#know your audience jfc

[jam-packed]

been very into borderlands lately

how do i make this abt motogp..........

[lost-romantique]

Avoidance vs. Vulnerability

I love how so much of Blitzø’s character development is rooted in his body language.

Lets examine:

"IT WAS NOT A BREAKUP! You need a relationship for one of those and we never had that... and we never will."

Blitz, after yelling at Millie's face clarifying to her that it wasn't a Breakup, only to immediately turn his head the other direction because he doesn't want to see her face.

This is Blitz being avoidant and trying his damndest to keep up that facade he always puts on.

Despite the fact, that his voice breaks when he says the words "... and we never will," Blitz is making sure Millie does not see his face. Showing to us the audience that Blitz still has his walls up around Millie.

Millie makes a joke to Blitz about "trying to not be our third anymore," fully expecting Blitz to make his usual spastic joke, deflecting the situation as he always does...

But the thing is, Blitz doesn't make a joke to avoid the question, he simply states very seriously, "No, not anymore."

Millie is confused and shocked, almost with a sad expression on her face. Millie has never seen Blitz act so seriously before and it shows.

However, with the complete obliteration of his walls caused by the trauma he suffered by Rolando, Blitz now feels comfortable enough to let Millie see the real him.

Millie states the elephant in the room, "The bird got you that bad, huh?"

Or in other words...

Wow, you really have feelings for this guy...

And Blitz simply states the words, "I guess." Showing to us, in the most simple, bare bones way that yeah, he does have feelings for him.

I love how Blitz looks straight at the camera when asked this question, he doesn't make an effort to look at Millie and he still averts his eyes the other direction showing to us how uncomfortable he is with being vulnerable.

But the biggest thing Blitz does in his body language is the fact that he doesn't try to purposely hide his face away from Millie, he just dejectingly looks off into the distance, because even though he's accepted and acknowledged his feelings for Stolas, he's still aware of the fucks up he made in Apology Tour.

Millie makes one last good-natured joke towards Blitz to lighten the mood, and Blitz simply averts his gaze Millie's direction with a grateful smile, almost giving her thanks for not dwelling on the conversation for too long.

(Stolas I get it, I am also down bad for this man. JFC if you don't want him, can I please have him?)

Blitz with relaxed eyes, simply plays into her joke, "Well you know, your husband is still a little fuckable."

I love how Blitz doesn't fully play into Millie's joke, he makes sure to add that little there to NOT downplay his feelings for Stolas.

Ghostfuckers is my new favorite episode of Helluva Boss, and one of the reasons why has to be the amazing character development Blitz and Millie went through this season.

[punkeropercyjackson]

Are Ghostpunk antis genuinely convinced Gwen and Hobie dating means their relathionship must be sexual?????????Like they do know teenagers can date without sleeping together right.Hobie's VA said how deep their connection goes is up to them(direct quote)and Gwen's crush on Hobie was full on text in an early draft but none of it had nsfw implications even as jokes so i really don't know where Atsv fans get this oversexualized vision of Gwobie from.It feels like they're just adultifying Hobie for being a black minor who's percieved as extremely attractive by others his age and the audience too and pushing it onto Gwen too and assuming he can't love her in a pure wholesome way 'cause he's a black punk.Can Gwen just date a guy who she's super into and him equally into her and saved her when she was in a bad place physically and mentally and Hobie date someone who helps him feel like a real kid(including not just Gwen but Miles,Pavitr and Margo too)without y'all acting up over your weird ass stereotypes jfc

[callmearcturus]

@ghostbird-7 linked me to another McQ interview because of course

some excerpts:

The stunts in these movies are famously risky and elaborate. But you don’t hear much about injuries on set, aside from Tom breaking his ankle on “Fallout.”

The biggest stress on a movie is time. That’s where all the anxiety comes from for me. And I simply had to let go of the deadline and the calendar, and everything that you’re programmed as a director to base your entire life on.

It has changed the way I direct. I now look at the camera crew as a holistic organism and how stress and anxiety lead to mistakes, some of them life and death, and some of them just hugely costly and financial. That doesn’t mean I still didn’t get stressed or angry. But no deadline is worth somebody’s life, so it’s very clarifying when you’re making movies like this.

Tom and I also have a very simple rule: Only one of us can be crazy at a time. Whoever is the person that’s really angry and frustrated, the other person just immediately becomes chill. And that is an agreement between us, but it’s also an automatic response. It’s another big reason we work so well together.

((this explains so much about them jfc))

There’s a major character death in the first act of “Final Reckoning,” which we won’t spoil here. Do actors ever volunteer for that?

Yes. Rebecca Ferguson. Rebecca and I talked very early on and she just said, “I’d rather die than be a love interest.” And I said, “OK, we can work with that.”

((fucking knew it.))

Instead of a political enemy or a rogue terrorist group, the main villain here is a malevolent A.I. called the Entity. How did you end up there?

This goes back to Tom asking me to be in one of the earlier meetings for “Top Gun: Maverick.” It was [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer, [the original’s director] Tony Scott and Tom, and I didn’t know why I was there. I was the only guy who didn’t work on the first one. And the only thing I could bring to it is that I remembered being a 17-year-old kid watching that movie. I could bring the audience’s perspective. So I said, “Maverick was America. And whatever America is, that’s what Maverick needs to be in order for us to make this movie.” People brought the Cold War to the first “Top Gun.” The filmmakers didn’t have to establish that, it was there.

[...] The problem was that information technology was always something intellectual where you had to explain the mechanics of the threat. It wasn’t emotional. Come 2019, we had finished “Fallout." We were making “Top Gun: Maverick,” and I said to Tom, “The audience is ready for technology to be the villain, not just the threat.”

[samwontshare]

I’ve been saving BNW for my recovery so let’s live react.

-Ooo okay setting up the bad blood between Sam and Ross at the start, makes sense. Cap vs President of the US.

-Everybody celebrating Sam as Cap, free drink, everyone being respectful - that’s more like it!!!

-“You must be new here.” Hahaha I love Sam. Wait for the Seal team? Absolutely not. Look at his new gear!!!

-Go for the package? No, Sam goes for the hostages. He’s a people first guy.

-These fight scenes are fun. Sam really uses movement a lot to build force. It must drive the military nuts that Sam gets vibranium gear from Wakanda. Haha beating some dudes with cinder blocks - you can tell he’s still hanging with Bucky.

-He speaks Spanish. :) Arabic and Spanish so far?

-haha Joaquin. “Pleaaaaaase, can I please go get the bad guys?” And Sam’s like you can have a little fight, as a treat.

-Sam’s little smile when he’s about to fight one on one.

-Joaquin is hilarious. Big golden retriever energy.

-Shield flip!!!!

-“he has a fractured arm so be gentle” SAM haha

-Haha Sam setting up Joaquin with Isaiah. And Isaiah is looking good!

-Sam in superhero landing pose! Haha

-I already love Sam and Isaiah’s dynamic. Hah Joaquin better watch it 🤣🤣🤣

-I think Sam also needs a skeptic like Isaiah in his corner. I like this generational dynamic. Isaiah is oldest and wisest and skeptical. Sam is an optimist but maintains his pragmatism; he’s seasoned but looking for a better world. And Joaquin is young, eager, and smart. And their youth is also invigorating for Isaiah.

-Sam is rightly suspicious of Ross! He knows what that means, Avengers under one nation’s authority.

-And Japanese!

-It took 472627125 years but we have acknowledged the celestial in the ocean!

-Adamantium has entered the chat

-Isaiah :(

-Sam pulling the clip out of the gun was a cool as hell move.

-Omg Crying. “Please watch my suit.” Ouch OUCH. Sam looks devastated. He knows what this means to Isaiah.

-Honestly they stopped any fatalities at close range? That’s impressive.

-“Youre not Steve Rogers.” Kudos to Sam for not punching them both in the face. HE DID NOT CALL SAM WILSON SON 😡😡😡😡

-Death penalty case. JFC. GET THEM SAM

-Isaiah is breaking my heart. I can’t.

-Sam’s so smart. He’s like oh this is obviously brainwashing. Been there, done that, spent several years tracking a brainwashed assassin.

-Ross was obviously hit. Really should not have given away Red Hulk in the previews - super bizarre advertising choice because the foreshadowing is ruined. Why make it a mystery when the audience already knows?

-Oh shit! Sam! This fight scene is reminding me of the highway CATWS scene! :) Sam fighting with knives in him daaaamn. He never met Sam bring a knife to a gun fight Wilson!!!!

-Joaquin and his cafecito. Cubano time!

-I like that Sam is just like I do not have time to deal with a Black Widow today.

-Sam “I do what I want” Wilson.

-“Duh I know that’s what makes it so noble.” What a cute reframe of Sam and Steve’s “You don’t have to come with me.”

-I love that Joaquin is thinking of snacks. A man after my own heart.

-Past enemies are enemying

-Front trunk on the truck, fun

-redwing the best spy bot

-creepy place

-Ooo so we’re manipulating governments now. This is probably bad.

-I like that Sam is not predictable! Even to the super villain. Kind of an interesting thing to do with Sterns after so many years. He has hands in everything because he can brainwash people. Cool make up for Sterns.

-Good team work!

-World war! Revenge!

-Denis stop flirting with Sam.

-Okay I’m kind of into Sam and Sidewinder as flirty enemies. Do I sort of want them to be mortal enemies who sometimes fuck? Maybe but Sam would never haha

-Ross isn’t that guy anymore! UM kind of seems like he is.

-Sam and Joaquin flying in to the island was a cool shot!

-Really scary villain when anyone can be an enemy

-Oooo desperate Ross. Interesting.

-Sam is like do I really have to deal with this white man’s daughter drama?

-Oh shit! Fired on Japan!

-OMG the aerial battle is so cool! Top Gun but SAM is the plane. I love they finally gave my guy a helmet to breathe.

-SURFING

-Joaquin! Being over eager, wanting to prove himself and he goes down. Sam must be thinking of Riley.

-The scene of Sam pulling up the plane against Ross losing control was very good - great pacing and suspense there.

-Captain Joaquin now!

-Not Bucky wasting no time to tell Sam he looks good.

-Bucky knowing that Sam was asked to restart the Avengers does make Thunderbolts ECS more annoying.

-It’s interesting that Sam says Sterns as if Bucky knows what he means. Right now that isn’t public knowledge. It sounds like Sam and Bucky have been chatting.

-Can we go back to supportive Bucky, a good friend to Sam? The Bucky that didn’t insert himself into Sam’s business bc he trusts that Sam has it handled. That showed up because he needed a friend and some love?

-Isaiah. 😭😭😭😭

-Denis no!

-Leila is hot. I feel like she should have had a bigger role.

-Awkward phone call w your estranged dad.

-Sam is like uuuuugh this guy again.

-that seems bad

-Interesting that vibranium seems to work somewhat against Red Hulk!

-Taking him to a sentimental place. This isn’t random, Sam knows Bruce and that he can be talked down.

-So much of solving this plot relies on Sam’s role as an Avenger. Knowing about brainwashing, about dealing with Hulks. He’s worked his way into this position from years of experience that cumulatively make him the man for the job.

-Haha Bucky is full of shit loool

-The CGI gets a little shaky here but was otherwise good elsewhere.

-Isaiah! His suit! 😭😭😭😭

-Sam at the Raft! As a guest not a prisoner. Haha tit for tat with Ross!

-Nice full circle for them both. Sam is such a good person. He brought Betty!

-Isaiah visited Joaquin. Awww he’s going to a game! I love Isaiah. Protec

-Joaquin! Sam! I like that Sam and Joaquin talk about the pressure they face as men of color. Joaquin wanted to Sam. He joined the Air Force bc of Sam. 🥹 Awww Joaquin. I love their relationship. What a nice moment for Sam - this time his partner made it.

-The multiverse is coming - I wonder how Sam is busy preparing.

-Solid Marvel movie. Would’ve hit different if they had kept a lid on Red Hulk and the end was a little rushed, but I like that Sam and Ross came full circle, that we built relationships (including enemies!) for Sam, and we saw that Sam is not willing to be a government shill. The relationships between Sam, Isaiah, and Joaquin really carried the movie. I would have liked to have seen Sarah! Fun fight scenes - would’ve been a good mystery had the advertising been different. Definitely as good as First Avenger and better than Civil War.

[sweetshelluvaau]

Seeing the leaks, I have something to say:

I fucking hope Stolas looses everything, never gets it back and Octavia never forgives him for both the cheating (regardless how bad and abusive Stella is, it's still cheating and and I don't buy 'wanting to give his daughter a normal life' bs because all you did staying together was make her life chaotic and stressful the two could have still had joint custody if Stella wanted to be in her life jfc) and over all being a shitting ass father but we know that's not gonna happen. He'll get everything he wants by series end, including the man he abused, SA'd, manipulated, broke down and molded to his liking because Blitzo thinks he's not worthy of love otherwise way to normalize abuse Viv.

I said it once, and I'll say it again: Fuck Stolas (in a bad way) as both a character and how the writing puts him on a high horse and makes everyone around him look worst or an idiot. If anyone else was writing him, he wouldn't be coddled and likely be seen as a villain and I'd go far to say he'd be viewed in the same lenses a Valentino but because the show gaslights the audience and and has mothered a horrible fandom who attacks anyone who even slightly criticizes Stolas, the show and it's creator; we're stuck with this character arc dragging down the show futher.

The shows views are down, the general audience outside your stans are jumping ship and those who still watch the show but are critical of it are likely going to loose interest by the end of the season.

If you like Stolas, more power to you but fuck this owl and everything bad about the show that's caused by the writing favoring him.

[feukt-42]

CO:E33 rambles and notes bc i am in shambles rn

ok so i just finished playing clair obscur : expedition 33 and i have so much shit to say abt it or i will explode

Obvious spoilers obviously.

First off, this game is a fucking masterpiece. I know everyones said it like 15 times but holy shit, the art direction, the writing, the dialogue, the gameplay, the level design, the ost (how tf is this lorien testard's first ost jfc), the voice acting (both english and french, i played in french due to being french and listened to the english vas through yt playthroughs), theres not a single discordant note for me in this, it genuinely is that fucking good.

Speaking of the ost, listening to the lyrics while playing and understanding them is truly an experience. i caught most of the juicy shit after the fact but sometimes id hear sth and be like "oh shit that sounds like its important". i have a bunch of favorite bits and im just gonna dump them here bc i need to spew them out.

-> Gustave and Gustave Eiffel : Ok so pretty early on i was already listening to Lumière and Departure non-stop but post act 1 the lyrics kinda started slotting into place. Eiffel (first name gustave), is referenced a bunch of times in the ost, and while at first i was like "ok french game is french", now im pretty sure theyre referencing Gustave (Parisian engineers from the belle époque who share the same name hmmm). Theres a lot of lines that really just work for this, like Departure's "Clair Obscur ôtera, brisera Eiffel" (Clair obscur will remove, break Eiffel) that seem to foreshadow gustave's untimely demise at the end of act 1. I thought it was really neat.

->Dualliste ok so this is a fairly small one but the song starts with and repeats several times "Renoir ôta, Renoir brisa" (Renoir removed, Renoir broke) in a fairly somber, almost angry tone. To me this feels like a callback to the part mentioned above, with the thing being removed/broken being gustave, in which case this reads like a call for vengeance and action, a reflection of the expedition's mental state in which they (mostly maelle tbh) are pushed forward mostly by this grief, this emptiness being turned into cold hatred and anger at the one responsible for it. That was also neat.

->Our drafts collide i just noticed this one while going back to listen to the ost, at first the title didnt really jump out that much, it just sounded cool but nothing special yk. then, i realized "oh shit the first fight theme is 'Our drafts unite', thats sick as fuck actually". Then i got to the spoken french section and Lorien hits me with "Nos desseins se confrontent" and i deadass did the surprised pikachu face. For the non-francophones in the audience, desseins, meaning intentions, plans, the will to do sth, etc., is a homophone of dessin, meaning sketch, draft. The french lyric the titles are based on is a massive double entendre of "Our drafts collide/unite"(literal, as in these people are fighting in a painting with chroma and gradients and such) and "Our wills collide/unite". That is so fucking cool. ->Lumière s'éteint ok so that whole poem is fire as fuck and you definitely should find a translation if you dont spek french bc its just really good, but the part that rewired my brain chemistry was "Si nos pulsations jouent à contretemps/Notre amour veillera sur la mesure". The translation is "If our pulses play off-beat/Our love will see to the measure". That is so fucking romantic holy shit. Its also sung in Une vie à t'aimer, but the second verse is replaced by "mon amour veille, attend" (my love watches, waits) which didnt strike me as much. That song is still a massive banger though.

-> Déchire la toile ok so this one has A Lot. Its downright spoilery if youre smart enough to connect the dots (which i was not). Im gonna translate whole entire sections bc this is just textual spoilers in the lyrics.

"[...]Renoir aida / Mais toujours son fils perdra [...] Verso va déchiré canva / Maelle tristesse dura / Amour vivra / Alicia va déchiré canvas / Renoir pleura / Verso dané / Alina enferma"

ok so in order we have "Renoir helped(?) / but always his son will lose" (aida reads like the conjugation of aider, to help, but is pronounced drastically differently), "Verso will tear the canvas" (should be déchirer grammatically, idk the meaning behind that) "Maelle ['s] sadness will last", "Love will live", "Alicia will tear the canvas", "Renoir wept", "Verso damned" (admittedly this one is complete guessworke but dané sounds remarkably like damné so im putting it in), and "Alina locked up" (as in she locked sth up, not shes locked up, that would be enferm��e). I'll leave you to interpret the nitty gritty but i just thought it was wild how they just drop this on you beginning of act I like holy shit.

Thats most of the neat little details in the ost. Since ive given some bits of translation already, here are some more that i havent seen mentioned anywhere yet :

Orphelin : orphan

Serpenphare : serpent (snake) + phare (lighthouse)

échassier : wader/wading bird

Benisseur : someone who blesses (bénir=to bless)

Boucheclier : Bouche (mouth) + bouclier (shield)

Chapelier : hatter

Chorale : choir

Danseuse : dancer (feminine)

Moissonneuse : harvester (feminine, in the agricultural sense)

Pelerin : pilgrim

Portier : doorman

Potier : potter

Ramasseur : someone who picks things up (ramasser : to pick up)

Rocher : rock

Veilleur : watcher

Tisseur : weaver

Dualliste : mix of duellist and dualist (thesis that relies on two irreductible concepts e.g manichaeism)

Theres also a fuckton of jokes and references that dont really work in english so heres a couple ive seen :

-The "à on" achievement for beating the serpenphare is a reference to the "Astérix et Obélix : Mission Cléopâtre" movie, pretty much a cult classic imo, in which the pun "Le phare à on" (sounding like pharaon -> pharaoh, meaning the lighthouse of us) is the crux of a whole gag (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdWZhAAf6gA)

-Two kid gestrals have a conversation which is almost word for word a copy of a badly dubbed scene from Hitman the Cobra which became a french meme a while back (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qznbecUX3Fc). The reference is almost unrecognisable in english unfortunately.

Theres most likely a lot i missed, and theres a lot more i have to say but this post is already long enough as is so ill just reblog/make new posts if i want to say more.

[dreamytfw]

Using one of @bardicious's tags as an excuse to nerd out about one of my favorite critiques ❤️

So late-stage SPN has a BIG problem with telling and not showing. It's ESPECIALLY bad in the Dabb-era, and Dean telling Mary that solitary was worse than Hell is THE example for this.

Let's start out by establishing that solitary confinement is a form of torture. Humans are a social species above all else and we tend to suffer A LOT of adverse effects if we're completely cut off from any and all social interaction. I am by no means an expert in this - I'm a just a nerdy information junky - so I'm going to leave a TedX talk here that describes what happens to prisoners who go through solitary confinement

I knew all of this before the episode aired, so I had no problem believing Dean when he said that being in solitary was worse than Hell. So I was genuinely shocked when most people walked away from that line going "pft, yeah right. Dean's tougher than that!"

So I went back and rewatched the scene. That's when I realized that the show does a fuck awful job at communicating what solitary confinement does to someone. Like, seriously. I would include a clip here, but I couldn't find it on youtube, so go and rewatch it again or look at a gif set if you need a refresher, I guess.

Their first mistake was breaking up the scenes of Sam and Dean in solitary. I don't know whose decision this was (probably Singer since he was director, but I don't know for sure), but it's a very bad one because it breaks up the mind-numbing tedium of solitary that the scenes should have been communicating. The first thing they do with the solitary scenes is have the anti-terrorism guy whose name I can't be bothered to look up tell Sam, Dean, and the audience that they're going to lose their minds before they get locked in. Dean counts the days with a loose screw (HAHA GET IT??? 'CAUSE HE HAS A SCREW LOOSE!! I hate you Andrew Dabb), Sam and Dean's different reactions to the prison food, them pacing their much too large for solitary cells, Sam working out a couple of times, and... that's it. Also who the FUCK decided Dean would have a razor in solitary that man would NOT have a razor jfc. A good chunk of the shots are wide shots of the cells, too, so the scenes don't even get across a sense of claustrophobia. The only thing they communicate is boredom. Probably because Singer himself was bored because he's a boring director who makes the most boring directorial choices 9 times out of 10.

I know what they were trying to do, though. They were going for that scene in that one Law and Order SVU episode where Elliot Stabler voluntarily gets locked in solitary for 3 days and starts to lose his mind from 2009.

I want y'all to pay attention to the choices made in both the SPN and SVU scenes. The solitary scenes in SPN are brightly lit with warm colors, they have a lot of wide shots, they have a guard talk when he delivers their meals, and the music wouldn't be out of place in an action movie. Hell, these whole scenes wouldn't feel out of place in an action movie.

Meanwhile, the SVU scene is dark and lit with green (green lighting isn't something that tends to occur naturally IRL, so a lot of the time green lighting in film is used to denote that something is wrong), the cell is A LOT smaller and more accurate to solitary cells in real life, the overwhelming majority of shots are TIGHT on Elliot's face to communicate the claustrophobia he's feeling, the shots that show all of the cell are shot through a grate to show how caged he feels, and the music is dissonant and off-putting with hallucination murmurs (I've had a couple of episodes of psychosis before, and SVU fucking NAILED what minor auditory hallucinations sound like). The SVU scene is shot like a horror movie.

I'd also like to look at the acting choices (or lack thereof. J2 stans, if this section bothers you, log off and go hug your pet or smth idk). imo Jared makes better choices than Jensen in the solitary scenes. Sam at least looks stressed and on edge. While Dean just... I'm sorry, but the man is blue steel-ing all over the place and it just makes him look bored and mildly annoyed 😭 Meanwhile, Chris Meloni goes from mildly bored when he first gets locked in, to actively stressed, to completely terrified by the end of the scene. This is not me saying that Chris Meloni is a better actor even though he is fuck you fight me. I don't know how many choices came down to the actors and how many came down to the directors. For all I know, Jared and Jensen would have also made similar choices to Meloni if they'd had a director who wasn't scared of doing anything interesting and could be bothered to collaborate with his actors like directors are supposed to do.

What I am saying (or trying to, at least) is that, in-universe, 6 weeks of solitary likely was worse than Hell for Sam and Dean. Like, at least Dean had some semblance of sensory input and got to interact with other people while he was being carved up. The problem is late stage SPN is incredibly lazy and can't be bothered to communicate that to its audience by showing us. Dabb and Singer just expected us to hear "you're going to lose your minds" before the solitary scenes, then hear "this was worse than Hell" after the solitary scenes, and expected us to just nod along and smile, no thoughts, head empty. Unfortunately for them, we're not stupid and SPN is a TV show, so if you don't show the audience, what you tell them is going to ring incredibly hollow. And that's exactly what happened for the overwhelming majority of fans.

TLDR: solitary confinement is torture, late stage SPN is bad at its job of showing and not telling, and we should abolish the American penal system in its entirety.

[murfpersonalblog]

NGL, the more I hear about Talamasca: The Secret Order, the more pissed off I get. AMC even approaching a writer who never read TVC truly & deeply BOTHERS me. Hancock's whole attitude turned me off, how he said he's not even interested in vampires or the Horror genre; so he made TTSO "a spy show" instead; starring some OC MC named Guy (WOW, what a name--"guy" being the most generic way to describe someone--oh, he's just some guy ("everyman") embroiled in shadow shenanigans; where things aren't what they seeeeem~!).

Oh great, the "You're a wizard, Harry!" knockoff for millennials. 🙄😒

I HATE the use of an entirely OC cast. I don't CARE about getting invested in OCs. I want to see ANNE RICE'S characters on screen.

That's why I'm watching ANY of these shows; cuz I'm a book reader; I'm not here for the lolz. I want to see how AMC adapts AR's books on screen in a modern era; not just taking the name of her organization and turning it into a lamer version of the MIB or Ghostbusters; where the focus isn't even on the supernatural, but on some jaded bitter skeptic too stubborn/clueless to even realize what effing genre's he's even in! 🤦

I know there's been plenty of cases where writers who know nothing about the source material knock the adaptation out of the park. But Passion Projects are trusted more than Hollywood Shovelware for a reason. And this just smacks of the latter rather than the former, esp. when AMC keeps emphasizing how they want this to be something people (WHICH "people," exactly? 🤨) can connect with & relate to (HOW, when you're using OCs and ignoring alllllll the canon Talamasca members in THE Talamasca show! 🤦). There's SO MUCH AR wrote about the Talamasca in her books, that we could be seeing adapted on screen. Instead, AMC's wasting our time with some totally fabricated plot & totally made-up characters, like IGAF about ANY of these people.

Jfc, I'd've preferred the braindead Jasper Is Secretly Marius~! theory folk were running with instead. 🙄😒

Any time writers brag about 🚨 subverting expectations 🚨 brace yourself for some Grade-A corporate bullsh!te, cuz that's just Hollywood code to warn audiences that what they WANT isn't what they're gonna GET--eff your expectations; cuz we think we're smarter than the source material, hurhurhur~!

This entire premise would've worked PERFECTLY for Jesse Reeves, AR's actual character who worked for the Talamasca. She grew up assuming she was a normie, but she had weird abilities, and hella mysterious relatives, and a bunch of missing memories, and shady people watching her her whole life. She too has a journey of personal discovery as she realizes that magic & monsters are all real.

I'd've been WAY more invested in seeing Jesse brought into AMC's TTSO, and getting vampires like Mael & Teskhamen & Hesketh, and ghosts like Gremt, and even bringing in canonical Talamasca members AMC effed over like Aaron Lightner & Merrick Mayfair, with whom this exact same premise Hancock's pitching would've played out just as well. Esp. since these characters inevitably DO connect with IWTV. We wouldn't even need to ever see Maharet on-screen, esp. if Rolin Jones wants to save her big reveal for IWTV. It can just be heavily implied that there's redheads to look out for out there. 👀

All I can assume is that AMC didn't want Jesse Reeves as another female-protagonist with an arc similar to Rowan Mayfair's; esp. not after all the critique MW S1 got from the sexist anti-feminist anti-woke crowd--but that was Esta's fault, for including that whole stupid Tessa-vs-Incels arc, which never even existed in AR's books. They already fell flat with Rowan and all of Esta's BS about "family," when she never properly explained who The 13 even were. So maybe AMC thought having the psychic/witch be a guy--LOL, Guy--would work better? Esp. since Jesse already starred in the QotD adaptation, and they probably don't want anyone getting distracted by another character we've already seen get paired up with Lestat on-screen. 🤷 That's the only way any of this makes sense to me; AMC deliberately choosing to ignore 100% of the source material to completely make up their own stuff and still slap Anne Rice's name on it, wtf?

AMC, how are y'all properly representing the corpus of AR's works & IP, when y'all act like she never wrote about anything but vampires & witches?! She actually wrote more books that AREN'T about vampires at all!

On the one hand, I HATE Hancock's attitude that if you're watching this show for vampires & witches then you're barking up the wrong tree, cuz HE is a skeptic and HE doesn't like vampires and HE wants this to be grounded in humans not the supernatural and HE wants to attract audiences who aren't predisposed to vamps & witches cuz HE wants to make a spy show and HE isn't interested in gothic romance cliches. WTF? 🤨🤨🤨

But on the other hand, I HATE that they keep mentioning vampires & witches, as if that's the only creatures AR ever wrote about, when she also had werewolves. aliens, SO MANY GHOSTS, faeries, dwarves, giants, angels, etc, that AMC persistently keeps ignoring in this so-called "Immortal Universe."

It REALLY just makes it obvious that the writers either aren't reading AR's books at all, or they're hoping that the fanbase is predominately NOT comprised of book readers; or BOTH. It feels like they've done ZERO research on AR's universe, and just took the surface-level fact that the Talamasca is a paranormal organization & that they're closely tied to vampires & witches, and ran with it. Will we EVER get the ghosts? Will we EVER get Pandora & the bees? Does AMC even know wtf I'm talking about?!

And they're ALREADY sequel baiting us before the effing show's even out yet!? So you already know that S1 is gonna end on some bullcrap cliffhanger. Thanks for the warning that you'll deliberately drag out this show to get as many seasons as possible, warranted or even EARNED yet at all. 🙄😒

TL;DR: Don't get me wrong; for TVC's sake, I hope TTSO's a home run; or a sleeper hit at least. 🙏 I DO NOT want another dud like Mayfair Witches. But omfg AMC, this entire project screams GENERIC AF. And it makes me not want to watch it at all, and just wait for the reviews before I even bother.

[besttropeveershowdown]

The Worst Trope Ever Showdown: Round 1, Side B

Love Triangle

Two characters are both in love with the same person.

Propaganda:

It's all drama that distracts from the main plot. Unless it Is the main plot in which case the audience usually already Knows who they'll end up with so it just serves as pointless, and if they don't then it means people might get attached to the wrong person and it ends up upsetting half the people.

Idgaf about your romance drama I'm aro I'm here for the CRIME. Plus it's often written just because people want characters to be in relationships like shut up and fight a sea monster or something. / all love triangles do is cause violent ship wars polyamory is the solution to all problems

Romantic subplots are often done poorly. However, if you'd like to take your romantic subplot to new levels of awful, try a love triangle! Has double the amount of will-they-won't-they slog, twice as many annoying love interests, with extra unnecessary drama!

It nullifies interesting female characters in to who to choose wars and can cause rifts in fandom, especially if the author’s favorite to win the love triangle is obvious from a perspective outside of the narrative.

Humanoid Female Animal

Mainly a thing in animation (tho comes up in CGI in otherwise live action movies or w/e). the male of an animal species will range from somewhat anthropomorphic to looking pretty much like a normal animal, but the female of (supposedly) the same species will be extremely anthropomorphised & sexualised. often includes long hair on the head, heavy makeup, and boobs where the animals they are supposed to represent usually have none of those, and the males usually don't have any either

Propaganda:

ugh. UGH. can a female not exist without being a sexy sex doll? can a female not be hairy and animalistic like the male counterparts? can a female not have ANY interesting design features/ any design at all except 'sexy'??? CAN A FEMALE ANIMAL LOOK LIKE A FUCKING ANIMAL PLEASE. IF YOU'RE GRANTING THE MALES THAT GRACE WHY NOT EXTEND IT TO THE FEMALES JFC. IS THE ONLY PURPOSE OF A FEMALE CHARACTER OF ANY KIND TO BE SEXY TO THE AUDIENCE??? IS IT????? (also they just always look terrible like c'mon that thing is meant to be attractive somehow? to be visually pleasing to you somehow?? (sorry)

gotta slap a bow and eyelashes on to Girl character design bc god forbid we can't tell the boy and girl bunny/lion/deer apart!!!

Aside from the obvious sleazy aspect, it is also, in my opinion as a working character designer, deeply uninspired and often a symptom of a lack of real consideration going into the designs and/or world-building.

[azfellesquire]

Season two isn’t (fully) real, it’s a peaceful, fragile existence

The more I rewatch the show and read different theories, the more convinced I get that S2 is some sort of elaborate dream sequence or a distraction or memory alteration attempt (Neil’s chaotic angsty ineffable husbands fanfic?). But not all of it.

(This gets kind of rambly so if you want my true hook, scroll down to the Michael Sheen Staged gif.)

Let me make this perfectly clear on the outset: I don’t think all of it is a dream, and I certainly don’t think the final 15/kiss is or is going to be discounted (and not only because there would be literal riots in the street, because there absolutely would be, but also I’m putting trust in Neil and the team wholeheartedly). I think that could actually be the domino that brings them out of it. I read somewhere recently something along the lines of “something loved can never be truly forgotten” and I think that fits my theory perfectly. I’m also making no claims (yet) as to what I think is real and what I think is “enhanced”.

Also I apparently am either too far deep or cannot work the tumblr search function with any modicum of usefulness, so please link me to the posts I’m alluding to if you think it’s the right one. I will edit them in and sincerely apologize to the brilliant minds that exist outside the confines of the search function.

Now, On with the show:

You can be in charge of the biscuits

Maggie and Nina: Look, I get that recasts happen, they change the actor playing the character because of scheduling conflicts, etc. But to cast the actor/actress that is immediately recognizable from a prior interaction (whether with the characters or the audience) is not something you see. FFS Maggie DIED in S1, and Nina was pivotal (maybe too strong a word, but enough to be memorable surely) to the storyline. It’s like someone said “Hey, they’ll work, bring em in, no I don’t care that they were in S1. It’ll be a test of how well our facade is working. If they (A&C) notice, then the gig is up and we’ll know it.”

Also why in the world is the owner of a coffee shop offering Eccles cakes to calm down, when camomile tea is right there? (Resists the urge to go off on a tangent on how Eccles cakes were used to celebrate the “Eccles wakes” at the feast of St. Mary (yes that Mary) and how that ties into the second coming plot.) Do Eccles cakes count as biscuits? Ugh another thought for another day I suppose.

It has come to my attention during writing that Shax is the same actress as Madame Tracy. I have less of an affront to this knowledge since I’m 2 months deep and countless rewatches in and only just noticed. But I’m going to pop it in this header anyway. Are you really trying to tell me that a show that apparently has demon entrances happening precisely on the 6s really didn’t think these choices out very deliberately? (Edit 3: https://www.tumblr.com/noneorother/735823422626709504/the-secret-timeline-inside-of-good-omens-season-2 JFC why can I never find the blogs when I want to insert them? It was a breakdown about how all of the demon entrances happen at a 00:00 that ends in a 6.)

Yours very faithfully, Maggie

Text to mail disconnect: There’s been a theory pop up (at the time one writing this at least (edit 2: https://www.tumblr.com/azariah-z-fell/743434274903048192/it-is-extra-weird-because-it-is-on-the-record) that Maggie actually texted Aziraphale her request to talk, and it was magically translated into a physical form, and the spelling error (that so many people are shouting DEMON at) was just an autocorrect typo. But, surely Maggie would know he doesn’t text if she knew him for several years at least. We’ve never seen either of our boys text, only call. Seems like someone doesn’t know how phones work, but wanted to get the message received? See also: currency, below.

You ever think, what’s the point?

Numerous people have pointed out the same obvious background people. There are theories about the guy in the Hawaiian shirt being the second coming or something similar. I wonder if it’s some sort of play on a badly executed attempt to make Wickber Street seem “normal” in an alternate reality, an elaborate distraction, but they have to keep using the same character models because their imagination is just slightly better than Shadwells’ (Oh gfdi how did I miss Mrs. sandwich right there). I’m not saying we haven’t done a “oh oops silly me I forgot something” but that isn’t usually done in the middle of a sidewalk. When Aziraphale is initially talking to Jim with the blanket, there’s a guy just chugging his arms outside the window, not walking. Another one in E3 when Shax show up outside the shop, a guy in an orange sweatshirt passes in the background, then passes again, and not close enough in time/area to just be the continuation of the walk. Especially in the early episodes, there are veritable conveyer belts of people, straight lines, no trying to pass, etc. I’m trying to look at the background in S1 and while there are still tons of people, the background is… livelier. People passing, shoving past, actually going places.

“I’m looking at the statue of Gabriel.” “Oh, good job?”

Aziraphale basically learns fuck-all when he makes the trip to Edinburgh. Granted, I do believe most of that was to make the Bentley “our car”, but so many things are out of character. The no drink, the over-the-top “investigation” (as awkward as he is, Aziraphale knows how to act more normally than that with humans), the background on the drive up there…

All the others were taken (random collective thoughts)

Somehow ALL the businesses on the street are different from Season 1?

A normal person would have moved out of the rain instead of just lolling there letting raid splatter their glasses, yeah? (As a person with glasses I can confirm).

“We have all the hosts of hell searching for him” cue Crowley looking around like then why the fuck are there still demons around me?

The cross disappearing from the Gabriel statue between shots.

“I’m a bit out of miracles” and “that’s not how miracles work” from the guy who got written up for too many frivolous miracles.

I have here a sixpence and a farthing There’s always money in the banana stand

The lack of (accurate?) paid transactions seems like whoever is pulling the strings has no concept of earthly money and how it’s supposed to work, just that it exists. Crowley and Aziraphale talk bluntly about poverty and know that money is needed and used in current society (“Give her the money, Angel”, Rome, Globe Theatre, 1941 magic shop, etc.). Could be a “let’s not get lost in the trivialities” thing but it does strike me as odd. Caveat: Aziraphale forgiving the rent doesn’t quite fit, but cost of the record is obscenely low.

But this does give me hope about the 3rd 1941 flashback, because they were using money accurately there, which hopefully means the flashbacks and memories aren’t being altered, just “present day”.

We’re real people

One of the overarching themes in Season 2 (and S1 now I think of it) is “stop interfering in the lives of other people”. Maggie and Nina, Job, Elspeth, the entire dance party, Warlock, the book of prophecy. It would be a shame if someone were to make sure I failed to be messing about in their own lives.

I had brothers, you don’t scare me

Something happened just before Maggie told them to “Come in here and say that to my face.” Another demonic turn potential here, but also kind of like someone’s saying “FFS get on with the plot”.

The book of love has music in it

This post https://www.tumblr.com/noneorother/731977308306636800/all-the-music-you-didnt-hear-the-good-omens (finally, one I can find!) popped up, and there’s another one that purports to have noticed that there’s music lines missing from the opening sequence (edit 1: Found it!: https://www.tumblr.com/dadesu/726651737165938688/anyone-noticed-the-missing-half-bar-in-good-omens ). Possibly Clueing us in that there’s something that’s missing elsewhere (I mean obviously, that’s the whole point of this season, is it not?).

So where do we go from here?

As much as I’d love to say “Alright so the kiss breaks the spell whoever was put over them because of ✨the power of love✨, the ruse will be revealed, and they’re not talking because they don’t have to”

I don’t know, my thoughts are just the overarching patterns I’ve noticed over many, many rewatches and probably reading a few too many magic trick theories and/or fanfics. I don’t intentionally make my theory posts open-ended, but in the end that’s the fun of it. Nothing has to be mutually exclusive (yes I’m referencing my “Is Crowley already the new Supreme Archangel” post, I think I’m allowed that much). I’m happy to be proven wrong, and probably will be.

Lots of things are wrong right now

But I will leave you with one parting thought: Crowley knows. He knows there’s furniture missing. (That’s why he keeps just tossing things everywhere, because he know it doesn’t matter.)

And he. Does not. Care. For it.

How many theories that I myself hate can I dig into?

I’m a demon, I lied:

[elericelery]

You can feel sad that Kamala wasn’t elected and hate her at the same time. I and many people I know still voted for Kamala even though she sucks so don’t get on people’s asses about how the big beautiful bill is the fault of people who were unsure about choosing between two genocide enablers or searching for a third option and turned to an online audience to express these feelings. You seriously cannot expect everybody to just let their issues with her slide just for the slim chance some more people might have gone out and voted for Kamala just because they didn’t see someone complaining about her online. There weren’t enough undecided or green voters to have changed the results of the election. Please direct your anger elsewhere. Jfc.

[finalgirlminamurray]

so last night i rewatched longlegs because i wanted a more solid idea of how i felt about it, and also because when i saw it in the theater last year (jfc it was almost a whole year ago. time is fake) i had to pee for the last half hour even though i'd been trying to avoid exactly that happening and it wasn't even that long of a movie. whatever.

but anyway, i last shared my thoughts on it in the tags of a post i made about the blackcoat's daughter, so i figured i'd post them here again: both films have excellent atmosphere and make great use of their cinematography and overall tone to really hold your attention as the whole film feels like it's building and building to something, and then when you get to the ending it just feels like kind of a letdown. to me at least. i blame this on the lack of reaction i'm inclined to have to any reveal that can be summed up as "it was...THE DEVIL."

both films represent their demonic antagonist the same way, as this admittedly very cool design of a looming black mountain of a shape with goatlike horns that appears in the shadows in the background of otherwise mundane scenes (i forgot to be on the lookout for it on this watch but i definitely noticed a few that i wouldn't have in the theater.) it suggests a constant malevolent presence lurking over the main characters the whole time, long before anything explicitly supernatural is revealed. and i don't have any problem with these films taking an explicitly supernatural turn (though i can understand why some people might be disappointed when they thought it would be "realistic" horror with that particular almost-surreal tone), but something about it being The Devil From the Bible is what makes it underwhelming to me. i honestly don't think i would feel the same way if it was more of a nonspecific demon of some sort; this one might have worked better for me if the reason why these metal spheres in the dolls' heads exerted this corrupting influence over the families was left completely unexplained. (i'm sure many people would have hated that, but you can't please everyone.)

i was thinking this might be because i wasn't raised religious at all and never thought of hell or the devil as a genuine real threat in my life, but i mean. i'm not one of those people who's like "i don't believe in ghosts so this fictional movie where ghosts are real was bad because i know they are not." i'm capable of suspending my disbelief for fiction. it probably is just the loaded connotations of "satanism" as portrayed as a real thing that people actually practice in a way that harms innocent people (especially The Children) and the law needs to step in and stop from happening. because, well, see anything related to the real-life satanic panic. i also feel like there's an assumption that the audience will immediately understand that anything to do with satan/the devil is not just evil but the ultimate worst thing you could possibly be dealing with and that just comes with too many presumptions for me. (if someone says "hail satan" in a movie i'm not going to instantly gasp in shock, is what i'm saying.)

this kind of thing works better for me in movies like the witch, where the film already takes place in a setting where everyone really did strongly believe in that sort of thing and it felt like a more real and personal threat to these characters, and also the more ambiguously triumphant way the ending plays out. or rosemary's baby, where the horror comes more from the situation of the main character and the way she's treated by everyone around her even without the specifics of "and also you're pregnant with the antichrist!" or the first omen, which took the bold direction of explicitly stating that this antichrist business was actually engineered by the church to draw people back to them (no idea how this went over with irl catholics, but i hadn't heard of any big controversy surrounding it so maybe it wasn't actually that notable to the real church.) meanwhile i've just never gotten all the hype around the exorcist, and i really wonder if it's just because i can't get that seriously into explicitly christianity-based religious horror. i probably already talked about a lot of this in the post i made after seeing heretic

ANYWAY my thoughts on the actual movie. i mostly like it. people have already written plenty on the themes relating to parents and children - i think the religious themes worked better for me when i started viewing ruth's actions through the lens of what devoutly religious parents will do to their children and/or other people outside their family in the name of protecting them from the influence of the devil, or from going to hell. i've heard that the original ending was changed after test screenings but i haven't seen anything about what it was originally supposed to be, or any deleted scenes - but i know they must be there because of some hints in the credits, like someone being credited as "adult ruby" even though we never see any flash forwards. there's also a character (i'd never be able to figure out who) credited as "agent kurt kobble" which is the exact same surname as mr. longlegs' real identity and how it's usually spelled in other sources, even though that's not in the credits. what does it mean!!

of course i was unable not to think about twin peaks while watching this because i've been in a peaks frame of mind ever since this year's rewatch, and also alicia witt is here - i believe she was cast based on her brief appearances in the return, which is impressive. i do wish the film had leaned more into the peaks approach of the demonic influences just being a non-religiously-specific representation of the evil that men do and all, because you wouldn't have to change much to have it be that. this could easily take place in that same universe, with your ambiguously psychic fbi agents and mysterious triangular symbols and demons possessing fathers who prey on their families. one of the most recent murdered families in the movie was called the hornes

the film obviously drew a lot of comparisons to the silence of the lambs when it came out, because of the young female fbi agent protagonist with a family backstory that weighs heavily on the present, investigating a serial killer case. but i have to note that it shares a good amount in common with red dragon too, with the killer specifically targeting families and the quotes from the book of revelation (the "stood upon the sand of the sea" is i believe from the same passage illustrated by blake in the "beast from the sea" entry in his great red dragon paintings) and yes, the ambiguously psychic fbi protagonist. and the film really does devote a lot of time in the beginning to establishing that for something that doesn't really come into play at all later on. part of the ambiguous vibe, i guess?

i think the film overall hangs together better than i thought it did when i first watched it. i do agree that the exposition dump after lee remembers/realizes exactly what was going on with her mom is a little too blunt, especially for a film that does a good job leaving so much implied that we can extrapolate things from. i do kind of wish i'd kept up more with the pre-release marketing because i only just looked at the tie-in website that was available before the movie came out - thebirthdaymurders.net - and there's a lot of cool stuff on there. even though it focuses more on the unsolved murder cases (being an in-universe creation of an amateur sleuth looking for whatever information they can get on it), it probably gave us the single piece of backstory on the killer we're going to get, confirming he was an aspiring rock musician who wrote some of his own original songs "before the voices took over". (lot of writers these days i feel have talked about how they want to make their fictional serial killers more realistic than the common portrayal of them as charismatic super-geniuses who evaded the law through their own mad brilliance, since irl they're mostly deeply maladjusted and almost pathetic figures. honestly i find this guy a deeply tragic character given what we know about him - he's clearly so far gone mentally at this point you can't really imagine him actually pulling off serial murder at this scale. which, well, he didn't.)

i assume by now that longlegs' modus operandi before ruth became his accomplice was to just drop the dolls off at the families' doorsteps and hope that they'd discover them on their own and bring them in, because as lee says he'd need someone who they'd trust to invite inside to deliver the "gifts" and the man himself is. not that. so when she saw an unfamiliar car or person in her yard as a kid and went out to investigate that threw off his plans. the lack of a father (or any explanation as to why) in the harker household is noticeable and the implication that kobble was just going to kill them himself because of that gives us much to think about. i think he had more success getting ruth to deliver the dolls, and i assumed the first time i watched this that it was her who visited carrie anne in the hospital under lee's name, but from what she says it seems like it really was him. they really do have terrible security there.

i'll fully embrace everyone reading lee as autistic, but i will confess that i might not have noticed her particular social awkwardness because, like with nbc hannibal, this is a world where everyone's kind of stilted or just a little odd in how they talk and interact. some more so than others, of course. i probably wouldn't have thought of seeing will that way on my own either, except for the fact that the show explicitly draws attention to it in the very first episode. but the combination of discomfort with social interaction and lack of a real social life outside of work and everyone's fascination with how your brain works is undeniably resonant. so there's that

[sweetfirebird]

Hmm I have been perusing Threads, god help me, and I guess it is once again because I do not use Twitter or because I am a small fry in the genre, but authors keep bringing up issues they are having that are terrible, or are new to them. And these are just not new. Like at all. So once again the same conversations are being had. (Over and over and over again. Sigh.)

I suppose it's possible that m/m romance (not queer romance, this is people who use m/m only as a term that I have seen) is getting an influx of new readers who are pulling the same "ew actual queer characters and actual gay men writers in my m/m" bullshit, so authors are getting hit with new waves of angry comments and reviews and DMs. And some of those complaining might be new authors who don't know what a certain portion of the m/m romance world is like, so this is genuinely new to them.

But it also reminds me of the reasons I started using queer romance as a descriptor when possible instead of m/m--so that it is clear right out of the gate that more than only cis (and frequently masc) gay men would be in the story. So maybe I wouldn't get those readers and comments. Which seems to have mostly worked. A lot of writers chose queer romance over m/m romance as a term and they seem to get fewer readers but also they get queer readers. Or more open-minded readers. (They still get shit. But in that way that you kind of expect, being online and queer.)

(BUT, maybe, the cynical part of me wonders if some of the posts are legitimate complaints from gay men writers having to deal with the 'm/m is not for gay men' nonsense, and the rest are posts made to get engagement. (To be clear I do believe those writers here, but maybe not all of the responders. Or I believe the responders are supportive, but I think their surprise at the problem existing is a bit perfomative.) But that is the cynical part of me and I hope it is wrong. )

Or maybe the larger, more popular m/m romance writers are getting a sudden surge of negative comments about, as one example, bi characters as love interests. The negative comments are certainly happening. I've gotten that stuff from editors, and I have definitely noticed that any of my stories that might in any way involve someone, somewhere having a pussy are read less than the cis dude stories. But the part of me that stopped using m/m (except in bookseller categories when you have to etc) and who has read many of the summaries for the bestselling books in the genre is also like... maybe the 'cis gay male, large top, smaller bottom, fairly strict and heteronormative gender roles, sometimes omegas but not with cunts' books... kind of encourage that sort of audience.

I mean if you are only writing one kind of gay relationships in one kind of way in your books that is fine, and you have an audience, which is great! But I don't think it should be that surprising to you that most of that audience is not going to like something else.

Not that writers shouldn't complain or branch out. Not that readers shouldn't be biphobic or queerphobic or transphobic shitheads. Because jfc of course they shouldn't and they should check their entitlement. But the *certain portion* of the m/m romance audience that will openly insult gay male authors just for existing or using the term m/m (fucking hell) is in an overlapping venn diagram with the portion of the audience who get the ick from queer characters who are not cis males and relationships that are not heteronormative.

I do think some of the problem is that the genre was based on m/f romance, which is full of toxic shit and has serious problems (including white supremacy, but also sexism, homophobia, misogyny, and a weirdly horny prudishness). But I also think the writers who have been in the m/m genre for a while acting surprised that the gay writers are getting attacked or that people don't want bi characters are being a bit disingenuous. Unless you are brand new to the genre... yeah it's been like that. Queerphobia and misogyny festering beneath the surface since the beginning. If you want to combat that, cool, but of you didn't notice until now... why not?

[gleefultogo]

Page 847-848

*Sigh* So nothing important happens once again in this comic. F your door joins nordgerdge instead oh hey idk his own daughters?, it's like no one gives a crap about there own family members, but yet most of them are and I quote "family orientated". Cause damn if i was him id be happy to see family that i haven't been around by in a while. Next page panels we get to see jahla, first of all. Me personally I don't like her new coat. it reminds of when people puts highlights in their hair just for looks. I don't know why kique didn't just give her the spring/summer coat she had back in asmundr, i liked the idea cause it happens irl with wolves. or like when dogs with longer hair get fluffer during the winter seasons. Now for the more negative aspects, but jfc kique is so beyond lazy. once again we have characters just sitting around bitching about there problems, there was never an indication visibly that jahla was even trying to make ally's, so quite frankly I have no sympathy for her. its another filler page with nothing important, like kique come on man, show the audience that these characters do things besides making out and fucking each other :/ its boring and unimportant. also why is jahla playing dumb? like girl speak for yourself or take actions for yourself, also it is actually very easy to just ditch this pointless plan if you so called tried making allies. then just dip and look for your family. no one is holding her hostage in this page lol (besides the author). As for rome, i still dislike him. Ngl i miss when thakir was the voice of reason, he'd have more reason to be talking with jahla about this stuff then rome. which still makes me think why her grandmother only wanted to see jahla and not thakir as well, plus he's considered a second generation and pretty much represents his god/maker with the crest wouldn't you have questions?

[audikatia]

10, 13, and 17 for the end of year book asks. 💕

Thanks, Kellie!!!! ❤️

10. What was your favorite new release of the year?

Henry Henry by Allen Britton

I don't know if I would recommend this overall to everyone because it is definitely a very Specific Sort Of Book, but god. A modern, queer retelling of the Henriad? I didn't know I needed this. This killed me, this revitalized me. I cannot stop thinking about it and I read it months ago. This is going to stay with me forever. Most of the books I read, I get from the library because I do not have the money or space in my apartment for all the books I read, but this... this I had to get a copy of it. I need to analyze it, I need to memorize it.

I knew the broad strokes of how it would go because, well, the Henriad has been around for hundreds of years. But the way it went? The liberations it took? It was exactly what I want from a tragedy where I can see the ending and I know the ending and I want so badly for the characters to break out of the Tragedy, but they never can. Beautifully executed.

13. What were your least favorite books of the year?

This is going to get long and ranty, sorry lol

Honestly, it was a year with a lot of low-rated books for me. It was not a good reading year overall, which is a shame. I have organized my lowest rated books into sub-categories because my complaints tend to be the same by genre.

Queer romances

Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake (horrendous, I will never read anything by her again)

Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner (so aggravating, I am mad when I think about this book)

Late Bloomer by Mazey Eddings (this made me want to not read sapphic fiction anymore, I was so fucking done)

If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales

Caught in a Bad Fauxmance by Elle Gonzalez Rose

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston (this made me realize I am so fucking done with Casey McQuiston as an author. I have hated all of their books except Red White and Royal Blue and I just need to call it quits. )

Time to Shine by Rachel Reid

Big Swiss by Jen Beggin (disappointing because this was so hyped up as a Genuinely Well Written book and the writing mostly was good, but the characters and execution just fell apart)

I don't careeeeeeee I just don't fucking careeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee atttttt allllllllllllllll. To be fair, I am not a big romance fan in general, but I do tend to like queer romance most of the time since there is like a genuine hurdle for why people can't be together rather than just bad miscommunication. But these just fucking sucked (in my own opinion, other people might have loved them and that's totally fine). A lot of the authors (I'm looking at you especially, Ashley Herring Blake) had some of the most tone-deaf ways of writing about characters of color or nonbinary characters, specifically writing afab nonbinary characters as though they were women and ignoring that amab nonbinary people exist. Totally tone deaf while also including so much virtue signaling I felt like I was watching fucking Dora the Explorer remind the audience that stealing is bad. The neurodivergent rep was just fucking horrible. I'm sorry, it was. Also, bad writing (minus Big Swiss, that was genuinely good writing), bad plots, bad characters, etc. Some of these characters are like 30+ years old and acting like entitled 12 year old brats. It was painful to read.

Also, Meryl Wilsner, girl, wtf. Watch TikToks about ADHD is not "medical research," jfc. And the word "queer" is not fucking linked with TERF-rhetoric. Are you fucking kidding me?

Thrillers/Mysteries

The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger

The Princess of Las Vegas by Chris Bohjalian (this should have been like 200 pages less and then maybe it would have been great)

The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson (this was baffling how bad it was. I like other books by this author. She's normally really good at plotting out a story that is a shakily plausible but mostly acceptable within the framework of mystery conventions, but this?? Wtf happened?)

Home is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose

Love Letters to a Serial Killer by Tasha Coryell (I read this expecting it to be trash and was still surprised by how bad it was)

The Mystery Writer by Sulari Gentill

I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin (This book could have been a tweet)

Everyone Who Can Forgive Me is Dead by Jenny Hollander (compelling premise, stupid as fuck execution)

The Drowning Kind by Jennifer McMahon

Ughhhhhhhh noooooooooooooooooooooooooo. I love thrillers, but these didn't make sense? They just went for vibes and no actual substance. The plots were terrible, the twists were done only to have twists rather than to serve an actual purpose. Some of them had random 10 year time skips that were mentioned in a single sentence and it was so off putting? So many of them felt like the author copy/pasted twitter threads about social commentary into the book and made it monologues. It was terrible. None of these were compelling, none of these made me give a shit about the events unfolding. Just bland and unimaginative the whole way through, even if the premise itself sounded promising.

Contemporary Literary Fiction

Piglet by Lottie Hazel (I read a few books about EDs this year, but this had nothing else to really offer except Commentary. Actually, I think the issue was that it wasn't written like a real ED? It was written like ED as a metaphor, which just sucked. Although, admittedly, the food was described beautifully. I liked her writing style and will probably read more by her, but this plot and this MC did not work for me)

Mercury by Amy Jo Burns

Overall, I hate the term "chick lit" and find it to be extremely derogatory. But damn. These books were not making a good case for why that's a bad term. These books really were just "wow, women have it rough and we should be poetic about it" without any additional substance.

Superhero Genre

Breaking the Dark by Lisa Jewell

I understand that they wanted a big name in the mystery/thriller genre to write this Jessica Jones novel, but I wish they had gotten someone who was actually familiar with the source material or at least willing to research it before writing.

I like Jewell's books and writing style, so this wasn't a bad novel on its own. But it was a horrible depiction of Jessica Jones's character and ultimately a bummer of a read. Jewell basically ignored every aspect of Jones's personality and also didn't seem to feel like writing about any of her powers, so she just... ignored them? Ignored their entire existence? And she also just sort of passed over Jessica Jones's entire history about her family being killed and being held hostage and repeatedly raped for over a year. Like, I get that Jewell didn't really want to write about the ramifications of all that, but then don't write a book with a main character who went through all of that. I don't know what to tell you.

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

Anyone’s Ghost by August Thompson (I knew this was going to rip my heart out for personal reasons, but I also think it would have destroyed me even if I wasn't as emotionally connected to the plot.)

My Murder by Katie Williams (Amazing premise with fantastic follow-through)

The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul by Eleanor Herman (I like non-fiction, but I am always pleasantly surprised when the author manages to present it almost conversationally. This was in-depth without being condescending or overinflated and was genuinely fun to read)

Emma Southon's books (Basically the same comment as above. I expected something a little dry but educational, but I got educational and very cheeky!)

Bless anyone who actually read any of that lol