#in which i really really love the novel ok

[pharawee]

As it turns out, I unfortunately don't have the time to both gif I Feel You Linger in the Air and write commentary (also, it kind of feels like cheating since I've read the novel and know what's going to happen. I've read some of my mutuals' theories but joining in on the conversation kind of feels like ruining people's fun 😔).

That being said, I love the novel not just as a BL novel but as a beautifully written and crafted (and translated - it comes with so many footnotes!) story in general. Definitely check out the official translation if you like IFYLITA and want to support its writer. It's well worth the money.

I've written before that I was very curious about how the series would approach the way the novel almost treats the past as its own character. Descriptions of history and culture and architecture (and language but unfortunately some of that gets lost in translation by necessity) are so vivid and colourful, and it's such a big part of why I love the novel so much.

You'd need a huge budget (and lots of cgi) to translate this attention to detail into visual form - to the point where it would probably detract from the story itself - but IFYLITA found such an amazing workaround that adds so much depth and colour to the narrative: instead of relying on the environment to tell a story about the past it concentrates on the characters itself.

And tbh at first I was a bit irritated by the large cast of secondary characters (most of which exist only at the very fringes of the story in the novel) because I thought it would take away from Jom and Yai's story. There's an episode early on where 20+ minutes pass without either of them appearing or being talked about.

Only, the story as it exists in the series would simply not have the same impact without Ming and his aging mother, or Fongkaew's tragic backstory, or Prik's family background, or Ueangphhueng and Mei's quiet love story, or the sympathy the series extends towards characters like Khamsaen and James (Robert can get f'ed in both the novel and the series though). It's the intricacy of their relationships and social standing that paints a picture that's just as vivid and vital as Jom's observations of the past in the novel - and I love that. It's such a natural, visual way of storytelling and it complements the novel incredibly well. It's like the novel offers an inside look through Jom's perspective, and the series provides an outside look through showing the characters and their lives.

There's so many other things I'd love to write about eventually (like how the series portraits Yai when in the book we almost always view him through Jom's eyes, or how the series visualises the mystery and horror of Jom's time travel, or how both novel and series treat karma) but giffing comes first because silly moving images is what I'm here for. 🙏

[thepersonperson]

I can’t believe we got an infodump on simple domains AGAIN over a Sukuna backstory.

More complaining under the cut.

Usually I am one to give Gege the benefit of the doubt and will read heavily into what little information we are given. But I can't defend this chapter themes or character wise.

Even if this turns out to be a fakeout, going in painstaking detail over a show-not-tell battle in a way that lacks characterization and heartfelt emotion sucks to read. Even if the new shadow style and simple domain debacle goes somewhere, having it the main focus after an extremely traumatic battle instead of characters processing their emotions sucks to read. Even if Gojo is alive and that's why they're this chipper, everyone ignoring his sacrifice and efforts along with Choso's sucks to read.

I'm happy Yuta and Higuruma are alive but why was their revival off-screened? Yuta was so defensive over Gojo and everyone treating him like an object just 8 chapters ago. What happened to that? Why is everyone treating this battle like it was no big deal? (Also why the fudge did Kusakabe tell Yuji, a 15 year old, to his face he should've been killed while disparaging Gojo for protecting the life of a child???)

After the Shibuya Incident, there was a whole segment dedicated to how this affected the average person. The Culling Games ended and there are still bloodthirsty freaks running around. What happened to them? Is Angel hunting them down and that's why Hana is missing? Infodumping on anything except the battle would've been better.

I doubt we'll get any more info on Sukuna, Kenjaku, and Tengen at this point. We'll be lucky if there's a funeral for even Geto's body. Shoko was absent this entire chapter which makes me thing she's still trying to save Gojo or she's preparing their bodies for a funeral.

Anyways. This is the worst JJK chapter for me hands down. My hopes for the final 2 are mostly dashed. Crunch and poor working conditions really do ruin art my goodness.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

what is your favorite thing about charles and your favorite thing about erik? separately, as in what you like most about their characters :]

a devious question this one is, my friend!!! it's hard enough for me to explain my thoughts cohesively, but having to pick ONE thing i particularly love is difficult. with characters like charles and erik, theres been so much done with their characters over the decades and so they have so many components to them that make them so interesting and fun to observe. BUT I TRY FOR YOU TODAY. under the cut i kinda ramble and the size of this text box makin me anxious

i think if i were to be simple and broad, what i enjoy most about charles is his determination to help others, even if he isn't really thanked and/or if people don't even like him. ofc, this isn't to say he hasn't done wrong- to be honest, the fact he does wrong/questionable things at times is another aspect of him i really enjoy, maybe because- broadly speaking- he's meant to be altruistic (intent vs outcome and all that). i don't know if that's super exciting to most people, but it is for me

as for erik, my reason for liking him is easier to explain tbh. To Be Simple And Broad, his progression from villain to antihero over the decades has been fun to observe (as much as i have so far anyhow) and analyze. i think to be a bit more specific, him using his rage and pain as justifications for his villainous actions is definitely what compels me the most: hurt people hurt and the sort, an idea i've always found interesting (something something vicious cycles and the like). yet now, he recognizes this wasn't really. A Just Thing To Do and is beginning to change that, which i enjoy

[youngpettyqueen]

Julian and Odo should've had more what I like to call "my autism to your autism" moments

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Still wild to me that the Avatar team saw a guy write a love story between a stick and a monkey and were like "This is the guy who we need to write Rangshi and Yangvik" and then he ended up making two of the best couples in all of the Avatar-verse TT0TT

[illarian-rambling]

Damn, what if I reworked Starbreaker to be exclusively in Anarac's pov instead of trying to balance 5 new povs in one book?

Thoughts?

[wolfhednn]

　𝐚 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐝 　/　drabble ₊

growing up, he'd never been made to feel the lesser of the sons of fraldarius. often, he'd wondered if it was all in his head.

he couldn't be said to have received any less attention. though his memories of his mother are sparing, their father had been equally rigorous with them both. their education had been equally complete. their training equally emphasized. it made sense——the name fraldarius wasn't a small one, or easy to live up to. the arm that filled the king's shield, young or old, needed to be strong, peerless, unflinching.

he couldn't be said to have received any less love. as the youngest of their entourage, many would've said he'd had anything but.

maybe it had only been in his head.

maybe it was him who saw glenn's skill in both lance and sword when he just wanted to exceed him in the blade.

maybe it was him who noticed how glenn cast with their father's talent in the goddess' magic when he showed no interest in those lessons.

"you're too narrowminded, felix," his father told him. his tutors told him. his mentor told him. "what happens if you're disarmed? your sword gets taken?" they proceeded then to do just that——schwing!——sunlight glinting sharply off steel as it sailed tip over hilt to clatter to the ground, leaving him defenseless at his enemy's lancepoint. at the other end of it was any number of those who'd built him and honed his skill, made him who he was today.

. . .

like he said, his father was like that too. skilled in faith magic, that is.

they say that magic came to him before the lance did, even before riding did. that when he was a boy, he used to struggle to match his peers in steel, and would be mocked and laughed at: what kind of king's shield can't even land a javelin! but that he made up for it in the strength of the goddess' smite that would silence them.

glenn, too, harnessed the same terrifying aurora that spilled from rodrigue's deft hand: a roar of brilliant light, the memory of dark waves bloodstreaked from horseback burned into a foe's eyes, more than enough to make repentence of apostasy.

for his father, it'd been faith in the goddess. his brother, faith in his loved ones.

in turn, felix had never sought out magic, never felt or welcomed its spark. his father said nothing——even after glenn had died, he said nothing, for all that he said to him at all at the time. and with glenn's death had died the last of any desire he might've had to pursue it: to better match him maybe, or live up to some imagined expectation ; to please his father maybe, or shirk off the voices saying he was too stubborn. instead, the blade was where he found himself, the same where he had always found himself. the blade was where he found his brother, and the pieces of everything he'd once held sacred. and so there he'd stayed.

until——

until. . .

a drop of ink disturbs clear water. someone tells him: magic will make you a stronger swordsman.

it's an echo of the voices from the past. "you're too narrowminded, felix" chases him forward in time like a hydra, grabbing him again in these cloistered, dust-smote halls where they'd never walked and had never seen him. his expression sours at first, and he swears, he swears. . .

but this time, he listens——because the voice that has chased him is none other than glenn's. airy and teasing, always flippant, who used to say to everyone else: "lay off him. he'll pick it up or he won't." now he says:

give it a try, felix.

give it a try, felix.

so felix finds, with enough time, that his faith is the faith that splits like lightning. born not from the goddess, nor in the belief that in memory he will never die, but something else. some third thing he doesn't know, but which howls and thrashes and bites even him, which would claim his life if he wasn't strong enough. and it feels like him. it feels like him like the blade feels like him, an extension of something he lives by and vouches for.

after all, thunder isn't too far off from faith: a flash of light, a smoldering crater, a scar for the departed.

　 FELIX has mastered:⠀ dread fighter.

[todayisafridaynight]

At which point did you realise that the plot of IW is ass? I've seen people complain only about the ending or the halfway point where the teams separate, while I was already actively rolling my eyes like four-five chapters in

i think the moment i fully accepted that IW's story was. Definitely A Story was the moment ebina announced 'bleach japan'. like i think leading up to that point i was thinking to myself 'oh i hope i see X happen' or being like 'i wonder where this is going' and that sort but the proverbial bucket of ice was definitely that moment

[dinosaur-mayonnaise]

asagiri is very glad he’s not on this app bc if he was i would track him down and send him a million asks begging for a fukufuku light novel.

[tacosaysroar]

I almost didn’t catch this one @busylivinnow!

Again, I could put SO many things on this list, but I’m going to limit myself to books that made a big impression or that I’ve continued to think about over the years.

1) Great Expectations, Charles Dickens. I’ve read it at least four times and I’ve seen most of the movie adaptations (which never measure up). There’s just something about Pip, so desperate to be loved and accepted and going about it in exactly the wrong way. (Also, come on. Miss Havisham and her super toxic influence on Estella is so compelling.)

2) The Long Walk, Stephen King (originally under Richard Bachman). This one I’ve read at least a dozen times. At least. It’s very reminiscent of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” but we get a much longer, much slower descent into the consequences of that sort of system. It’s so beautifully and horribly accomplished. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to read it without crying.

3) The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien. This is a collection of short stories about the Vietnam War, based on his own experiences. (One of several, I think. He had lots to say on this subject.) The Vietnam War is one of those historic events I find so perplexingly awful. The fact that you could sit in front of the news at night with your family waiting to see if your birthday (or your brother’s or your boyfriend’s) was called. That we sent sweet, 18-year-old boys with no life experience to die or be traumatized against their will. That’s so dark and dystopian.

4) The Road, Cormac McCarthy. Speaking of dark and dystopian, this post-apocalyptic quest story crosses my mind often. There’s a scene where he finds a coke while scavenging and lets the boy have it. Because he’s never had one before and likely never will again. Not an uncommon idea for that genre, but the execution was very good and the language of the book is highly stylized, almost like a very long poem. That scene comes back to me sometimes.

5) City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s got 1940s fashion, sex, the New York theater scene, and the very smart, dry humor Elizabeth Gilbert is SO good at. I’ve read this one twice so far, but I’m sure I’ll read it again.

[namazunomegami]

“Kindly consider the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? Shadows are cast by objects and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. Trees and living beings also have shadows. Do you want to skin the whole earth, tearing all the trees and living things off it, because of your fantasy of enjoying bare light? You’re a fool.” - The Master and Margarita

[mermaidsirennikita]

gatekeeping the Lyonesse series from readers "rooting" for one "couple" over the other

[the-busy-ghost]

“Ok so the other bookshelf hasn’t arrived yet but why don’t I start organising my books, it will be a fun activity and useful!”

What nobody tells you about said fun activity is that you have to make Choices about how to organise and it’s all very confusing

[woolydemon]

my uncoordinated ass playing video games: wow my hand eye coordination is so bad for playing video games

[squintsintwink]

I love posting gallery builds bc I get to make silly descriptions about the most simple beach in the history of sims 4 beach builds

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

for whom good omens is being written

Hey maggots and the rest of the fandom, it's the Good Omens Mascot here. Today I read a post about this tweet:

The accompanying video genuinely made me cry. And I've been thinking about this for a long while, as far back as February, when I saw a lot of conflicting opinions on what people wanted from the third season. It really is true that no matter what you do, some people will be dissatisfied. But what matters is that Neil is writing this for Terry.

And I was reminded of some paragraphs from the Good Omens TV Companion, which I'd read in Amazon's sample excerpt of the book. I know this is a long post, but I really truly do think you all need to read these, I've done my best to select only the most important parts. Here you go:

'His Alzheimer's started progressing harder and faster than either of us had expected,' says Neil, referring to a period in which Terry recognized that despite everything he could no longer write. 'We had been friends for over thirty years, and during that time he had never asked me for anything. Then, out of the blue, I received an email from him with a special request. It read: “Listen, I know how busy you are. I know you don't have time to do this, but I want you to write the script for Good Omens. You are the only human being on this planet who has the passion, love and understanding for the old girl that I do. You have to do this for me so that I can see it." And I thought, “OK, if you put it like that then I'll do it."

'I had adapted my own work in the past, writing scripts for Death: The High Cost of Living and Sandman, but not a lot else was seen. I'd also written two episodes of Doctor Who, and so I felt like I knew what I was doing. Usually, having written something once I'd rather start something new, but having a very sick co-author saying I had to do this?' Neil spreads his hands as if the answer is clear to see. 'I had to step up to the plate.' A pause, then: 'All this took place in autumn 2014, around the time that the BBC radio adaptation of Good Omens was happening,' he continues, referring to the production scripted and co-directed by Dirk Maggs and starring Peter Serafinowicz and Mark Heap. ‘Terry had talked me into writing the TV adaptation, and I thought OK, I have a few years. Only I didn't have a few years,' he says. 'Terry was unconscious by December and dead by March.'

He pauses again. 'His passing took all of us by surprise,' Neil remembers. 'About a week later, I started writing, and it was very sad. The moments Terry felt closest to me were the moments I would get stuck during the writing process. In the old days, when we wrote the novel, I would send him what I'd done or phone him up. And he would say, "Aahh, the problem, Grasshopper, is in the way you phrase the question," and I would reply, "Just tell me what to do!" which somehow always started a conversation. 'In writing the script, there were times I'd really want to talk to Terry, and also places where I'd figure something out and do something really clever, and I would want to share it with him. So, instead, I would text Terry's former personal assistant, Rob Wilkins, now his representative on Earth. It was the nearest thing I had.'

(...) As Neil himself recognizes, this is an adaptation built upon the confidence that comes from three decades of writing for page and screen. But for all the wisdom of experience, he found that above all one factor guided him throughout the process. 'Terry isn't here, which leaves me as the guardian of the soul of the story,' he explains. 'It's funny because sometimes I found myself defending Terry's bits harder or more passionately than I would defend my own bits. Take Agnes Nutter,' he says, referring to what has become a key scene in the adaptation in which the seventeenth-century author of the book of prophecies foretelling the coming of the Antichrist is burned at the stake. ‘It was a huge, complicated and incredibly expensive shoot, with bonfires built and primed to explode as well as huge crowds in costume. It had to feel just like an English village in the 1640s, and of course everyone asked if there was a cheap way of doing it. 'One suggestion was that we could tell the story using old-fashioned woodcuts and have the narrator take us through what happened, but I just thought, “No”. Because I had brought aspects of the story like Crowley and the baby swap along to the mix, and Terry created Agnes Nutter. So, if I had cut out Agnes then I wouldn't be doing right by the person who gave me this job. Terry would've rolled over in his grave.'

And, finally, this paragraph:

"Once again, Neil cites the absence of his co-writer as his drive to ensure that Good Omens translated to the screen and remained true to the original vision. 'Terry's last request to me was to make this something he would be proud of. And so that has been my job.'"

I think that's so heartwrenchingly beautiful, and so I wanted you all to read this, too, just in case you (like me) don't have the Good Omens TV Companion. It adds another layer of depth and emotion to this already complex and amazing story that we all know and love.

Share this post, if you can, please, so that more people can read these excerpts :")

Tagging @neil-gaiman, @fuckyeahgoodomens and @orpiknight, even if you've definitely read these before :)