2024 reads / storygraph
Our Lady Of Mysterious Ailments & The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle
books 2 & 3 in the Edinburgh Nights series
paranormal mystery set in a climate-ravaged future Scotland, plagued by ghosts and magic
follows a 15yo Black girl who’s finally gotten an in to learn scientific magic properly - but it turns out to be an unpaid internship, so she has to take more jobs delivering ghost messages and investigating mysteries to take care of her gran and little sister
in book 2 she’s investigating a strange illness centred on a magic school for boys
and in book 3 she’s attending a global magician conference held in a creepy castle - when someone’s murdered, and they’re locked in until she figures out the culprit
Zimbabwean magic, friendship, disabled characters, no romance (so far)
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The Villain and Hero Switch...🙄
On my Maleficent salt again. If anyone ever wants help understanding my hesitance to give live action remakes a shot, look no further. I honestly did want to like the movie at first, but them just taking the story and switching the villain and non-villain roles felt like a cheap cop out.
The fairies thing really pissed me off. In the first film, they were immortal magical beings who had trouble doing things the mortal way. Did that make them imperfect guardians? Sure! But they did their best successfully for just under SIXTEEN YEARS. Then the curse caught up with them, because of course it did. It had to. There wouldn't be a story otherwise. That wasn't a good enough reason to make them criminally negligent in the live action version in order to make Maleficent look like a hero by comparison. I love the fairies from the original movie. They made mistakes, yes, but all good heroes do. AND they SAVED THE DAY!!! Phillip would've frikin died without them, and so would've Aurora!
...huh...I think I'm realizing that maybe my hesitance to give remakes, live action or otherwise, of my animated faves might have a root cause...
Anyway, I do understand that adaptations should change some things in order to justify their existence. After all, a shot for shot remake is also lazy and boring. However, a lot of the time, the remakes just make lazy choices. Like Maleficent being turned into a thinly veiled date-rape allegory and switching the hero and villain roles instead of...I don't know... giving Maleficent a deeper motive for her villainy besides being snubbed for a party invite while still letting her be the fabulous villain we all love. Or instead of focusing on Maleficent at all, they could have focused on giving Aurora more of a story. Maybe showing us how out of place she felt growing up, and what finding out who her real parents are meant to her. Also expanding on her relationship with her "aunts". Have the fairies learning to be mortal a more pivotal part of their experience. Making Maleficent a hero at the expense of villainizing King Stephen, making Queen Leah even less of a character, and Flanderizing the fairies feels...well, lazy. Aurora was one of the few Disney Princesses with two loving parents. Why remove that distinction instead of expanding on their story? They had to give up their only child in order to save her life. Not only is there conflict for them as her parents, there's conflict for them as monarchs. I think a good writer could have made that a compelling story. But no...they just had to make King Stephen evil, for...reasons...
Look, it's not even like I'm against taking the villain of an original story and turning them into the hero. I just want there to be a good reason for it. For example, I love the story of Wicked. I think making Elphaba the hero worked really well, because in the original movie (I didn't actually read the books...sorry. But in my defense, I feel like most Wicked/Wizard of Oz fans probably haven't either? We're all Judy Garland trash) In the original movie the titular Wizard is enough of a morally grey character that you could argue that he could have been a villain actually, and the Wicked Witch of the West was such a one dimensional character that you could take her in so many directions and keep her recognizable (btw, I'm not saying it's bad the 3W is one dimensional. It worked for the story, but it gave the fanfics author something to build on). Also, I feel like Wicked the novel doesn't remove all the moral greyness from Elphaba's character, and it makes her interesting. There's a story to tell there! I can dig it! It's when adaptations completely switch the role of hero and villain so completely and abruptly that I get annoyed.
What they did was less a retelling than making up a completely different story altogether. Stephan and Leah were minor characters in the original story, yes. But they could've remained loving parents to Aurora, and Maleficent could've remained the villain and still been part of a great, expanded story.
Then maybe Maleficent could've still turned into a dragon instead of giving her stupid pet bird that moment.
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∞ !!!!
"hanging 'round, downtown by myself / and i've had too much caffeine, and i was thinkin' about myself / and then there she was in platform double suede / yeah, there she was like disco lemonade"
from sex and candy by marcy playground
so i discovered this song back in like middle school when my mom was forcing me to watch MTV with her and this song came on. and i liked it! i thought it was fun so i added it to my music library. i looked up the lyrics and i saw disco lemonade and yknow in hindsight that's a drink but back then i was what, 11? 12? and i had no idea what the fuck disco lemonade meant so i thought it was absurdist humor and i was yknow, 11, 12, so i was fully in my weird nonsense = height of comedy phase. so i was fully obsessed with disco lemonade. i thought it was a fun phrase that had a nice rhythm to it, it felt nice to say, and the fact it was a nonsense phrase to me just made it all the better. i believe i made my roblox username "DiscoLemonade" or something similar because of it, because back then i changed my roblox username like how some of you people change your tumblr urls. DiscoLemonade was not a very long era of mine but it unfortunately was very much an era
( put a "∞" in my ask box and I'll shuffle my music player and give you my favorite lyric from the song that comes up )
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rewatching inanimate insanity season two
spoilers!!! vvv
I love analayzing characters facial expressions and Trophy is in season two so of course while he’s there I’m gonna notice his. I think the one time I saw him smile was when he got that picture of Knife. In every single group shot he is frowning. There are several instances where it’ll cut to the grand slams and all of them have neutral/indifferent (or happy) expressions except for Trophy who looks pissed. They said find me a character that’s more angry than Paintbrush and I said I DID.
Soap I love her. She had so many issues to begin with but I really enjoy how she spent her time trying to fix them. Also ‘Theft and Battery’ had me so mad for her because first she gets thrown out of a hot air balloon, and then she’s targeted by the same guy like 3 or 4 times all in the same day. I love Suitcase but I’m not gonna lie and say that Soap calling her out there wasn’t justified. I’ll miss you my gorgeous little freak
Test Tube’s character development. I watched II3 before going back and (re)watching II2 and it’s like. There used to be light in her eyes. She used to be a silly girl who said golly gee and talked about nerd stuff. (Not saying she can’t still be a silly girl who says golly gee and talks about nerd stuff, but her character is a lot more serious in Season 3 than in Season 2.) I think the turning point for her was in the alternate reality episode, mostly because of her and Lightbulb’s interaction. Also, her furiously scribbling out the word ‘secret’ from her board and eventually just destroying the whole thing. She didn’t have a huge change in character, but she went from making nerdy references and science facts to showing real frustration and envy(?) towards the people around her.
This isn’t a huge thing but Nickel literally constantly stepping on people. Like standing on their heads. He does it with Baseball a lot and he (at least once) has done it to Suitcase as well. It could just be a visual gag but I feel like it’s really representative of the way he stepped on people’s feelings as well. He was a huge jerk to Suitcase, and even though Baseball was his friend he did dismiss him and his concerns at times.
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... Man if Tim should ever discover what a Chimera is or just starting to actually delve more into his origins lad is gonna have a crisis,
That said a part of me would kind of love to see someone use the fact of him being- lab made to their advantage and as a way to idk manipulate him.
That as he tries to grow and become his own, there's still that lingering side with strings to tug at of being just a 'tool' 'artificial' 'a puppet' 'not real' ect..
Levi would 100% use that to try and take advantage of Tim, point out how he's the only one who could ever understand him. Human's can't be trusted, after all it was people who hurt them.
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