#let's be honest: this would happen

[benevolenterrancy]

Scholarly peak is catching up on recent literature

[bleue-flora]

Wait... Dream was born on August 12, 1999 and Dream was arrested in the Disc Finale on January 20, 2021 soo... wait, wait, wait, that means he was only 21 when he was imprisoned for life in a small lava covered box!... Did I do that math right? 21?! Man was barely able to drink legally in the United States and they gave him a life sentence in a boiling cell with nothing but lava, raw potatoes, a clock, and some books?!... oh my god...

[endless-nightshift]

Heaven officials blessing version of this. They fill me with joy <3

[bugflies00]

perhaps its just the toxic inniterisms but he was SIXTEEN and idk it just makes me really fucking angry. im glad that he's now grown up and more confident and clearly fine enough to talk about it pretty calmly but like. that was a fucking kid and he deserved better even just from what we know publicly, and given his allusions to how "horrible" some people were to him well. i think the death by hammers is justified

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[raddestrose]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN

AHHHHHHHHH

it comes out so soon too

[front-facing-pokemon]

[lilnasxvevo]

A fic that looks like it’s about to be a Wangxian kid fic because WWX is seriously considering adopting A-Yuan because all of A-Yuan’s living relatives are too old or too sick to take care of him except for Wen Qing, who is an ER doctor and just simply does not have the time to do that and be a single parent of a little kid, so maybe, because A-Yuan loves you so much, Wei Ying, you could adopt him, and then what’s left of his birth family could still stay in his life…

But HERE COMES JIANG WANYIN WITH A STEEL CHAIR and a “We could get fake married and I could help you take care of A-Yuan, it’s not fair that you should have to give up your nephew just because this country has so few accommodations for single parents, I’m really good with kids (probably) I’ve always wanted to be a parent (kinda) and it’ll be a totally 100% platonic marriage because I’m DEFINITELY not secretly in love with you” and then the rest of the fic is chengqing fake relationship AU

[epickiya722]

I'm calling it and I hope I'm wrong about it.

If Gege drops a backstory for Sukuna, folks are still going to be like "well, it's not the backstory I want for him".

[jadelemonadee]

give me a complex rundown of samuels personality in your mind when i say complex i mean complex like 3 paragraphs

shiiiit okay here we go fasten your seatbelts (guys idk if i’ll be able to stretch this shit out into three paragraphs but I DID get the best score on my essay about bottled water for a standardized test soo…,) also im going to be stealing a lot of stuff from genius annotations and other things beware

ALRIGHT HERE WE GO so how i see him personally is just this annoying, stuck up guy who is the #1 george III glazer (/j) + he views himself as above the revolutionists and sees them as these vulgar barbarians who are trying to lead people to “the dark side” (don’t let them lead you astray) BUUUT although he acts all righteous, hamilton pushes him off of that high horse of his (and almost his box…,literally) with his AWESOME EPIC WITTY writing and argumentative skills showing that seabury wasn’t even all that in the first place (and NOT ELOQUENT!!!! cmon man you can’t be acting all high and mighty and then epically lose a debate to someone young enough to be your son HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE THAT 19 YEAR OLD DOES IT FOR YOU😭😭) another thing ive noticed is that whenever hamilton speaks there’s little to no instruments in the background maybe showing that he doesn’t even need music for support of his arguments and to completely obliterate samuel (just listen to the instrumental trust…….idk where im going with this alright it’s 12:10 as im typing this part)

okay some other things i want to add are little details about this whole shabang like how seabury’s accent seems almost forced, as if he’s trying to create similarities between him and the beloved figure of his majesty (/sar 😛) and the fact that seabury went by the name A.W. farmer in his papers about the revolution which IN THE MUSICAL could maybe be another example of my previous point since one of the king’s nicknames was “farmer george” (although as far as i know it was used some with political satirists….SAMUEL FCS DO SOME RESEARCH BEFORE MAKING YOUR KING GEORGESONA OR SMTH😭😭😭) secondly i really like the detail that lin had both seabury and the king’s songs both include instruments like the harpsichord + they both use formal vocabulary meanwhile The Revolution People (TM) use more modern slang + instruments in their songs, showing the growing contrasts and conflicts between the loyalists and patriots!!!! so cool we love you LMM anywho also the fact that seabury soon realizes after hamilton starts interrupting him that he won’t be able to beat hamilton with words so he might as well try to physically get ahead of him (pushing the box in front of him ect ect) and then doing his big “FOR SHAME” near the end as a last resort, “modulating the key” as they call it /j (this one was said by thayne himself) lastly just the fact that you can hear the guys making barking and whining noises after hamilton makes his epic mange joke….,,like that’s so silly i love that for them

i did it i technically did three paragraphs ARE YOU HAPPY ANON /j

[ramenwithbroccoli]

hey. turns out there's a wholeass robot i keep forgetting to post about besides it's rapid development so ughh

meet Bernie!

originally named Bernadetta (but she just goes by Bernie) it was build in 1949, with strong mechanisms destined for factory work and a red matter core installed at the back of her head - to keep it as high and far away from dangerous tools and chemicals as possible. it did great in it's work - until a tragedy from the shoreline made general attitudes more and more hostile towards the "robots"

after the story of Giewont broke the news, Bernie's work got tougher as people all around her either feared or outright despised her for what she was. when one day it finally fought back against the harassment, her anger was too great to control. it ended up seriously injuring two of her co-workers and losing its job

with no place in the world that deemed her dangerous, she stuck to the only thing that brought her relief - anger. with all the injustice that happened to her, she decided to pin the blame on the one who started it all - Giewont. it didn't help that her now biggest enemy escaped the country and was never caught. Benrie promised itself to get its revenge one way or another, resentment getting worse with each day she was stuck in the smoking ruins of a hostile country while Giewont left god knows where.

but there was another thing that kept her going. messing around with nothing to life for, Bernie found refuge in creating films. hanging around the producers and actors, perfecting the craft, it found itself amongst the creative group of people who inspired each other. and she drank it all in, sticking out even more from the crowd - if that's even possible with a plasma-ball like head. she also picked up a fancy for motorcycles :]

still, the general public opinions on robots didn't change. that's why it found itself on a mission - to Make Them Understand. because surely, once everyone knows the Truth, they wouldn't treat her so bad. they would know better.

set on her quest to create a movie conveying the Absolute Truth, it found itself in a role of a screenwriter and a director - still, no actors could play their roles as well as she imagined. and so, it's still lead on by three things that power her - revenge, inspirstion and the need to Show Them All

but behind it all. she's still such a loser<3

bonus under the cut:

midnight meme redraw because her ego is fragile as shit<3

[iamhereinthebg]

This may be a strange question but have you ever been bullied in the tbhk fandom? I am having a hard time here

Heya no worries at all for the question! This is an important thing and if you needed to have a place to say it I am happy you did!

I really hope people will be nicer to you :// There is never a good reason for bullying unfortunately it happens a lot on internet QvQ my only advice would be to block those people and/or delete anonymous asks for a while if people are just putting stuff as anonymous :///

To answer your questions, idk if it counts as bullying but I was the target of some stuff like that yep, and tbh I don't really know why. People can have the opinions they want but I will be honest in the tbhk fandom you like a character or a ship that is not 'what everyone in the fandom should like' and people start menacing you for no reason.

A lot of people in this fandom are kids who sometimes don't get what insulting people do. (and not only kids but it is one of the reason, I feel like a lot don't have 'internet basis' like not saying everything about yourself on twitter help.)

Which is also one of the reason I am taking my distances with anyone in this fandom because I had too many unwanted stuff like when I was just trying to be nice and answer messages. It's not because we are in the same fandom that we are bffs.

This is sad to say but yes I don't think you can just have fun 'fun' in this fandom anymore, people will make sure you have a hard time for no reason and honestly I am tired of people who are unable to understand that we aren't just bots on the internet and that Surprise! people have feelings wow

I hope you will be better but don't hesitate to take some time off the fandom a bit ^^ I am being overly dramatic here because I had some bad experiences (I've been in the fandom since the start of 2020 so welp) but a lot of people are really nice and I am sure you can make some friends too ^^ (I did too! even if a lot aren't in the fandom anymore, it's nice seeing mutuals from far away doing their lives)

[laney-rockin]

Bradward Boimler is the type of person that, when made captain, makes his entire bridge staff run an entire hypothetical movie scenario as a training/team-building exercise.

I'm running off pure vibes here. He would 100% do it in my heart of hearts.

[fusionsprunt]

dang.. so bee spent all this time getting back to her "home" (as you siad is not really her home) just to never feel anything again? to realize that the pepole she cared about and loved on fusionsprunt and on that planet and the happness she felt while being a robot/ humaniod being she would never feel again..

and she didn't know that reaching the point of becoming the comet again she would feel this way? this is so sad to me. if she cant think anything. if shes just there, like an infinite object, AND SHE CAN NEVER GO BACK EVEN IF SHE WANTED TO? 'PFJBKNSLGPDOJLVDSFJ (MB for the rant starbs, sorry if this makes no sense i panicked)

.

[waddles-ex-machina]

alright place your bets folks

[possamble]

Do you have any plan to make some kind of bonus chapter or oneshot about marcille's perspective in little creature? It's not like I'm asking you for it ofc!! it's just that i think it'll be interesting to read, and especially since you had those tags about marcille after her fight/outburst with falin and how you couldn't add it to the fic because the fic is from falin's perspective

Probably not about anything that happens during a little creature, but maybe something before or after? Sometimes I do like to do "the other character thinking back to events while doing stuff in a sequel" oneshot type thing, but we'll see how it shakes out!