plot. Im not saying their moments in v7 werent romantic, they were deliberately so, im just annoyed cuz bb seem to have gone from 0 to 100 with little to no explanation in between. Why do they like eachother? How many times have blake and yang ever sat down and gotten to know eachother and banter? Does yang know anything about the WF? Does blake know anything about yang besides that her word id “strength” ?They never properly address any of the dirty laundry between them. They never show how blake reaches the conclusion that “oh ‘ill protect you is the wrong answer,,,,,’we’ll protect eachother’ must be the right answer!!” Theyre so detatched from the main plot of the show and exist like theyre in their own bubble, glued at the hip, and the whole thing seems to have happened out of nowhere. So yeah after introducing all that, it would be odd to jump back to bs, except this time it would be bb theyre pretending never had feelings for eachother.

I genuinely do not think they planned to have bb be endgame since years ago when they were first creating rwby man :/ And thats why i find their foundation as a romantic pair to be lacking. I think rt saw how rabid the fandom was for bb, since they’re very close to the community, and thats why theyre pushing it so hard now and selling overpriced bb sweaters in their store. Theyve written themselves into a corner cuz they know they’ll recieve HUGE backlash if they dont go with bb, if they learned anything from the fairgame situation. Thats another reason why i find this whole bb/blake love fest so exhausting; i dont even think theyre doing it to genuinely rep lgbt fans (cuz idk what other purpose having blake and yang get together serves besides acting as some rep,,,their relationship doesnt affect the main story in any real way like say monochrome would, and blake hasnt done anything meaningful for yang besides act as a source of very negative emotions tHat tHEY DONT EVEN ADDRESS) It comes off as a blatant cry of “look!!! See how woke we are!!!111 Buy a first member subscription!!! :DD”

[morphogenetic]

How horny/pervy is Date? I'm thinking of picking up AI but a lot of reviews say Date is annoyingly perverse :/ Do you think it's genuinely funny or does it get in the way of the narrative?

oh boy uh well. if you've played vlr. picture sigma. now multiply sigma's h*rniness fivefold. that's how thirsty date is.

it can be KIND of annoying and your mileage may vary but for me, bc date is fucking 30 years old it's just. funny to me? like the sheer amount of whiplash at having someone who is (in the narrative not actually afaik, dw) a fucking dad and actually really good at his job for once being absolutely incompetent here is so fucking funny to me

also its not just him being the token h*rny protag, bc like.....every single adult (minus like 6 for reasons but this game has like 28 characters and all but one ((afaik)) are at least 18) is super goddamn thirsty. this includes date's 42 year old (lady) boss. and his 36 year old coworker.

(if anything I think a different character's horniness is MORE creepy than date's due to the object of his affection but a) hes not the protag b) that. might be plot relevant for reasons I cannot talk about bc im not done w ai yet)

if that's not your sense of humor I get it, completely, but a bunch of middle aged single adults being thirsty pieces of shit is ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS to me. like do I still fucking want to slap date half the time y e a h but bc the average age of people in this game is like. mid 30s?? it doesn't just feel like most other games do w that sense of humor.

believe it or not it's actually like. narrative relevant (less in the pure plot things and more in the qtes. no I will not elaborate) sometimes

ANYWAY tl;dr yes Very but if you've played vlr and lived this shouldn't give you too much trouble and there are definitely still other aspects to the humor ((dad jokes. SO many dad jokes.))

like ye it's a lot but it's not the whole sense of humor and also a) canon??? lgbt characters plural??? (questionable rep for one of those but the others are superb)??? b) real good family dynamics

[hazeldough]

i........ have a lot of feelings about tpodg with the announcement of the film adaption

disclaimer: i’m not mlm, so i can’t speak about that part of its narrative in place of mlm. plus, the film adaption was only recently announced and we don’t really have any details on it except that it exists and is set to have female leads. 

and while i’ve done my share of analysis on the book and some of wilde’s history and really passionate about both, there’s a lot i dont know yet or may be misinterpreting. my opinions and pov about tpodg and oscar wilde are subject to change the more i analyze the book and read about wilde��s life through his writings and the transcripts of his trials, so i’m open to reading other people’s opinion on the novel and film!

also, i got carried away and even busted out the copy i annotated in, so this got super lengthy. it’s mostly me reanalyzing the book after stepping away from it for a few months. 

oh, and spoilers ahead.

(i spent about 2 hours on this and it’s 4:27 am now.......... im already yelling @ a future me who is procrastinating on an essay, looking back at this moment thinking “hey, i wish u could put some of that focus and research into this thing right now” and hey......... hard same, buddy)

anyway.

 i just want the film adaption to not lose the essential themes and messages that come with tpodg and the weight it carried in wilde’s life.

it’s already not the best lgbt rep with its leads being assholes (dorian & henry) or (spoilers) ending up dead (basil). granted, the victorian era wasn’t the best time to make revolutionary strides in normalizing lgbt+ media, but it still was a novel that was written by a gay man that time period, drawing from his own experiences. 

wilde’s works primarily criticized english culture and society’s tendencies to put up a front for the public to save face for their personal lives. 

“My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.“

“Dorian,“ cried Hallward, “that is not the question. England is bad enough I know, and English society is all wrong. That is the reason why I want you to be fine. You have not been fine.“

Dorian & Basil (Chapter XII)

tpodg was no exception since it featured a lead who was groomed to believing that the downfall of others was the ultimate symbol of his love towards him and was eventually able to abuse/manipulate people on the regular through his charisma and get away with it because of his privileges. 

“Someone has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such and experience. It would have made me in love for the rest of my life.“ (Lord Henry Wotton, Chapter VIII)

and it’s not like no one was aware that dorian had major red flags around him. because they did.

“Women who had wildly adored him, and for his sake had braved all social censure and set convention at defiance, were seen to grow pallid with shame or horror if Dorian Gray entered the room.“ (Chapter XI)

“Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your home nor invite you to theirs?... Why is your friendship so fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who committed suicide. You were his great friend.“ (Basil Hallward, Chapter XII)

(that whole paragraph is just basil talking about how men are afraid to be associated with dorian, there’s way more stuff, but i felt that info was enough)

even though there were consistent and frequent rumors that surrounded him. no one believed that this cherub looking guy was the reason that everyone who interacted with him either had their reputation ruined for life or were driven to suicide. 

(spoilers) basil wasn’t an exception to this, not believing that all the rumors surrounding his friend, muse, and for a lack of better term crush were true. he was so blinded by his love that dorian was capable of bringing on ruin ultimately led to his death. 

“But you, Doian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth-- I can’t believe anything against you.“ (Basil Hallward, Chapter XII)

even dorian’s motives in murdering basil was a result of his own misattributions. instead of taking ownership of his own behavior, he placed blame on basil and his portrait instead.

“The friend who had painted the fatal portrait to which all his misery had been due, had gone out of his life.“ (Chapter XIII)

and when dorian was close to confessing what he had done to his confidant, the person arguably more responsible than basil for leading him to his lifestyle? he didn’t believe dorian either.

"What would you say, Harry, if I told you that I had murdered Basil?”

(...)

“I would say, my dear fellow that you were posing for a character that doesn’t suit you. All crime is vulgar, just as  all vulgarity is a crime. It is not in you, Dorian, to commit a murder. I am sorry if I hurt your vanity by saying so, but I assure you it is true. Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don’t blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.“

(Dorian & Lord Henry, Chapter XIX)

after stepping away from the book for a few months, i feel like some reevaluation is due. i initially approached the book thinking that it would end up with an ambiguously happy ending, having only heard slivers about it and knowing that it was written by a gay man. i guess the part of me that’s very invested in good redemption arcs and lgbt books in ap eng lit just wanted a book to read that didn’t feature weak character development and/or heteronormative relationships. the closest books i got were their eyes, atss, and tpodg.

but now that i’m looking back at it, most likely unpopular opinion: i personally think that tpodg isn’t a lgbt story. (even if it was, it’s not the best representation for lgbt characters since it has a lot of tropes that we now see as overused and negative) 

to me, it’s just a story that has lgbt characters. meaning that while the novel focused on dorian, it focused on his morality, not his sexuality. dorian knew who he liked, since it was heavily implied that dorian had male and female lovers. the story wasn’t focused on his romantic or sexual relationships, but on how his morals took a nose dive as he developed into a grade-A fuck boy using his multiple failed relationships as evidence of that.

i’ve come to understand that character development doesn’t always mean getting a redemption arc. good character development is a character starting from point A and actively moving towards point B with minor interference by other characters. most of the time, it’s a character going from morally neutral/bad to good. this time, it’s a character going from neutral to bad.

i do agree that there’s a huge imbalance of lgbt characters being portrayed as predatory and abusive instead of flawed and needing of development, adding on to preexisting homophobia that’s rampant in most cultures. i also agree that there needs to be more positive representation of lgbt characters, by lgbt people, for lgbt people. 

at the same time, tpodg was written before we could even safely discuss and address these issues in public. i’m saying that because wilde got straight up jailed for “gross indecency” for just being a gay man existing. but i don’t think wilde was unaware of the repercussions he’d face when he stated that being gay was normal. most of his works were about calling out the hypocrisy of english society. even in his own testimony at trial, he stated:

"The Love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are.”

full quote and transcript found here

wilde was fully aware that he was going to be imprisoned for being gay and accepted it. not because he was ignorant of how society functioned, but because he knew how it functioned. and he was right. and i want to say that he was aware of this even when he was writing tpodg (which was about 4-5 years before his trials took place).

even if tpodg was going to be portrayed with male leads, the film would be in an era with a new perspective about mlm relationships. homophobia is still rampant in multiple societies, but lgbt people and mlm in particular have more of a voice and agency to defend themselves, look for, and create media that is representative of their experiences without needing to pander to heterosexual audiences. it still isn’t perfect, knowing that mlm still have trouble telling their stories in a field dominated by straight women who only see to use them as objects for fetishization instead of helping them create a safe platform to be heard.

basically, wilde’s context for writing tpodg is drastically different from how it can be interpreted and discussed today vs how it was in his time. based on that, i’m inferring that if writing a negative, heavily implied mlm relationship was deemed criminal enough as it is, i imagine he would have faced even more horrible punishment for writing a positive relationship between two men.

at the moment, we know nothing about the direction the film is going to follow, other than that it’ll be female-led. and, judging from the recent string of female led films (ghostbusters & oceans eight), i’m going to safely assume it’ll be a dominantly female cast, with dorian, basil, and henry being portrayed by women, and them all being wlw. (there’s a better word to describe this, it starts with a p, but it’s 4 AM now and i’m losing steam)

i’m not saying that the movie is going to be free from homophobic comments, but i am saying that it’ll face more criticism for not accurately portraying SGA (same gender attraction) relationship more than it featuring a SGA relationship at all.

even with the lack of information, i feel like if i’m going to be consistent about an opinion it’s this: the any adaption can do is to keep elements of the book while being cognisant of its perspective and purpose.

at the same time, i do want the film to deviate from the novel by being more open about the leads’ sexuality while also addressing the tropes that’s present in the society its set in and how it affects the narrative. 

to me, the film doesnt have to be a carbon copy of the novel, it just has to have the same vibe the book gave and to do that, it has to be aware of the issues wlw face in society today but also integrate it into the victorian era setting.

...yes, i know it sounds really confusing but i’ve spent around 2 hours on this already and it’s currently 4:24 AM. i’m doing my best my sleep deprived and coffee fueled brain can do atm. but again, i’m open to discuss this when i’m more put together and see more perspectives on the film adaption.

i am aware that there might not be enough elbow room for that to happen since society’s still pretty homophobic (albeit, not as much as before) as well as time constraints that come with adapting a book to a movie. still though, it’s something i’m interested to see be executed properly.