#not great I don't think

[clonerightsagenda]

New ask for PPLN: Lyra Silvertongue

Hell yeah the ask meme adventure continues

(Ask meme here)

Full disclosure, I have not reread these books in quite some time. I do intend to, so that I'm prepped to be properly judgmental of the TV adaptation, but since my surgery keeps getting postponed I've been putting it off.

First impression

Man I wish I got to be a feral child running wild around a university.

Impression now

Given that HDM deconstructs the idea of the ~ innocence ~ of youth I like that Lyra (especially early on) is depicted as a selfish, impulsive kid who doesn't always make good decisions or empathize with other people. Like yeah, 12 year olds are still figuring stuff out! Most of them would cheer as their favorite bear tears another bear apart and eats his heart! Kids are weird and gross and complicated and authors who write very Pure Innocent Sweet Children just don't remember being that age.

Favorite moment

When she's not sure if she can trust Will so she asks the alethiometer about him and it tells her "he is a murderer" and she goes oh thank god. Bonkers behavior. (Also very judgmental of the alethiometer, I would call what he did manslaughter at best)

Also love that despite being the Eve in this scenario she pulled a Jesus and co-led the harrowing of hell. Love me a good afterlife breakout. Partycrash the underworld just to say hey to your friend and go 'btw while we're here do you want to like. leave'

Idea for a story

Lyra's described as a witch in many of the ways that count after being separated, and she pretends to be a witch a few times during the sequel series. I think she should hang out with them sometime. She suffers from the common female protag written by a male author problem of having no female friends and they might help her more than reading a bunch of depressing philosophy. "Oh your preteen crush is stranded in another universe? Well I've outlived 3 husbands. Let's talk about it."

Unpopular opinion

Is being a #hater of the sequel series so far unpopular? I was not a fan. While I did not expect some sort of secret surprise Will/Lyra endgame and hold the general perspective that most people are not going to have lasting relationships with their 13 year old crushes (a separate nested unpopular opinion?), setting up a romance with a guy who knew her as a baby and was her teacher when she was a kid weirds me out.

Favorite relationship

Does not every 12 year old girl want a giant fuckoff armored bear to be her bestie. At least after Lyra got every other person in her life surgically removed over the course of the narrative she can still visit Iorek the bear king. I hope? I don't remember him mentioned in the sequel series but I don't remember much of it.

Favorite headcanon

While as stated earlier I don't support holding out for your 13 year old crush I think it would be nice for her to get to say hi to all her friends from other worlds in the land of the dead before they all vaporize. (Speaking of which, wasn't the deal that they could only keep that window open if they taught everyone in each of their worlds to stop being assholes. How's that going guys)

[daisywords]

One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.

Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.

It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?

Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.

[nitw]

i've been waiting for gravity falls to become relevant again so i could share one of my favorite underrated bits from the entire show. like it's only episode 2 but this whole segment just makes me lose my shit. i think jason ritter's exasperated line delivery is what makes it

[egophiliac]

can't believe that skeleman has turned on us, and Halloween Prom is tomorrow.

(what a top-tier UM...we are about to be just totally obliterated in the absolute silliest way. what possible use could this power have outside of bringing us to the brink of utter holiday disaster.)

[descendant-of-truth]

Shipping is fun and all but I swear every single time someone makes a comment, whether as a joke or in a legitimate analysis, about there being "no other explanation" for a pair's interactions, I lose just a bit more of my sanity

Like, no, you guys don't get it. Romance is not about the Amount of devotion, it's about the COLOR. the FLAVOR of it all. a character can be just as devoted to their platonic friend as they are to their romantic partner, and they don't love either of them more, just differently.

But because the majority of people still have it stuck in their minds that romance exists on the highest tier of love, I'm stuck seeing endless takes that boil down to "these two care about each other too much for it to NOT be romantic" as if that's the core determining factor to how literally any of this works

In conclusion: stop telling me that I don't understand the story if I don't interpret the leads as romantic, I am TIRED

[nashilayladragneel]

I have a thing for traumatized men who turn out to be okayish father figures.

[hyperblue]

terry: i used to make really poor choices about my life, so now I'm redeeming myself by being batman

dick, who is always five seconds away from killing himself when he has to be batman: what an... interesting way of seeing things

tim, who can not EVER be allowed to be batman: huh.

[technically-human]

Bisexual crisis Crystal edition

[writeouswriter]

People sorting ao3 solely by stats and only clicking on fics with a certain amount of kudos or comments, you will not survive the winter, nor the summer, nor at all, *brings out knife,* run

[bixels]

It's crazy how Dungeon Meshi's manga can feel more cinematic and emotional than the anime to me, even when they're practically the same. Compared to the anime, this moment is such a heartbreaking gut-drop. The way Kui uses negative space and flat compositions to create a sense of horrific stillness is so key.

The way the text (Senshi's monologue) is sequestered to an empty corner of a panel or huddled away from the edge of its text box is not only a great way of showing Senshi's headspace (fearful, isolated, dissociating), but creates a visual representation of pause, as if you hold your breathe after each line. The first panel puts us directly in Senshi's perspective too (compared to in the anime, which puts us as an outside observer over Senshi's shoulder). The detail of the door and bricks so effectively implies that he stared at it for so long, waiting and hoping, that its image is burned in his memory. The wood grain, the brick arch, the number of rivets. The lack of dialogue in the second panel shows a moment of realization too –– "he's dead" (also a great example of the Kuleshov effect). And it's that pause that creates a beat and sets a great rhythm to his headspace, like a music rest: "He never came back." (oh god.) "I'm all alone." Finally, the third panel's negative space, cropping Senshi, shows how truly alone he feels. Without his family, the world ceases to exists. Under shock, he traps himself in a 1-foot radius, too scared to even perceive a world outside its boundaries; a world that can hurt him, kill him, make him disappear with it. There is only his body, the stone beneath his feet and against his back, his thoughts, and that awful bowl of soup.

Even though they're a series of flat images, there's an implicit reading of silence in Senshi's realization and horror. Kui influences your experience to slow down and take your time.

Compare this to the anime, which fills every shot with dialogue. The pacing is fast; we never get to sit in silence like we do with the manga. The horizontal frame allowed the boarders to add Senshi, turning the composition into an over-the-shoulder shot, which takes us out of Senshi's POV. They also added a zoom-out in shot one, which adds unnecessary energy to a very somber scene. The tightening on Senshi as a close-up reaction shot also dulls the moment. In the original panel, Senshi stares ahead at the empty space to his left as a shadow surrounds his mind. It not only shows how Senshi's senses are dulling and his world is shrinking (setting up panel three), but shows how terrified Senshi is of what's in front of him, how the air itself becomes pitch black and opaque, how Senshi is surrendering himself to fear. The pacing is understandable and necessary; this episode packed a lot of story content together. It's just a shame because it really (imo) deflated one of the most nauseating moments in Dungeon Meshi.

[hypewinter]

Firefighting hadn't been the first job on Danny's list but it was surprisingly well suited for him. Toxic smoke and blazing fires were nothing to a guy who didn't need to breathe and could phase through anything after all. Plus it gave him a way to feel useful without catching the attention of the big bat himself. At least.... it was supposed to. But Danny supposes that ship has sailed considering Batman is standing in front of him at this very moment.

[goosebelle]

[divineandmajesticinone]

4 MINUTES (2024) I 1.02 "It's pretty deep. All the doctors in the ER are busy. I'll stitch it up for you."

[keferon]

The tac net crash chapter is one of my favorites so far~

Ah and. Guess what. I just discovered that including this post, I made 50 pieces of fanart for Mistakes on mistakes until.. I’m so sane and normal about this story can you tell👍

[myopicry]

lurking in radfem spaces has really changed my entire view of most mainstream internet spaces because once you realize just how censored women's voices and feminist thought are on these sites, and how much porn and misogynistic values are defended, you can't unsee it.

how anyone can bear to participate in an online space where porn, of all things, is lauded as the bastion of "self-expression" and yet any woman slightly critical of popular cultural opinions is demonized is wild, especially when a lot of that porn is a) violent and misogynistic b) often accessible by minors c) gross and shallow d) myriad of other reasons far better writers have probably described

fuck I'm just so tired. seeking rationality online is just opening a pandora's box of garbage and seeing the reflection of how bleak the social hegemony has become.

[art-is-kayos]

I see why people do MS paint rage doodles this is really great