#like let a female writer write about the female characters on this particular aspect of the show

[tryingtimi]

Books of 2024 (in no particular order)

Hi, hello dears! Since I’m out here trying to bring back things, I’ll give a shot to this one too from last year. The “rules” were to list 9 books you’ve read and loved this year, and boy I’ve got recs to gush about. (somehow I could read 40+ books which is just insane)

No pressure tagging: @bloodlessheiratnight, @the-void-writes, @barbex, @indigowriting, @aalinaaaaaa, @approximately20blorbos, @wildswrites, @dyrewrites, @odysseywritings, @jadefyre, @goldfinchwrites, @sodaliteskull, @astarlightmonbebe, @tc-doherty, @forthesanityofstorytellers and anyone who’d like to join!

So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole. ya fantasy, Jamaican-inspired, dragon riders, M/F and F/F focus

God I wanted to yap about this one for so long. This book literally got me back to reading, so naturally it became an instant fav and a life-changing book. And, honestly, gave me hope for some YA since I’m not the audience for those usually. The setting is as breathtaking as fresh within the genre, and the story is a very exciting one with all the dragon riding, the academy and the gods that would loan their power. Not to mention the characters which I surprisingly grown to love very much. (And man the romance part made me kick my feet and squel in excitement at some point). So yeah, give it a try please all. Like, now.

Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui. non-fic, great audiobook, title says all

The read that rekindled my love for swimming and being in the water. A very interesting little book about incredible lives that were saved by or moved by swimming and the waters, while it also shows light on some beneficial aspects that not everyone might know. It’s a half memoir/biography too, but that part wasn’t as impactful I’d say. However the rest did make a strong impression on me so I’d recommend this to everyone who wants to know whats the swimming and water crazed people’s deal.

Jade City by Fonda Lee epic&urban fantasy, east-asian martial art movies and the godfather vibes, grimdark

And here we come with the big guns. I didn’t know this story is gonna be the second all time fav fantasy series on my list, nor that Fonda’s gonna become the tradpub female writer idol for me, but life’s just that unpredictable. Seriously, this book has me by the throat and I don’t want the grip to soften. All that you can imagine from the bleak, smoke filled gangster life to the flying-jumping double kicks of Michelle Yeoh, it’s in it. The story also very heavily leans onto the political intrigue, and lore aspect so keep that in mind. Oh and the best ever erotica (for my taste personally) is sprinkled around there casually too, so there’s that.

Penance by Eliza Clark litfic, fake-true crime, thriller

I was never a true crime girlie, but I was a litfic one. This book is kind of a satire about how true crime impacts people, especially teenage girls, and what's up with the obsession over it. It also explores where reality and fiction blurrs, and how that can impact lives. A brutal read, in my opinion, and I ate it up in two days smh. Also, I'm going to be real honest with y'all here; I was very confused at the beginning because I never read a fake investigated interview/essay before, so I completely believed it to be true (even tho I found it in the fiction genre). So yes, Eliza Clark is brilliant in that sense, will definitely check out her other books, and will never forget the true tragedy she based the crime in the book. Oh and when she brought up tumblr and tumblrinas in the book... ugh.

Cultish by Amanda Montell. non-fic, great audiobook, title says it all

2024 was the year of litfic and non-fic on my end, or at least I tried and am still trying to get back to them. This one was a very interesting book about cults and how cult leaders use language as a tool to create their communities. Or, well, not just them but everyone. I love learning about how and why we use language as we do, and I also love learning about anything cult related even tho they make my skin crawl. This book luckily did justice on both ends.

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. litfic, fake-rockumentary, fleetwood mac/stevie nicks-inspired

Continuing my march on the "reading the books my favourite series and movies are based upon" journey. Daisy Jones is something that was great in book, but excellent on tv. The whole fiasco and the documentary part works better on screen I think, especially after they literally wrote, produced, sang and perfomed songs. Like what the hell. Still listening to the songs cuz some of them are peak 70s. However, the book and the series has the same vibe, so that's why I could enjoy both. (not to mention it inspired me too) What I would really highlight tho, it’s Simon’s story in the series because my god I love her so much. Sometimes even wish it would have been about her than Daisy, lol.

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang. (ya) historical fantasy, very heavy war stuff, chinese mythology

It's not ya, okay? There are elements that match that, but overall, it's just not. What the book (and the whole series) actually is tho, is a raw portrayal and an essay about the horrors of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and what went down there, coated with a touch fantastical world and some magical/mythical elements. Loved the first book to pieces. This one might be the closest to ya, with all the academy time, the hint of enemies to whatevers, but only up until the half of the book. After that it blurrs and morphs. Still, the whole series is the most educational fantasy I've ever read, and will always keep the first book as a favourite. It's something everyone should read at least once, I think. But never ask me about the last installment.

The Red Palace by June Hur. ya historical fantasy, mystery, romance

Imagine a book that literally reads like a korean period drama. I mean, literally. Funny enough, I needed a second try to get to this book, but after that, oh man it checked all the boxes. It's easy to read, a fun little murder mystery in the palace, and a great experience if you're a kdrama junkie like me. I still think about this book from time to time, and will read all the other works from the author for sure. (fun fact: the royal family stuff are usually historically accurate because that's June Hur's whole sthick, which i love that for her)

We Will Devour The Night by Camilla Andrew. gaslamp fantasy, court intrigue, light vs dark, some impeccable erotica

We all know and love Cammie. And trust to bring an amazing next installement to the The Essence of the Equinox. I loved the book to pieces, because it contained everything I'd crave in a continuation. An interesting and gorgeous expanded world, escalating political intrigue and a ton of great character interactions. While, of course we still got to spend time with our best girl Laila, and best dick Darius.

[stangeranfanficion]

So….. The New TF2 comic came out.

My opinion on it? TW SUICIDE/SUICIDE IMAGERY

Thanks, therapist from Scott the Woz episode Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash | The Darker Age of Nintendo. I do feel the same way about this comic. My wife? Missing. The retcons? Plentiful. The Overall lack of care or understanding of these characters I grew to love? OH BOY, IT'S ALL HERE!! It's all on a hastily rushed-feeling package too, despite it being around what? Eight years? 

While that was a bit hyperbolic, I honestly feel there are themes and ideals I like in here. It isn’t bad if you are a casual Tf2 fan or if you mainly only enjoy the mercs and don’t reread the same four blog posts about a single micro detail on why Saxton Hale would smell like swamp gas. I do not want this post to be taken as the writers are evil human beings who personally look at my ideas on admin and personally rub their hands together and say yes kill that one single person. I personally don’t think it is a moral crime to make bad media. I don't want this to be turned into a Steven Universe rant video that tries to claim Rebecca Sugar caused every horrible world event. Anything like the first paragraph is more so written in hyperbolic because I am bad at dictating tone in text without spelling it out. However, I will make some personal claims about how some aspects of tf2 writing in this comic, in particular, is kinda not great in the sense that it feels misogynistic. Not claiming the writers are just saying it feels like it and I feel should be pointed out on how to not write female characters. 

However, let me like first point out on what I did like about the comic in a small list.

Olivia Mann's aged-up design is so cute! She would run Tumblr like the Navy on her options on why Starlight Glimmer sucks and terrorize people on Neopets.

I thought the art was WONDERFUL. I personally love the framing of this comic and a lot of the scenes feel so intense. The one scene with Admin digging the grave up was so chilling, the covers are wonderful, with three whole renders to boot! So please remember when I criticize some events in the comics, this isn't at the artist drawing these scenes. Hell please do what they did with Showdown and release the version without words so we can see the full art.

We have a new cute old lady from TFI, shes uber cute and stuff.

I’m glad for the Tribute, Rip fligh high soldier Rick May.

I am really glad they at least teased Admin Pauling (not the ship the idea that Miss Pauling would be the new Administrator of TFI) I always loved the idea that Miss Pauling was a loss end for her and wanted her to become the next “Admin” figure in Helen’s life. How fan art interpreted this idea before the final comic was amazing especially that one piece with the gun and Miss Pauling shooting herself. It was always a really powerful comic so shout out to that artist.

I liked seeing the inside world of TFI. I still have major issues with it and how the fuck this makes sense and also how they handled the interworlds of it but I like it was included because I genuinely thought TFI was fully reconned.

Sniper supports stealing planes (:

I like that we got comic-relevant Merasmus even tho I hate him being buff now. However it was nice they didn’t forget his nickname T-bone.

I support the opinion that Admin keeps bees. She would love those lil fuckers. Thank you, comic for actually putting in a new piece of admin lore I like.

And that's about it, really. Everything else in it was just an “okay,” or what I like to call “oh no, girl.” 

To me i already had an off relationship with the tf2 comics, or at least the mainline comics. I never really fully connected to the storys presented within mainline. I was always never really liked them and even with the details I did like where usually quished between 10 more pages I didn’t. Which I think is fine. TF2 seems like a game where not even the writers seem fully on the same page and you know what I’m fine with that. I been in worst fandoms with that type of shit (ex Harry Potter fan) and honestly to me I personally enjoy seeing in what fans make with theses characters. If we  we didn’t allow for different interpretations of these characters we couldn’t get things like tf2 freaks nor short storys like Emenis Blue. But the TF2 comics are bit different from lets say the tf2 updates comics these comics claim they would be the main storyline of tf2 and that just kinda feels not great to me. Mainly because with how much of tf2 you could never really wrap up the entire story line to please everyone. That fact isnt really helped that their was a 8 year time gap between comics. So to say I came in with low expectations on how much I would like this comic was low. Not saying the whole fandom but me as the one really hyper obsessed Admin tf2 fan who ships her with a character who has never even canonally connected nor talked to her. So if you hear me make any opinion you dont like you can always say counter point: adminsniper fan.

But to simply say, I was extremely disappointed in this comic and the lore presented to one character in particular. 

Helen, Elizabeth, or even the now canon Emily (another thing I did like to see) is probably my most beloved TF2 character by a long shot. To understand she is the TF2 character I have a whole file dedicated to on my computer and also the album I have most pictures saved of any tf2 character other than sniper who gets a past because AdminSniper (™). The second neopet I have ever created is Administrator_TF2 with an script that makes her just speak in Admin TF2 quotes. And like don’t take this as “I’m a better fan compared to you unwillful reader” take it more so as “man how wasn’t I diagnosis with autism 5 years ago.” To me Admin was a dearly connected character to my heart just because shes silly. She is in fact the ultra hater who is so petty she caused those two men to fight forever. Shes a fun character who just overall a nassy lil bitch who personally seems to make it so she ruins everyone elses days for her own motives. The personal detail that made me truely fall in love however was in the tf2 comic post “Gift Abuse: The Gift That Keeps on Abusing” is the detail that on her annual hour-long vacation what she does is go out to feed the pigeons just to cause them to battle in a war and planted seeds of doubt within their leaders and now is planning to take away their bread. That is what I truely love about her. It just seems shes just really to do any means just to cause shit. One headcanon that I personally love is that she just lied in Showdown just to cause shit between Heavy and Pyro for not having the funds to help both of them. To me personally thats what I just love about her she just seems very much within her own motives and doing things to get her own way in the end.

So why am I not happy with what they with her. I got exactly what I wanted…Right? I got Admin being the worlds most petty bitch. You can’t get more petty than having some guy fully be entranced by watching his worst nightmare play out for eternity. This is perfect- Right?

Wellllllll idk. In theory the ideas presented in the comic I like. The idea that admin lived so long that she doesn’t even know why she is doing this is a good idea. It fits into the ideas set up with how pointless the gravels wars is with how pointless admin is doing this to a probaby not even ghost possessed corpus. I also like how it didn’t remove her pettiness. I was never really interested in even learning her huge ass plan I was more entertained by the overall story of her just ruining everyone elses live that when Zeph is dead for the first time we see her truely in what seems to be true happiness. But why in practice does it feel so hallow to me. Like yeah, in theory I love every single bit of this this is pure and healthy admin goodness. This is great! If Zeph was an actually character I gave a single shit about.

To be honest, Zeph was a more interesting character in death than he was in life. At best of times he was boring. At worst of time he was the most uninteresting character in the room. Even his eras Saxton Hale, Barnabus Hale had more going on. He showed remorse to Brette (who lets remind people is related to Darling!) after her death. He seems genuienly broken up about compared to anyone else. Zeph is just seems indifferent and just like going though the motions. Basically any themes with him wanting his sons compete and become a true Mann was handled better I feel with Admin or in this time Elizabeth. I’m not saying he was a bad character due to his role in the story. Sometimes a character needs a two dimensional dad character just to help get the ball roling so you can see “yeah….that’s how they ended up.” It just like I don’t really even care for him, he wasn’t really interest nor really have a connection with Helen at all. Compared this with Hale’s family we see one of the first people in the US with a Phoneline is her and she is made VERY clear on coal town with the “if SHE calls” go to to Bilious Hale. Yeah it is true that Helen was hired by him it doesn’t really seemed like a really connection. Like yeah she got the Austerlium but its either your sons you know are about to kill the other or the man who fights animals every day in the wilderness. They didn’t really established anything outside of “she works for him” and “she hates his sons.” Their needed to be more set up to even let me fully give a damn on why I should start to care. 

“But but her parents died!!!!”

Oh god not that. Ok look, I ain’t against the idea of “to make a cartoon villain motives make sense, one must give them a uber tragic backstory on how there parents died.” But man, after Book of Bill basically pulled off the what now feels like an overdone trope that been beaten to death, I couldn’t give a single damn. If you could find one for me please give it because sadly I can’t find it. I have sadly grown tired of how creators think to make their villains now super deep and a complex character is by giving them dead parents. I am so tired. Somehow admin was so inspired by Cruella de Vil that they even ripped off her new backstory in the Cruella (2021) stupid ass backstory. Which is in fact a bold new choice that they infact did! I do think it is cool/a cool idea that admin probably can’t remember why her parents died. However it doesn't change the fact that it is still an overused trope that feels more like a rush job that tries to explain why Helen hated Zeph in the quickest speedrun possible. It feels unearned, I don’t even care if Helen had a motive; hell, her motive could have been when she was ten, Zeph called her fursona cringe, and I would have dined in that. This also doesn’t help in why Baby Admin was in that australium rod at the end of comic 6. Because now it doesn’t even make logical sense if she knew about it if she was a kid and had no connection to Zeph. Again to me this new motive and backstory feels like a kick in the face to me. It was already web established that it just seemed Helen was already a shady ass person. Like so much the wiki for the longest time has an unsourced fact that apparently, admin had control of every single world government at one point. Which is such a fascinating fact if it is true. Even then you could have just stated that the Mann family was just unlucky. She already saw potential unrest within the family and used it as an opperutinty of just to raise in status, to issue control better. Or more phrased better to have an affinity to violence, just like our favorite mercs. She was one of the first tf2 characters of the 10, you just couldn’t see her. She probably saw the newspaper to see a mother who recently died of an incredibly rich and successful family and just decide to fuck with them. It is not personal, just like how when the mercs kill it doesn’t seem personal until war. Would Zeph really see her cause wars between pigeons in the park? Was it needed to join every world government when she was already controlling the economy with her shell corps? Is she seeing that in her head? Or is it just that she craves blood? Not of Manns, or Hales, or anyone in the world. She is alive out of spite, of something in her that can’t be fed. Just like how the mercs go out and fight the same endless war, respawning after death over and over again for what? Things to make them better at killing? For things to just show your enemies you better as you blow off their heads?  And I think that's just more interesting than just another her parents died to him. She just craves violence just like the mercs so why judge her. Why judge her when they do the same, in the same ideal of pointless killing just to see your enemies suffer? She is the symbol of capitalism with Hale as the environmental impacts and Grey as the rapid growth of tech and how people waste their money on it. She's the untamed bull of Wall Street. The need to keep expanding and expanding while hurting those under her just for more power and greed. As she said herself “Greed is Good”.

But NOOOOOOOO, that's stupid. We need a new trendy backstory that people like already. And so Admin gets a dead mom. This is how tf2 makes complex characters; give them daddy issues! All jokes aside, I do not like this backstory. Again, it feels forced and more so a speedrun on actually explaining why she does the things she does, which feels unearned. I feel this would be a lot better if the first Admin backstory drop section aka the first time she met Zeph was a whole new comic. Call it Bloodlines or something and give us a reason why Admin and Zeph even have a relationship in the first place. Then reveal the twist in the final comic, and that feels 100% more earned than just infodumping everything making it feel like admin randomly got a motive from the thinnest of air. Give us anything idk even just show them at a Christmas party talking about the weather, I can't even confirm if they shared a single word before this point. 

Next, another reason I don’t like this backstory is just how TF2 treats its female characters, all four of them. I’m not going to sit here and say that TF2 was actually the pinnacle of writing women. It had a lot of flaws, especially the mainline comics, which basically introduced female characters just to use them as development fodder (Mags) or just to ship off one character (Zhanna). Even then we only had two main female characters that weren't just mothers of the mercs that we knew for the longest time. These two were Miss Pauling and Admin who in the start were just “loud angry prone to loving violence old lady and the more meek assistant who trying to turn things around and get that big promotion.” So they were perfect for being the shady figures behind the scenes. Over time they got more developed with Miss Pauling exploring her relationships with the mercs and Admin’s own dark history. However the TF2 comics seems purposely uninterest in the lore which make it feels like Admin to alot of people was one note. Even When Pauling got out of her bubble Admin’s main personally traits were locked away in 6 second voice lines or again on the blog posts. However with that small pieces we do have it seems Admin is independent in her own cruelty, Helen didn’t have a central man in her story. She caused pain because she found it fun just like our favorite mercs. Even tho Showdown had Heavy as the main star I feel it characterized Admin greatly in how she interacts with people WAY outside her circle of professionalism. She truely forherself realizes how much shes surrounded by idiots and now just using them to fuel her own love of conflict it makes her so joyious. She is incredibly smart and truely has everything in her control and willing to take herself out and everyone around her with the ticking time bomb on her watch. However I think the face when Heavy says what he really wants really tell her though process here. Also this also supports the admin just like chaos theory with her at the end laughing at the idea of Heavy and Pyro killing the other.

Admin was a character who made alot of impact even when she wasn’t the main focus. Which draws into her independence as a full fleshed out character. She was mapulitive Which felt nice, again having your female characters who are just obsessed with their male counterparts is great. Admin could be violence and mean and down right cruel and disgusting without some mysterious outside force causing it. However the last comic drops and OH BOY they reduced her entire character to an obsession with one man! A man who never even shared a single line with her is actually the apple of her eye. A toxic yuriyaoi if you will but god why. Expically sense this comic line has alot of issues with introducing female characters just to be something for the male character. Like Mags being just used to help develop Saxton (sorry saxton fans but he shouldn’t been in the comic that much) or Zhanna who while I do love just gotta admit feels like she was added just to keep soldier as a main character vs others like Demoman. My friend said my own feeling on the matter best with this very simple quote so shout out to Thrn from neopets “personally not a fan of the reduction of her character to obsession with one dude.” Which yeah thats what happened to Admin and like I am upset from that. Again her “haterism” was to the world at large, yeah she a horrible person to the Mann family but like I dont think a character who have said this before “How I do love the holiday season. A time of year that makes the sweet things in life seem so much the sweeter. A time when ignoring the mournful cries of a litter of famished puppies provides the deep satisfaction of labored accomplishment. A time when delivering a sharp kick to the exposed shin of a desperate beggar takes on a certain character of charity. A time when sending one's witless minions repeatedly to their deaths at the hands of their equally witless enemies provides an unrivaled and noble joy. “ really is just made at one guy I think theirs more there. It feels very deleberte like it isn’t just a bad pattern. It feels  misogynistic with the now three times the charm pattern. Again I get that TF2 is a series that isn’t known to write woman but it sad to see one of the few characters that were important enough to get a whole comic dedicated to her now is probaby going to get fandomifed and make her whole personality around one guy. Which I am not happy with. Already Mags and Zhanna struggle to make personalities shine in fan media. Hell you could even claim Olivia was primarily only known for being the daughter to Grey Mann and now having a father in Saxton. She didn’t even get a personally or any real moment to shine even tho with her orange eyes it might imply she was an australium baby. Again if this wasn’t a pattern of introducing a female character just to act as a prop in Olivias case, some admire of a guys affection (Zhanna), or just to be used as a tool to develop another character (Mags), then I wouldn’t proababy be here calling this misogynistic but because I feel this is a pattern that it needs to be called out. 

The final point I want to make is that I just truely didn’t like the Helene commits and success in suicide. Now please undersyand I do not struggle with suicide or suicide idealation. I probably more so struggle with undiagosied ocd and intrusive thoughts. Because of this I do not feel comfortable claiming if this was good representation of these real mental health issues. The only think I say I got some weird being seen moments from Admin with her obsession of Zeph feeling less like she wants to torture and more like the worlds worst ocd mental breakdown. In this case I will in fact start lying to myself Admin canonally have OCD and Autism #win. I also don’t think its a bad idea perchance. It humanizes her in a way that we the readers fully never seen. It’s a powerful scene to show how much her obession with this man has gone. But I just don’t know, reading that scene felt like a slap in the face. A full rewrite of her character to be focused onto one man and never going to have her own motives for pure malice again. I just feel hallow reading it. And not like in the I am sad that Admin is committing suicide but more so I’m upset they took my favorite character and turned her into just one thing. Her obsession with one guy. Already I said I didn’t like mainline, mainly how some characters like Demo was written. One such character was Admin. I felt it was fine but just off like more so in the way only a simpsons gag of “I hope somebody got fired for that blunder” type shit (also I didn’t like her young shes hotter when old like a fine wine). But now? Im fucking pissed at this scene. It is the scene that stapled any chance of admin having an interesting motive and plot and replaced it with the generic stock villain plotline revenge treat we been seeing for decades. I think what made the straw break the full spine of the camel was the weird recton with Admins iconic white streak actually being from Australium magic after she dies which is rectoning the Loose Canon comic AND the FUCKING PICTURE AT THE END OF THE SAME COMIC IT WAS INTRODUCED IN. It even rectons the LORE WRAPUP COMIC. You know the comic thats supposed to help wrap people up onto the same page? Not anymore its outdate! Which shows the underlying issue that the TF2 mainline comics seems to have, they seem very uninterested about the characters and complex arcs they are presenting. The TF2 lore characters are so much more complex and need more screentime because of that. A lot of them characters that come from trauma or are within a family the actively wants to kill the other and tear the other down. However it seems like the writing seems very uninterested in actually like treating the characters like people. The comic seems way to “Oops did I just do that?” to the camera and spent more time with very unfunny toilet humor as a source of dangling keys. 

This is why I partly I don’t like this scene, it symbolizes why I don’t like this comic, the reduction of Admin’s character into easily to swallow tropes, the overall lack of care clearly put into the overall TF2 lore, and just how so much had to recton that the “Adminastors mystery” felt less like your putting clues together to try and find that end goal into “what are they going to pull out of a hat and recton now!” It just feels incomplete….SO TAKE A WILD GUESS WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I WAS WRITING.

So….It was incomplete, they ripped out so much to try and squeeze in some extra time for the “main characters” which isn’t g r e a t. Again this supports how little the writing seems interested in these lore characters. They will be push aside for hit or miss jokes that either you will like or hate. This I feel was a bad final send off and just over all very lacking. We bearly had any loose ends finally tied off and actually makes some things make less sense now with retrospect. Which just make Zeph feel even more useless because its clear they didn’t care so why sould I you know? But I think Ill take my peace before I start infodumping on every single micropixal with my funny purple lady.

So I don’t have much else to say other than just repeating the same points over and over on how the writers clearly didn’t know what to do. And that's okay, I feel, at least rn when I'm writing Adminsniper I’m going to have a hell of a time. But right now I don’t feel malice at the writers. They don’t deserve hate or death threats or anything just for writing what I think is a bad comic. Im just more so trying to say please be normal you are upset like I am. However, I not saying you personally reading my words behind that screen needs to suddenly force themselves to like this comic. Because I feel that gets us nowhere it just ends up people trying to like something they hate and ends up a big mess that causes 300 years of fandom discourse for people trying to cause others to force them to like it. I don’t care you see this comic as the next coming of christ good for you if ya do. Hell I wish I liked it, its a huge event for everyone in the community but yet why do I feel so hallow. I feel less like a critic and more so like a spoiled child at the birthday party for not liking a comic. Which is why I just saying, this comics ain’t just the single tf2 canon. They are one remixing of the Tf2 lore and maybe hopefully I can get to see great rewrites in the future. All that I’m asking for to be normal. This isn’t a post to spread hate but to share my own ideals. 

Thank you very much, and remember, older admin is hotter than younger. Sorry, not sorry.

Anyways here this is me.

[rifleseye]

𝐆𝐄𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐃𝐌𝐈𝐍.

NAME. Raphael / Cyrus / Percy (to a select few) PRONOUNS. He/Him SEXUALITY. Gay SINGLE / TAKEN. Recently single

𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐒.

— If you ever go to an art museum with me I will be able to tell you everything you need to know about the art there. I love art so much. I'm going to be doing volunteer work at one of my favorite museums over the summer which I'm looking forward to :^)

— I act! Last season I played the Ghost of Christmas Present for my local theater's rendition of A Christmas Carol. I was sick as a dog during the showings, however. Nightmare. I've an audition coming up next week that the Director wants me in so I'm excited for that.

— I wanted to be an astronomer as a kid but I have dyscalulia And bad eyesight (not good when you didn't know you needed glasses during an observational cosmology course) so unfortunately that dissuaded me. I'm still interested but it's more so just out of hobby than anything else.

𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄.

HOW LONG. So long. No idea. probably since I was 11. PLATFORMS. So many. My very first was the lego message boards 😂. msprp. pararp. chatzy. skype. facebook. tumblr. discord. i have no prefrence atm between tumblr and discord but i do feel i have an easier time on tumblr sometimes because of like... ask memes and such. also aesthetics... BEST EXPERIENCE. I only talk to one person from the discord anymore but this one Discord rp server I was in for Destiny still holds a special place in my heart. There were a lot of plot driven aspects in it that Really let me flex my writing. I miss the vibe of it if I'm being quite honest.

𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐓𝐘𝐏𝐄.

FEMALE OR MALE OR OTHER. Generally men but I've got a few nb muses on my multi as well as one female character who like... okay i'm gay but if i were to suddenly be homoflexible it'd be for ana amari. i need to save her from overwatch. FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT. i'm a little weird in that i'm not into one specific thing of these three. i'll go where plots take me or where the vibe follows. i'm not overtly fond of Just fluff since it's just too sweet for my taste and i'm a writer who needs substance. and pure angst is also too much at times and is overly meaty, ykwim? smut i'm very particular about and really depends on the muses involved. my perceptor in specific is on the ace spectrum so i'm slow to do anything with him. PLOTS OR MEMES. either or! i tend to plot with people i really jive with and most of the time it's over discord we plot. i've not given out my discord in a hot minute, however, since i've been a bit inactive until recent. i like memes too because i like exercising my writing and some prompts allow me to do that. BEST TIME TO WRITE. my adhd autistic ass does not have a set time i write at. inspiration hits me when it hits me. ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S).

yeah.

tagged. @tacticturn

[sirenalpha]

I am saying that Netflix is addressing it though, they're toning down the misogyny not erasing it and since the show's not out I can't say how well they've achieved this goal only that it's a legitimate one in terms of crafting a better, more consistent narrative

the original show was a cartoon for preteens made in the mid 00s by two white guys who barely understand misogyny

the whole post is about how flawed this aspect of Sokka's character and the show's messaging on misogyny overall is, Sokka's "arc" to unlearn misogyny being something major and important to the character is something that exists in fandom and isn't accurate to what's on screen

the point of Sokka's character is not to unlearn toxic masculinity, this "arc" of his lasts all of 4 episodes and is solely focused on the idea that women can fight and be good at it, no questioning other aspects of how women are restricted, how labor is divided, it's not even about the water tribe's cultures northern or southern or Sokka's personal stereotypically masculine interests which you can tell by the fact Sokka's unlearning isn't brought up at all while in the NWT and his interest in meat, hunting, and being manly isn't questioned at all and continued on through the show, an arc doesn't matter much if it results in no narrative consequences or has a strong counterargument of yeah Sokka insulted Suki but he should still get to kiss and date her

like look at these responses to see what I mean by cartoonish/unrealistic set up, this is what I'm taking about

I can attribute some of Sokka's early set up vs the s1 finale and s3 flashbacks to they literally didn't know they were gonna do that because it's a serialized show, but once you have it Sokka's issues are goofy and it cannot realistically be attributed to him being the only teen male left behind

their tribe has been dwindling and losing their separate non-NWT culture for decades, it's all hands on deck for survival people are gonna break the boundaries of traditional divisions of labor so they can live and on top of that, while sure women can raise sexists (I'm not even advocating for Sokka to exhibit no sexism at all) but I am saying Kanna crossed the whole world to get away from that, that's not having a casual opinion on sexism

it doesn't make sense with Sokka's personal familial and cultural history, and it doesn't make sense for it to be a 4 episode blip for one male character when like I said you see the exact same thing in the EK regarding female benders with absolutely no commentary at all and almost the same in FN and also no commentary

why doesn't Toph say anything about other female benders or ever talk to Katara about this? Why do Toph and Katara never talk about facing Azula literally the only other female bender they've met the whole damn show? why is dealing with or combatting misogyny still about addressing a male character's insecurity with his masculinity and he needs a kiss from the girl who's better than him afterwards to get through it? why can't a male audience hear and see more from a female perspectives on all this as a cure to podcast bros?

Netflix is making a live action show for an older audience in the 2020s with the foreknowledge of the original show already having been finished instead of an ongoing serialized work

if they tone down Sokka's misogyny, they are more aligned with their medium and audience while correcting an inconsistency or potentially a retcon of the original show

but it also leaves them room to say or deal with misogyny in other ways if they don't have to spend time on babysitting Sokka's ego for an episode then letting him go right back to being stereotypically masculine

will they do that or do it well? No idea cuz it's not out and I haven't watched it

but I am saying the original show did a bad job in this area, it's not that important to Sokka's overall character or arc as his insecurities don't have to be intrinsically tied to misogyny or masculinity so Netflix has a legitimate narrative reason to tone down Sokka's misogyny to improve the overall show and handle the messaging around misogyny better

so like I said, this is a non-issue as a statement, it's not destroying Sokka as a character, it does not delegitimize the adaptation

it's also not saying the adaptation will ultimately be good or better than the original show either cuz again it's not out yet, just because they stated a legitimate intention doesn't mean the execution will be any good

I'm seeing so much commentary on people reacting to the live action atla toning down Sokka's misogyny

and I'm over here like this is a total non-issue because in my own rewrite of the show I already did that exact thing, it makes complete sense to do it and they should do it because it's a weaker aspect of the original show

Sokka's early misogyny is utterly cartoonish in comparison to the set up of the rest of the SWT, it doesn't feel realistic for the only teenaged boy in a dying culture surrounded by adult women with a grandmother who left a more out and out misogynist society to act the way he does

how Sokka "resolves" his misogyny is equally cartoonish, I never liked how in The Warriors of Kyoshi literally episode 4 of the show makes a teen girl compromise her own culture with a female only fighting tradition teach a boy who is supremely rude and disrespectful to her and then still be attracted to him afterwards, it's more misogyny to fix misogyny and is very obviously men writing about how to fix misogyny especially as they have Aang make a joke about Sokka wearing a dress after going through how meaningful the fighting costume is and how a lot of Asian clothing with hanfu influences like atla borrows from would have men in what to western eyes would be dresses, Aang has already seen multiple male authority figures in robes, the joke makes no sense

I also wouldn't consider Sokka's misogyny genuinely resolved after this, consider how the show deals with his romantic relationships with both Yue and Suki and how both can be seen as extensions of how Kataang is treated in the show, rewards for the hero, especially with how Sokka interacts aggressively with Hahn instead of respecting Yue's wishes whatever her reasons for them, I think an argument can be made that Yue's death is a fridging for Sokka's storyline rather than or in combination with being a consequence of Aang's failure as an avatar or the culmination of her own storyline where she fulfills her duties as a leader to protect her own people

Beyond his romantic relationships, while Sokka drops a lot of his more misogynistic language with Katara, he doesn't support her when she faces off with the NWT leaders to learn waterbending, and he still leaves the caretaking and food preparation and grocery shopping to her which is more common than him going out to hunt or gather in order to provide for the group while he takes a leadership role like determining their travel schedule and routes, it is not an even division of labor and falls along traditional sex stereotypes

In addition to his typical duties to the group, Sokka also remains invested in the trappings of masculinity after ep4, he's concerned about what's manly and how he compares to Jet for example, there's no investigation or interrogation in his interest in meat and hunting and how they relate to masculinity and his misogyny, in the episode with Piando, his insecurity as a non-bender is resolved by giving him a new male mentor and a new martial skill, sword fighting, which is masculine in both western and Asian cultures rather than assuaging his self esteem issues in any less stereotypically masculine ways, I also think it was done so he could compare more favorably to Zuko, another male character, and even his interest in engineering and mechanics comes with a male mentor and is a traditionally masculine pursuit

the show's poor handling of misogyny also extends beyond Sokka, with the NWT, the show acts as if Pakku is the only reason the tribe is misogynistic and the only consequences to that misogyny is that women can't waterbend and there are arranged marriages, and that both the NWT and Pakku's misogyny is resolved by allowing only Katara to learn to waterbend which she doesn't even earn on her own merits, she gets the opportunity because Pakku likes her grandmother

none of this is realistic, misogyny is not because of one bad apple, Pakku doesn't make Yue's arranged marriage, Chief Arnook does, he picked Hahn for her, and the show acts as if Arnook has no authority to compel Pakku to teach Katara or any ability to persuade him in order to reduce his culpability in the NWT's misogyny as its leader to make him a more respectable character so it's not uncomfortable when Aang and Sokka follow his orders in the battle later on, but women not being able to bend and forced into arranged marriages is still status quo when the gaang leaves, Yue's just dead

I'm not even convinced the show runners understand what's wrong with arranged marriage, the issue is not Yue can't be with Sokka who she likes and at most has a slight crush on cuz she's only known him for like two days, it's that she's being treated as male property, a broodmare, and a vehicle to ensure Hahn receives the throne because her father has no male heir and picked some guy to succeed him instead, like it's not explicit in the show but that is the implication based on the historical reality of princesses in arranged marriages, and the show has her get out of it only through death idc that she ascends to being a spirit, it's still a teen girl that dies

There's also no discussion by the show of the Earth Kingdom's misogyny when it has the exact same shit going on, Toph is the only female earthbender in the show not including avatars, there might have been a female earthbender in the background when Katara broke them out of prison, but I'm not really counting that, the entire army and Dai Li are all made up of men, the EK might even be worse because the show doesn't demonstrate that women and girls even have the capacity to earthbend aside from Toph and avatars and Toph doesn't even learn from a human, she has to learn from animals, the show treats this as commentary on her disability but the show has no compelling reason why it can't also be commentary on her sex, Toph was also originally supposed to be a boy so this could have ended up so much worse there literally would have been no female earthbenders aside from avatars at all, I'm not counting Oma as she might just be a mythological figure not a real person that once lived

The Fire Nation kinda barely avoids the same issue, Azula is the only named female firebender aside from avatars in the show but she has two female sidekicks who despite being non-benders show martial skill and there are clearly female soldiers and guards in the FN military so there are much stronger implications of female firebenders existing and being completely allowed to train their abilities and that Azula isn't exceptional in that respect like Toph is, only for being a prodigy with blue fire

Azula was also originally supposed to have an arranged marriage in s3 and they dropped it in favor of showing that royal and noble girls could casually date in the FN which has wild implications for women's empowerment in the country more so than but especially in combination with the fact women can train and join the military (which is why I say the FN is not fascist it's literally the least misogynistic country aside from Kyoshi and by like a country mile so it's literally not misogynistic enough) not that the show does anything more than minor teen drama with it

again, the vast majority of this misogyny is completely unremarked upon by the show especially after s1 when they leave the NWT, it is clearly a fictional world made by men with no true understanding of misogyny just a vague awareness that misogyny is bad and what the really obvious and outdated examples of it are, this is a narrative inconsistency in the show to have the examples and commentary on misogyny be so cartoonish in the beginning and then disappear after s1

your options to resolve this inconsistency is to either go all in with more realistic misogyny and provide commentary on all of it but this takes effort and will be divisive, or take the easier route and ease off the cartoonish-ness of it and comment less on it to avoid drawing attention to all instances of misogyny in the show

obviously Netflix was gonna do the latter

(not me tho, I'm making it less cartoony and dealing with it in my rewrite)

[dramavixen]

watch this! – delicious romance

How do I describe my appreciation for a show, marketed as a feminist drama, that actually turned out to be a pretty darned good feminist drama? Gone are the days in which I feared such empty promises of compelling female characters, only to be cursed with some of the most obnoxious personalities ever known to womankind. Because now that I know C-dramas are capable of writing women, no one has an excuse to write any more that garbage with a “feminist” label slapped on it. I’m sure many can understand my pain.

Today, I’m officially recommending this drama called Delicious Romance (爱很美味), which just finished airing and ended with as much flourish as it began. And I’m recommending it loudly, because it is extremely, extremely good.

What is it?

A rather short (20-episode) drama centered around three 30-year-old women as they try to find their way through personal struggles in romance, the workplace, and life in general. One is an intelligent and ambitious vice president at her job, another is a naive (note: not stupid) and sweet housewife, and the third is a quirky lady who’s also the picturesque 剩女 – or, “leftover woman.”

Very down-to-earth comedy with its fair share of fun moments. Romance is involved, but the focus is always on the female leads and their growth during their transition into their 30s.

Part of the reason why people outside of China are not aware of this show is because Tencent has horrible priorities has not made a move to subtitle it. But fear not, for I am currently subbing it here; i.e., you now no longer have any excuses to not watch it.

Why watch?

A+ characters – I’m not sure what it is about C-dramas in particular that have a habit of writing boring, unrealistic female characters; but for some reason the entire industry belongs to this hive mind of doing so. You know exactly what I’m talking about – there’s always that female lead who’s sold to us as being really strong or the beacon of justice, and then you really think about it and realize that she’s super useless without the male lead or just a real bitch? Alas, this show has made me see the light: each character, including the supporting characters, is so entertaining to watch. The girl boss is actually a girl boss. The kindhearted one isn’t a pushover. The weird one isn’t a caricature. Bless. I think the great thing about each of these characters is that you can find a little bit of yourself in any one of them. You will have your gripes with them since they’re all rightfully flawed. You will feel bad for them and also cheer them on. This show is built on its characters, and these characters are the strongest of foundations.

What exactly is “girl power”? – There’s this odd misconception about what makes a good female character. Even though I’ve already brought up the characters, I think it’s worth mentioning how effective the feminist aspect of each truly turns out to be. For one thing, each of the leads feels like an actual person; this alone trumps about 80% of the female characters in Dramaland. For another, the way they’re all so different from one another, yet no less deserving of our respect as people, is something that I’m deeply thankful for. I think a lot of female audience members are frequently being forced to think that you can’t be a strong, independent woman without being overbearing. Or, conversely – that being nice or soft automatically makes you weaker. We constantly complain about it as viewers, but writers keep putting female characters into boxes. Gosh darn it, maybe I just want to be a person, you know? This is that show which tells you, yeah that’s fine. You do you, whoever you are.

Noms – Let’s talk food. Many important conversations and revelations happen when the characters are eating, and a lot of food metaphors are also utilized. This might just be a me thing, but this is actually one of my biggest biases when it comes to storytelling. I absolutely adore scenes where a character is eating something, and they suddenly feel like it’s okay to be vulnerable in the face of whatever is troubling them. By which I mean, I cry every time.

Intensely meta – This is a very self-aware show. It will constantly take tropes and clichés and turn them on their heads; then it’ll take that and turn it on its head again. It’s incredibly comedic but also a great lesson in creativity. There are more effective ways at delivering clichés than just...using them. So, yeah, I think my time watching low-effort rom-coms has officially ended. Welp. I won’t miss them.

Please stop telling me to get married – I don’t know if the poster in which they’re all donning wedding dresses might’ve been a hint, but marriage is a huge central theme. I mentioned the concept of “leftover women” in the beginning. So this is a really fun term – if you’re a woman in your mid- to late-20s and not married or are to be married soon, then you’re already considered a leftover woman. Yes, as in, “no one will want to marry you because you’re too old.” The way the drama goes about critiquing this term is both very interesting and incredibly positive. Frequently, the gut reaction to being called a “leftover woman” is for said woman to show in what other respects she’s been “successful.” For example, maybe she’s made great advancements in her career. Basically, she has “legitimate” reasons for not being married. I’m very thankful to this show for not relying on that. It will bring up that, yes, some careerwomen will delay getting married to focus on their job. However, it does not look down on women who may be single simply because they don’t want to get married, or aren’t ready to handle a relationship. Shout it from the rooftops! We don’t need an excuse for not being married! (Mom, please stop telling me to find a boyfriend.)

TL;DR please watch this quality drama, especially if you’re looking for one that’s easy on your heart without being stupid. Missing out would be the shame of all shames.

[avelera]

“Break the Cutie” aka Whedon’s just writing his fetish over and over and people are just beginning to figure that out

(Title from TV tropes “Break the Cutie” trope of the same name)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the latest “reveals” about Joss Whedon, namely, that his take on certain superhero franchises is just objectively bad (as someone who loathes “Age of Ultron”, this comes as no surprise to me) and the even less shocking (to those paying attention for the last 20 years) “revelation” that he’s abusive to his cast (all except for his self-selected male stand-in who plays his Mary Sue) which is even less surprising from a man who referred to his actors not-so-jokingly as “meat puppets”.  

But I do find this implosion of his reputation, for the lack of a better term, rather objectively interesting as someone who liked Buffy Season 1-2 back in the day and is from the era where worshipping Joss Whedon was like worshipping Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow-- simply put, it was inescapable in most nerd communities. And the worship was largely by female fans because, shocker, Buffy was largely aimed at young nerd women.

Were all those women simply blind? Did they not see the subtly misogynistic mind behind the creation of such breakout “feminist” nerd icons as Buffy? Were they taken in? 

I don’t actually think that’s the case. Rather, beyond the fact that complex feminist theory wasn’t necessarily being taught in the late 90s to young nerd women, I think there is a nuance between idolizing and fetishizing “Strong Female Characters” that can be difficult to distinguish and that the differences are not necessarily visible during most parts of a standard story structure.

Buffy was a strong female character, no sarcastic capitalization needed, because the fetishizing parts are largely limited to individual story beats, such as the “Long Night of the Soul”, for example. 

Simply put, Joss Whedon’s fetish was the moment that Strong Female Characters are broken, so 90% of the story buildup of the character remains indistinguishable from someone building up a strong female character because they want her to be strong vs. wanting to see the moment she breaks.

And here’s the thing, as a writer, I get it. I get that we all have our story fetishes. We all have things we write about, over and over, the niggling loose tooth of a concept we can’t stop prodding at. 

And yeah, as an angst writer in particular, I get it when the thing that gets your motor running for the objectively difficult slog of writing a story is seeing your beloved character bruised, suffering, and at the end of their emotional rope because of all the trials you’ve thrown at them. My personal story “fetish” is seeing characters transformed into the thing they most fear themselves becoming, either physically or mentally, and their struggles with that confrontation and what they and their loved ones go through during this horrific event. This story fetish colors pretty much all of my long-form stories. 

Heck, I loved Season 2 of Buffy because Joss Whedon’s “see the strong character bruised and in anguish” fetish resonated with me. Not for the weird sexual aspects--for those uninitiated, Buffy sleeps with her Good Vampire boyfriend Angel, who promptly loses his soul and becomes essentially a demonic version of himself she has to fight and eventually kill, for maximum emotional anguish, at the climax of the season--I ate that up as an angsty teen! Not because of the actual sex, I admit I could have given that part a miss and I consider that part of Whedon’s weird sexual hangups coming into play around Purity and Sin and Anguish or whatever, but the idea of your moment of greatest intimacy/joy becoming your moment of confrontation with your worst nightmare is the stuff that really melodramatic angst is made of. So I get it and I enjoyed it as a viewer, at one point.

But where Whedon lost me there is that Buffy and Angel never get to be together. They’re perpetually apart from that point on, and eventually see other people, end up with other people, etc. I mean, what’s the point of the Ultimate Suffering around needing to kill your own soulmate if the story is then just going to ignore them being your soulmate? The suffering was just never ending. Buffy was a bit like Dean Winchester after a while, just never allowed to catch a break. Because Joss didn’t want a Strong Female Character overcoming obstacles and eventually triumphing for good, he was in it to see a Strong Female Character who he gets to watch at her lowest moment, surrounded by other Strong Female Characters repeatedly going through their lowest moments of pain and anguish, over and over, until we reach some sort of network-required conclusion. 

Like the cruelty of Benioff and Weiss of Game of Thrones fame, it’s not difficult to understand once you see it. Sometimes, the angst and cruelty is the reward. The real sin of Joss Whedon is that he didn’t stop there but let his fetish spill over into his working and personal life by fetishizing the women who played the strong female characters he wrote and by being cruel and abusive to men and women on set who weren’t fitting his weird fetishistic obsession when it spilled into the way he ran his real life. Because word to the wise, all you creators out there, your fetishes will keep you going in your art, and keep you warm on a cold night, but letting them take over you creative process rather than simply provide power for it is a fast track to becoming a failed creator for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully, just that you can’t objectively view your own work anymore and accept critique, but more harmfully as we see here, when you play out our story fetish skit on real people, which only grows worse when you’re so insulated by fame and fortune that no one can tell you no.  

(There’s another aspect of Joss’s storytelling that I’m going to break into another post, if you got this far. That is, that Joss doesn’t accept the premise of most of his stories. That is, he rarely takes a world he didn’t build himself seriously and that lack of accepting the premise of the world, is why he can be great at banter, but often fails at the new era of superhero movies. 

Part 2 - link once it’s up.)

[imdreaminadream]

The results pt 2 ~ what about it makes you cringe?” Category 3

( - prologue.   - part 1  - category 1  - category 2 )

Okay so this is the results to the question in the quiz, What about it makes you cringe. In reference to the questionnaires core subject about smut fanfics.

Also quick psa there will be a part for the results for the other question -  “In kpop fics, Korean words i.e. jagiya, seem to be a no no, would you like to elaborate why?”

Now note these particular results are going to be split into 3 posts because I decided to split the results into 3 categories. 1 - Writing Aspects. 2 -  Personal Preferences. 3 - Genuine Problems.   >This post is category 3<

TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR MENTIONS OF - rape, minors engaging in sex, child pornography, childhood trauma, unsafe bdsm/kinky sex, misogyny?, toxic masculinity? anything else that needs to be tagged message me so I can add them.

DISCLAIMER BELOW. (please read that before continuing)

This is going to be a long post. The responses were very enlightening but please don’t take this as an attack. Consider this more as constructive cheat sheet to good smut writing or just ignore it if you don’t agree with it. Some of this did a bit deep apricate trigger warnings will be put on the appropriate posts but I’m not sorry it got deep fics can also affect real life as much as we wish it were something that didn’t mix in with real life, it does. I’m no official like sex guru or big-time writer, or what ever BUT I did add little advice underneath each answer, which are just a reflection of the people’s answers. Again if you don’t like the sounds of this don’t take it personal and click off.

Genuine problems

Rape territory - There was a common theme of people commenting about what is essentially edging into rape territory. This was talked about with both sexes, where one expresses, they’re not in the mood but the other just continues to make advances on them until they end up having sex. Everyone who spoke about it mentioned it comes across as coercive or forceful (which would be dubious consent, but I personally know how no one tags it as that because they don’t realize.) something that makes them immediately stop reading and knocks an author’s credit in their eyes. When a character is crying as though they’re not enjoying it, but the sex doesn’t stop and there is not safe word that is used.

No advice for this just use common sense.

Lack of tags which indicate trigger/content warnings - This only came up a handful of times but considering its importance I added it in here to talk about. The comments about it were straight forward as is the topic. Some authors aren’t tagging their work appropriately and it’s actually quite dangerous. You tag your work for a reason to let people know what is involved in it before they read, tagging everything is crucial. If something isn’t tagged you risk the reader, at the very least, the reading but then feeling discontent because it had something in they don’t like to read. Then at the worst you risk people’s mental health, you risk them having panic attacks, anxiety attacks because their trigger was in your fic but they didn’t know because it wasn’t tagged for them to see and know not to read because it could trigger them.

Advice for this is to bold things which you know for sure are sensitive topics, and make sure to tag everything in your damn fucking tag section. You risk people having panic attacks when you don’t tag your work right and they read your work only to find out it has their trigger included in it being blindsided because after reading your shitty tags they didn’t know but you put it in there. Also please don’t just tag smut, tag everything included in that smut because something works are tagged smut and then next thing you know person b is being choked, clothes cut by a knife, restrained with rope, told they’re a slut/whore.

They’re a minor - This also only came up a handful of times, not because people don’t care but probably because they don’t commonly come across it enough however this is incredibly important topic even outside of what about smut makes you cringe. This shouldn’t be a problem, as in it shouldn’t be happening as the people who commented, me and all of you know. They’re a minor, under 18, they’re technically still considered child in the law’s eyes anything sexual about them, like writing smut about them would be considered child pornography. “Things that persons under 18 are prohibited from doing - being depicted in pornographic materials.” No one even cares about “but I’m the same age as them uwu.” It still doesn’t make it right so don’t try and use excuses. Also, the minute a person turns 18 if your first thought is oh, I can write smut about them or request someone to write it for me please just leave that’s like preying on them as though you counted down till they were 18 and now the only value you see in them is for sex.

Mine and everyone else’s advice DON’T FUCKING DO IT.

Also, to note I don’t know what the official rules are for age swapping so like writing an adult person as a minor and depicting them in smut materials, to cope with your trauma, would anyone be open to talking to me about it, like educating me? There has just been this sudden wave more fics being, it’s okay to write adult that I made a child in my fic engaging in sexual content because it helps me cope with my trauma. It just seems everyone’s started saying that and I don’t know how many are being genuine or using it as an excuse or gone with the flow treated it like a trend. Not to be rude just genuinely how legit is this? How many people who write it have genuinely experienced that trauma? P.s if you have experienced that trauma, I am genuinely so sorry and know I am not disrespecting or invalidating your trauma I promise.

Female Characters/misogyny? - Now what this means is everyone expressed how they hate the constant portrayal that it only takes seconds for a female to reach an orgasm and she already wet to go like some kind of tap. They also highlighted a big problem with constantly painting the female as this innocent, dainty, dumb, naïve, shy, small, little girl. Women have brains too; women can give as good as they get and aren’t these shy naïve little playthings. All women have different personalities, the stereotypes about women in fics I’ve seen through the answers, and myself in fics, to my questionnaire is upsetting everyone. And you can see why, is it not bad enough we are subjected to misogyny and stereotyped in real life but now we have to see it in fics too. It genuinely does make people stop reading, it makes them cringe as the answers have suggested. One person mentioned this in their response, and I feel it should also be included, “y/n is absolutely okay with everything being done to her.” This isn’t something we should ever hear. This category feels like the right category to mention it so just consider their words, consider why that makes them cringe at smut writing that includes that.

To everyone the advice is a no brainer when you look at the responses. Make sure that the female character is actually getting turned on like into the mood before even thinking about mentioning that she is wet. And consider that a lot of statistics and personal experiences of other women stating it’s not all that easy to orgasm during sex, and not typical for her to come before the male, so make it sound like it’s worth the female characters while not that they do it for 3 minutes and suddenly she is coming.

Please also STOP with the constant bullshit of stereotyping of women as exampled above. If you like to feel small or submissive or whatever in the bedroom and you express that in your fics I get you but that does not mean you have to portray the female character as dumb, naïve, small, weak like for the love of god spice it up a bit, make her powerful, clever, with personality etc.… being in charge of her own body, knowing about her body, and what she wants and how to get it.

Btw no one is saying it’s not okay to be shy and that before you come in here like “why are you shaming shy, or small girls or dd/lg kink,” it’s not that I can assure you. We’re talking about the stereotype of it that is used to make the women seem more pliable for the man to control essentially not the genuine personalities/kinks people have.

Very passive sub female reader and overly dom male - Now many people spoke how an over macho dom male, and a passive - made out like they’re dumb, submissive female is a dynamic that is making them cringe now. It’s not a dynamic they care for anymore, and I agree with them especially considering the issues it brings about. “ Whenever the female reader is extremely passive and shy/flustered whereas the idol/character is extremely assertive/condescending/dominating/leading everything in comparison.” There is a personal preference to this yes# people acknowledged this, however when talking about this dynamic they further explained the issues with it. Overly passive female has already been touched on but to reiterate the replies insinuated they’re sick of seeing women in fics treated how they are in real life essentially – like some dumb little girl. One person said, “I like when the girl can give as good as she gets, though that’s just my preference.” So, like what has been discussed before this portrayal of females it absolute bullshit and needs to fucking stop being such a constant portrayal. (mind break is different so don’t start)

Then for the male side of things it’s enforcing the stereotype men are macho an alpha male, they don’t have feelings they just think with their dick and have all grr I’m super toxically manly do you ever lift bro, I’m so strong, I get all the bitches, fuck all the girls, the have control over the passive female and not in a consenting way, in an entitled way. Which no, they can have feelings, they can be softer more feminine all whilst still identifying as a man. They can be submissive just as much as a anyone else, they can be a switch or just a dom that isn’t this macho, macho, man. They can be needy, loving, caring, in touch with themselves, their feelings and everything the female character is made out to be, apart from dumb, naïve and weak of course, yano all those negative things any gender and non-gender people want to be associated with. If the guy wants to get railed by the female and be the sub in the dynamic of male x female, then fair enough let it happen there isn’t nothing wrong with it.

All in all, it’s okay for males to be more feminine than masculine and females more masculine than feminine. It’s okay to portray that in fics genuinely. I wouldn’t say I have any advice for this other than the obvious no more macho man and passive females.

Use of Korean words. - If you’re not a Korean person don’t think you’re in the right to argue about this. The Korean people have spoken up and you will listen and respect them. Know this is an important topic, however there will be a separate post for this, so I’ll keep this bit short to then expand on more in the separate post. Just wanted to make you the reader aware that this is an issue.  It’s not okay to be treating noona, unnie and oppa like a kink if you are not Korean, or have Korean heritage. The people who are Korean so kindly explained, it was a normal word for them like just another part of their culture until bad egg kpop fans got their hands on it and they have now sexualized it to the point where some Korean people do not feel comfortable to even use it without thinking of the sexual connotation it has now been given. 

Now like I said I will talk further about that and more, to do with the use of Korean words in fics, in another post, I don’t already have that post drafted so it might take a while to get out and post. However in that time I’m gladly open to hearing more people who are Korean and have Korean heritage, views on this. Or if you too have experience with a word from your language having been taken from being an innocent word to now having a sexual connotation as well because of people not from your country/culture having given it that sexual meaning. It could be helpful to further emphasis the point about the Korean words but also show overall no matter the language/country that it’s making the people of that country/culture uncomfortable. 

Also I hope it doesn’t come across like I’m trying to speak over Koreans. If anything i want to be helpful more than a hinderance. This was something that was spoken about on the questionnaire so I’m just writing what the Korean people have expressed about it in the questionnaire. I want to be able to give their voices from the questionnaire a platform and shed light on this situation, with them.

Also can I ask if gender is a factor in this as well? I’ve seen on tiktok where some Korean guys like being called oppa but I’m not sure if that's in a respectful light or a sexual light, if they were being sarcastic for the Korea-boos or? but i have never seen women say they like being called noona in a way that comes across as a turn on? So can anyone comment on that? send me anons pls.

Too much degradation - Of course everyone who has mentioned this has said it is quite a personal preference thing, the acknowledge that it’s a kink not for everyone. Although on the flip side them relentlessly mentioning it give the feel that it’s becoming more of a problem and less of it’s okay it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. You see they exampled “bitch, slut, whore.” It’s so commonly used, and they even said how they’re finding it not tagged majority of the time, so seeing that surprisingly in the fics constantly it makes them cringe but it’s not a type of thing one can get over it’s apparent it’s becoming a slight problem. It begs the question how much degradation is too much, why is it constantly being used in fics? Does everyone love labeling the female y/n a bitch, whore, slut? Why is the male y/n never called a slut as much as female y/n? Do females have more of a degradation kink than men?

I can’t think of any advice to give based on the feedback, apart from obviously add it to your tags that there is a lot of degradation but it there is anything anyone else wants to add on this topic feel free to re-blog with your take or send me anons.

Describing features on a y/n fic - A few people have mentioned this, and I categorized it as a problem because well it is because not only does it make them cringe in smut fics but also in normal fics and poc feel oppressed in yet another way. When it’s written as y/n it’s supposed to allow the reader to insert themselves into the fic to imagine themselves in there, yet it’s not always done like that. As one of the responses said, it seems authors like that tend to project themselves or their ideal selves onto y/n physical feature wise. More often than not as the responses have indicated y/n is portrayed as cis female, white, blonde, blue eyes, other physical traits such as breast size, dick size body type, height and hair length are portrayed too, which pulls the readers out of imagining because they’re being told they have features they don’t. It’s especially bad for poc because their race never gets portrayed in fics, so it gives the message white race is the most favorable and we already know how racist the world is no need to bring it into fics either unknowingly or purposely.

Moral of the story, stop racism, end it. Go educate yourself.

Moral of the story, in regard to fics, well don’t describe y/n thoroughly. Instead leave it as vague as possible, I mean it’s not even needed to know what eye colour y/n has when they’re in the middle of getting railed.

Quick intermission to just say make sure you tag what gender and pronouns y/n has for your fic, so people are fully aware what y/n they’re getting in this fic.

Nor do we need to know what skin colour they have, it can easily be mentioned that a character is touching y/n’s body without saying they have milky skin indicating they’re white. It is very possible to not give y/n a race. Also, height, keep height out of it don’t describe it because not everyone is 5’2. (hello yes, I’m 5’10 so imagine me reading character a of height 5’8 towering over me, I mean maybe if they wear heels yes but otherwise no.) Similarly, don’t ever describe body types, you can say an outfit flatters a person’s figure without describing it, people can have sex without their body being specifically described i.e., slim figure, toned shapely legs. Please understand that by not describing y/n you’re helping to contribute to racism, and these wacky beauty standards that are already being forced onto us in the real world never mind the fictional world. 

Lack of safe word - Following on from kinks not being portrayed correctly there is the issue of lack of safe word. Now this is something that again didn’t come up quite a lot but that doesn’t mean it’s not an issue. Some are writing fics where one of the people involved, are being railed to high hell and it’s kinky as fuck or you’re writing a BDSM specific fic. Which is okay we are not judging or shaming but it’s concerning how with all this type of sex being had there is no even slight mention of the pairing having a safe word which is has the name would imply really important. It is there to keep the people participating in this kinky sex safe, without that it’s really harmful. Now if you think oh but writing in the discussion of safe words is really unsexy, especially when I’m just trying to make the characters fuck really kinky, then please go educate yourself. Safe words are incredibly sexy when you know it means you get to have bomb ass kinky sex but know that you can also have boundaries that should and will be respected, and a word or system i.e. traffic light system, to pause or stop when ever you need to in order to keep the kinky sexy safe.

The obvious advice is to incorporate consent and knowledge of safe word in your fic. It can be as simple as writing that the characters stop a minute for person a saying to person b you know your safe word. And then writing a small mini paragraph of person b feeling even more in love and/or turned on because their boundaries are being respected. Then you just carry on with writing the smut. You can imply easily that they have a safe word, that it’s been discussed, therefore they’re gong to be safe, respected and made to feel good.

Also, I know there are some people out there who are, a bit unsure on writing a fic in which one person uses their safe word. This is your friendly supportive message to just do it, don’t be afraid of what others think, do it for you it’s something great to write. There are many different ways you can go with it, so you do it if you want to 😊.

Honorable mentions of things that make the people cringe.

(Not a problem just as we are at the end of this category I figured I’d put honorable mentions. disclaimer again, these are other people’s comments from the questionnaire. You are entitled not to agree with them however do not attack me as some have been doing.)

fetishize people’s gender or race/ethnicity

uneducated use of other cultures to make it look authentic

Use of the word plum when they mean plump. One’s a fruit/colour, the other means having a full rounded shape.

PICK ME Y/N (we all know the type)

Stereotypes of all kinds. Of people, phrases, troupes etc.….

Written in a way it sounds monotone. i.e., “He did this, he did that, I did this.”

 When all y/n does during a smut scene is whine. There are other synonyms people.                                                                               

infantilization of y/n. stop making me feel like the person who the fic is about, is a nonce.                                                                                      

y/n is constantly oh so innocent. Like they can be a virgin don’t get it wrong. BUT we all know 9 times out of 10 y/n reads fanfic so they ain’t innocent.· 

no refractory period. 

try hard humour in the middle of smut.

terrible euphemisms

proper unrealistic dick sizes

adding in smut into a plot where it doesn’t fit

try hard

more to come potentially?       

END OF CATERGORY 3

(Feel free to discuss in comments, in my messages or send anons or anything like that if you want.)

@nctsworld  @lauraneuuh @jooniyah  

 Tag list:

@ceoofxiaojun @lovemayble  @myelle-n

(@smutwritingpolice) (@smutwhy)

[mal3nko]

“Why wasn’t Life is Strange 2 as popular as the first game?”

A lot of people like myself have wondered what exactly made Life is Strange 2 go so relatively unnoticed compared its predecessor, Life is Strange 1. And when you think about it, you may come up with the few obvious generic answers, such as the lack of Max and Chloe and just the original cast in general. However, I think there was a lot more at play here that prevented Life is Strange 2 from reaching the amount of success/popularity the first game had. So I want to take the time and break down what exactly happened to Life is Strange 2 and the things that hurt the game’s ability to really connect with the audience of LiS1.

Disclaimer: We do NOT know how well Life is Strange 2 was for Dontnod and if it was a success or not. No sales numbers have been given out to the public so there’s no way of knowing for sure how well the game did. What we do know is that LiS2 did not receive the same amount of attention/popularity as the first game. That can’t be denied, it simply didn’t. However, based on the fact that Dontnod have recently announced they are working on six new games at the moment and are now expanding their studio, even if LiS2 was a “flop” it doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on them (most likely due to the success of Vampyr). Dontnod is going to be fine either way. Another thing I want to mention is that this is not a anti-LiS2 post and that I am a fan of the game. I’d consider myself a pretty big fan actually. I have my problems with the game of course and don’t agree with a lot of the writing decisions but I enjoyed the game very much overall. But for the sake of this post I will try to be as unbiased as possible, giving out only what I’ve observed when it comes to reactions from the fandom on different websites and forums. So with that all being said, let’s dive in to this.

Here I will be listing the many different reasons as to why Life is Strange 2 failed to reach the same amount of popularity as LiS1 or even BtS managed to achieve. This list isn’t in any particular order but some reasons are bigger/more important than others.

For some background, there was a lot of hype going into Life is Strange 2. The teaser trailer for it with the cop car trended at #2 on YouTube, a huge feat for the series. It generated immense amount of views and comments in a short period in time, completely surpassing Before the Storm’s announcement trailer in just a few weeks. So what exactly happened to all that hype? Where did everybody go? Well, let’s break everything down.

1. The lack of Max and Chloe: Yes I said that this list wouldn’t be in any particular order in terms of importance but I think it’s obvious this one is one of, if not the biggest reason as to why LiS2 failed to match LiS1’s popularity. When the protagonists Sean and Daniel were first revealed, the reception was pretty divisive. Specifically, a very vocal part of the community were baffled and disappointed at the lack of Max and Chloe present within the trailer and subsequently the game itself. This instantly turned off a lot of people from the game, as they couldn’t connect with the new characters or simply didn’t want to. At that point in the franchise Max and Chloe as well as the original cast from the first game had been the face of the series for almost three years. It’s understandable why it was hard for people to just…move on. To this day people are still asking for Max and Chloe to return. The Life is Strange subreddit is still dominated with Max and Chloe fanart. Whenever the social media accounts for Life is Strange post anything Max and Chloe related it gets way more attention compared to a post about Sean and Daniel. Whenever a post online goes viral about Life is Strange you can bet it’s most likely about Max and Chloe. Hell the only reason why episode 5 of Life is Strange 2 trended on Tumblr was because of the fucking picture of Max and Chloe. On the releas day of episode 5 of LiS2 the top post on the subreddit was the Max and Chloe picture. It was almost as if that one photo of them completely overshadowed the entire episode. Point is, Life is Strange 2 lost a lot of momentum the moment it was revealed Max and Chloe would not be present. Case closed, let’s move on.

2. The release schedule: Words cannot describe how frustrating the release schedule was for LiS2 when it came to it’s episodes. For those reading this who didn’t follow LiS2 until the game was finished, each episode took around 3-4 months to be released. This was because Dontnod bit off a bit more than they could chew with the road trip story in having to create new locations and character models from scratch. The reason why this wasn’t a problem for LiS1 was because Max was for the most part always in the same locations around the same characters (I’m pretty sure you roam around Chloe’s house like 4 times throughout the season), which made development a lot easier since the devs could just reuse a lot of the assets. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible for LiS2 due to the nature of it’s story. The wait times between each episode made a lot of people leave the fandom due to loosing interest or simply forgetting about the game altogether. This also impacted youtubers/streamers as many of them either stopped coming back to play the new episodes or they’d not be as connected as they were in the previous episode due to the amount of time that had passed. One of the reasons why LiS1 gained so much popularity was because of youtubers/streamers and how they would bring in their audience and would pretty much make them fans of the series. With quite a handful of youtubers/streamers quitting LiS2, the game was not able to draw in as much of an audience as previous games did. This is how detreminetal the release schedule was for LiS2.

3. The marketing (or lack thereof): Square Enix really fucked up on this aspect. Due to the ridiculous wait times you would think Square Enix would try and advertise the game heavily when a new episode was about to be released, right? Well they didn’t. Not at all actually. Throughout the games release schedule from September 2018 up to December 2019, I had not seen a single ad for the game. Nothing on YouTube, nothing on reddit or any other websites, it was like Square Enix had completely forgotten about the game’s existence. Now don’t get me wrong, SE did do a few things with LiS2 like starting up the community series on their YouTube channel and also the dev updates that came after episode 1 (that stopped after episode 2 for some reason) but these went relatively unnoticed to people outside of the fandom and did pretty much nothing. I believe SE was trying to wait until the game was fully complete with all of it’s episodes released before actually marketing the game (and they DID start advertising the game after episode 5 came out) but that’s just WAAAY too long to go without any type of advertisement. I understand marketing teams have budgets and what not, but you’re telling me there was no way for SE to market each episode in anyway as they were about to be released? Seems a bit ridiculous, don’t you think?

4. The road trip story: I completely understand why Dontnod wanted to branch out and do something different with the story of Life is Strange 2 and I respect them for stepping out of their comfort zones. However, it can’t be denied that the road trip story where characters are cycled in and out as Sean and Daniel make their way to Mexico was a very…questionable decision. Seeing as how LiS1 was loved for it’s world filled with a reoccurring cast of characters that developed as the story went on, it’s really easy to understand why LiS2 was so off-putting for a lot of fans. It was off-putting for me, even. It just…wasn’t fun having to leave these truly interesting characters behind because the plot demanded it. This left a lot of characters feeling underdeveloped to many people and by the time you meet new characters you already know they’re most likely gonna be gone soon anyways, so it made it even harder to connect with them. Couple this with the fact that LiS2 lacked any type of mystery unlike LiS1, speculation and discussion fizzled out a few weeks after each episode was released. LiS1 kept people speculating and wondering about what would happen next, while LiS2 left a lot of people struggling to care.

5. Politics: Yeeeeaaaaah I think I had to put this somewhere on the list. While many of the people who tease and mock how LiS2 handled its political topics were most likely not fans of the series anyway (the type of people who called LiS1 “Life is Tumblr” and hate Chloe), I do think it’s important to realize that some people just don’t want politics in their games, period. I’ve seen people online come out and say that while they agreed with what the writers were saying when it came to the political topics, it overall still came off very forced and one-sided to them, lacking any type of nuance or subtlety. I could write an entire essay discussing if the politics in LiS2 were handled well and whatnot but this is not that post so I’ll just leave it at that.

6: Lack of a prominent female cast/wlw: This is a bit more tricky to talk about (for the record the person writing this is a black gay guy) but I will try and write about this the best way I can. For many women, specifically queer women, Life is Strange was a series they could expect representation from. Max, Chloe, Rachel, and Steph are all popular characters amongst the fandom and even other wlw ships such as Marshfield, Chasefield, Chaseprice, etc are popular. So when LiS2 was revealed to be about two (hispanic) males, the queer women within the community were understandably upset. It felt like DN were simply throwing away the community that for the most part made up the entire fandom. At the time I simply found the situation ridiculous and overblown as many people were dismissing Sean and Daniel as “generic straight males” (even though it turned out Sean was bisexual in the end) before really getting to know them. However, looking back I totally get why people were upset. A lot of the fanart/fanfiction that was made for the LiS series was mostly created by queer women, so when the franchise pretty much stopped giving them representation, they left in search of other media (like She-Ra, which honestly has better wlw rep anyway). LiS2 is also mostly male dominated in terms of its cast, and features no queer women as well, which is really disappointing in my opinion.

7. Price: This one is pretty simple. When Life is Strange 2 was first released the full season costed $40. This was a pretty big jump in comparison to LiS1’s $20 price tag (original price was $25 however) and BtS’s $16. Obviously people would be more skeptical about buying a sequel that is pretty much double the price of its predecessor and has completely new characters. With the pretty mixed reception from gaming communities I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people saw the price and decided to either watch a playthrough or simply not check out the game at all. With the first episode now free the base price has been lowered to around $30-32 I believe so yeah.

8. Daniel Diaz: Some people just don’t like kids, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people grew easily frustrated with Daniel early on and once he got more irrational and bratty as the story progressed they just stopped playing altogether. Even if you do like kids, or at least don’t mind them like myself, Daniel can still be quite a pain.

9. Not having control of the powers: This one is honestly really disappointing and I know it was to a lot of other people as well. In LiS1 Max had the ability to rewind time and do certain scenarios and conversations over and that basically acted as the more interesting gameplay segments. In LiS2 Sean doesn’t have the power, his brother Daniel does. This leads to the gameplay feeling much more boring and mundane. There are also no interesting puzzles this time around, most likely because Dontnod didn’t know how to implement them without the rewind power so they just…didn’t even attempt to add any. The power itself, telekinesis, is also much less interesting compared to rewinding time, according to a lot of people.

SO YEAH that’s basically it for me. I know this probably came off a bit rambly/incoherent but I tried my best to be as clear as I possibly could. I don’t doubt there are other reasons at play as to why LiS2 failed to meet LiS1’s success (such as liscensed music not being quite as good as LiS1) but I think I hit the main points I believe were key reasons. And the thing is, there isn’t just one main reason why LiS2 didn’t do as well as LiS1. It’s overall very unfortunate so many things went wrong with it that ended up making people lose interest in it. I think the lack of Max and Chloe hurt the game the most right off the bat, but the other reasons just led it to do even worse. Oh well.

I hope any of the people who read this enjoyed it (it was a BITCH to write). I’ve been wanting to get my thoughts down about this for SO long but just never had the motivation/time but I finally did it!

Again, thanks for reading! If you have any disagreements or just thoughts in general don’t be afraid to reply or dm me about it and I’ll be sure to reply! Now back to reblogging Marco posts….

[tamorapierce]

Tammy's Spring 2020 Reading Recommendations For the Bored

Sooner or later the bookhounds among us are going to start joining my relentless song, from age five on up, of “I don’t have anything to read!!!!”

 I am here to help.  In this space, as I get to it (knowing, as my readers do, that I have no sense of deadline), I will be posting a constant set of collections of book titles by authors my team and I have read and will recommend in a wild variety of genres and for a wild variety of ages.  (And I’ll give a short hint as to the subject of the first book/series—if I did them all I’d never finish this.)  This last is for the many of you who are reading teen and adult books in grade and middle school, and those adult readers who are reading teen and kidlit. These people are for those who love books and don’t care who is supposed to be reading them.  

 Also, you may have to look far and wee, since we will be drawing upon not only recently published books but older ones that we have either read recently or that we read long ago and have re-read or have never forgotten.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you when the writing is archaic.  If you’re a true nutsy reader like the rest of us, you won’t care.

 -Tammy Pierce

                                                        *     *     *

Assume the book came out within the last 2 years unless I put LO next to the title, which means you have to check libraries and bookstores online and paper for copies.

 *     *     *

 Diana Wynne Jones  LO

A generation or two of fantasy writers, particularly those who love humor, bow to this woman as our goddess.  Not only was she out of her mind in a very British and manic way, but with her TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND she taught a number of us to ditch some ill-considered tropes of our genre.  If you write historic fantasy in particular, move heaven and earth to track this book down.  There’s a bonus: some of the entries will make you laugh till you cry.

           She is best known for her books for middle grade and teens, but they are enjoyable for all readers.  I cannot list them all here because my fingers will break (curse you, arthritis!), but these titles will give you a jumping-off point.  And remember, authors change with each book, so you won’t encounter the same author with each title as the author you read in the previous one!

           The Chrestomanci books, all in the same universe, in order of story,

                       not publication

Charmed Life  (1977) An innocent lad follows his plotting egotistical sister to live with England’s chief wizard

The Lives of Christopher Chant (1988)

Conrad’s Fate (2005)

Witch Week (1982)

The Magicians of Caprona (1980)

Short stories

 The Dalemark Quartet begins with

The Spellcoats (1979)

3 sequels

 The Derkholm books are

Dark Lord of  (1998)

Year of the Griffin (2000)

  The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is standalone, but is a kind of offshoot of the Derkholm books.  You don’t have to have read the Derkholm books to get Tough Guide!

 There are other books and stories by Jones—I’ll let you find them on your own.

  Philip Pullman

To this day I am unable to call him anything but Mr. Pullman—that’s how much in awe of the man I am.  We’ve had dinner together, talked on the phone, talked at an event or two, done a conversation on audio with Christopher Paolini—it’s still Mr. Pullman to me.  (I was an assistant in a literary agency when I discovered his work, and I never recovered.) He is, in a word, brilliant, and his interests range through all kinds of areas, particularly history and religion.  I could have talked with him forever that night we had dinner, but the poor man had jet lag and I let him go to collapse.  It was one of the best exchanges of ideals, values, and books I’ve ever had.  

Read his work carefully, because what he discusses is never just the story on top.  No matter what he writes, he is making strong points about social justice, human nature, religion, and history without preaching.  He is one of the few male writers out there who can write female characters as people, not Something Different.  And you never know, with his work, where he will go next.

 The Ruby in the Smoke,

book 1,  the Sally Lockheart mysteries

Victorian mysteries with a female hero and male assistants,

           The Book of Dust and sequel,

first 2 books of The Secret Commonwealth

           His Dark Materials trilogy

                       The Golden Compass

                       2 other titles                

           THE COLLECTORS

           LYRA’S OXFORD

           THE WHITE MERCEDES

           FAIRY TALES FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM

           I WAS A RAT!

           TWO CRAFTY CRIMINALS

           COUNT KARLSTEIN

           (I will stop here and let you find the rest. Most are available as Nook books.)

  Sharon Shinn

I discovered Sharon Shinn with JOVAH’S ANGEL, but a shortage of funds left me unable to pursue my interest (I am an economic disaster with libraries, so I buy rather than borrow) until, with a job and money to spend, I spotted THE SAFE-KEEPER’S SECRET.  It is the story of a medieval-ish world and a small village where a baby was left with a childless couple.  She is raised as their daughter and discovers, as she grows, that her mother is an important, a Safekeeper, the person to whom a secret can be told, relieving the person who told it of the weight of guilt from it, to be carried by the Safekeeper until the owner either decides to tell or dies.  (And if they die without giving permission, the Safekeeper never reveal the secret.)  The baby who is adopted by this town’s safekeeper becomes the safekeeper in her turn.

           The next book is THE TRUTHTELLER’S TALE, about a girl who acquires the gift (??) of telling the truth, whether the person she tells it to wants to hear it or not. The third book is The Dream-maker’s Magic.  The three main characters now learn why they have been brought together over the course of the two earlier books, in what I thought was a satisfying, if unusual, conclusion.

           And there’s more!  I just did the two I love best!

             THE SAFEKEEPER’S SECRET (book 1, two sequels)

           ARCHANGEL (4 books)

           TWELVE HOUSES (5 books)

           ELEMENTAL BLESSINGS (4 books)        

SHIFTING CIRCLE (2 books)

           UNCOMMON ECHOES

           GENERAL WINSTON’S DAUGHTER

           GATEWAY

 Daniel Jose Older

 I was a Daniel Jose Older fan before I was sent DACTYL HILL SQUAD for a blurb (preodactyls in flight!  Of all sizes!  Confederate spies!  Thuggish bigot northerners!  The backlash of Gettysburg and the forced recruitment of blacks for the war effort! And strong, smart, fierce kids of various ages, sizes, colors, national heritage, and skills doing their best to help the war against the slaves, keep escaped slaves safe, duck the cruel managers of the homes and jails where they are being kept, find a half-decent meal, free other kids in trouble, learn who’s killing their friends, and help the dactyls!  That’s part of it, anyway!

Yeah, I loved it.  And there’s at least one new book, and once I’ve mowed though that, there are his older teen books, and his grownup mysteries, with their half-dead taxi driver who doubles as a part-time troubleshooter for the undead powers in his Bone Street Rhumba series.  {happy sigh}

  Edgar Allen Poe

Yes, some of these are reminders of why we ended up to be the readers we are and to nudge us to corrupt—I mean, “introduce”—­new readers to the glories that are our legacies.

­

THE COMPLETE TALES AND POEMS OF EDGAR ALLEN POE

           Here are the greats:

poems like “The Raven,” and “Annabelle Lee”

stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Telltale Heart,” and  ::shudder:: “The Pit and the Pendulum” (yes, a deep pit and a swinging pendulum topped with a razor-edged blade will be featured in this story).  

My dad would read these to us on dark and stormy nights when we lived near the Pacific ocean, when the fog came rolling in, softening every sound, when there were no cars driving by and no other sounds in our house but his deep voice and the crackle of the fire in the fireplace.  We would listen, soundless, as he wove the stories and poems around us and the foghorn sounded offshore.

           That’s the power of Poe.

  N. K. Jemisin

I think I began with Jemisin’s THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS, soon followed by its sequel THE BROKEN KINGDOMS.  The series ended with a third book, THE KINGDOM OF THE GODS.  She presented a rich and varied world from the aspects of people of different classes, showing the growth of societies and their formation.  I have a secret passion for society-building and social interaction, and whether or not a book is difficult to read (as Jemisin’s books are in spots because she refuses to insult a reader by talking down to them) is immaterial.  I want the world and I want the characters, and with her far-reaching mind and her respect for her characters she delivers each and every time.  I have read almost everything she’s written since that first trilogy: if I’ve missed something, it’s because I was in the middle of a deadline and on the road and somehow didn’t see it.  I’ll catch up!  This is just a sample:

           For readers of all sexes and adult reading skills

 The City They Became (pub’d April 2020)

 The Inheritance Trilogy:

           The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, 2010

           2 book sequels

Novella: The Awakened Kingdom, 2014

                       Triptych: Shades in Shadow, 2015 (3 short stories) 

             The Dreamblood Duology:

           For readers of all sexes and adult reading skills

           The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, 2010

                       Two sequels

 The Broken Earth series:

         The Fifth Season (August 2015)

                       Two book sequels

And there are plenty of short stories out there.  I may even have missed a book or twelve!

For those who prefer to hear my ramble in person, a video!

[eruden-writes]

deep fic writer asks (3 of 4)

I’m answering 5 questions at a time from this list by soft4hardthings.  (The ones I answered before will be copy-pasted when they come up.) 

11. Has a fic you’ve written ever caused issues/controversy?

There’s things I’ve written that I’m not super proud of writing. I’m not super ashamed, either. They’re just evidence of the growth I had to do as a person.

When I was a teen, I wrote BB x Rae fanfic, with heavy Terra bashing. (Ironically, in the same fic, someone got mad at me for letting teenage Robin and Cyborg drink alcohol.)

Also had a fixation on yaoi pairings, which probably meant bashing female characters at times. (Welcome to early 2000s queer-kids-who-didn’t-know-they-were-queer with a helping of internalized misogyny.)

In my early 20s, I wrote Amon x Korra fanfic. I have conflicted feelings about the pairing, nowadays, but it was the pairing and community that helped reignite my passion for writing.

Fanfic that I felt contributed to a problem in society, I’ve removed from the sites if I still had access to it. But I still have my removed fanfics so I can look back on it.

12. What’s your perfect environment to create/write?

For drawing, I like to listen to audiobooks or YouTube videos.

For writing, I like to wear my headphones and just type. Sometimes with music of some sort, but most times I like silence.

Home is the best environment, but I haven’t tried elsewhere lately.

13. Do you take pride in your writing, or does it embarrass you? Why?

Both? lol

I enjoy creating and I’m happy when readers like my characters or the emotions I get them to feel or certain plot points.

BUT

Some of my older stuff can be problematic or cringey. While I’m somewhat embarrassed by it, I still like it, since it’s a snapshot of my life and I know I’ve improved - both as a writer and generally as a person - since then.

14. Do you compare yourself to other writers? In a positive or negative way?

Other writers’ work definitely inspires me, but I’m content in my own skills and know I have my particular voice for writing.

Artists can inspire me to work on certain aspects of my own skills. And there’s a lot in this method of creating I need to work on, anyway.

I’m a total fail at marketing my creations, but I’m trying to improve that.

So, yes, I suppose I compare myself to other creators on various levels, but I use it for examples of where I can improve, rather than tearing myself down.

15. How do you think your writing has improved over time?

I have writing from when I was 13. So pretty much everything. 😂

Consistent tense, correct spelling, pacing, description, plot, realistic characters, editing, and more.

Like this is a snippet of one of my first fanfics, dated 2003 (when I was 13:)

I was sitting at home...me vs. writer's block... my Voices are playing Uno. I'm bored so I watch them play for a little bit.

"UNO!" shouted Joker, who had two cards but placed one behind the other so it looked like he had one.

"You do NOT have one Joker! I saw you! You had two!" shouted Flaunt, using her whiny childish voice on him. A fight goes out between all the voices, except for Outcast (and Anti whose sleeping) who doesn't care one way or another who wins... she just throws her cards into a deck and leaves, knowing the game is now ruined. She decides to try and help me with a story. How nice of her.

"What about another Inu trooth or dare one?"

"No...i don' really want to since i still have my first one still going. What if i try a love story?" I asked.

"Kinda mooshy don' ya' think?"

I sigh, agree that isn't the way I think and look back to Life who's decided to beat-up Joker for cheating, since HIS girl asked him to. Outcast followed my look and sighed. She was the only one who found out about my crush...except for my readers. ^^

“I'll just doodle a little." I sigh. I'm a bit depressed, but then my day changes from depressed to joyous. There was a knock on the door downstairs, I rush down and there is Rimiko, the creator of Inu standing before me. I just stand there like an idiot with eyes wide open and my mouth agape. She hands me a notepad and tells me she'll be away on a business trip so I have to take care of Inuyasha and his friends(and enemies)! She leaves with a smile on her face. Then the Inu chracters, Inu, Kagome, Shippou, Miroku, Sango, Kohaku, Kouga, Naraku, Kikyo, Kaede, Souta, Sessy, Rin, Jakken, and Kirara, file into my house a little sullenly.

Like it was technically an Inuyasha fanfic, but it was actually a romance story about how me and Life got together. Heaped with pick-me bitch vibes and internalized misogyny and reader participation, among other things.

The Voices, of which Life was apart of, are a whole thing of their own and I can explain that if anyone is interested. lol

[willowlark369]

Let’s Do MATH

This is actually about writing. It is specifically about writing diversed characters and even more narrowly, by creating it by changing a canon character to have whatever trait.

The majority of canon is an unfortunate ensemble of neurotypical, straight, cis, white Christian males. I probably messed up the adjective order there, but you get the point. Very bland Wonder Bread there.

Fanfiction has a tendency (and pretty much since its conception) to change aspects of canon for whatever reason suits the author’s fancy at that moment. Fic writers literally exist because they looked at canon and went “hm. I have a few notes.”

What if these same sex characters got together? What if X character was female? What if Y character actually dealt with their canon trauma/issue?

Like a cat stalking a mouse, fic writers have been edging towards adding towards adding more diversity to the diversity they add to these Wonder Bread fandoms.

What if X character isn’t gay but is bi/pan/ace? What if the character was only assigned male at birth? What if the character was assigned female and appears male in canon because they’re trans? What if they’re intersex?

What if the character deals with canon trauma/issue the same way that RL people with it would? They’re in therapy and may take meds.

What if X character was Jewish? Muslim? Pagan? Atheist?

What if X character was deaf/HoH or blind? What if they were mute or autistic? What if they had arthritis or needed a wheelchair?

None of these tweaks to canon are seen as inherently inferior, even if there are already a canon character who might have that particular diversity trait. Or at least I haven’t seen anyone complaining about fic writers doing so, unless the writer made something that is outright bad representation or a prejudiced trope. And then, they’re calling out the bad/harmful rep and not the change from canon.

It’s acknowledged that changing a character in such a way adds diversity.

You start with 10 WASP characters, take away 2, and add 2 diversed characters, you’re gonna be left with 8 WASPs and 2 diversed. If you were starting with 10 WASPs and 4 diversed, when you take away 2 WASPs and add that to the diversed group, you will get a higher number of diversed characters just the same as you would when starting with 0.

That’s how math works.

Clint Barton isn’t less deaf because Echo exists.

James Rhodes isn’t less Black because Sam Wilson is as well.

Ana Jarvis doesn’t spontaneously become fertile just because Natasha Romanoff isn’t.

Spock isn’t less Jewish if James Kirk is.

John Rainbird isn’t less Native if Charlie is, too.

And the Patil twins aren’t less Desi if Harry Potter is.

Neither is Dean Thomas and Angelina Johnson less Black if Hermione Granger is.

It is not taking away diversity to change a character’s traits like this. When an author adds diversity to the characters they want to write, they aren’t taking away anything from the characters they don’t but who has the diversity in canon. Those characters still exist, elsewhere in canon if not in a particular fic, and they aren’t less what they were just because they’re not in a particular fic.

That’s not how math works.

I know it’s a big joke that writers can’t do math, but it’s time to lay this argument to rest. It’s not a debatable point because there’s nothing to debate. There is nothing inherently wrong with racebending a character just like there hasn’t been anything inherently wrong with any other kind added diversity.

Adding diversity will always add to number of diversed characters.

After all, that is how math works.

[bao3bei4]

i have basically covered the material in this post several times on my twitter. but this is, in my opinion, the only s*xy t*mes with w*ngxian take you need. 

(cw transphobia, transphobic slurs, antiblack racism, mentions of csa and bestiality in fiction)

edit 6/10/21: hi! i’m realizing people are still reading this! this was written in response to aja romano’s vox article on the fic that was published in late february of this year. i had been frustrated with how their article seemed to miss the point in many ways, because they never talked about the substance of the fic. which, i mean, fair. i wouldn’t want to read a 1million word fic either.

but i already had, so i thought i’d write about some things that i believed needed to be part of the conversation. namely, that its author wasn’t a harmless troll, but a person i genuinely disliked who i believed should be deplatformed.

i think virtual1979 is a bad person. 

i think a lot of people mainly know about sexy times the phenomenon more than they do sexy times the fic itself. i have the dubious honor of being one of the few people who has actually read large portions of the million word fic, and that’s why i wanted to write this meanspirited hit piece. 

the fic is down right now and the author’s notes and comments have both been deleted, which is why i cannot provide screenshots. however, these are all quotes i have saved from when the fic was online, and i’m happy to talk with anyone if you feel any of these quotes are mischaracterizations of the fic. 

i also want to be clear this is not a “callout post” and i’m not trying to “cancel” them or whatever. i am just explaining why i don’t like them, why i don’t feel bad they’re being harassed, and why i do not find them sympathetic at all, and perhaps why you should also adopt these stances. 

let’s start with transphobia. 

sexy times with wangxian is transphobic. this much is apparent from the tags. virtual1979 tagged the following: F*tanari, d*ckgirl, Sh*male. they use this language in the chapters that include a character with both a vagina and a penis. 

they refer to this character (wei wuxian) with the pronouns “he-she.” the following excerpt is a fair representation of how this wei wuxian is referred to in the chapters where wei wuxian has a vagina and a penis. 

[Lan Zhan] would never be turned on by a female, and he would actually be turned off by a drag queen - but this… this Wei Ying, it’s Wei Ying, and he-she looks [...]

i know these words are common in porn categories, but they are also slurs. virtual1979 also uses hermaphrodite to refer to this set of anatomy, which is not strictly a slur, but definitely a stigmatizing choice of language. 

they have repeatedly made clear they are not open to criticism. they have also since removed the comment section. making an intersex character for the express purpose of using transmisogynistic language towards them in your million word porn fic isn’t annoying the way their tags are, it’s actively fucked up. 

fanfiction has a transphobia problem, and if we’re talking about sexy times with wangxian in any capacity, we must be clear: sexy times with wangxian is part of that problem too. 

secondly, virtual1979 is also complicit in ao3’s racism problem.

i think the way they write about chinese characters and settings is annoying and racist, but they are a malaysian chinese person, so i do have some sympathy for them. i am committed to having some patience for people who are annoying if they themselves are working through the prejudice they have faced. 

they’ve commented as much: 

Not gonna lie, this fic has been a steep learning curve for me despite my roots being Chinese as well, but I have absolutely zero knowledge in some of these aspects!

and i’m happy on some level they can get in touch with their roots. who among us has not been cringe and diaspora. any criticisms i have of their portrayal of chinese people will stay private and be made to other people of color.

i’m going to be clear here i don’t think the actual comment they made makes them super evil or anything. but this essay IS clearly in response to That Article, which did mention racism in fandom. so.

i think we have all seen the infamous karen comment they made, in which they compared people who criticized their tagging with “Karens,” equating antiblack state violence to... mean comments on ao3? and “SJWs,” which, eye roll. no ageism but you’re 41 why the hell are you complaining about sjws

anyway. i am deeply frustrated by the co-option of the word karen. a stand-in for a particular type of racist violence white women specifically can and do inflict has become fused with that reddit-type mommy issue “can i speak to the manager” internecine white resentment. 

so their trivialization of antiblack racism is another reason i don’t like them. again i KNOW it’s petty to point this out here, but this to me shows that virtual is afflicted with the same kind of fandom brainrot that aja is, where everything comes back to that same sort of self-centered bullshit. 

sorry for that jab. julian told me that aja thought that cql was about callout culture and all i could think was “wow! just like virtual thinking that--” because i also have spent too much time on twitter this week. 

this is just like. part of this ongoing pattern i’ve noticed with virtual, where they’re aware enough of real problems to acknowledge they exist (police violence, accessibility issues caused by their tagging) but are determined to double down on their minor relative persecution as king, shittily drawing parallels between like... real problems and fandom problems. equating the two or allowing the second to take priority over the former is like... par for the course for this type of person! 

third, this is just another clarification on more parallels between ao3 discourse and sexy times that went completely unremarked on by That Article. 

i would rather DIE than get into discourse. but why did they write this sentence: 

Lan Zhan’s rational mind finally broke with a tsunami of pedophilic lusts [...]

by the way that is the start of a 430 word sentence. and yes this fic does contain hundreds of thousands of words of aged down wei wuxian. make of that what you will. 

also why would you make wei wuxian teach baby chickens how to sexually pleasure him. do you hate these characters. what’s going on. i think mxtx should be able to sue virtual for that one. 

there’s a very obvious connection between mainstream ao3 discourse and sexy times that went completely unremarked on in That Article. sexy times contains multitudes and some of those multitudes are bestiality and explicit childfucking. 

this is not unrelated to fannish culture, they are not unfamiliar with fannish norms, blah blah blah. this is just normal fandom. they’re not subverting shit, they’re just a normal fan who unlike 99% of fanfiction writers on twitter, spends more time writing than posting. this has taken their fannish tendencies to cartoonish heights. 

finally, they don’t care about mdzs or wangxian. they’re literally just horny and spiteful that’s it. this isn’t a question of like... “ohh they were a good faith participant in fandom until they went joker mode” and the REAL villain is society/ao3. like no they wanted to write shitty porn, and when they found out they were annoying people, they decided to double down because they could be the main character of the mdzs ao3 tag every time they found a spare hour to write. 

here are some select receipts on that topic:

they do not care about canon: 

MDZS has quite a complicated and expansive plot and history, and enough content that one can choose to tune out certain parts and still get to the end of the story in one piece. Also, because of its source, some fans may not fully realize the nuances, cultural aspects (ooh, cultural appropriation is another triggering topic) or the full breadth and depth of the source material, such as a person like me, who is half-baked in terms of knowing what the canon universe is all about. So I end up playing with characters and settings technically borrowed from the story, and make them do things that would otherwise run counter to the original source material - and that draws quite some flak from those opinionated people I mentioned just now. It's part of what makes the fandom toxic. It's like they're the self-appointed guardians of the source material and they act like they own the rights to question such questionble fanworks, and dare I say, try to take down those that cross certain lines too.

they are just horny: 

After that giddines of extra drunken Lan Wang Ji scenes at the beginning, I'm blessed with Lan Wang Ji (Wang Yibo's, actually) fuzzy nips! Bless Bless Bless, and Amen! muahs the nips on the screen

anyway they did get nuked over wishing covid on people. 

so yeah. i want to be really clear. this is my thesis: i do not feel bad for them. you should not either. i do not like them. you should not either. that’s ALL!!!! 

[mariemichonao3]

The concept of ‘Mary Sue’ - a change through the ages?

Due to current politics, I recently entered a discussion about today’s fan fiction stories with main characters that would generally fit the literary term ‘Mary Sue’, as far as the following specifications apply:

“A Mary Sue is a type of fictional character, usually a young woman, who is portrayed as unrealistically free of weaknesses. Originating in fan fiction, a Mary Sue is often an author's idealized self-insertion. Mary Sue stories are often written by adolescent authors.” (Sources, see Wikipedia)

For those in need to look it up, the term ‘Mary Sue’ was created in the early 70ies when fan fiction author Paula Smith wrote a Star Trek fanfiction parody(!) in 1973, "A Trekkie's Tale", which featured a certain female Lieutenant Mary Sue ("the youngest Lieutenant in the Star Fleet—only fifteen and a half years old") and in which she satirized that kind of female ‘original characters’ widespread at that time in Star Trek fanfiction.

This type of character, of course, appears in every fandom written by people of every gender and age, and although the ‘unrealistically free of weaknesses’ part can vary according to the writer’s own flaws, the ‘idealized self-insertion’ is what brings me here, today.

I’m not here to discuss the Mary Sue concept per se, au contraire, but to share an observation that really, really bothers me. And as a woman, I especially would love to warn inspire young writers to maybe rethink certain aspects of their idealized picture of themselves. I don’t want to write a boring scientific piece that nobody wants to read, so in short and without pointing out any story in particular that’s the situation observed:

Where, initially, the idealized kid actually had ambitions which went further than her/his bodily features and looks, I read more and more often that the teen’s abilities and dreams go no further than having and interest in social media/TV, make-up, clothing, accessory, and maybe connections/inherited titles/money and all their ambition is becoming and influencer/model/actress/singer/it-person.

Where the original parody showed Mary Sue as the smartest ever person to graduate from the star fleet academy and ever get a commission, showing unprecedented skill in everything from art to zoology, including karate and arm-wrestling, combining skills and sparking the interest of Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy at once, the typical Mary Sue following through the years always featured at least one inspiring interest, skill or ambition. The most famous ones used to vary from being a nurse, vet or doctor, police, DA, PI, lawyers, judges, journalists, archaeologists, art experts, musicians, dancers, poets, librarians, all kinds of sports, arts, or magical abilities or being fighters, captains, gangsters or pirates. Even the girl in the most laughed at “50 Shades Of Grey” is an English literature major who wants to become a journalist. It has only become prevalent – or at least come to my attention in bigger numbers – in stories since “Twilight”, which knowingly was written with a religious background and reflected the ideal of Mormon world view ideals, that the girl ‘Bella’ had no further dreams or ambitions for herself beyond marriage (to a certain guy) and the following motherhood.

But why do I care at all what teen/twen kids today write? Why does it bother me so fucking much?

Because, HONESTLY! With showing that THAT is, where your interests, your dreams even, lie, you’re making it easy for them. You let those “Handmaid’s Tale”-patriarchy desiring, right wing, anti-female/diverse-rights loving assholes win! Where we had to fight for things like control over our own bodies, deciding whether we are allowed to vote, work or study and what we want to do with our lives – with or without influence or a paying partner/family, you apparently go back to dream of the idealized versions of uneducated eye-candy who do not bother or care for any ambition, or education, except for super shallow and superficial shit!

While I TOTALLY get that not all of you can dream of becoming chancellor or (vice) president or to pursue an academic or scientific career, save the climate or cure cancer, please, at least dream of something magical or fun, handcraft something, cook or plant herbs, draw comics, write romance novels, whatever, but please don’t let current politics or religion or shallow media content push you back to historic times and thinking it’s desirable to be nothing but a pretty and superficial arm candy whose interests are manicures, expensive handbags and make-up. Even back in archaic days everybody knew: “Behind every successful man there is a strong and intelligent woman(/lover)”. Dream of more, please.    

[ratingtheframe]

Everything wrong with... Ep 3 - Pretty Woman

*sigh* *big sigh*.  I’m back here giving you another politically charged review of a film I like to call a femmeçade:

Femmeçade /fɛm//fəˈsɑːd/ noun noun: femmeçade; plural noun: femmeçades; 1. A genre of films directed by men that forefront yet misinterpret the female narrative and representation on screen. "Pretty Woman is the worst femmeçade of them all in the way it depicts women as the lesser gender"  (definition by yours truly).

I have to say, I have never felt more compelled, more angry in my entire life to write such a review and tear this film down until there is nothing left but the underlining, prominent misogynistic aspects of this film. I am talking about the 1990s classic, Pretty Woman starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Now a musical, the film has survived three waves of feminism (if you count MeToo), and yet is still available to access for our entertainment. Even though censorship is less common in the Western World, the only good thing about watching Pretty Woman would be to see how vile and unacceptable it is in the eyes of our modern and ever changing society. It truly brought tears of anger to my eyes to watch such a film and see how its lead was shoved into the spotlight for a round or two of humiliation and prodding by the fingers and eyes of the male gaze. There is A LOT to go through here, so grab a snack and buckle in as I put Pretty Woman to shame.

Let's just start with the title itself Pretty Woman, a pretty lazy title for a film if you ask me. I understand it does what it says on the tin, like any title should, however the irksome thing about the film and title is what it’s selling. The lust and beauty of Julia Roberts as opposed to her character or story for that matter. Stood alongside Richard Gere in thigh high boots with her legs for days, months and years on show. We get it, Julia Roberts is a beauty, but why does a film have to focus on that sole part of her? By doing this it creates the idea that it’s her only asset and BOY does this film do a good job at reminding us just that. They’ve got the man’s vote and supposedly the woman’s seeing as the story is about them or who they’d like to be. WRONG, seeing as the crew behind Pretty Women were mostly men themselves. The writers, cinematographer, director, producers, best boys and gaffers, you name it. So who was this film for if it wasn’t to satisfy at least it's mostly male crew members?

Male satisfaction are the appropriate words to use when we are introduced to our leading lady in close up shots of her bra and knickers. Vivian is played by the highly talented and ordained Julia Roberts. Ever since seeing Erin Brodkovich which bagged her an Oscar in 2001, I’ve been in love with her spirit and confidence on screen. As we all know she is certainly one of Hollywood’s shiniest stars, up there with the elites like Meryl Streep, Viola Davis and Angelina Jolie. Why she decided to sign onto such a film, I would hate to speculate seeing as Feminism was more of a dirty secret than a positive movement back in the 1990s. Many (mostly men, though women too, especially those in the film business) would accuse the movement of threatening the comfortability and fun out of life’s pleasures, like women wearing makeup, dresses and being groped at office parties (sarcasm). However, as we now know, feminism isn’t the demon that the 1990s tried to make it out to be and I hope that Julia Roberts was unaware of feminism back then rather than being a strong opposer of it. 

Vivian Ward is a hooker living and working on the streets of LA, the city of dreams as some may brandish it. She lives with her roommate Kit (Laura San Giacomo) and between them they spend their nights trying to scrape enough money for their rent. I’m glad that sex work isn’t as scrutinised as it was back then and another arresting aspect of Pretty Woman is the way it depicts the so called “atrocities” of being a sex worker. The propriety and haughtiness of those who laid eyes upon Kit or Vivian was degrading and dehumanising, simply because they choose to lead a different lifestyle to those around them. It seemed so archaic, almost Victorian like the way people ogled and gazed upon Vivian at the hotel where she was taken in by her male counterpart. Pretty Woman again proves itself to be an anti-feminsit horror show for shaming women on choosing what to do with their own bodies and how they dress. We need to cut this BS out of society ASAP that women dress in certain ways to attract the attention of the opposite sex. Clothes are a form of expression and 9 times out of 10, that expression hasn’t anything to do with wanting to be leered at in public. Enough with the victim shaming as well; asking women what they wore when they were sexually assaulted. Instead let's ask what the attackers were THINKING when they decided to prey on an innocent victim....

One night whilst Vivan is looking for clients, she meets the so called delectable and mouth droppingly handsome male lead that is Edward Lewis, played by Richard Gere. I didn’t get the hype at all as I felt Vivan to have enough personality and lust for life to fill both of her and Richard Gere’s character. Edward Lewis was wooden, stern and boring, and despite this, Vivian seems to see more in him beyond her usual hookups. That’s another irritating thing about Pretty Woman. Edward Lewis didn’t have to do FUCK ALL to prove his love or worthiness in the life of Vivian. 

He didn’t have to (nor did) change one thing about himself throughout the entire film and that’s not only extremely sexist, but shit filmmaking. Did the writer of completely forget or give up on Edward Lewis’ character arc whilst he was too busy making drooling over Vivian? All Edward Lewis had to do was wave his card around and POOF Vivian was at his knees. No wonder the 1990s shamed feminists because this is the exact sort of crap they were trying to prevent from happening on screen. It may seem like fun and games when Edward Lewis tells Vivian to go shopping, buy herself a new dress for dinner, but in reality this is just a fresh case of misogyny, served up with a side of degradation and bigotry for dessert. 

Edward Lewis goes as far to hire Vivian for the week as his...escort? His actual motive isn’t known and we are left as an audience to conclude that it’s because she’s pretty. Again, selling the film title through and through and deminishing the worth of women with each scene. Vivian is never actually asked what she wants, nor do we get to know her seeing as Edward’s inflated ego and wallet covers up most of the screen time whilst watching this film. If you didn’t think this film could get any more horrific is the age gap between Julia Roberts and Richard Gere at the time of filming, to which Roberts was 22 and Gere, 40.

One moment in particular that proved this film to have zero substance to it, is when Vivian eventually gets down on Edward and to my absolute horror, her bra strap is INCREDIBLY and shockingly inauthentically loose. Like falling off loose. Not one woman in the world who chooses to wear a bra; not in China, India, Pakistan, the U.S, Ukraine, Hooker, doctor, astronaut, teacher, hairdresser or not would ever EVER wear their bra strap so loose. An impractical and uncomfortable choice, this tiny infinitesimal yet significant part of this film showed that this film doesn’t care or know how to show accurate female representation on screen and goes against any sense of providing women with strong characters they can use as role models. And all from one bra strap. 

The shopping and transformation part to this film had to be the big red thumb that stood out the most from the eternity of this film as AGAIN for the fifteenth time this film has proved itself to be in favour of entertaining those who like to ogle at Vivian as opposed to getting to know her. Edward thrusts his card at her once again (without giving her much choice, a common behavioural pattern associated with sociopaths and abusers) and she goes to Rodeo Drive to essentially pretty herself up for him so that Edward isn’t judged by those he introduces Vivian to. 

When Vivian had attempted to go shopping alone on Rodeo Drive in her casual attire, the female employees of one of the stores behaved abominably towards her, classing her as someone who didn’t have the means or appearance to shop in such a place. This film just got even worse as not only do we have the opposite gender dictating the appearance of women, we’re having our own sisters do the same whilst investing in the patriarchal narrative of the way women should be seen in public. At this point you may think I’m going crazy and repeating myself, of which I am doing both, however once you’ve fully taken the time to wake up and smell the patriarchy’s cup of coffee, there’s no turning back. These details become smoke signals that turn into epiphanies and realisations that have you questioning is this really okay? And a Pretty Woman is NOT okay.

Once Vivian has had her transformation (so kindly afforded by the dominant Edward Lewis) she seemingly begins to enjoy her new life as a piece on the side, until she is presented with Edward’s lawyer, Philip Stuckley.

So here’s what we have so far on our checklist of misogyny and anti-feminsit motifs to Pretty Women

A poster and title created in the eye of the male gaze CHECK

A female character whose worth is based on her desirability and propriety CHECK

A mediocre white man who doesn’t progress and gets his way through charm, money and power CHECK

Women who take unkindly to other women because they don’t fit the normalised standards of the patriarchy CHECK

Shaming women for their dress sense and career choices CHECK

Lack of women in general, most of which don’t speak throughout the film CHECK

The list could go on but another motif to add to the list from this film that acts as big shiny wrecking ball that smashes up feminism and leaves its values in the dust is sexual assault. Or attempted sexual assault at that, as when we see Phillip Stuckley’s first interaction with Vivian he says right out that he knows she’s a hooker, whilst running the edge of his sunglasses down Vivian’s arm and suggesting they get together after Edward’s demise back to wherever he came from. EW, this was one of the many moments of the film where I had to swallow my vomit. Phillip attempts to rape Vivian back at Edward’s penthouse suite, when luckily Edward comes in to stop it happening, which was the most decent thing he did the entire film. Edward’s lawyer represented a hoard of men that existed back then and now who feel entitled to a woman’s body, hooker or not. Even though Pretty Woman had dug itself a big enough hole, by the time I got to this part of the film I had been sold on the idea that this film is completely out of line with women’s liberation and empowerment. It’s just one big game to prod and poke at women, seeing how far they can go, which in itself is a metaphor for sexual assault. 

I’ll wrap up on the lack of diversity in Pretty Women. Because the world affords white men and women more luxuries and privileges than people of colour, they were at the forefront of this story whilst black and asian minorities were put in the background as butlers, maids and chauffeurs. It makes me so angry that on top of being a whirlwind of misogyny and sexism that such a film would have the audacity to misrepresent minorities entirely and highlight their so called use as servicing white people. IT. IS. GETTING. OLD.

Hopefully you’ve made it to the end of this “review” (kinda) and seen the damaging implications such a film has on our society. On reading Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies curated by Scareltt Curtis, I read that “Books and things reflect what’s happening in the world, Hollywood movies DICTATE IT and MOULD what people think”. 

You may think movies don’t matter or a film of the 1990s doesn’t matter, but if we are to learn from our mistakes and progress our movements, we must unpick the past and see it for how it was. Movies are our culture, our representation of what we’ve learnt or seen in the world. I don’t want to see women as sexual objects without their permission. I don’t want to see them being moulded by the patriarchy or by women who support it. I don't want to see women only good enough to be hookers, wives or mistresses. I want women to be the strongest versions of themselves and for films to buckle up and show that shit on screen.

Pretty Woman can kiss my ass and if it’s a film you like in  unlike it. Pronto.

[imdreaminadream]

The results pt 2 ~ “What about it makes you cringe?” Category 1

( - prologue.   - part 1  - category 2  - category 3)

Okay so this is the results to the question in the quiz, What about it makes you cringe. In reference to the questionnaires core subject about smut fanfics.

 Also quick psa there will be a part for the results for the other question -  “In kpop fics, Korean words i.e. jagiya, seem to be a no no, would you like to elaborate why?”

Now note these particular results are going to be split into 3 posts because I decided to split the results into 3 categories. 1 - Writing Aspects. 2 -  Personal Preferences. 3 - Genuine Problems.   

>THIS POST IS CATERGORY 1<

DISCLAIMER BELOW. (please read that before continuing)

This is going to be a long post. The responses were very enlightening but please don’t take this as an attack. Consider this more as constructive cheat sheet to good smut writing or just ignore it if you don’t agree with it. Some of this did get a bit deep appropriate trigger warnings will be put on the appropriate posts but I’m not sorry it got deep fics can also affect real life as much as we wish it were something that didn’t mix in with real life, it does. I’m no official like sex guru or big-time writer, or what ever BUT I did add little advice underneath each answer, which are just a reflection of the people’s answers. Again if you don’t like the sounds of this don’t take it personal and click off. 

Writing aspects.

Poorly written/typos – Nearly all of the people said that, poorly written, bad grammar and lots of typos made them cringe. Answers said that sometimes works are so poorly written it comes across as though the person writing doesn’t know how sex works. Now by poorly written they talked about, the plot being non sensical, choppy or lacking decent grammar, too many typos, using words in the wrong context, repetitive language. They also specified they understand not everyone’s first language is English but the least that can be done is proofreading of the works by them or someone else. And many people cried over the use of first person, they felt it brings them out of imagining the fic. 

Language used – So they we’re talking about strange words for body parts especially genitals, and just weird terms and phrases in general. Regarding body parts, everyone mentioned that childish or full-on scientific names for genitals was the worst. Feedback suggests calling it a dick, cock – although some commented that cock sounded too vulgar, and pussy. Also referring to female’s arousal as juices was a common answer, to quote one of my fav answers “so none of that her juices coated my fingers’ Like bitch it aint orange juice.” Then for weird terms and phrases, no specific example was given but I’m certain they meant things that literally every man and their dog would not say, ever! Personal opinion here but, “you like what you see?” and “Your wish is my command.”, and “tongues fighting for dominance.” should die off. It’s overused and I’m sick of seeing it – pretty sure no one says that during sex in real life anyway.

So, to avoid it alls you need to do is use second or third person, proofread, and learn how sex works if you don’t know. Also, best way to proofread it to leave it a few days then come back and read it again – also there are apps like Grammarly that help with your writing too. (PSA I personally love proofreading work, because I’m weird like that, so if you ever want me to proofread drop me a message/anon.)

So, take a moment to consider what you are writing, again proofreading is very helpful, and just stick to the mature ways to say dick/pussy. Suggestion here if you can’t write it the mature way, stop writing smut fics because clearly you’re either not mature enough or uncomfortable (to be) writing smut. 

Dialogue – Too much dialogue and not enough action cropped up a number of times. Also that the dialogue written is cringy essentially, Then there was too much dirty talk, and dirty talk that shouldn’t even be considered dirty talk which commented a lot in regards to dialogue. And although I think I wrote about this answer previously but weird words, exaggeration, and choppiness in the dialogue. (someone commented over use of buzzword but idk what buzzwords are.) May I also personally add that written fake stutters irritate the living day lights out of me just stop.

---- I actually did another questionnaire about this, it didn’t garner same amount as this one but it gained a good few responses. The answers should be available to see, if you want you can take a look at that to see more about people thoughts when it comes to dirty talk in fics. ----

Advice is, keep in mind when writing dirty talk what sounds good, to plausible, to terrible. Just think about what sounds realistic as well, draw on your own experiences or what you want to be said to you. Also, if you don’t find it sexy don’t write it for everyone else’s sake or to fit in with the trend, stay true to yourself but try to vary it up for each fic you write.

No build up – They talked about how some fics go straight to the dicking down, to action, with no build up or a bit of sensical plot, and it doesn’t work. Or if the characters haven’t even talked and suddenly, they’re down to fuck. They expressed it doesn’t make sense and doesn’t feel like the characters are even that interested, as though they’re fucking for the sake of fucking. This also ties in with some comments that said sometimes people fail to remember smut isn’t just about being railed, it is also about connections with people and making love so going straight to the fucking, fails to make the reader want to continue reading.

The solution to this is to reference history/tension or build up the tension between characters, or just set the scene a little bit before getting straight into it. Also remember no one is having sex without some foreplay and if they are it isn’t very good, so don’t let it be like that in your writing. 

Lack of realism/inaccuracies – Okay so this was mainly in regard to sex, the way the body works and some scenarios. To elaborate, people said that there are just some sex positions and places to have sex that just don’t work. In example one person wrote how sex in a gaming/office chair doesn’t work well and they know through personal experience. So, for the readers it’s just super unrealistic that it happens, and it leaves the reader either fixated on figuring out how that is possible or cringing because they know it’s not possible rather than reading the rest of the fic. There’re also just some ways the body doesn’t work I’m not going to go through examples there are so many, but we all know what is meant. Also, I’ll mention that kinks also were apart of the lack of realism, I’ll talk more about that in the next post.

So, based on this the only thing I can say is keep it real and keep it accurate as possible. Like we know its fiction but consider how ridiculous some of the stuff you’re writing may be, how impossible it is. Just don’t be afraid to google things – you can actually freeze and delete your search history – to double check or educate yourself about. Or ask for advice, draw from experience, or maybe try it out yourself with or without your partner then reflect that in your writing.

----------------------------------

END OF CATERGORY 1

(Feel free to discuss in comments, in my messages or send anons or anything like that if you want.)

Tag list

@nctsworld, @lauraneuuh, @jooniyah, @ceoofxiaojun, @lovemayble @hyucksie​ @myelle-n

- if anyone else wants to be tagged for the next parts let me know via anon or dm -

[aconboyindependent2021]

‘Now and Then’ - current state of play

My film is a re-imagining of the site of Brighton General Hospital next to my home. Until around 70 years ago, a workhouse operated on the site (for details, see: Gardner, J, (2012) A History of the Brighton Workhouses). Aspects of the austere workhouse are still evident on the site today. I began to think about the stories of the residents of the workhouse – what did they have to endure? With this in mind, I bought the above book by a local author about the history of workhouses in Brighton.

I have always been fascinated by the idea that traumatic events in a particular location can be recorded and replayed at a later time in history and that this might be a basis for ghosts and hauntings – for example, in the blockbuster, Poltergeist, and the BBC drama from the 1970’s The Stone Tapes (Sasdy, 1972). This is one of the key concepts behind the film.

After a lot of thought, I settled on the story of the workhouse being told by a single woman, Agatha, whose infant child was taken from her illegally and sold to a rich couple living in Brighton. This is a variation on the common Victorian  practice of unmarried women being compelled to give their children to a foundling home.

The film starts with Aggie telling her story in largely neutral terms and comparing the workhouse and the site’s positive use today as a hospital, but it climaxes with Aggie screaming with the loss of her child, and we see that she is a tormented spectre.The film ends with her anguish fading into a sign on the present site, promoting a nursery for infant children.

The film will be around 5-6 minutes long and will consist of edited original footage taken on the site in the present day. The film will be treated with video effects to alter the pacing, colour and atmosphere of the original footage. I have asked for a drama-trained friend to narrate the film as Aggie and will be using original and library sound effects and music motifs, or possibly drones to punctuate the soundtrack.

Now and Then – influences from other artists

1. Brian Percival - About a Girl

Female voice-over revealing a terrifying truth about motherhood at the end of the film. This film gives a cold dead feeling inside from the casual yet downcast demeanor as the leading character talks about her dysfunctional life and especially the ending, where the girl is revealed to have secretly miscarried a baby and we see her dump it into the canal (“I’ve become good at hiding things”). Both my film and About A Girl attempt to humanise the female main character outside of their tragedies.

2. Tobe Hooper - director of Poltergeist Paranormal activity centred around past events and the presence of aggrieved spirits. This was a film that made an impact on me from its non-stop tension, even before the presence of the supernatural becomes apparent. Tobe Hooper, ever since creating The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) has achieved many awards, and after this film, it is easy to see why. It also has a similar plot to my initial idea for my film - where a great wrong done in the past creates a ‘haunting’ by aggrieved spirit(s)..

3. Peter Sasdy – Director of The Stone Tape (1972)

The original idea from the film was stones “recording” traumatic events from the past. While the current draft has drifted away from this concept, it still lives on with how Agatha remembers everything about the past as if she died yesterday, despite the superficial veneer of the current day hospital. However, Agatha is a real soul though in my film.

4. David Lynch - Eraserhead, The Elephant Man His black and white films – particularly The Elephant Man In the latter, view of Victorian England shot in black and white featuring cruelty and time-specific sounds, sights and atmospheres. The film always seems to have a sense of foreboding, even when the scene is uneventful, and with a deeply engaging soundtrack. Eraserhead will always always be an influence due to its deliberate disturbing monochrome style, investigation of altered perception and the anxieties of parenthood.

5. James Gardener- Author of: A Complete History Of Brighton Workhouses A detailed and easy-to-understand book centred around the original workhouse in my area. It includes the Brighton General Hospital Site. It helped give a real-life grounding to my supernatural tale.

6. Richard Boden - director of the Blackadder series 4 finale, Goodbyeee The series as a whole has very little to do with my film, but this is a powerful episode whose fade-out ending and closing-sound inspired the cross-dissolve effects and soundscape in my film - coincidentally both are centered with the cruelty of the past and atmospheric sound. Present and past merge at this point. One of the most popular scenes in TV drama/comedy and understandably so too.

7. Piotr Obal – various films and still images Obal is an independent artist who works with art, music and still photography. Occasionally, he teaches youths how to work at the computer like me (!) when he was helping out with an arts award I was studying for. Below is one of his images that has been an influence on me and the film. I love his Photoshop collages and the wonderful images he posts from his native Poland.

                                                        Work by Piotr Obal

8. Nalini Malani- for her immersive installations, ‘disgraced’ women under partiarchy, history and mythology, miscarriages of justice. I found out about Malini when I was writing my essay on her work in the  Diversity module: what started off as just finding out about an artist for the sake of my writing became a long-lasting admiration and inspiration from an artist who not only knows where she is coming from (from her upbringing hugely affected by India and Pakistan’s partition) but willingly sticks her neck out for those oppressed by society and history, and confidently shows her creations to the world. A particularly relevant aspect of her work is her use of the supernatural and mythology stories and myths to highlight aspects of women’s oppression throughout history.

9. Chris Butler- director of ParaNorman A key influence, supposedly aimed at children, I used the same of the spectre in this moving animation, and I was influenced by its themes about the cruelties of humanity and how we “moved on”. The spectre is a ghost of a falsely accused of being a ‘witch’ who wreaks her revenge on those who persecuted her.

It was also a strong influence that is more powerful at its climax and twist. In-depth look at how prejudice destroys lives that are never regained - even  death provides no relief. Butler is a part of Studio Laika, creating animated films that go beyond the norm.

10. Jacqueline Wilson - the writer of the Hetty Feather trilogy and other such Victorian novels such as Clover Moon.

A part of Jacqueline’s writings is her commentary about how unjust the past could be compared to today: even though her protagonists speak in ways that were customary to Victorians, she keeps them relatable the same way she keeps her modern-day protagonists relatable. The writing style of her books inspired certain characteristics of Agatha’s narration, because it was easy to understand yet engaging.

11. David Lean  - Director of Great Expectations (1946) This film, based on the Dickens book,  also brought to mind the cruel period of the Victorian era, and the acting and emotions continued that spirit and my inspiration around my project. I love that it is black and white as well as dialog-centred - I particularly like the formal style of speech - even to express negative emotions- for example:

“Let me point out the topic that in London it is not the custom to put the knife in the mouth for fear of accidents. It's scarcely worth mentioning, Only it's as well to do as others do”.

Miss Havisham, an almost ghostly older woman, in a similar way to Agatha cannot move beyond the terrible wrong done to her - she was left at the alter and devoted her life to training her adopted daughter, Estella, to get revenge on men.I use s similar obsessive, sing-minded hatred to motivate Agatha.

12. Sunset Boulevard (1950)

This film involve a man becoming the object of affection of a former silent movie star, Norma Desmond who overtake his life little by little until she kills him. Norma suffered with the times when silent movies went out of fashion and she is unable to move on, alone in her great house: people told Norma that she had no value and it had an impact on her psyche. She loses all sanity when arrested for killing Joe Gillis as she believes she is back in show business. The film also explores facades; Norma may live a glamorous if not lonely life, but her mental state torments her, like Aggie has with hers as she wanders around the hospital site driven ‘mad’ with grief and anger.  

13. R D Laing: ‘anti-psychiatrist’

'Here was someone explaining madness, showing how the fragmentation of the person was an intelligible response to an intolerable pressure”

Quote from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/25/rd-laing-aaron-esterson-mental-illness

 In discussing the concept of my film with a member of my family, I was directed to the psychiatrist/anti-psychiatrist, RD Laing. In the 1960’s and early 1970’s Laing wrote about how a person’s so-called ‘mad’ behaviour was in fact intelligible when their entire situation and experience was taken into account. He and other writers (like David Cooper) talked about the concept of the ‘double-bind’ where a person’s opportunity to make a decision to resolve the way they were being treated was blocked – perhaps by a member of their family saying that it was not in their personality to be assertive or angry.

This reminded me very much of Agatha; she tries to express her outrage at the great wrong done to her, but she is judged as unworthy and undeserving, so the wrong is seen as justified and her punishment for being the ‘low-life’ who would have a child and have to live in a workhouse. It is circular – she is treated badly because she deserves to be treated badly and so this means that her hatred and insanity brings the great wrong up herself.

Laing is largely forgotten today, but his ideas resonate with certain ideas in feminism and anti-racism. ‘Gaslighting’ is everywhere, both back then and now.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NnBonXPLJM