#least of what's truly insipid about this is that it's making people mostly teenagers really really comfortable with complete

[blorbosexterminator]

I believe a lot of fanfic writers would be massively disappointed if they were to try and publish their fanfics (having changed the most identifying characteristics to present it as original work). bc one of the reasons why we never say anything when someone's writing is full of spelling mistakes or bad grammar or, imo the most serious flaws - plots, characters, the low quality of the story itself, the themes, the subtext, the deeper meaning, etc - the reason, besides the whole participating in fandom communities and the fact it's free, is that we easily overlook some of those things because we get to read more about the characters we already love. I know my ff standards are fairly low. and who hasn't found themselves in a situation where they've read through everything they initially wanted to read and then started reading even the fics they first disregarded bc they can't get enough of their otp. do you know how many times I've scrolled past some especially cringy parts of fanfics, but I still love them. when you publish it, you immediately lose that aspect and most reviewers and readers won't be particularly generous. I just think publishing ff has a very high chance of being a mistake, and if publishing houses are approaching ff writers, I don't think they're looking for high quality and I wonder how much they'd invest in serious editing. IMO those who write ff and want to be published should consider working on an original piece of work, or at least reworking their ff significantly. thanks for reading through my message.

Again, I can't say I disagree at all. Fanfiction doesn't hold a grasp in all of those aspects you mentioned against actual published books [and of course nothing at all against the few of those books we would actually dare to call literature] and we allow it and are fine with it, not just because it's free and about the community and about the basic delight in sharing more of the characters we care about, but because none of those things are the primarily function of fanfiction. You don't judge Ikea and an apartment you're going to rent in the same mannar. Ikea isn't a house. At least to me, fanfiction is only about the source material. If there is a fic that has a well-thought out plot and decent prose, but the characters are mischaracterized and/or the dynamics are inherently misunderstood, then it still fails at being a good fic to me. Because, simply, if what I'm looking for is a good plot and decent prose, then I'll just pick any, even a mediocre, book [and it'll be better than said fic]. So not only does fanfiction fail by large at competing in those elements, in the average ratio of good to bad fics, it's also the fact that even a good fic that does all of those things decently still won't hold a chance against an actual good book.

It's the same from a writing's perspective too. It's not exactly about effort but what sort of effort it is. If I feel like it, I can just post a fic because I want it out without spending millenia editing it. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. But the point is, with fanfic I have the choice and it won't matter. And it's not just about the editing, the grammar, etc.

Anyway, yeah. They aren't looking for quality. It's still a capitalisic endeavor. Bad books, unfortunately, do sell. Fifty Shades of Grey made millions to an average fanfic writer. Doesn't make it a good book [and I doubt even a good fic before that]. And it's understandable with this current twitter and tiktok book market; honestly the things twitter authors write and tiktokers promote aren't at all that much better than fanfics. They are well aware of what makes them money, and if they're pursuing ao3 writers then they know the money they'll put in editing, they will get back tenfold. But if anyone thinks that's a win for fanfiction, they are mistaken. It's just an insane downgrade in published literature. And dare I say [while risking sounding like a Harold Bloom-like boomer] it's an insane downgrade in the generation/public's reading taste.

[avatar-of-the-green]

Swamp Thing 1x06/1x07 Thoughts

My goodness, the last two episodes have definitely been something else. Other posters have already offered their excellent perspectives, I just have so many thoughts that I needed to express. As such, this is very long because brevity is not my strong suit. As always, cutting due to spoilers for the current episode and possible future episodes. 

Matt: 

I love how this show explores its characters. One of my previous complaints was that Matt had very little depth beyond being a seemingly-nice police officer with a torch for Abby. But with the last two episodes, we were given a deeper look into his actions and frustrations and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Him being the one to kill Alec disappointed me-mostly because I didn’t want him to be a “bad” guy-but the reasoning for him doing so was at least understandable. Not excusable, of course, but basically continuing the appalling cycle of corruption that was started by his mother and Avery. 

When it comes to the people we love, for some people, what’s “right” takes a backseat. I have no doubt that the only way Avery was able to force Matt’s hand was due to his blackmail material, in a direct contrast to him pulling Lucilia’s strings without much effort. Him being willing to murder Avery in episode seven basically showed how unwilling he was to remain someone for Avery to manipulate, but even that was completely turned on its head when Avery dropped the paternity bomb. 

I wasn’t really shocked about Avery being his father, it was something that I had wondered about as we never really received any information pertaining to Lucilia’s husband and given her rather messy behavior, it certainly made sense. But poor Matt, I feel that the next episodes are going to have him spiraling really badly. 

He “killed” an innocent person who later came back as a plant monster that might decide some revenge is in order once his memory returns. The man who manipulated him and his mother is actually his father…whom he also helped to murder. His whole identity is now in question, his relationship with his mother is in shambles and one of the people he cares about just up and left just like he was told she would. 

I hope that we have more scenes with him and Liz. Marais has felt very tiny in the most recent episodes and it’s nice to another friendship depicted. 

Lucilia:

Oh, Lucilia. I’d feel badly for her if most of the disasters in her life weren’t due to her own bad decisions. The fact that she never expected Avery to have blackmail fodder going back for years was unrealistic to me until I gave it a bit more thought. She isn’t a good person and neither is Avery, but she somehow assumed that his feelings for her made her immune to his perpetual need to control and manipulate everyone in his life. 

It reminded me a lot of a scene from the end of Kill Bill: Volume 2 between Bill and Beatrix when she mentions how shocked she was at what he did. She was well aware of-and even comfortable with-the terrible things he was capable of, but the possibility that he would do any of those terrible things to her never entered her mind. Lucilia was exactly the same and it seems like an incredibly naive mindset until you consider how some people are. 

She did awful things for Avery for money while deluding herself that it was to protect Matt. I’d bet that if Matt had expressed interest in transferring to other locations prior to episode six, she probably guilt tripped him about leaving her and all she did for him until he dropped it. Her keeping his paternity to herself may have been about “protecting” him from Avery’s influence, but it was also about keeping him to herself-as is sole influence-as well. It’s not that she doesn’t love her son, but she’s so possessive of him to an unhealthy level. I wasn’t all of the nefarious things she did for Avery that pushed her to kill him, but the fact that he involved Matt in a murder and completely shattered his perception of her as his mother. And as Avery said, she doesn’t forgive or forget. 

Maria: 

She was definitely one of the highlights of episode seven for me. Seeing her in control and getting things done was wonderful and while I’m assuming helping with the Avery murder plot is going to come back to bite her, I’m glad that she was able to deal with Lucilia despite their obvious issues in order to achieve her goals. 

While I still believe “Shawna” is inside her somewhere, I’d also like to think the experience in the swamp and finally receiving medication might have snapped her out of her fog of despair. There is nothing wrong with receiving help when you need it and while Maria is terrible to Abby, I genuinely believe she would feel badly about possibly putting Susie in danger with her shenanigans. 

Thankfully Avery won’t be around for a little while with his patented “Abby is stirring up all these bad feelings,” gaslighting speeches. 

Avery: 

He is really going all out to win the title as the most monstrous person in the series. The scene with him and Abby in episode six made me so tense and uncomfortable because it was such classic emotionally abusive behavior. How dare she accuse him of things he (most likely) did! She had nothing before him, she owes him! As though he isn’t a murderous scumbag. As though he doesn’t talk out both sides of his mouth playing on Maria’s grief and Abby’s affections. 

It’s mostly my headcanon, but I think he was probably closer to Abby than Shawna growing up, as they had the deaths of their parents to bond over. Shawna was born into money and Abby wasn’t, so anything he did for her she was immensely appreciative of. She was also probably so afraid of being abandoned that she did everything possible to be the “good” daughter, in contrast to Shawna’s more rebellious personality. 

She loved and respected Avery until Shawna’s death, which is probably when his mask briefly slipped and she saw the rotten person he truly was. But because she was just a teenager, she rationalized it as being the effects of Shawna’s death and all her fault. But after returning to Marais, Abby is able to see more and more of the despicable person Avery truly is and that infuriated him. He has nothing to hold over her aside from Shawna’s death, nothing to control her with and while I’d like to think he wouldn’t hurt her…his behavior towards Lucilia in the swamp-a woman’s he’s been with for thirty odd years-shows that doesn’t really value anyone. 

Everyone is disposable in his eyes. 

I wonder what led him to become such an atrocious person. We constantly hear about the “swamp taking his father,” but the flashback we were shown doesn’t really depict a sadistic child that would become a villain. It could simply be the typical story of a man desperate to rise about his station became consumed by his greed and corrupted by his ambitions, but I hope there is a little more to it than that. 

I’m both curious and afraid of what’s going to happen next with him. I enjoyed how his rise from the swamp was a mirror of Alec’s, but with more violence. If he is an Avatar of the Rot, it’s going to make things very interesting in the remaining episodes.  

Woodrue: 

I’ll just state the obvious that what he did to Cassidy was beyond unethical and potentially remarkably insipid. Alec faked scientific results, and he’s a scientist by loose definition in his eyes, yet he engages in unsanctioned human testing and that’s completely acceptable. Avery really does poison all the people he touches, though his own ambition and his desire to help Caroline probably would have led him down the same road. 

I loved that Caroline called him out on his behavior and just how amoral his actions were and how her quick thinking kept Cassidy from being shot. It was painful to witness the change in her towards the end of this episode and sadly I’m sure her situation is only going to get worse. Either Woodrue will inject her with the formula to prevent her Alzheimers from progressing or he’ll inject himself as another test subject and things will fall apart from there. 

Abby: 

As I stated in one of my notes, I love her but her lack of self-preservation is crazy. She has this incredible need to fix situations and yet makes choices that are incredibly impetuous and could make them worse. I truly wish that we knew more of her background, but one could assume her mother dying and then Shawna dying both contributed to her unhealthy fixation with trying to save everyone and control the situation. She couldn’t help her mother, she caused Shawna to die-but in actuality was just unable to save her from an unseen force-and now she has Alec to focus on and feels as though she’s failing him as well. 

With some people, I would say it’s based on a desire for praise or to be a martyr, but with her I think it’s just an effect of having so many unresolved issues and so much guilt. As though saving as many people possible will somehow help her “atone” for those she couldn’t. She wants to save Alec because she cares about him, but also because the situation he’s in could be incredibly dangerous. Two hunters came for him, the next time it could be a team to capture him for study or dissection. 

It’s thoughtful of her, but then she has this remarkable reckless streak that almost got her killed several times. Lucilia could have shot her, she could have died from the darkness, she could have died from the Rot. She was incredibly lucky in the first instance and fortunate that Alec was present in the last two. While the end of episode seven was heartbreaking, it was completely reasonable for Alec to tell her to leave. While her intentions have been good, her behavior has been irrational and eventually her luck will run out. 

I’m curious as to whether or not the show is involving Abby’s New 52 origin and if the tendril from the Rot will awaken something within her. We’ve already seen (the person I assume) is Anton Arcane, so it might not be such a far stretch. 

Abby’s scenes with Alec were just so perfect and it made me so happy as a shipper. All of the touches and her kissing him were lovely. But her crying as she drove away from him in her boat broke my heart. Hopefully her time in Atlanta will give her some time to reflect on things. And with luck we’ll see Harlan again and find out what-if any-consequences have arisen due to her absence. 

Alec: 

Although I’m almost one hundred percent certain that they’re going with Alan Moore’s interpretation of Swamp Thing, I’ll still refer to him as Alec for now. 

Episode six was a particularly painful one for him, as he got to experience the joys of being trapped, shot and hunted like an animal. His anger was justified and while his response was a bit much-I winced at the bark spikes to the face-he doesn’t quite have full control or knowledge of his capabilities yet. He was also completely aware of the danger that people poking around the swamp would pose for him. He is a scientific find of the century and there would be no shortage of people wanting a piece of him. There was also the Matt aspect later in the episode as well. What he did to him was inexcusable, but I really hope Alec doesn’t kill him in recompense.

The near-end of the episode was lovely and definitely understandable. It’s frightening, but sometimes you need to move away from the person you were in order to grow and gain a better comprehension of yourself. 

Then the last scene occurred and I may have freaked out a tiny bit. 

It was wonderful having Andy Bean back as Alec Holland for episode seven. I love the way that Derek Mears portrays Swamp Thing, he’s so incredible emotive despite the costume and the makeup, but I also love how Andy Bean portrays Alec as well. They have distinct personalities, Alec being affable and charming, while Swamp Thing is more solemn and otherworldly-for obvious reasons. Having Human!Alec back was bittersweet and it was nice that they were able to find a plot-relevant reason to do so. I still really hope we get some more flashbacks to his life prior to Marais, but that may sadly be just a pipe dream. 

This episode was definitely a turning point for Alec and his growing acceptance for his role as Avatar of the Green. As wonderful as it was to be the “charming man” he used to be, without his abilities, Abby would have died. Technically, he should have stopped her from getting too close to the Rot, but that might have broken the immersion of the hallucination. But the scene before they encountered the Rot was so beautiful and I’m glad the lighting wasn’t terrible for once. While parts of his new life are undoubtedly strange and a bit traumatizing, it was good to see Alec extolling the wonderous aspects as well. 

The way the Green is portrayed is also interesting. We’ve seen the darker aspects with it lashing out in the first episode and it briefly forcing Alec to see those who perished in episode five, but it consciously trying to help him connect with Abby and to save her life was wonderful as well. It was also teaching him something of a lesson. If he even could go back to being human, he would be unable to do anything against the Rot or help anyone except in the traditional sense. Perhaps Abby is able to synthesize a formula to combat the Rot, but then it would have to be tested, approved, mass produced, distributed and analyzed. 

Which would be remarkably useful, but would take valuable time that they don’t have. What Abby viewed as him giving up hope was more him coming to terms with his destiny and what that entails. Him asking Abby to leave was so painful to watch, but with something so powerful and ancient intent upon destroying everything, allowing her to remain in harm’s way would have been selfish on his part. 

But all the longing looks and the touches throughout the episode nearly killed me. As Swamp Thing he’s been so reluctant to be close to Abby unless it was necessary and the fact that she kissed him-while seeing his human form-may have inadvertently made things a little worse. He can’t be that person again, despite Abby’s belief that he can be cured and despite his talk of accepting his destiny, he doesn’t view a relationship with her as a part of that. 

He’s referred to himself as a “monster” and a “thing.” Despite the beauty in his existence and the knowledge of having a special purpose, he still is obviously bothered by his “transformation.” While Abby mentions a cure as something that will help him, which she undoubtedly believes, he probably interprets it as her being bothered by “what” he is and feels insecure about it. In terms of a future, he also can’t offer her much in way of traditional things. Which begs the question of Abby wanting a more normal relationship and him feeling as though she would be settling. 

It’s such a delightful tangle of emotions that we’ll have only three episodes to figure out. 

[deltaengineering]

Fall 2016 Season Wrapup, Part 2: The Flip Side

Not to give anything away, but while compiling this post I noticed that alphabetical order is also exactly in descending order of quality. Since that’s not very nice to read, I’ll start with... O.

Occultic;Nine

Oh boy, Occultic;Nine. I should have known that this was going to be painful after its obnoxious first episode, but O;9 has the irritating property of always promising just enough to keep me watching, but barely ever being any good. And then I got to the end and realized I had just finished the worst anime I’ve seen in years. The real tragedy here is that none of this seems to be the result of misfortune, this show is designed from the ground up to be the most nauseating thing imaginable, and they totally pulled it off too. Easily the biggest culprit here is the way that the writing is translated to the screen: The narrative pacing of O;9 is actually okay, but the script adaptation clearly saw the typically bloated LN and thought that all of these words had to be preserved. So about 90% of this show is people talking as fast as they possibly can in either a flat monotone or freakout shrieking, with any space for breathing edited out in postproduction. What are they talking about? As far as I can tell, mostly random shit the author found on Wikipedia. The visual presentation tries to make this stupendous amount of blah interesting, which mostly means cutting to random wacky filmschool angles at sub-second intervals and having the characters jiggle around like they have an epileptic seizure. Speaking of the characters: Half of them are useless and half of the rest is only there to add even more useless exposition, which wouldn’t be a huge problem if any of them were in the least bit likable. But, as usual for the semicolon series, they’re all a bunch of smug nerd assholes. You do what you gotta do to get nine characters together so you can do an insipid title drop, I suppose. I won’t comment much on how sensical the mystery story itself is since at some point I just gave up on following this bullshit, but I do know that the one decent twist it has is in the middle, a lot of the subplots don’t go anywhere and the ending is extra bullshit enabled by an outrageous amount of plot convenience.

The sad part is that it has a bunch of really positive aspects: When it does shut up, it can do some really beautiful, moody scenes, but quiet time in Occultic;Nine is about as rare as action scenes in a cheap fighting shounen. The music’s pretty great, as is the opening and ending. The characters are animated to an almost distressing degree. It even has a bunch of neat ideas, like people being so much up their own ass that they don’t even notice that they’re dead. But somehow the amount of polish wasted on this turd only makes the whole thing even worse. It would be a bad show even if it was watchable; as it is, it’s straight up horrible.

Hibike! Euphonium S2

If it’s polish you want, you can’t beat KyoAni anyway. Euphonium’s second season is not a turd, but it’s a highly polished... nothing? While Euphonium ends up very watchable, the source material is also the culprit here. The sequel has the weird combination of stretching out its drama arcs far too much (in S1 an arc would maybe take one or two episodes, here’s only two major ones in the entire season), and also lacking any sort of filler - while I wasn’t a huge fan of the moe shenanigans in S1 and considered them inoffensive at best, the absence of them here just makes the show incredibly dour, and the amazingly blunt yuribait is also toned down significantly. With Hazuki and Midori mostly gone and Reina only showing up for a brief, not very engaging subplot, Euphonium is now absolutely a show about teenagers taking the one thing their lives inexplicably revolve around (the band competition nationals) far too seriously, which causes an amount of drama war tragedies usually fail to reach. Especially the first arc is just puzzling; it’s about characters we never heard or cared about before and is mainly built out of Kumiko either overhearing people expositing about it by sheer chance, or people spilling their heart to her for no reason. And then it just resolves itself. The second major arc is at least about a character that mattered before, but I never found Asuka very interesting and dropping a tragic backstory on her for purposes of sad doesn’t change that, and doesn’t really relate to her mysterious behavior much either. But at least that arc does something that had eluded Euphonium all this time: It manages to make Kumiko herself moderately interesting. Both of the arcs show that Euphonium is still pretty good at resolving its drama in huge, theatralic scenes, but is very clumsy at setting it up, which is pretty bad when said setup takes 5 episodes. It pretty much says it all when my favorite moment by far is a long, unbroken performance scene, which looks dope but notably does not require any writing whatsoever.

The presentation is still excellent, and KyoAni’s particular gimmick here is striving for maximum realism with a lot of artificial lens and lighting effects combined with unusually naturalistic voice acting, which is nice but raises a big question: If Euphonium was what it’s clearly trying to be (a j-drama), would I have any interest in watching it? And the answer to that is an unambiguous no. Not to mention that realistic presentation doesn’t help much when the scenes in question are either boring or the most stagey, overwritten, “I have prepared a speech for this occasion” monologues imaginable. Overall I can’t say that Euph is bad now, but it just lacks a lot of what I liked about it in S1 and doubles down on aspects I never warmed up to. I can appreciate its expressive character work, but on its own that is not enough for a great show.

Girlish Number

Girlish Number really has one big problem: It can’t decide whether it wants to be cutesy slice of life, farcical satire or legitimate character drama. It swings between these aspects rather freely, but they tend to get in each other’s way much more often than they enhance each other. It has a sizeable cast of cute girls making cute faces, but not enough focus on them for that to be worthwhile. The satire is too one-note to be consistently funny and too shallow to be really incisive - I’m totally down for an anime industry satire, but then you have to bring a little more to the table than “everyone’s just kind of greedy and lazy, I guess”. And the character drama... well, it’s actually pretty good at that. But only when main character Chitose is not involved, since Chitose is far too much of a joke to make me care about her life problems, and unsurprisingly the resolution to her arc swings decidedly in the direction of cynical satire again anyway. In the end, the life lesson everyone learns is “you gotta be a shit to get paid”, which is fine by me but not exactly something you need multiple episodes of angst to set up. I’d happily have watched a character drama about the girls that aren’t total trashcans mugging at the camera, or alternatively a comedy of errors about Chitose. But not both at the same time. Girlish Numbers has its moments and it’s probably worth watching for those, but fails to come together to a form a coherent whole.

Fune wo Amu

I righteously laughed my ass off at Fune wo Amu’s attempts to be profound in its first episode, but in the end my secondary prediction for the show came true: Fune wo Amu is primarily a really good slice-of-life story about somewhat eccentric adults doing an unusual job (editing dictionaries). Like most good anime of this kind, it doesn’t do a lot but gets the details right: The characters are well-written and sympathetic, it does a clever timeskip of 10 years in the middle that saves it from getting repetitive, and its realistic character animation is generally spot-on without falling prey to the filter demon that is consuming KyoAni. There’s really not much else to say here, it’s rarely amazing but it’s a good time. So far so good, but the ridiculous aspect never quite goes away either; it’s not totally the focus of the show like it was in the beginning, but Fune wo Amu is still very, very proud of its “a dictionary is a boat on a sea of words” metaphor and brings it up at every opportunity, and while it may have seemed moderately insightful at the first mention, by the end it becomes abundantly clear that there’s really not much mileage in it. Occasionally hamfisted writing aside, it doesn’t seem to trust the strengths of its material on a visual level either, and tries to spruce it up in very silly ways: Most of the time this comes up, you will indeed be shown a literal sea of words, likely with the characters staring wistfully into it because this shit’s so deep, man. Add to this a few other instances of illustrations of simple concepts that are clearly trying a lot harder than would be necessary and a completely bewildering chibi comedy section in the middle of every episode, and that really puts a big dent into the subtle, robust qualities of the show. The saving grace is when it goes ham it goes all the way ham, and laughing at the bad parts means that it’s still always entertaining. Fune wo Amu is probably the most puzzling combination of ironic camp appeal and genuine quality I’ve ever seen, and while I can’t call a show that’s this flawed truly top tier, I can’t deny that it’s a very fun time.

Flip Flappers

But the clear highlight of Fall is not a flawed mature anime for mature watchers such as myself, but this bizarre animator fever dream. At first Flip Flappers seemed to be Space Dandy without the bad parts, which I would have been plenty fine with, but it soon became apparent that there was more going on here: An Ikuhara-style illustration of puberty anxieties with a big hint of the ol’ gay. And Flip Flappers strikes a particularly good balance between these extremes, it’s very entertaining and straightforward on a surface level while still providing a lot of food for thought, unlike the frequently just plain stupid Dandy or the irritatingly opaque and mannered Yuri Kuma Arashi. It obviously helps that it looks mighty tasty too - while it’s only a sakugafest some of the time, the backgrounds, character designs and art direction are fantastic. Another strength is the show’s tone, which is generally very lighthearted without being overtly comedic, just like I like it. For most of the show’s runtime the combination of fantastic world of the week with the strong throughline of Cocona’s and Papika’s growing friendrelationship keeps things extremely varied without seeming random. Unlike the usual genre shifter show that plays everything for a joke, Flip Flappers is legitimately good at what it does; When it’s doing an action episode, the action is rad, when it does a horror episode it’s spooky, and when it’s doing drama it’s emotional. I’ve also rarely seen a show where I like all the characters down to the bit players this much, and when even the requisite cutesy sidekicks are great, you know you have a strong showing. In the last third, a stronger plot comes to the surface, and while that relatively standard scifi anime plot is not quite as great as what came before, it’s still good and the subtext remains interesting, and while the production values take a minor hit, it’s still a looker. And most importantly, by that point I already loved the show and when you love something, it takes more than a little plot detour to fall out of love. And unlike most of these shows that drop the ball towards the end, the ending ending is really strong and satisfying - Flip Flappers is no Kyousougiga, because it neither nosedives as hard nor relies on the plot as much to make any sense at all. It’s not perfect, but I wasn’t expecting perfection from this leftfield passion project to begin with so it’s all good. Not quite enough to be the best of the year (Rakugo looms large), but easily the best of the season. Highly recommended.