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honestly the shadow and bone series is fascinating in its own way because I have never seen an author so actively and obviously retcon her own books, and somehow convince a large majority of readers that itās the truth
#like the obvious pandering & rewriting combined with the extreme lack of reading comprehension from the people who believe her#is unparalleled#like these are published novels#also the show doing it too like alksjdflkjsd did anybody on the writing team know what they were doing?!?#myramblings#shadow and bone#sab salt#anti leigh bardugo#anti lb#grishaverse#sab#negative#negativity#fandomcourse#darkling slander sunday
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the managers' plotline: we need a safety pin to solve the mystery of how the opera ghost keeps stealing our money!
christine's plotline:
#gaston leroux is a comedic genius honestly like the fact that these things are happening simultaneously#thatās poetic cinema babey#(āpoetic cinemaā i whisper quietly as i read a novel originally published a century ago)#phantom of the opera#poto shitpost#poto#gaston leroux
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it takes years for terry pratchett's books to get consistently good. I would argue that the series doesn't really hit its stride until Feet of Clay, which means that pratchett was writing and being published for 12 years before he found his groove.
and I genuinely can't imagine that. in part because I do think that pratchett's publication calendar looks different than what's expected of writers today---he had about 2 books published per year for his entire career. he must have been writing furiously, and the publisher must have relatively quickly gotten these to press.
but also....I just can't imagine any modern-day publisher keeping an author on their list for twelve years, unless that author is a prestige get or a constant presence on the bestseller list. And what does it say about the state of publishing that you can't go on publishing someone's good-but-not-revelatory books until they figure out what story they're trying to tell?
#this ties into my other thoughts about the workmanlike genre writers of the 80s and 90s.#king and koontz and even grisham in the early days.#it's a world that's gone away. publishing is a different animal. still....#and I liked prior discworld novels! I think pyramids is great; as is maskarade and lords and ladies#but feet of clay hogfather jingo and carpe jugulum have the feel of someone settling into a groove#jingo is actually really very good. so is carpe jugulum.#you can feel his characters getting smarter. more alive.#(and he takes steps back too; I think thief of time is a good book but it's a little too impressed with its own plot.#and wee free men is a throwback to lords and ladies in a way that's hard to ignore even if tiffany is a delight.#night watch is still good but you know what? not as good as I remember. I prefer jingo.)#also I have figured out pratchett's ''if I handwave a bit about dreams and timelines and magic I do not have to plug this plothole'' trick#I'm mostly amused by his audacity in doing so (and can relate as someone who has maybe used the same trick...)#it's just funny.#discworld
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A body in the water. A howl in the mist. A community secret. A God waking up. Sybil Kane, a London nurse, is dispatched to the isolated island of Calda off the Irish coast, to care for the grandfather she's never met. She's not built for the task; timid, quiet, and self-sacrificial, her journey across the sea dredges up past horrors she thought were long drowned. In the wake of the Irish Civil War and Free State, she feels like a foreigner on her own soil. The islanders are quick to embrace her ā but they have plans for Sybil, plans they don't share out in the open. With only a revolutionary soldier and the local shipwright as allies, Sybil tries to persuade her newfound community to see sense and evacuate their elderly population to the mainland. But their roots are planted deep, and Sybil feels those tendrils growing around her... The longer she stays, the more she belongs. The closer she draws to the grotesque secret they keep hidden at the church...
Very excited to reveal the first teaser image of my novel, The Water Dog! It's been a long time in the making and is probably the most deeply personal story I'll ever tell. A mix of folk-horror and supernatural romance, I think people who've enjoyed my previous stories will be a bit surprised (in a good way I hope!) by this more intense literary experience.
I'll be releasing more updates soon, but this is the reason RTR has been on such a long hiatus. I've been writing like a demon all year to get this finished and edited to a professional standard. I can't wait to show you all more.
#the water dog#eeeeeee!!!!!!!!! it's getting real now and I'm equal parts terrified and exhilerated#i have a kind of crazy idea of how I'm going to publish this novel but it requires a bit more research#and i don't know (??) if anyones done it before. I assume they have though but I haven't heard of it before#anyway!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >:3 hope you like folk horror#boin day#my novel!!!
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um... he just remembered he missed a step in his hair care routine, that's all!
#elliott sdv#sdv elliott#stardew valley elliott#elliott stardew valley#stardew valley#sdv#sdv elliott x farmer#sdv farmer#stardew valley farmer#i picked the mystery novel but i feel like he'd make one for all of the options somewhere down the line#blue tower was his first published novel from the valley but at some point he makes yazzo#stuff like that#i hc that he's probably not that used to people in his personal life praising his writing (directly or indirectly)#so seeing THE FARMER of all people do is huge#arachart#arachocs#julian berker#stardew au
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One of my small haterly joys in life is to Well Akshully the Well Akshully take that Belle and the Beast are about to die in the French Revolution
Because you see the BOOK was published in 1740, which means that Assuming theyāre 21 and 19 in the animated movie as supplementary material would suggest, they will be in their 60s minimum when the revolution happens. Not out of the question, but either of them could get take it out by disease well before then at that point in history, or Belle could die in childbirth. And then the movie completely takes any sort of age reference out of the equation, so they could be even older and therefore have even more chances to die before the revolution hits
Alternately, in the live action movie, the triplets are wearing clothing from the early 19th century. Maybe the revolution has already happened in this universe, and most of the town is just extremely behind the times in terms of fashion! Which makes them even less at risk, although it does raise the question of whatās going to happen to the Prince now When Napoleon finds out about him.
And the biggest Well Akshully of all: the novel doesnāt even take place in France; itās in some kind of fairytale kingdom āfar far away.ā So all of this is moot to begin with, and all of the nitpicking just highlights the absurdity in trying to ruin the happy ending of a fantasy story by getting all smug about real world events that the author had no way of knowing were going to happen.
Especially in a way that relies on forgetting thatā¦ You knowā¦ The 18th century was an entire 100 years, and not every single point within those 100 years was āright before the French Revolution.ā So thereās no more reason to assume that the movie is set on the brink of the Terror than any other time during the 1700s
#beauty and the beast#The author died like 15 years after the novel was published#and anyway if she had lived up to the BEGINNING of the revolution she wouldāve been like 100#so yeah. The reason thereās no consideration of what happens to them during the revolution#is that she literally never found out about the Revolution
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urgh i was listening to a podcast where they alluded to some published romance authors dunking on other authors for writing "gratuitous" and "less tasteful" smut and it reminded me of the time i also accidentally implied something like that on here while i was talking about the less descriptive vanilla shit i write and i want to build a time machine and go back and break my own fingers before i could type that reeee
#it's so interesting that like the entire romance novel industry is seen as 'not legitimate' or 'not credible' by the publishing industry#and some authors try to somehow legitimize themselves by distancing themselves from those 'Other Authors'#instead of making a case for the romance genre as a whole or telling critics to eat shit#the podcast was also talking specifically about some interviews in the 80s#and it drives me bonkers that we're still having the same convos 40 years later trying to ālegitimizeā the romance genre#like i have personal beef with a lot of the tiktok dark romances we see today too but having oodles of descriptive smut is NOT the issue#and same goes for how fanfic (particularly x reader) is looked down on for being Too Smutty or some shit#LET PEOPLE HAVE FUN REEEEE#anyway good morning lmao
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Mark Oshiro confuses me a little bit not going to lie. In the press tour for the first book all they ever talked about was how Nico is their son and Will is fine I guess. Then they said like 2 weeks before TSATS came out that they didn't understand Will's character at all and it's one of the main reasons why Will has so little POV.
Possibly unpopular opinion but I don't think it's a good, encouraging sign when the writer admits to not really caring about the deuteragonist or not even having a sense of how to write them...
Yeah, no. If you have no interest in 1/2 of the POV characters of your book, you REALLY shouldn't be writing it (or at least, not have that be a main character). Especially when the main way TSATS could have been improved is if it was primarily Will-centric instead of Nico-centric. Will basically had next to no established character prior to TSATS! He was practically a blank slate! But all the new stuff we got for Will in TSATS was so clearly disinterested and had no regard for his previously established traits (or the established timeline/canon). Which is annoying because fleshing out Will would have been the PERFECT opportunity to actually incorporate a lot of the topics that Mark Oshiro specializes in as a sensitivity reader, which was the ENTIRE REASON THEY WERE BROUGHT ON AS A CO-AUTHOR!!!!
As TSATS stands, there is no reason for Mark Oshiro specifically to have been the co-author instead of someone else. It's so clearly just a PR move from RR following the huge backlash Rick received due to his response to criticism on how he wrote Piper and Samirah (and Reyna and etc etc). This was immediately following Rick saying he wasn't going to write what would become TSATS because "it [wasn't his] place to." Most of the topics that Mark Oshiro specializes in either weren't relevant at all to TSATS or written very poorly (to downright offensively) in TSATS, so either Mark Oshiro wasn't doing their job or was not able to do their job for some reason, but either way it basically makes the theoretical justification for Mark Oshiro being the co-author/sensitivity reader irrelevant.
With Will, it was HUGE fanon back in the day for him to be trans. Trans!Will and photokinesis!Will were basically the two biggest headcanons for him (both largely popularized by Cherryandsisters). We know Rick is aware of this old fanon because he canonized photokinesis!Will. If we had gotten trans!Will, that would have been great! And then made sense why we specifically got a trans co-author! (Instead, if anything, TSATS canonized Will being cis.) If we had gotten Will being latino, that would have been amazing!!!! And also then made sense as to why they chose Mark Oshiro for the job as a latinx author/sensitivity-reader, versus potentially choosing an Italian co-author since Nico being Italian/Venetian was emphasized so much in the book (and done poorly! Yknow what they could have done to fix that? GOTTEN A SENSITIVITY READER FOR IT)! Based on the themes and focuses actually present in the book, it would have been most logical to get a queer, neurodivergent, Italian co-author or sensitivity reader who specializes in those three topics at least. But we didn't! So why was Mark Oshiro chosen instead when they only specialize in one of those topics? PR reasons. It's blatantly entirely PR reasons and no actual thought or care was put into this book (or, likely, TSATS 2 either).
It doesn't help that we're also actively being told that the published version of TSATS was a rough draft. Or that their editor blatantly isn't doing her job. Or that "The Sun And The Star" was the working title that they just kept cause they didn't bother to make an actual title. And that the final version is full of explicitly last-minute scenes that weren't checked over at all (the final Bianca scene, for one). Or the ACTIVELY ADMITTING TO SOURCING IDEAS AND INFORMATION FROM FANS! That last one is kind of important because at this level of publishing that is a HUGE no-no for legal reasons. You can get into a lot of trouble for that and there is a reason why it is Ye Olde Fandom Law to never try to pitch your ideas or headcanons to the source creator(s) and keep fandom separate from the creators. There is a REASON why Rick Riordan is so distant from the community these days and it's for PROTECTION AGAINST LEGAL REPERCUSSION. Mark Oshiro being the exact opposite while also ACTIVELY ACKNOWLEDGING sourcing concepts from fans does not bode well! It has to do with copyright stuff.
It's just. So. Sighhhhhhhh >->o <- me lying on the floor about all of this. It's sad being able to see the glimmer of what could have been at the very least a decent book underneath all this. If anyone involved in the process had actually cared just the tiniest amount.
#pjo#riordanverse#tsats#the sun and the star#tsats crit#rr crit#mark oshiro#mark oshiro crit#< ?#ask#Anonymous#long post //#i wrote out a whole response to this and them tumblr deleted it. SIGH. re-writing.#sharking Mark Oshiro: YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DEFEAT THE SITH NOT JOIN THEM!!!!!#i do also want to make it clear: i have not read Mark Oshiro's other work so i have no opinion on if they are a good writer or not#and that is irrelevant. i am not judging them based on that at all. if more of the topics that they specialize in as a sensitivity reader#had actually come up/been relevant in TSATS i think it would have been nice for them to have been the co-author and stuff#but as things stand based on what actually ended up being relevant in the book i think another co-author would have been appropriate#or even just. if you keep mark oshiro as the co-author then have *other* sensitivity readers#because as things stand the only specializations that Mark Oshiro has that were relevant in TSATS were mental health and queer topics#and BOTH WERE DONE POORLY. like REALLY BAD. plus the blatant ableism and minor racism and such#i know Mark Oshiro doesnt specialize in neurodivergent/disability topics (though a sensitivity reader for anything riordanverse SHOULD)#but they *do* specialize in racism and it got through. also the fact that blatant ableism got through should also be a bad sign#and yes ''respect the right for bad queer novels to exist'' BUT THATS SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE. SMALL-SCALE.#thats for like. indie publishers. it should not be used as an excuse to let an extremely famous straight/cis author write bad queer stories#i want to like Mark Oshiro really really bad. i do. i really do. but RR is not making it easy#anyways after having to rewrite this i dont have the energy to proofread it more than once please excuse any errors
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as the holder of extremely niche isako lore it's really important to me that you know i didn't make this whole writer thing up. the p3 club book brings up that she's a writer as a hobby, specifically so that it can then say she hasn't had any particular success with it. her whole profile is so hilarious but this bit really gets me. mean to her
#it just refers to her as a dÅjin author which can include both fanfiction and original works. as long as it's self-published#i like to think she's got both under her belt ofc. look at her. that woman writes fanfiction.#but the one i made up for my comic is a webnovel she posts on her lil blog. and it probably stinks. but i love it for her. w/ all my heart#i support her awful novel. hamburg has been trying to make her realize how much subtextual yuri is in that thing for like 6 years now.
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The second half of the Nevermoor graphic novel is set to be released in France on August 29th!
#no link i'm sorry bc it's not up on the publisher's site yet but it's in upcoming catalogues and etc#will add one later. I think w/ pt1 we found out about it like right before it came out lol#nevermoor#nevermoor graphic novel#what I am wondering if the future ones will retitle to their respective books Or if wundersmith will be parts 3+4 hollowpox 5+6 etc etc etc#my guess is honestly the second one but idk we will see. the last page of this second part should tell us
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Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.
Ein wunderliche und erschrƶckliche Hystori von einem groĆen WĆ¼ttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen
A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death
#hellsing#alucard#kouta hirano#translation was found in a comment by u/lazyfoxheart on r/Kurrent#fun fact this is the highest quality version of this image that exists online#i know because i've been looking forever for a version that's clear enough to actually read what hirano wrote under '1443'#but there weren't any so i had to take matters into my own hands#the real image on the back of the guidebook is only 2 inches tall so i had to take this with my smartphone and will my hands not to shake#anyway i'm pretty sure it's supposed to say EÄrigƶz (the location vlad was imprisoned) so yeah. thank you hirano very cool#if i might rant for a sec it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out because i didn't have the guidebook at first#and in the images i could find online that part was just a blur that looked suspiciously like a person's signature and i was like. who tf#i was thinking matthias corvinus since he issued some political propaganda against vlad iirc but it didn't match his signature on wikipedia#then i thought it might be vlad II dracul's since he probably had to sign an agreement to send his sons over as hostages at some point#but that didnt seem right either so i kept skimming vlad's wiki page#and then i was like goddammit...hirano.....you just misspelled EÄrigƶz didn't you.. ....#i maybe should've made a separate post dedicated to this instead of writing a novel in the tags but eh#the hellsing brainrot runs deep#also- i put it in the source link at the bottom of the post but the german inscription is copied off a real woodcut of vlad from 1491#except instead of depicting him as an adult hirano drew him as a child which gives the inscription a very different feel imo#the one final thing that interests me about this is the fact that hirano published this calendar in 2002#which is REALLY early in the series. like this was before volume 5 came out??#i have no idea why he decided to do a massive spoiler drop in a random piece of japan-only merch#sandwiched between a drawing of alucard as john travolta from saturday night fever and integra as a fish no less#it makes me really curious to know what the fan response to this was back then. like did people even know who this was#maybe im just an idiot and everyone back then was like 'ah yes its alucard as a 12 year old. how very informative'
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Kind of want to write an academic AU. Do I know for what ship/fandom? Nope. Do I have any plot besides mundane suffering and/or disturbingly specific catharsis for me? I do not. Have I written fic in ages? I have not. And yet. Here we are.
#hilary for ts#etc etc processing trauma through writing#also my novel is finished!#can't decide whether to bother trying to find an agent but that seems like a lot of work#and i have made a cover and everything so it would be easy to publish#bad news: there will be a sequel#i am already 120k words deep#but yes this is the definition of āno plot just vibesā#and frankly there are barely even any vibes#i just like to put my blorbos in academia and watch them suffer#for reasons
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This art is doing things to me
#Are they... You know......... šš#atsushi nakajima#osamu dazai#dazatsu#bsd#bungou stray dogs#bsd s1#mine#Yesterday I spent one hour cleaning this but I'm really nowhere near to done#The canvas is just too large (834px of width) and the image way too grainy.#I can't redraw stuff if it's this grainy and even cloning wasn't getting me anywhere#Not even noise correction works...#After sleeping over itā I resolved that it's probably for the best to reduce the image size.#Hopefully then the lineart will be compact enough for me to draw over it#It's just. WHO HAD THE INSANE IDEA of putting illustrations under text.#Not only it's a huge shame it covers the artā but also... When reading the novelā I was seriously struggling to read the textā#that overlapped with black areas#That's such an incredibly poor editing choice I have no idea how it could get through publishing.#Publishing houses are truly insane the only way something like this could have happened is by overworking and understaffing. It's crazy#THERE'S NOT EVEN A WHITE OUTLINE. C'mon peoples.#Alright sorry rant over. Dazatsu is SO real tho ā”ā”ā”
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Wow, Eloise is so ahead of her time that she's reading Emma at least 6 months before it was even published.
#bridgerton spoilers#bridgerton#emma#jane austen#eloise bridgerton#i'm being nitpicky#but the moment she said she was reading emma i was like '...does that work... timeline-wise...'#and the answer is no. it was published in december 2015. while season 3 is approximately spring 2015.#if we're basing it off the Danbury ball being on april 6 1813 in season 1 (the date was on the dance cards)#so her first ball of the season should generally be around that same time for the later seasons too#so if it's springtime then eloise is reading emma more than half a year before it's actually published#so they should have had Eloise reading S&S or P&P instead of Emma if they wanted Austen. but. i kind of get why they went with Emma.#and i appreciated her quick little review of it because it is more than a romance novel#(also Mansfield Park was published before Emma but i don't really like Mansfield Park)#DAYS later I realize I wrote 2015 when I meant 1815. wowwww my brain
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Han Yoojin's Black Choker
This post isn't going to be everything, but it's going to hopefully be easier to find/navigate than the handful of posts I'm seeing floating around and that I've responded to: a summary of official art with Han Yoojin wearing the black choker in S-Classes that I Raised, its maybe appearances in the text of the novel, and its maybe relationship with fanart. For the short answer, yes it appears in multiple pieces of official novel art, and maybe at least once in the novel text. But it might also be a fan design that's sort of accepted as official at least in some cases? Explanation beneath the read more.
Yoojin's black choker is most likely Grace, the protection item Myeongwoo made from Shalos. Other folks have said it's the translation item he gets from Yoohyun, and I disagree, but I'll get to that.
The novel covers and text
Yoojin is not wearing a choker on either novel cover. The first cover, on the left, has a black line for his collar, not a necklace or choker. It appears often in the manhwa. The black collar is gone in onlyraii's cover on the right (even though onlyraii had drawn Yoojin with the collar in fanart years prior to this, detailed later). The first cover seems to be from when the novel started publishing, and the second cover came out in April 2022. More on the second cover later.
The ebook release also got a cover, but it doesn't have Yoojin on it.
Text-wise the "choker" is possibly from novel chapter 109, where Grace turns into a sparkling choker at one point (which Yoojin notes is more over the top than a bracelet during his struggle to get her to turn into something less ostentatious). Some folks looked at different text in the novel here for how it and particularly Grace look, but just as a warning, there is no official English translation for the novel outside what we get in the manhwa, which is somewhat modified because it's a manhwa adaptation. There are fan translations for parts of the novel, but a lot of folks use machine translation, which can be very dubious.
In other places in the novel she's just described as turning into a necklace, not specifically a choker, though in novel chapter 176, it's described as sitting close around Yoojin's neck (which sounds like a choker). Whatever jewelry she turns into is specifically described as having a blue/silver jewel from which her bird form emerges (as she has in novel chapter 156, which is the chapter one fanwiki lists it appearing in, and in which she is described as turning into a necklace, not specifically a choker). So there's very little textual support for him to be wearing a choker, though he does at least on occasion wear necklaces.
Revised ebook novel volumes
SCTIR the novel was (and still is) originally released chapter by chapter on Naver, Munpia, and Ridibooks (currently Side Story is only available on Naver, but the chapters of the main story are on all three). The main story was eventually collected into 35 volumes and partially revised or at least given additional scenes in places. Each volume contained at least two pieces of art. For volumes 1-14 this was seemingly a character portrait with their bio (e.g., age, height, likes, dislikes), and 1 piece of interior art, with the latter at least being by ė¹ģ (the manhwa artist). Volumes 15+ switched up interior artists, for a total of I think at least 3-4 artists, and those volumes had at least 2 pieces of interior art, with volume 35 having 4. The individual chapters didn't have this, it was added for the ebook release.
The volumes themselves are available on Ridibooks and Naver (they might be somewhere on Munpia but I couldn't find them).
The first volume of the ebook released in May 2020 (the Ridibooks release lists an earlier date for some reason than the one on Naver, which is November 2020). By this point, fans had already been drawing Yoojin wearing a black choker with a gem (usually blue or silver) on it since at least 2019: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. <This fanart is by onlyraii, the artist who went on to make the new cover for the novel published in April 2022. So at least some of the official artists were involved in the community and knew of popular fan designs (though notably, Yoojin is not wearing the choker on onlyraii's official book cover).
Just want to emphasize: there's a difference between an author drawing/commissioning art and ensuring that it complies with their specifications in the text/their vision and their publisher commissioning art that might not even get approval/comment from the author. I don't know how much geunseo had a say in any of the art for the novel. If there's some interview or something somewhere where they state clearly how many/which pieces of art they approve and the level of control they have over what the art looks like, I haven't seen it. It's not unusual for third party artists to have more freedom to do stuff and draw fan designs/things that aren't accurate in "official" art and for it to get approved (e.g., some of the interior art for the official English translation of "Mo Dao Zu Shi", which actually goes directly against what's on the page; it's kind of unclear how much control MXTX had over this stuff, and heavily implied she had little to none; it's possible that's the same case with geunseo). So whether or not you view this stuff as official is up to you. But it is in the official ebooks, though designs are not really consistent, which implies there was a lack of strong direction in what artists were/weren't allowed to do.
ė¹ģ potentially drew Yoojin wearing the choker in volume 13, for the Chuseok art (September 2020, I'm going by the Ridibooks release dates). It's very hard to tell whether that's his shirt collar or a choker. But judging by the color of what's beneath it before robe starts and the skin above the choker, it looks like it's again the collar of a white t-shirt, not a choker.
The next time it was potentially drawn was by a different artist in volume 18 (July 2021). It's hard to tell because he's holding a bouquet that mostly covers his neck, but on the right side of his neck seems to be part of a black choker.
You can kind of see something that looks like a black choker near Peace's front left paw.
The clearest earliest example of him wearing it in official art is in volume 19 (April 2022), where he's clearly visible wearing a black choker with a blue gem on it. I don't see it mentioned as something he's wearing in the text of that chapter, at least from a brief browse.
He's also definitely wearing it in two pieces (one each) of art for volumes 20-21 (April 2022). Here's the one from volume 21:
In volumes 22 (April 2022) and 25 (August 2022), Yoojin seems to be wearing a cat collar with a similar design in two other pieces of art (one each volume). Not exactly a choker, but he's at least wearing something on his neck. Here's the one from volume 22:
The other art of him with the cat collar in volume 25 is a lot more similar to the other interior art choker designs, with a black ribbon or whatever it is and a blue gem in the center, rather than a blue ribbon.
After that, they switch artists at least once if not twice and none of them drew Yoojin with the choker - or any necklace at all - that I can see. He didn't lose Grace for good in the novel, though he doesn't wear her all the time, but no other artist for the interiors drew him wearing the choker for the last 10 volumes of the revised ebook novel release, if not the last 14. Whether that's a narrative choice or the inclusion of the choker at all is random/whatever the current artist wants/what was geunseo/the publisher's mood, who knows?
The manhwa adaptation
This is how manhwa episode 103 depicts Yoojin trying to get Grace to turn into something wearable after first receiving her (art by ė¹ģ), when the alleged "choker" description appears in the novel text:
I'm not seeing a black choker anywhere. The black line near his neck is the collar of his shirt.
As of posting on June 21st, 2024, at least on the free to read Webtoons page and Tappytoon English chapters of the manhwa, there is no art of Yoojin wearing the choker, either as Grace or the translation item he got from Yoohyun. The manhwa depicts the translation item differently, and Grace has only appeared as fancy necklaces or a bracelet. If ė¹ģ drew the choker on Yoojin in the Chuseok ebook novel art for 2020, although the manhwa hasn't gotten there yet, they have drawn him wearing the choker before in official artwork, and yet have not drawn him wearing it since in the manhwa, for whatever reason. We'll have to see how the scene is drawn when the manhwa gets to Chuseok.
In the manhwa, Grace is shown turning into a simple bracelet after negotiation in episode 103:
You'll note he often wears shirts with black collars on them.
This is the translation item that Yoohyun gives Yoojin as it appears in manhwa episode 55:
Which is roughly how it's described in novel chapter 68, absent any specific color description for the metal ornament. Someone else said this is actually what people are drawing when they draw the choker because the design is vague enough to match a choker, which is strange to me, because from what I recall of the novel, Yoojin has this in his pocket/inventory most of the time. He's not wearing it constantly (he also already had it when he got Grace). It's kind of implied if not stated he doesn't like wearing it much and only puts it on out of necessity and takes it off at the first opportunity. He does, however, typically wear Grace (though he does, for various reasons, take her off a decent amount).
The April Fool's 2022 art by ? and the 2022 official novel cover by onlyraii
Someone else pointed out the "sketch" for the official novel art by onlyraii (final art below):
And here it is when it was released seemingly originally on 31 March 2022/1 April 2022 (KST).
In the other post I'm seeing about the "sketch" for this, the unfinished "sketch" listed was actually the April Fool's Day joke for 2022 that seems to parody onlyraii's cover, but with all the guys being bald:
(A lot of manhwa and I think Korean webnovels do April Fool's Day joke posts with fake "new" art done by official artists; 2022's SCTIR manhwa April's Fool's Day joke was magical girl themed, and this was 2024's, which had most of the cast become dinosaurs).
You can also see that while there are similarities, this is very much not what they ended up with, and again, it's dubious this was an actual sketch for the cover: it's not on onlyraii's twitter, though that doesn't mean it wasn't posted elsewhere, and seems more in the style of ė¹ģ's art, so it's likely this is the manhwa team doing a jokey post (the manhwa started in November 2021, and ė¹ģ was still doing art for the novel ebook revision at least around 2020, so they'd have been around, and serikachan, the lead storyboard artist, does post about recent novel chapters on twitter, so at least some of them pay attention to the novel). I think it's intentional that all the men are bald as well, to note it's a joke; a lot of the Korean commenters are commenting on their baldness.
A core issue is the similarity and that they were released 11 hours apart (the gag went up around 11 hours before the official cover was released; onlyraii commented on their work for the cover around 40 minutes after the official cover was released). The "sketch" seems to show maybe a planned choker, but if it was an actual sketch in whole or part, it was clearly nixed for the final design. Who made that decision is anyone's guess.
"Sketch" or not, again, onlyraii has drawn Yoojin with a choker many times in their fanart dating back to 2019: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Before the 2022 piece. If onlyraii and/or ė¹ģ wanted to incorporate a fan design into the official art in some way, again, they wouldn't be the first fanartist/community member to do so on official artwork.
In conclusion:
At this point I don't fully know if the design/his regularly wearing a choker comes from the novel or fanon that was later incorporated by fans into canon when they worked on the official art, or if geunseo suggested it or at least okay'd its inclusion on official art, but these things at least are true:
Grace is apparently mentioned as being a choker at least once in the novel text, but it's described as being rather fancy
the fan design/idea of the black choker with a small gem in the middle predates at least the official release of the ebook art with him wearing a choker (if they were released earlier than that on an artist social media post or portfolio or publisher post somewhere, in some form, encouraging fans to use it in fanart prior to the book releases, I have no idea), so at least the stuff pre-2020 was not inspired by the ebook interior art, and potentially nothing before 2022 was inspired by interior art because the clearest art with him wearing it wasn't out until then; it was likely inspired by the potential single/two times Grace is described as a choker in the text, or just generally popular fanon about him wearing a choker (wouldn't be surprising, there's a lot of emphasis on Hyunje grabbing Yoojin's neck all the time and how Yoojin's neck feels when he's not grabbing it)
Yoojin wears a black choker/collar with a gem in the middle of it in at least 3 if not 6 pieces of official ebook interior art, and a blue ribbon collar in at least one piece of official ebook art
after the choker/collar shows up on those 3-7 pieces of interior art, it stopped appearing at all (his neck is visibly bare of any necklace of any kind in multiple art pieces), and he doesn't wear anything on his neck in the artwork for at least 10 volumes; furthermore, despite the manhwa artist potentially drawing him wearing the choker in one of those pieces, they have not drawn him wearing it in the manhwa in the years since that ebook art was released, even after he had both Grace and the translation necklace item, both of which have been suggestions for what the choker is
So does he wear a choker? In the novel text and novel art, maybe, at least sometimes, but not currently in the manhwa. Does it look like it does in fanart? Maybe: it's not really described in the text and the few novel art pieces we have don't quite match each other. The publisher and/or possibly geunseo okay'd at least some official art with it on (though I don't know how much control geunseo has in that decision, and the author of the original work okaying art is different than the publisher okaying art, particularly depending on what degree of control geunseo had over any changes/what could be drawn, or if they were just allowed to say yes or no and that's it).
I'll try to keep this updated if new information/art comes out, so if you're seeing this as a reblog, check the source post to see if there's an update.
#han yoojin#sctir#my s class hunters#s classes that i raised#han yoojin's choker#han yoojin choker#ė“ź° ķ¤ģ“ sźøė¤#this is probably annoying to people but I was curious too and wanted to know if it was official#it's a long novel it's easy to forget details#it's not a criticism I just like having information clear#also I feel bad responding with all this to all those posts#sorry the opening is text heavy I tried to go semi chronologically#and while a past version of this started with the manhwa I felt it made more sense to start with the novel#fallfthoughts#now with more official art cause the publisher shared at least some of it on twitter
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i dont hold this against any casual reader but if you're discussing lolita in an academic context and you don't stumble over the way the references to dante and beatrice are so objectively nonsensical that nabokov might as well be slapping you with an electric eel to remind you humbert is bullshitting your opinion is less than worthless and you should probably change careers!
#lolita novel#vladimir nabokov#humbert humbert#dante alighieri#lolit4#lolita book#loleeta#like the fact that ive read actual essays that i know are HIGHLY REGARDED#by people with lit phds#uncritically with no addendum repeating the dante and beatrice stuff#you are CLOWNS and you dont deserve to publish
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