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

[zahri-melitor]

Catwoman Vols 1 & 2 so far:

I’ve just finished Moench’s run and am eagerly anticipating moving onto Devin Grayson’s, so I thought I’d do a round up of the various writers on the title so far, because it is very, very 90s in places, and I’ve been trying to sort out the differences in approach for myself.

Let’s talk about the writers!

Mindy Newell (Catwoman 1989): I think the most valuable work Newell does with this series is how it takes Batman Year One and refocuses and explains the story in terms of its effect on Selina as a character. It gives her (and Holly and Maggie) agency in the narrative that was not present in Miller’s work. (They should package this as a back-up with Batman Year One, just as Oracle Year One should rightfully be at the back of any reprint of The Killing Joke, if DC had more respect for its female characters). I also really like Newell’s focus on the impact of the grittier aspects of the story on Selina in particular: you really can see her background in nursing in the writing.

Mary Jo Duffy (Catwoman #1-14 1993): What I particularly liked about this run is the fun Duffy had in slotting Selina in around everything else going on in the narrative. Her run is set across Knightfall overall, and informed by it, but rarely fully crosses into it. I love little bits like Selina sneaking onto Bruce’s flight to Santa Prisca at the start of Knightquest, the flashbacks of her history we get here (training as a circus acrobat!), and the repetition of Selina’s ongoing focus on danger and poverty among children and young women on the margins of society. It’s a very episodic run – characters are often dropped straight into the story in a way that you presume that they had been previously established somewhere else (like her butler, Wilder, who just appears in issue #8, or the animal rights protesters in the Knightquest crossover), but no, they’re brand new.

Peter Milligan (Batman: Catwoman Defiant 1992): Milligan really only has this one-shot. It’s interesting in that it’s a proper team up with Bruce, which is otherwise quite unusual around this period in Catwoman titles – she’s more likely to reluctantly end up working with Tim or Jean-Paul than Bruce himself. It’s a lot of stuff about the faces you show the world and secrets concealed, which goes into the core of Bruce and Selina’s relationship.

Deborah Pomerantz (Catwoman #22-24 1993): This is a classic ‘steal from the mafia in Gotham’ Catwoman storyline. Selina tries to steal something from the family and then gets overinvolved in the many many plots everyone in the crime family are running on each other. I don’t think this is the best execution of this basic plot I’ve seen in a Catwoman run, but it’s a familiar one.

Alan Grant (Batman: Shadows of the Bat #43-44, Catwoman #26): Grant gets a crossover with Catwoman here with both Ratcatcher and Catman running around the narrative being terrible. I wouldn’t say it’s his best work; the approach to Thomas Blake in particular reinforces the culturally appropriative nature of his backstory regarding his source of powers, and his position as a joke character before Gail Simone rescued him from the set of D-listers that nobody cared about for Villains United and gave him a full personality and backstory makeover. It’s…fine. It does give Selina and Thomas just cause to have beef with each other outside of their overlapping themes.  

Chuck Dixon (Catwoman #15-21, #25, #27-37 1993): Dixon’s run is one of those world-hopping thief of adventure, Selina Kyle! style runs. She’s very rarely based in Gotham itself during his run, and is generally getting commissioned to go off to international locales to steal things and end up in situations. It has, on reflection, got more than a little of the flavour that Dixon ends up using for his Birds of Prey run. It’s very Dixon in places, particularly in how many male characters are attracted to Selina (there’s even a potential forced marriage to an evil European aristocrat that Selina manages to duck out of, which…yeah, shades of Dinah/Ra’s anyone?) and also in his very free hand with the concepts of ethics around archaeology and artifacts. We go raid an ex-Nazi compound, at one point. We also have a very Indiana Jones style adventure into a combo of ancient Order of St Dumas and League of Assassins secret plots.

Doug Moench (Showcase ’93 #1-4, Catwoman #0, #25, #38-53 1993): I think what I get a lot of out of Moench’s run is titillation for various characters with a whole heap of Sexy Villainesses (and not only because we’ve got Balent on art), and a heavy focus on Selina’s Terrible Birth Family and Childhood In Orphanages and Reform School leading to her learning to steal. There’s a whole plot thread running through his run from #0 up to the end about one of Selina’s rivals, Cassandra Cartland, who also was a thief in the orphanage and wasn’t as good as Selina. He does Catwoman Year Two, which is honestly mid: it’s a lot of Selina thinking she’s oh so clever (while not being) and using other Rogues as cover to distract Bruce while she commits thefts. There is definitely a focus on Selina’s joy in stealing things and enjoyment of both the challenge but also possessing shiny things. Moench also does do a chunk of work with Selina’s pivot towards caring for the underclasses in his Showcase ’93 story, Struggle Street, in terms of establishing that as part of her post-Crisis characterisation.

[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.

[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

[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!

[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!!!! 

[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.

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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

[purgatoryandme]

Hey, I mean this as innocently as possible but aren't characters supposed to be complex? I mean if characters are a barely and not well hidden walking talking propaganda of a certain theme or idea, isn't that bad writing? It's possible I'm not completely understanding what you mean when you say you don't like people who say 'they're complex characters', so is there any way you can explain further? Also if you don't wanna respond and if this is rude in any way, please ignore this.

NO! This is like...the biggest quibble I have with internet meta creation and fandom at large!!!! Not every character needs to be complex, some works are better off without complex characters, and, most importantly:  Complexity isn’t the hallmark of a talented writer!!! AHHHH!!!!! AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So first, what is a complex character? According to tumblr, it seems to be somebody who is either a) a character with conflicting motivations, b) a character with a very detailed backstory, c) a character that evokes sympathy through their realistic experiencing of certain events/situations, or d) a character they are going to say has all these things but is really just blank enough to be relatable in a way that lets people fill in those details themselves with their own experiences. You’ll notice that these are not the same things, though some can go hand in hand. This is the first issue with the conceptualization of complex characters. Fact of the matter is, nobody really agrees on what a “complex character” is in the same way nobody knows what a “strong female character” is. It’s a bad and annoying descriptor that I hate. Generally, though, most lit people would agree that a complex character is one that doesn’t fit into any particular archetype due to conflicting motivations.  With this background, I can get more into why the “THEY ARE A COMPLEX CHARACTER” meta argument is an annoying and often reductive take that hurts literary analysis in fandom.  Archetypes exist for a reason. They are a storytelling tool - perfect for introducing motion into a plot or setting up something people will recognize. Complexity is only possible because archetypes exist. Breaking from an archetype is only interesting in that it is differing from a pre-established norm - there is nothing inherently better about characters that don’t fit archetypes, or characters that invert them, lampshade them, etc. There’s also nothing interesting about doing it in a story where every single character is doing the same thing, unless, of course, that is the point and is played on in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way (like Good Omens) or is played straight and used for broad thematic effect. There needs to be intent. Themes exist for a reason. Walking talking propaganda of certain themes and ideas GIVE A STORY A CLEAR ATMOSPHERE. You don’t need to be hackneyed about it and it certainly isn’t bad writing. Clarity is the single most underrated aspect of writing today, imo, and it’s really frustrating that people act like you need to only hint at themes that have a high chance of going over readers heads. There’s nothing particularly fun about inaccessibility or subtext so deep in the “sub” text that there isn’t any strong evidence of it at all, though it has its purposes and places (re: in narratives aimed at small groups of people who WILL understand what the author is hinting at, or in mysteries/horror/thrillers where some level of confusion is the goal, etc). Cartoons use very blatant tropes to make ideas BIG and LOUD and OBVIOUS in ways that are very good at creating humour and yielding reactions with relatively little screentime - it’s not bad writing, it’s knowing your audience.  A good example of walking talking propaganda characters is the cast of the Bioshock series. Down to their names, characters represented very clear ideas and were full of in-your-face religious imagery that was well-selected, well-executed, and consistent in a way that wasn’t up its own ass. There’s no doubt about anyone’s place in the story and guess what? It added to the richness of the world and the player’s experience of it in a way that overly detailed characters would not have. It also made the few outliers stand out even more as people for the audience to relate to.  Speaking of which... Complex characters are generally more interesting when supported by archetypal characters. It gives them the contrast they need to stand out and situates them as unique in the story’s overall atmosphere. It helps ID them as important to the plot and the ways in which they are. Also, archetypal characters can be rendered more interesting than complex ones by either having them be one of the few archetypal ones, by giving them more depth or making them relatable, or by simply having them embody an archetype people love (like the hero, for instance). And another thing; frankly, in a world where a LOT of fandoms and writers make a big deal of breaking cliches, cliches become interesting again. C’est la vie.  Stories aren’t just random and narratives aren’t often populated by real people. We LIKE narratives that we can understand that deliver messaging that can actually be parsed. Complex characters should never evade the messaging of a work entirely. They are meant to uphold it, to act as parallels and foils and in concert with dozens of other literary tools. Complexity doesn’t mean living outside of the atmosphere the work is trying to create. Complexity doesn’t mean intentionally running counter to the moral of the story for the sake of it. Writing has purpose. You are TELLING A STORY. It’s viewed through a lens - through perspective - that colours it AND every character within so they cannot respond like real people. It’s SO FRUSTRATING to see characters that damage the integrity of a story constantly described as “complex” just because they stick out like a sore thumb or as a way to excuse their poor placement. It’s even more annoying to have people constantly reach for ways to explain behaviour that IS NOT EXPLAINED IN TEXT / make it fit the narrative through “complexity” - AKA explanations of how a REAL PERSON could respond to some stimuli in a fictional story.  Complexity has to be supported in text to be a good argument (if you are fighting against people complaining a character is simple or that they have a singular motivation so their behaviour is inconsistent - it doesn’t excuse personal quibbles people have with a character being a dick and it’s super annoying to see it brought up in that context) or “good writing”. It can’t just be something you relate to or think could be possible. That’s not what it is. Characters are not real people who respond in completely random ways to input - characters are creations of a person within a story (unless the purpose of the story is to represent the real lives of people, in which case the moral framework is a whole other thing that I cannot get into because this is super long already).  All in all, I hate the whole “THEY ARE A COMPLEX CHARACTER” thing because I don’t think complexity is that deep bro, I think people use it to explain away their projection and shut down evidence/analysis based think pieces in an “it’s too deep for you bro” kind of way, it’s a symptom of people thinking that “smart” reading is conflicting and confusing bullshit and “stupid” reading is accessible clear-cut narratives, and I wish people would stop with the REAL PEOPLE DO X thing. Realism isn’t everything, and realism isn’t just you projecting onto a story and making pieces fit.

[mellicose]

Doctor ... WTF?

An impassioned rant about the steady decline of Doctor Who, the trajectory of the Thirteenth Doctor, and the righteous indignation after The Timeless Children, not only as a Whovian, but as a woman-

I love how certain people are spinning The Timeless Children as being good, yet the BBC has released (2)TWO statements basically telling fans the following:

“Doctor Who is a beloved long-running series and we understand that some people will feel attached to a particular idea they have of the Doctor, or that they enjoy certain aspects of the programme more than others. Opinions are strong and this is indicative of the imaginative hold that Doctor Who has – that so many people engage with it on so many different levels.

We wholeheartedly support the creative freedom of the writers and we feel that creating an origin story is a staple of science fiction writing. What was written does not alter the flow of stories from William Hartnell’s brilliant Doctor onwards – it just adds new layers and possibilities to this ongoing saga.”

Creative freedom, huh? Ask Joe Hill about it. Or Gaiman. The writers, including Chibnall, are only free to do what the Beeb and the other show investors tell them. 

They go on:

“We have also received many positive reactions to the episode’s cliff-hanger. There are still a lot of questions to be answered, and we hope that you will come back to join us and see what happens, but we appreciate that it’s impossible to please all of our viewers all of the time and your feedback has been raised with the programme’s Executive Producer." 

Uglylaughing.gif

There is a huge, monumental difference between 'not being able to please everyone all at the same time' and basically making a whole fandom, New and Classic, young and old, come together with the same level of disgust and disappointment.

I also find the people arguing "Canon? What canon?" about the Doctor now being the Lord and Savior of the Shining World of the Seven Systems to be foolish at best, and disingenuous at worst.

No canon?? So what have I been steeping myself in for years  - a vague approximation of a tale? Please. Of course, writers have embellished and alluded, but tampering with the unspoken but well-known 'no touch' rule about the Doctor's origin is ... well, it's canon, in and of itself...

...which Chibnall completely wrecked, and I can't imagine why. Hubris? By all accounts, he was a fan. I thought Moffat was a dick for bringing back Gallifrey, but now, to me, my disappointment then vs now is like comparing a fart to a shitstorm.

Please excuse the scatological references, but I'm using it deliberately. It is a swirling turd, which I and many others wish we could flush down and forget forever.

In another RadioTimes article - which basically is the BBC - amongst the usual apologetics, Huw Fullerton drops this little gem:

“The glory days of David Tennant et al were in a different TV landscape, and if the Tenth Doctor touched down now it seems unlikely he’d command anything close to the ratings he did over a decade ago.”

Yeah, you can all take a break to have a hearty laugh. Or throw up. Whichever. Did they just hint that, basically, the incarnation of the Doctor who continues to get as much love (if not more) than Four, who still consistently gets thousands of butts in seats in conventions worldwide, and has made the BBC hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling in merchandising “wouldn’t command the ratings he did in 2008?”

As Gary Buechler of Nerdrotic said in his response to this article: “Actually, if David Tennant had been given as many chances as Jodie Whittaker, it would’ve had Game of Thrones-level ratings.”

And I agree. Not because I’m a Tenth Doctor stan, but because it’s just ... categorically true. His seasons consistently got average rating of 7.5 to 8 million viewers - and this in a time before BBCiPlayer, so 7-day catch up ratings meant nothing. It was butts on sofas then, which, to me, speaks of a massive, sustained interest.

But Huw goes on to say that such things mean nothing. And that the huge, telling sink in both overnight and 7-day ratings between the 11th and 12th seasons, and the dismal 4.69m 7 day ratings for The Timeless Children - the lowest for a NewWho finale since its reboot - shouldn’t be taken as a loss of interest from the fandom.

Then, pray tell goodman, what does it mean? Does it mean that fans are following the Thirteenth Doctor’s adventures in spirit? Ratings are tanking. Outside of the precious few who blindly tweet and write articles about the show solely based on its now female protagonist, people are notoriously furious, especially after the execrable season finale.

Yet BBC’s Piers Wenger, who once produced the show, says “I don’t think it’s been in better health, editorially. I think it’s fantastic and I think that, the production values obviously have never been better.”

Right. Okay. So, putting Tom Ford makeup on a pig makes it haute couture, huh? The writing is appalling, and after two excruciatingly painful to watch seasons, the Doctor has failed to appear - all I’ve seen is borderline sociopathic navel gazing from an ‘alien’ wearing a pastel duster.

How dare you besmirch the unfailingly cool reputation of the long coat, Chibnall? Jodie? How?? 

I will not let someone piss on my head and call it rain ... ‘because it’s a woman.’ Assuming I’ll accept it just adds insult to injury. Who do they think we are, as female fans? I will not cosign garbage to further an agenda that is ultimately damaging one of my favorite things ever, Doctor Who. I agree that politics, and a positive moral, have always been a part of DW, but at it’s best the writing was so good that it only added to the entertainment. Now, the BBC is feeding us all the bitter pill, without the kindness to hide it in a piece of tasty cheese. It gives the impression that they believe we are already so indoctrinated that we no longer need artifice!

Well, not only am I not indoctrinated, but I refuse to ingest.

I refuse to allow people to silence me because the Doctor is now a woman, and so am I. That, I shouldn’t say anything, or complain, because it’s an act of rebellion on womankind, not only in entertainment, but in general. Well, to that I say ... er ... I disavow.

Disavow. Disavow.

And this from a woman who once criticized Peter Davison for saying that casting a woman was “a vital loss of a role model for boys,” taking it as a sexist comment when in truth, it was just a relevant narrative concern about gender-swapping the traditionally male-presenting Time Lord. Just changing a character from male to female doesn’t do anything but demonstrate a tone-deafness about the emotional and physical differences between men and women, which exist whether we want to address them or not. This is why genderswap reboots are terrible. They are trying to further the feminist agenda, while surreptitiously painting traditional, every day femininity as weakness, and something to be avoided at all costs. I reject the modern Hollywood representation of what a ‘strong woman’ is meant to be. I can be clever, yet sensitive enough to comfort a friend when they confide their fears about a cancer relapse. I can be funny, and not at the expense of the man in the room. I can be brave, but not at the expense of my friends. The mind boggles as to why they thought their current tack with the Doctor was going to be any good. The Doctor is a woman, but more importantly, she’s a Timelord. Where are they? Is the alien that we’ve known and loved for the last 60 years truly gone away, and Thirteen is from a whole different timeline? If so, I don’t want to know her. 

And it breaks my heart.

Why continue to support a corporation who thinks of me, the fan, as no more than a heartless, thoughtless consumer? A drone? A sheep who has no conscious idea of what I like or need?

I’m done. It’s been two seasons of absolute dreck, with absolutely no sign of a course-correction due to the overwhelmingly negative response. I may be many things, but I’m no masochist - even in the name of love. And Chibnall, knowing that many fans would go back to the classic stories to cleanse ourselves, went back to the beginning and took a giant shit there too. 

Oh, the cleverness! the absolute schadenfreude of not only tampering, but rewriting the Doctor’s origins! I suppose that tells me he truly was once a fan. But no longer. Even if it turns out that the Master is as full of crap as Chibnall and it’s all an orchestrated lie, I don’t care anymore. Every inexplicable, terrible thing that happened before has already exhausted my patience with the narrative.

As veteral DW writer and script editor Terrance Dicks said:

If you’re concentrating on putting forth a political message, rather than on doing a really good show, I think there is a danger, maybe, you can do both but it would be hellish difficult, and I think that there’s maybe a danger that the show wouldn’t as be as good as it could or should be, because you’re not looking at the right aims.”

It seems like all that has been lost in time. Big corporations are buying up beloved science fiction properties, and systematically destroying them by trying to mix their politics into the mythos. [see ‘the fandom menace’]

I say, don’t support things that make you unhappy, in the name of nostalgia. That’s how they continue to upset us, while lining their pockets with our hard earned money. Complaining amongst ourselves, writing emails, or making angry Youtube videos no longer works anyway. Now is the time to just ... let it go. No more special edition DVDs, novelizations, or pretty action figures. Hit them in the pocketbook. We will still have fond memories of better times. I will not let them hijack, retcon, and retool them too.

There is a telling paragraph hidden in the depths of the article, which makes my DW fangirl sink:

It’s not as simple as “the ratings are down so Doctor Who will be cancelled,” as for the publicly-funded BBC there’s an interesting question about exactly what ratings are for beyond bragging rights. Obviously they need to make TV that people want to watch – but which people?

Not us, Huw. That’s who.

[enabledarmy]

Bored in quarantine?

Want some good movies to watch but don't want to support the careers of racists, r!pists and general jerks?

Worry not! There are plenty of good movies out there that you might not know about

If you liked:

Baby Driver

Watch:

Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Why?

They have the same editors (Paul Machliss and Jonathan Amos), director of cinematography (Bill Pope) and the same director (Edgar Wright) so that cool style and pace is there that a lot of people love about Baby Driver

And if you loved the music aspect of Baby Driver, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is full of it! The soundtrack is awesome and includes original songs written for the film (and performed in it) including 'Black Sheep' by Metric, and you can even listen to songs by the bands in the film on Spotify. Another great addition to the album is 'It's getting boring by the sea' by Blood Red Shoes.

Here's a gif that showcases the classic whip-pan that Wright's work often uses so well

Note: Given the context that prompted this post, I feel I should make you aware that at the start of the film, Scott (22) is dating 17-year old Knives. Although they only ever hold hands, are never alone together and her parents are aware and ok with it, please don't watch if this will be triggering for you. To give an example of the nature of their relationship, Knives wants to kiss Scott and says "I've never kissed a guy before". Instead of kissing her or initiating any contact, Scott responds "Hey... me neither". Scott decides he's too old for her but doesn't handle this particularly well, not wanting to upset her (don't worry- he gets called out for it) She remains a key character throughout the film and really develops as the story goes on. Bonus points for having her own arc and not being there as the foil for the white love interest. I love you Knives!

I also love the female characters in general they're so different but cool here are some gifs ok bye

Attack the Block

Why?

Attack the Block has the same composer as Baby Driver (Steven Price), and is also edited by Jonathan Amos (Baby Driver, Scott Pilgrim vs the World) and co-produced by Edgar Wright.

It stars John Boyega, which is of course a reason itself to watch it, especially because supporting his work makes it harder for Hollywood to drop him (if you didn't know, he is a vocal leader of the BLM movement in the UK and so stated he might lose his career). He is also just a good actor and general good person which seems rare these days.

Its cast were mostly unknown at the time, and a lot of the dialogue is based on quotes from real teenagers- in the same demographic as the characters- spoken to during research. Joe Cornish (writer/director) also discussed with the actors any changes they wanted to their characters' dialogue and the last drafts were influenced by their choices.

This is especially important as the movie also deals with race and class issues, as well as treatment of black British people and people of colour by authority

I won't write a lot about it since I don't know it as well as I do Scott Pilgrim, but will be rewatching soon and if you need to know if there's any subjects that might be triggering for you check the website doesthedogdie

I'll just leave this quote from the film here:

"They arrest us for nothing anyway"

"No, I reckon yeah, I reckon, the Feds sent them anyway. Government probably bred those things to kill black boys. First they send in drugs, then they sent guns and now they're sending monsters in to kill us. They don't care man. We ain't killing each other fast enough. So they decided to speed up the process"

Cast members you may also recognise!

Jodie Whittaker (Doctor Who)

Frank Drameh (The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow)

I can do a pt.2, if there's particular films/actors you want alternatives to let me know 💜