#problematic faves are my jam

[url0calpr0sh1tt3r]

The Old lady with a Sword is Proship!

She has no reason not to be! Hell,; it’s why she has a sword to begin with !!! :D

[spockandawe]

Oh, this is interesting. To me. I'm not sure it's interesting to anyone else! But I'm on my computer for once and FULL of words again, and I'm delighted to talk to myself given half an excuse.

So, I made a post about Long Live Evil! Because I cracked open the book and was absolutely taken aback by how transparently it seemed to be an SVSSS reskin. I wrote up a goodreads thing (it's whatever, I'm going to rehash the main points here too), because I was also full of words and beans after finishing the book yesterday, and after polling online friends, I was surprised to see that the comparison didn't seem to have organically occurred to anyone else, when it was so naked to me. I know there’s a TON of transmigration and isekai stories out in the universe, and pointing at one single book was a big claim, so I just had to assemble all my thoughts! I find this so interesting! And I reblogged my initial one-off post with a little more elaboration about some of the things that jumped out at me, then got on with live and went back to chipping at ORV and GHG, and shotgunned MADK this afternoon.

This is a subtle nod and a wink to my passionate love for these kind of... morally grey main characters! Calling them villains might be a bit much, I don't think there are many true villain protagonists out there (LLE included), and even Devil Venerable has a demonic cultivator who's doing demonic shit and killing loads of people... but with the ultimate balance of the heavens and earth as his priority. This kind of story is my jam. I was recced this book on the basis of transmigration and sketchy protagonists being my thing. I can't rightfully call SVSSS the best cnovel I've ever read, but it is my favorite. And I've probably reread it more times than any other cnovel.

So, that SRB post, huh? I put Long Live Evil behind me, and honestly even following up on the sequel is mmmmmdoubtful, but THIS snagged my attention again. First, the comparisons she's calling out as incorrect are wild to me. Draco and Harry? What? Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian?? (I had to ponder that one for a hot minute, but I bet you anything it's about 'the golden cobra' and 'the last hope' and that's just silly, they're not wangxian, they're MOSHANG)

I was recced LLE in one friend group, but I had an anti-rec from my book club friend group. My book club friend hadn't been at all impressed by it! And she's cool, and I talk up svsss and mxtx to that crowd every so often, without really expecting them to read it. I talk about transmigration as a plot device that I love, and the things that can be done with it! But with that connection in mind between the books, as I started LLE, I was jokingly defending the honor of SVSSS to this crowd, so I admit I was primed to recognize similarities.

I really truly did not make it far in the book before locking it down. I was getting vibes basically from the moment Rae started gushing about her problematic fictional fave, I referenced 95% certainty shortly after she makes the jump to the fictional universe, the golden cobra was 98%, Lia Mingyan's, I mean Liu Mingyan's lack of sex scenes was 99%, and the first pov section for Marius-jun was where I gave up and called it as a sure thing.

It'll be very funny if I'm wrong! I don't think I'm wrong.

Plenty of spoilers to follow, because I identified this inspiration early, I guessed basically every plot twist early, I don't have the patience to dance around spoilers while explaining how it all lines up.

Now, I said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: I don't think this is plagiarism. I think it's tasteless to accuse an author of stealing and repurposing characters to her face. But I think it's also tasteless to repurpose characters as nakedly as happened here! Again? If I'm wrong? That's why I'm talking to myself on my blog and not messaging her directly (?????? who even does that). What are the stakes for me being wrong here? I look like a clown online? That would be terrible, I've never done that before! It's not a crime to write in ways I find distasteful. It's not a crime to write a book I think is not good, even apart from the use of fictional influences. But I like talking about my feelings online, and I can't be stopped!

But there's two aspects of this that make me somewhat uncomfortable in a less fun way. Both are contingent on the big IF. If this is inspired by svsss, I think it's not a classy move to take a Chinese story in a Chinese setting, inspired by the modern Chinese literary scene and classical Chinese fantasy, and just dump the characters into a generic western setting. Fanfic? Have fun and try to be respectful. Profic, making money off it? Ehhhhh. The question of how much change is necessary is a tricky one! It's not one I'm equipped to answer, this is not my wheelhouse or my place to speak. But it doesn't make me feel good!

However, here's where I have more personal stake:

Again, if this is inspired by svsss. It really doesn't feel great to see a queer story (a smash hit in more than one country!) stripped down for parts and made into a heterosexual story. It's not all heterosexual, we get side lesbians, we get men with homoerotic tension. But the central ship is now a guy and a girl. And it... stings a little extra, because in the story of svsss, the idea of assumptions about default (hetero)sexuality are such a central theme. A queer man has written a trashy, oversexed stallion novel where the hottest guy in the universe collects the hottest women like pokemon, and it sells so much better than the more personal stories he tried to write. He has to write this pandering trash to make money to live, he can't live on the more authentic stories he tried to tell before. The protagonist is the projection of his own insecurities and self-hate, and the protagonist's right hand man is his projection of his own ideal man. Another man transmigrates into the book, assuming that he himself is straight, assuming the protagonist is straight, and the force of their love changes the course of the entire narrative. In retrospect, it's upsetting to see those load-bearing themes casually carved out of the story and the hollowed-out remains used like this.

Anyways, in their place, now we've got running gags about how the heroine's tits are BIGHUGE now and she can't keep her balance because her GIANT HONKERS keep tipping her over.

I'm a little more bothered than I was yesterday! On the other hand, since I saw SRB's post, I've been chewing on that central ship. Full disclosure, it was one of my favorite aspects of the novel! My other favorite aspect is the dynamic between the golden cobra and the last hope (the moshang, which I think some people misdiagnosed as wangxian).

I know that the central ship here is the thing that's LEAST comparable to svsss, and the biggest roadblock in the way of my theory. On the other hand, I think it was the thing that HAD to change if this story was going to repurpose svsss without getting called out for being a classic 'bro can i copy your homework' adventure.

For this section, let's assume that I'm right and let's roleplay an author trying to figure out how to change Bingqiu into something not-obviously-Bingqiu. How do we need to differentiate Rae and Key from Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe.

First, we eliminate the martial sect thing. Easy peasy! That's a wuxia concept, and this book goes full nondescript western fantasy. She's not his teacher, he's not her student. And if she's not his teacher and he's not her student, why does this woman have power over this man, to build up the resentment that inspires him to turn the tables on her later? Well, in nondescript western fantasy, she's a noblewoman of some kind, and he's a servant of some kind. Noble lady treats servant like garbage, servant resents her. Doing great.

And to loop back around to the beginning of this a little, I think it really is key to this reskinning that Rae is a SHE. If the central ship remained queer, it would be so, so hard to pull away from the most identifiable thematic aspects of svsss. And pieces of what remain are... kind of bizarre for a normie heterosexual ship where our protagonist is aware that she's transmigrated into an impossibly desirable sexpot character!

Shen Qingqiu never considers that Luo Binghe might be interested in him because Luo Binghe is about to have a HAREM of beautiful women, he's the most heterosexual man of all time, and Shen Qingqiu is straight too! Besides, Shen Qingqiu is his teacher! He half-raised Luo Binghe! Even if Luo Binghe was bent, he wouldn't be interested in an old man like Shen Qingqiu!

Rae is 20, occupying a 24-year-old body. Her character's sexiness is relentlessly remarked upon from start to finish. Key is 18. Why is Rae so sure that he looks up to her as... a mentor, as an older woman? He almost goes down on her! He makes out with her! And she's like 'ah yes, it means nothing. lol. so funny how these things happen.' Bruh, at least after Luo Binghe kissed Shen Qingqiu, Shen Qingqiu finally got hit with the clue stick. Binghe didn't try to blow him only for Shen Qingqiu to keep noodling on about how Binghe definitely isn't into him in any sense, even the most oblivious man in the universe managed to catch on.

Why doesn’t Rae think there’s any chance of genuine attraction here? Yeah, I get that she's coming back from terminal cancer. She's doing great. She knows that the fictional character she occupies is one of the most desirable ladies in the land. He’s a teenager. He’s not expressing disinterest. A lack of horny for sexy lady ought to be more surprising for her. But I guess she’s slightly older than him and that small age gap has been magnified by the transmigration, so she conceptualizes herself only as his teacher, I mean mentor.

I’m not even mad at this dynamic. I love their chemistry, the ‘boss’ thing is cute, but lordt, I have to wonder if it’s meant to substitute for ‘shizun.’ But you know where this comparison really falls apart? Key isn’t really THAT much Luo Binghe.

At least, he isn’t in terms of personality. I mean, we’ve got the mysterious magical heritage, the healing factor, the unbeatable fighting skills, being beaten repeatedly because of the protagonist (tbh it’s sexier when she’s responsible, rather than just being a bystander), being yeeted into the abyss, I mean the ravine, to rise again and assume power as the merciless ruler of all the land. Oh, and he comes back from the dead still bearing the scar that represents her betrayal. In the original novel, he turned on her the moment he got his opening and was responsible for coming up with her gruesome torment.

(Also, Shen Qingqiu being terminally ill isn’t canon, but it’s very popular fanon, and it’s hard to ignore that with how hard the narrative lingers over Rae’s terminal illness as her gateway into this fictional world)

But! But the things that are different! Luo Binghe is a smart and sweet teenager, who had a rough start on the streets and has a tragically deceased single adoptive parent, but that’s their only backstory parallel, he doesn’t blacken until he’s thrown into the abyss. Not like Key, Key is a murder-happy sociopath, a former street kid who fought the odds and made good, and who’s a lot sharper and cleverer than the upper classes think someone like him should be. He utterly destroyed a righteous cultivator clan, I mean glassblowing guild, for the sake of revenge. Once our heroine scores a number of trust points with him, we unlock secret backstory about how as a small child, he experienced deeply formative hand trauma.

He’s Xue Yang.

It took me a moment to process the wangxian allegations SRB mentions in her post, because I was trying to figure out how someone would be aware of wangxian, and read that backstory, and somehow miss it. But it’s fine, I’m pretty sure they were actually talking about the golden cobra and the last hope! So LET’S TALK MOSHANG.

It was so funny. I was liveblogging the book to friends, because honestly, I do not jive with the buffy-esque joss whedon relentless quip-quip-quip writing style. I was struggling to stay engaged when the narrative never took a moment to breathe. And I perked up at the introduction of this new character! He seemed kind of fun, kind of meta, Key came over to share Secret Info with him, and I messaged the friend who recced this to me (also an svsss appreciator) ‘lol, what if he’s shang qinghua. just straight from svsss shang qinghua.'

Reader, a second transmigrator has hit the narrative.

Now, in some ways, he’s a disappointment to me. He’s not nearly as interesting as Shang Qinghua. Adding the author to their own narrative is way more fascinating to me than just dropping a rando into the story. But I’ll take what I can get, I think multiple transmigrators are almost always a fun decision. And for the queer reasons I mentioned above, I think Shang Qinghua ties into the themes of his novel a lot more strongly than Eric does here. I don’t want to call him ‘the golden cobra’ every time, I get more self-conscious every time I write it. And honestly, the reveal of Eric’s full Eric Whatever name feels a little awkward and… pointed compared to the sheer opacity of Shang Qinghua’s existence. Never mind what his name was in the real world, we don’t even know his name before he was a Peak Lord. I’m not upset we got a name or anything, it would make certain fannish activities a lot easier if Shang Qinghua had additional canon names, but it was an interesting detail in light of how parallel the characters are.

Okay! He’s not the author! He’s still a super-fan. He transmigrated into the book years before the LLE main character, and has settled in pretty well. According to canon as Rae knows it, he’s fated to be killed by his own favorite character. He’s fast-thinking and fast-talking, and scattered and all over the place, but dangerous when cornered and more competent than he looks. He deals in information and manages a network of spies. He’s a creative! He and the main character banter relentlessly and get along like a house on fire. He and the king’s trusted ice-cold right hand man share a weird codependent dynamic that’s part hostile, part homoerotic.

Marius has complicated feelings about not-shang-qinghua. Eric is a coward, he’d rather talk fast and lie than stand up for anything, he cowers and cringes and isn’t honorable. He and Mobei-jun also shared a deeply formative experience in their youth, where as a teenager in distress, Eric/Shang Qinghua appeared before them and announced their devotion. In Shang Qinghua’s case, it was offering to serve him (and saving him from huan hua injuries), and in Eric’s case, it was declaring him to be his favorite character (and saving him from sad teenaged isolation), but man. And in the end, after a long, fraught relationship, Marius/Mobei-jun is furious and strangely distraught when Eric/Shang Qinghua abandons him.

Guys, it’s not wangxian.

I think it hits less hard when Marius’s themes of family violence aren’t allowed to sit directly in the narrative, and when it seems like some vague berserker rage thing rather than Linguang-jun just bluntly wanting to murder him for practical reasons, but hey! This was still, genuinely, one of my favorite parts of the story. I wanted more more more of them, I would read this moshang au any day.

After that, the parallels get a little more nebulous! The comparisons between the abyss and the ravine are pretty obvious. I’m not sure why we decided to build our city and palace right on top of the pit of people-eating ghouls rather than literally anywhere else, but it means we don’t need to take a special field trip to Jue Di Gorge, which means we can do the bait and switch where it turns out Key was a heavenly demon all along. The temperamental King Octavian, the young master of the palace, one might even say the xiao gongzhu if they were feeling spicy, jealously tries to romantically monopolize half our main ship and has the other half flogged with a magic whip.

I already mentioned that Rae brings up that Liu Mingyan — wait, I said I’d change some answers so it wasn’t obvious I copied — Lia doesn’t get a sex scene in the books even though loads of other people did, just like Shen Qingqiu praises Liu Mingyan for her untouchable image in such an oversexed, gratuitous book. I don’t think it would be right to call Liu Mingyan a white lotus heroine in either SVSSS or PIDW, but her archetype is in that wheelhouse, and Lia is just a white lotus rival played straight (and played deliberately, another touch I liked). We don’t have made up animals like black moon rhinoceros pythons in LLE, but we do have leucrotas, which are like a lion and a hyena and serve no narrative purpose.

Oh, you know what else I forgot to mention? Rae gives Key one of her red ruby earrings, and he refuses to sell it, and stubbornly holds onto it until the bitter end. Is this Xue Yang holding onto the last piece of candy Xiao Xingchen gave him, or is it Hua Cheng determinedly keeping Xie Lian’s red coral earring with him even through his own death? Por que no los dos?

There are things that are original in here. I know that this presentation undersells how much of the book is original. The trouble is, almost everything I thought was good is something that either was lifted from another person’s creative endeavors, or is being tainted by association with all the other naked lifts. Some of the noble ladies have an archery contest! That’s pretty new and fresh, huh? We didn’t have any archery contests in SVSSS!

Yeah, but we sure did in MDZS. And MDZS is already in play, because we’ve already got one character who’s just copy and paste Xue Yang.

There’s a thermocline of trust in this book that fell off for me sharply, and it turned a lot of this into a guessing game of ‘wait NOW what the refrance? owo'

I’m probably on a hair trigger by now, but I’ve also probably missed some things. And I’m sure this is a synthesis of multiple influences, because most stories are. But this feels like cooking and trying to season your dish with a little salt and then the container lid just falls off.

Emer isn’t a clear parallel to an existing character! Love that for her! Love a lady with an axe, especially if she gets a nice girlfriend! On the other hand, in terms of backstory? Wow, she’s been raised with our protagonist since early childhood, as not-quite-foster-siblings, but she was always the clear unfavorite and harbors a lot of resentment over that. Oh, and once Rae entered the story, Rae started trying to speedrun an enemies to 'hello hiiii we should bestiessss' arc with her. I think she had to have an axe, because a whip or a sword would make the Jiang Cheng and/or Liu Qingge vibes a little uncomfortably strong. She doesn’t follow their character arcs! But the disappointing thing is that it felt like she was just there to facilitate pasting the frankenstein patchwork of the narrative together rather than having an arc of her own.

(why did Marius stop to give her a sword lesson? Why did she immediately sneak onto the roof to eavesdrop on the king?? It’s hard to give her credit for being an original character when none of her original actions make sense in the greater universe)

Oh, I almost forgot, we’ve even got magic plot macguffin plants. While Binghe is in the abyss, Shen Qingqiu needs to get the Sun And Moon Dew Flower Seed so he can build an escape hatch for himself before Binghe wrecks his shit. Rae, on the other hand, needs to secure the Flower of Life and Death by an arbitrary deadline as an escape hatch so she can go back to her original life rather than being trapped here forever. Very different! There’s even little side tangents about how these plants can be so beneficial to others, Zhuzhi-lang is desperately trying to secure a seed to build a new body for Tianlang-jun (which Shen Qingqiu enables him to do, despite not knowing what he wants it for), and Rae thinks about how the flower could “save someone on the very doorstep of death,” and gives it away for that exact purpose. So different!

I need to cut myself off, otherwise I’ll keep going. Truly, there is original content in here. It was just all the stuff I didn’t like. The character quipping was. God. There sure was a lot of it! By sheer volume, that’s a lot of original content. Some of the extended cast was interesting, I enjoyed the Horrors and their brothers, I liked Valencia. Now, I didn’t like how basically every girl ADULT WOMAN in this cast was in shitty teen mean girl mode. I didn’t like how immature every character interaction period was. I lost track of how many times Rae was going around in sexy clothes and rando servants were like “HARLOT,” out loud about a favored noblewoman, you know, as you do. Especially when her bodyguard is pulling against his choke chain just waiting for an excuse to do a murder. I don’t need Rae to be the picture of flawless maturity. But nobody is mature, full stop, not even the set dressing servants.

For a less loaded example, the cumplane friendship dynamic is here, practically intact. Shen Qingqiu can't snipe about authorial choices, because Eric isn't the author, so instead Rae and Eric squabble about favorite scenes and favorite ships and such. But it isn't nearly as charming when we don't see these two characters dropping their dignified Peak Lord cultivator roleplay to talk shit with each other. Rae and Eric never have a filter once in this book. They are always Like This, it isn't a secret face that gets unlocked when they're bouncing off each other, they are never circumspect, never have a filter, never have any idea they shouldn't be speaking their full thoughts at full volume 24/7. Even after this starts to have material consequences when they're inevitably overheard! It's an immersion-breaking level of immaturity, which is terribly frustrating when the original dynamic that I loved is only changed in such minor ways.

And another thing that actually tastes way more sour than it did on first reading – Valencia is probably the least mean girl of all the women in the cast. She’s delightful. Too bad that in every scene but her last one, Rae, who repeatedly references her own experiences having her body and appearance ravaged by cancer, cannot for love or money stop talking about how uggo Valencia is.

I know this is an adult novel. The characters are, by age, adults. There’s almost an oral scene. God, I wish we’d gotten the oral scene. But by every other metric, the characters are all high schoolers and I’m an exhausted adult muttering to myself ‘they’ll grow out of it, please GOD let them grow out of it.’

Again, none of this is a crime! Nobody forced me to finish the book! And I did enjoy the book. Parts of it! But that very distinct partial enjoyment experience almost forced me to dissect my own emotional response. And truly, other than a few flashes like Valencia, almost everything I enjoyed about the book was something I could trace directly back to one author, and mostly to one book by that one author. I… enjoyed half of the book. And if I can track most of that half back to mxtx and svsss, I really think that says something about how much wasn’t done to make the inspiration behind this book the author’s own.

It's disappointing! I read this book because I like svsss, I read it because I want more books like svsss, I read it because I trawl the novelupdates tags looking for more books that will hit me the way svsss did. It doesn’t taste good to be served reheated svsss with expired buffy sauce drizzled on top. It tastes even less good once I have a minute to think about what turning an m/m meditation on sexuality and self-image and assumptions about others into a m/f snooze does to the themes I loved so much. It stings to see an author rehash a book that was/is so important to me, and see what they kept and what they threw out, and be like ‘oh, so… these were the elements that mattered to you?’

Again, I hate to be redundant with this, but. I think calling this book plagiarism would be overdoing it. I think it’s tasteless. I don’t think being tasteless is a crime. It remains wild to me that she’s getting messages calling out her supposed inspiration, even if I’m simultaneously criticizing the judgment of the people making those specific comparisons. And I ABSOLUTELY understand why she’s reluctant to own up to the specific inspirations behind this book, because good lord. If it was me, I’d be professionally embarrassed too.

It’s not my job to be the book quality police, but I think someone as experienced as this should be able to do a better job of synthesizing inspirations into something original. I dropped ‘can’t afford to offend my scheming disciple’ earlier this year, because that narrative couldn’t shake the taste of stale svsss fanfic, and it was much more subtle than this is. Once again, if I’m wrong, this post will be retroactively VERY funny and I’ll be all ears to see what her inspirations actually were. I don’t think I’m wrong.

[missingrache]

Okay okay BULLET POINTS Disco Elysium as katabasis/journey to the underworld because I have no idea how to organize this HERE WE GO!

-My big touchstones here are Hades & Persephone, Orpheus & Eurydice, and My Problematic Fave Odysseus, I know there's stuff I'm gonna miss, putting this here in hopes that other friends at the potluck will supply my deficiencies, hi @binomech hi @selfchiller hi everyone.

-Harry is half dead at our start of the game, post suicide-attempt, we're in purgatory/limbo/"you have to stay here in hell forever" awoken by Kim's Infernal Machine (tm)

-Do we need to bring Dante's Inferno into this I think maybe we do oops -That's also a katabasis -we gotta save that for later I can't start talking about Doralores and Beatrice right now that's a whole different tangent and I haven't read any of it since high school -But also Dante's hell is cold and so is Revachol and so is entropy/the Pale, so is the fimbulwinter that has destroyed the world in the Wirral Untethered game setting

-Anyway we are very firmly established as in An Underworld.

-Harry's amnesia/Drost's amnesia caused by drinking, caused by the Pale, caused by age and trauma, caused by the presence of the phasmid--forgetfulness, generally, regardless of the in-game cause, is Very Much A Thing, and the dead drink of the River Lethe which causes them to forget their past lives

-WATER CROSSINGS! The dead cross the River Styx to enter the underworld, to get to Revachol you gotta cross the bridge it's why there's a giant lorry jam etc, they raised the bridge. Two river crossings, the Styx (river of hatred--ledger of hatred? The one harry dumps his car and his past into probably.) and the Lethe (river of forgetfulness, borders Elysium), cross the bridge into Revachol, cross the channel on Lilienne's boat to the island, the forgotten and forgetting place.

-There are actually 5 rivers and I wonder if we can find the rest of them. (What if the flaming graffiti is the river Phlegethon WHAT IF.)

-My problematic fave Odysseus visits the underworld to speak to the dead/receive prophecies. Our man Harry has EXTENDED CONVERSATIONS with Lely's corpse and does in fact get future knowledge from him.

-But also we're in the underworld already so literally anyone he speaks with could also be interpreted as a ghost, a mirror, a prophecy, some piece of knowledge to take with him when he returns. (ie @selfchiller 's meta about Harry and Klaasje, dead woman walking, and Lely)

-Different sorts of underworld/different mythologies, different...values? Things that happen when you get there? Dante's hell and purgatory--punishment for sins/burning off impurities: SORRY COP Greek underworld/Elysium specifically, not for those who are VIRTUOUS but for those who are especially skilled and famous/possessed of kleos: SUPERSTAR COP

(These are the two copotypes I have played with so far MAYBE THE OTHERS ALSO HAVE THEIR OWN SPECIAL HELLS?)

-Orpheus: a performer of laments, beautiful enough that all the underworld stops to listen. Tragic flaw: looking back. -HDB: Says he loves disco and rock and roll but the only music we hear him choose is Sad FM for his boat ride over the pale/over the Lethe and his sad karaoke number, sung for the infernal court of the Whirling in Rags. A man who also has some trouble with looking back/moving forward.

-DORA: Young, beautiful, IN HER SPRING COAT at the bus stop in Harry's happier memories: PERSEPHONE, KORE, the young woman abducted by a cthonic figure--we could call that figure, that Hades stand in, Harry's rewriting of her memory as something Horrid and Terrifying, or we could call it Dolores Dei if you like the parasitic thought form possession theory. Either way Doralores from the final dream is Dread Queen Proserpine, the other mythological aspect of Persephone, who iirc had her own cult? (Apricots, pomegranates, same thing right?)

-Something something Harry and Dionysus and theater/partying/wine/madness and Dionysus also doing a katabasis to go visit Semele in the underworld? Speaking of Greek gods with their own mystery cults.

-Final fun side note unless I remember more things: GILGAMESH. Entirely different epic tradition, but we descend to the underworld in search of a flower of immortality. Peaches of immortality anyone?

-That's it that's what I've got!

[bluedalahorse]

me: well, thank god I got those drabbles out of my system. me: now it’s time to finish up graduate school work. me: and I’m sure none of the upcoming challenges will distract me for the rest of the semester. The next few months are just kinktober and holiday exchanges that aren’t my jam as much. Fuck Christmas amirite. my absolutely evil brain: so about kinktober me: oh no, don’t you start my absolutely evil brain: you know how you’ve never written stedrika me: yeah! I mean, NO DON’T TELL ME WHAT YOU’RE THINKING my absolutely evil brain: I actually don’t have to tell you what I’m thinking because I’m literally your brain and I’m the one running the show here me: no, my deadlines and capitalism are unfortunately running the show. my absolutely evil brain: ok but like. Hear me out. You’re always pushing for the inclusion of more female characters and F/F in fanworks. me: brain, I agree, but I also feel like if you keep going you’re going to start using rhetoric from the Your Fave is Problematic Era of Tumblr. my absolutely evil brain: no I’m just going to remind you that women are hot me: dammit. you’re right. my absolutely evil brain: do I win yet? me: we’ll see what the energy levels and the ungodly workload are doing later in September. my absolutely evil brain: ok fine. You can be stubborn. It’s your defining trait after all. my absolutely evil brain: and I was being so nice and not mentioning what absolutely depraved things sara could do to august. me: what sara could what now my absolutely evil brain: exactly.

[lutethebodies]

Lute the Bodies: A BG3/5e Cesspool

New pin for a reintroduction, collecting series links (below) and abouty things (under the fold).

I'm just here for escapism and related brain-rotting enthusiasms. I’m compelled to create things and am maybe a bit too eager to share them all.

Series

Tav Tuesdays, character profiles for my BG3 Tavs, imported from 5e: Cannor (bard), Zafraia (rogue), Drem (monk), Olini (ranger), Farago (ranger), Qiranna (warlock), Ruy (cleric), Sianed (druid), Vashti (bard), Talinthe (fighter).

Tav Deep Dives, answers to folks' insightful questions: Cannor/Minthara Culture Shock, Olini/Wyll Friendship, 

Lost Songs for Lost Singers, a "Music Mondays" series, written by my cleric Ruy about seven of my bard Cannor's songs: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Worldbuilding Wednesdays, a 5e homebrew world tour, beginning with an Introduction plus Guides/Reckonings, and continuing nation by nation, tagged by region: The Green North, The Golden States, The Six Sisters.

Minthara Judges My Tavs: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

Minthara in Act 1: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Solo/Duo Run Diary: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5,

About Me

I’m a freelance creative and house-spouse from Southern California. I’ve been a professional graphic designer since 2004, and since 2020 I’ve specialized in creating map illustrations and artistic cartography. When not designing, I bike for exercise, make music, and follow baseball.

In classic lore bard fashion, my jams are trivia and general knowledge—I'm especially into the ways history, geography, and language intersect—but I'm not a specialist in very much (even maps; I'm definitely not a "real" cartographer).

Fandom-wise, I go for mainstreamy/conventional fantasy and sci-fi (Stars Trek, Wars, and Battle; Dune, Tolkein, GRRM) but also some more recent (Jemisin, Eames, Roanhorse) and/or fairly niche (the Marys Stewart and Renault) works in both as well as other genres. All my faves are problematic and I’m fine with that.

BG3 is the first video game I’ve been sucked into since Final Fantasy 1, circa 1992 (after the first two Zeldas and Ultima 4). I played D&D 2e briefly back then and play 5e regularly now.

In case it matters, I am much closer to 51 than 21, my pronouns are he/him, and I am happily monogamous/married. I don't post salacious stuff but I should probably call this place "18+". I block for my own sanity, because like I said, I’m here for the escapism.

I don't want to be overtly opinionated or take-y, but I’m too old, straight, white, and male to be anything but a demographic outlier On Here, so please be patient with any associated obliviousness and I'll try not to be too embarrassing to follow.

[cecilysass]

Hi Cecily! I’m a big fan of your work. In case you’re still in a chatty mood, I’d love to know your favourite books or books you read recently that you’d recommend. Thank you!

Hey Anon! Thank you for the ask! At first I was like, do not answer this question because you have no sensible sounding answer and you are going to sound so weird, but then I was like, hey, what am I invested in hiding exactly?

I used to read constantly as my anxiety-management technique. but I slowed down late pandemic (and frankly started turning to fanfic more often). So I don’t think I am on top of my recent fiction game exactly.

My fave genres are also really particular. I love historical fiction and fantasy. I also read tons of YA for professional reasons, so lots of my faves skew that direction, too. I think as a rule I like world building and novels about ideas and yes, some romance.

My weird recs:

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. Mystery-fantasy-horror-romance among secret societies at Yale. This is the author of Shadow and Bone (like the TV series), but it isn’t YA, and it’s darker. The first of two novels. (Actually, the series is not romance yet, but I am halfway through the second novel and I am hoping.)

The Pox Party: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing - M.T. Anderson. Nobody ever likes this book about philosophy and race in the American colonies as much as me, but I do love it so.

The Witching Hour-Anne Rice. Listen, I am sure there is probably so much problematic in these books, but OMG this series combines smut and history and horror like nobody’s business. Same with Interview with a Vampire, obviously, but I feel like people sleep on these witch books.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. Yeah, it just is what it is. Read if you have not.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman. If you read YA books at all, you know this already; if you don’t, it’s really excellent. Dystopian future, extremely original and smart.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - Claire North. Fantasy involving time conundrums is definitely my jam.

Hild - Nicola Griffith. This is my most unhinged recommendation, because it’s a historical novel about a saint in Anglo-Saxon Britain and you have to be an absolute nerd to be into this hyper specific shit.

Children of Blood and Bone - Toni Adeyemi. This is another one you know if you read YA, but if you don’t, it is a very suspenseful, adventure-romance story set in a fantasy world influenced by west African mythology. Will totally immerse you.

If anyone wants more YA recs specifically, I could go on and on, but I will stop there for now to preserve my limited dignity. I’m also totally open to recs if you happen to share my niche tastes.

[ppeonppeonhan]

I've been searching for a new hetero drama to watch and somehow stumbled upon an old one that has SO many Thai BL actor faves: P.S. I Hate You (2022).

The male cast includes:

Mond, who had us all screaming at our screens last year during Only Friends

Lee and Pluem from the rather forgettable Baker Boys

Papang and Pawin from one of my faves: Dangerous Romance

Toptap and Guy from the somewhat problematic Tonhon Chonlatee

And the female cast includes:

Jan, the BL female icon, who the fandom recently adored in the Thai remake of Cherry Magic

Aye, the long-suffering FL in Be My Favorite

Fah, who starred in The Warp Effect

Jamie, who I've only seen in Hidden Agenda

It's jam-packed. But it's a shame I don’t like watching female revenge mystery plots. Girl on girl crime is not my ting...even though there is a BL subplot between Prapai and Guy.

[appleflavoredkitkats]

💙Smoshblr December Asks Day 20💛

What are your top 3 fandoms outside of smosh?

Bonus: What are your top 3 fave ships of all time? (don’t have to be from the same fandoms as the above answers)

since fandoms are different from the media itself, i will strictly just go by fandoms for this one, which is hard bc . most fandoms suck

from the top of my head, i think lupin iii has one of the best and most dedicated fanbases i've ever seen. most people who ae into it are consistently into it, and there's a decent amount of fics that are amazing! genuinely the sweetest and least problematic fandom i've been in tbh

second, icb i'm saying this but . hetalia . ignoring all the nazi cosplay bullshit, it's so fascinating to see how much spawned from this very problematic show, and how much fans have matured to make such amazing, analytical, historical content. a lot of history buffs and polisci people i meet were into hetalia at some point, and i just think it's actually . cool ! like historical hetalia on ao3 is my absolute jam

last, while i think the mcyt fandom is a nightmare, the small subsection of c!fundy fans for the dsmp will always have a special place in my heart. it's always a blast collaborating with them and eventually getting the catharsis we needed, and yeah! it was amazing :>

[allthecreepsofthecosmos]

A Trick and a Treat: Post-Release Thoughts

Hey everyone! Our short, free Halloween visual novel, A Trick and a Treat, has been out for a while now, so Sadie and I thought we'd share our thoughts! We posted this in a devlog earlier, but thought it would be great to get our thoughts out on here as well!

Some small details are spoiled about the premise one of the two short stories, Vamp Me!, are below, so you might want to play the game first. It's just a quick 20 minute read! Now, without further ado...

Post-Release Thoughts

First, Sadie's going to talk about her short story, Dead Letters! Take it away, love!

"Dead Letters is my tribute to 1920/30s style weird fiction. I find the kind of pulp, hard-boiled with a side of purple prose style extremely fun to write in. Probably the biggest inspiration for Dead Letters is H. F. Arnold's The Night Wire from 1926, a deliciously creepy little tale. If you liked this, be sure to check that one out.

The other big pulp inspiration is from that great font of inspired horror and insipid opinions, H. P. Lovecraft and his great early story The Statement of Randolph Carter. This is a style I definitely intend to revisit in the future. Like the opening says, Weird Tales is a problematic fave, but there's real magic in those yellowed old pages, and I hope I resurrected some of those old spells for you here. Happy Halloween."

Sadie DeForest

And now, I wanna talk about my short story, Vamp Me!

We found out about the Spooktober VN Jam pretty late. About two weeks after it started, in fact! But it sounded so fun that we had to make SOMETHING for it. We decided to do separate short stories as a sort of compilation title, and Sadie figured out hers pretty quickly. I struggled with my idea at first. Did I want to do something serious, or something lighter?

Some of the ideas I had included a darker story about a trans woman's dysphoria manifesting itself into a physical form, and a lighter story about a "cis boy" caught summoning a demon to "become a girl". I wasn't sure if I wanted to make something dark for the jam; to me, Halloween is something that's happy and fun, so I ended up going with the second idea. But it was still missing a key bit of Halloween spirit. This was where Girl Dracula came in.

Who is Girl Dracula? Well, she's actually a character I played for a tabletop game. When I thought about the idea I had, and replaced the "Summoning a demon" with "Summoning a Girl Dracula to trans your gender", it added a sort of playfulness that I felt was essential to the project. And so I wrote my first primarily comedic piece of writing! I was very nervous about it, but it made all my friends I showed the early draft to smile!

Some of you who've read Vamp Me might feel the ending was abrupt... but don't worry! That cast of characters is going to be making a comeback in another title we have planned, so stay tuned! ;)

That's about it! I hope that you give our little VN a read on a cold, windy October night, just as a little treat before bed. I think you'll find it'll give you both of those essential Halloween flavors; something eerie, and something sweet!

Crystal DeForest

[purple-goo-writes]

TF content??? 👀👀

Oooh boy do I have TF content and Hcs. Idw Lostlight is my jam, I have nearly all the TF 2015 comic run too.

The Seekers are my babies and I unapologetically love Megatron, he is a scrungly boi who committed war crimes and I don't even try to apologize for him. He knows what he did and trid to reform.

I actively have rp and still do rp as Unicron, Megatron, Thundercracker, Red Alert, Ratchet and Tracks along with may others on Tumblr and Discord.

You wanna know my ships? My headcanons? My problematic fave tropes? Which TF content I absolutely loath? My absolute faves? Ask away~

[turntheotherpurf]

Joe Secondopinionson, for the ask meme!

1: Sexuality headcanon = Hmm, for some reason I feel like he'd grow up to be somewhere on the Bi scale? :o Idk why really, just kinda makes sense to me .3.

2: Otp = Idk if I can think of anyone canon-wise I'd ship Joe with rn... though maybe a bit later I'll think up an OC to put with him when he's older (if inspo strikes)? :o

3: Brotp = While not always the "nicest" to him, I like to think Joe and Orel would grow to be decent-ish friends down the line (even if not to a "best friend" level, per-say... but just the two of them growing up, respecting eachother's differences, and generally wishing the best for one another yknow? ^^)

4: Notp = ...Ehhh, I got nothing 🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️

5: First headcanon that pops into my head = He'd become hype af once Stephanie comes into his life (via-dating Nurse Bendy, ofc :>). Often going to her for edgy fashion advice, guitar jamming sessions, and just generally wanting a listening ear when everyone else is being too "dumb" to hear him out.

6: Favorite line from this character = "Believe me, I know dumb and everyone sure is... but, not you" 🥺

7: One way in which I relate to this character = ...um, I like alot of sweets/sugary foods? lol

8: Thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character = Joe, I love ya and all... buuuuut you did kinda have it coming when that one boy got back at you for beating him & his crush up >>

9: Cinnamon roll or problematic fave? = I guess by default I'd say a "problematic fave"... but then again he is just a kid so 🤷‍♀️

[canagadoodles]

I can't believe I have literally never posted this anywhere! Not because it's a fantroll I promise.

My OC Aerona, my aspirational problematic fave and total babe. This was a part of a sculpting jam at work where we riffed off of a base mesh and put our own characters (or characters that would never be licensed) on it. RIP that form factor.

[just-antithings]

so, is it bad that i'm both hyper anticipatory of october and dreading it?

for fans of the Big 3 of anime, they know that the final arc of Bleach is being aired finally after years of waiting on it and i am so happy about that. but on the other hand, i am also dreading it because i just know that antis are likely to swarm it.

the protag's three major ships? two of them involve major age gaps. one of them involves the fact that he, and the dude that people love to pair him with, tried to kill him. i ship the age gap ships because his canon-ending ship just is not my jam. and i just know that people are going to get weird over the age gap ships being majorly involved in the fandom.

and then there's my OTPs, both of which are absolutely gay and both of which are definitely Problematic by the definition of antis. one ship has a very clear power imbalance thanks to the fact that i love to ship the antagonist, the major main one, with his captain which means oops that's abuse of power and the antagonist tried to kill him. my other OTP? age gap is canon. my bad guy fave is canonically at least over a hundred years older than the man who kills him (and he kills his partner, like, that's canon. our antagonist doesn't stay dead and i HURT).

like i am hopeful that there will be a revival of my second OTP, which was once one of the BIG SHIPS for bleach but i am also dreading the fact that there's a good chance that antis will show up and scream at those of us who've been in the fandom in years about what we're shipping and what we're writing.

i am so eager for new fans, but i'm also just absolutely so tired ahead of time because i just want the antis that i know are likely to show up to just leave us alone. it's an old fandom. that's all i want and i don't think that's too much to ask for, you know?

well I hope it didn’t go too badly for you anon

[wolfofthewisps]

Hello hello everybody! Whisper's been one of my more active muses lately, so I'll be posting this here. I go by Neo, though some have known me as Alex in the past, and I go by Jam in my art stuffs. (It's very confusing even to me, don't worry) I'm a 27-year old they/he/she enby. I've been in Isola for around three and a half years now, during which time I've had near constantly full muse slots, and would doubtlessly have more if I were allowed because I deleted Self-Control from my Contacts list. Current other muses in the group are Gaige the Mechromancer from Borderlands, Jester Lavorre from Critical Role, Margaret Moonlight from No More Heroes, Jinx from League of Legends/Arcane, Tatsumaki from One-Punch Man, Toph Beifong from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Eda the Owl Lady and Kikimora from The Owl House, and Anne Boonchuy from Amphibia. (Also the blog you're reading this from is Whisper the Wolf from the IDW Sonic comics)

I graduated college a little over five and a half years ago with a fine art degree concentrated in New Media and Design- lots of Adobe product stuff and some 3D was taught, though I've learned a lot more since graduating. I'm currently employed at a fast-food restaurant where I've been for far too long. =v= While working in animation, whether 2D or 3D, is my dream, I currently want to fill out a portfolio to get a job in video editing! I'm taking some online courses to get projects from, and I started a Youtube channel for video essays and such some time ago, though currently it's only for video essay, singular- only one video on there atm, about my Problematic Fave Kikimora. BUT I'm writing a script right now as a kind of follow-up to that video related to the most recent Owl House episode! Hopefully that'll be out soon and I'll get a newer video out less than eight months from now afterward. Maybe it'll even be one that isn't about a character everybody but me hates(jk, though I probably don't need much more than two hands to count how many fans she has in the fandom).

I'm a tremendous DnD fan, currently playing in two campaigns(one of which is using a homebrew Pokemon system). I also have one that I DMed, though it's been on hiatus for over a year now because of complications- hopefully everybody'll be interested in getting it started again when I'm good and ready. (I've even considered apping an NPC from the campaign here bc I've obsessed over her ever since her inception and the party hasn't even met her yet) Other hobbies include wanting to play video games and then not, drawing far too slowly, and puns.

I really like this idea!! Glad to really meet you all and I hope we can all have more fun together!

[sunshine-vine]

All The Things:

#SunshineVine wrote it = stuff I've written for Tumblr

I live on Ao3

Have Keyboard, Will Write:

- HisoKuro (my fave)

- Poems

- Douma

- Crack

- Griffith x Guts

- HisoMachi

- Headcanons

- CHALLENGE ME

- rarepairs

Tell me what you want. It isn't often I decline.

"Your writing is poetic." - The Comments, 2023

Chaotic neutrals. Give me chaos.

The wilder, the better.

I may also ship problematic tings like SangBum and HanniGraham. Might overanalyze all my media. Maybe I also write non-fiction. Maybe neuroscience is my jam.

Boredom infests my brain like a sentient, gnawing mite. Send me prompts to save me from myself.

[johannas-motivational-insults]

Morgan’s arc in 4x03 was really hard for me to watch. Not because she was being a jerk (though she obviously was), but because I’ve been there and it’s painful.

Morgan is grieving. She’s mourning the loss of a lifelong dream, something she has devoted years of her life to, and she’s currently in the bargaining phase. She’s putting up a fight to find any way to hold onto some scraps of that dream, to stay involved in the surgical department and have that level of impact on her patient’s care. Beyond that, her medical condition has alienated her from her peer group and support system in this time of personal crisis. She desperately needs to feel relevant and still feel like part of the group, even though (and precisely because) she’s not.

This is a story about someone coping with what is essentially an acquired disability. It may not affect her activities of daily living (yet) but it affected her ability to work, and this was particularly damaging to her because her work was her only source of validation. As I’ve said before, Morgan’s deepest need is to matter. And she gets that validation through her work, by helping people and saving lives. She may have been cast as a villain of sorts, but she’s got a hero complex. Now, working in internal medicine, she just doesn’t have that level of impact anymore. And now she can’t help feeling like a failure, like maybe her mom was right and this wasn’t a worthwhile thing to do with her life, like maybe she really is the underachiever after all despite all her hard work.

I’m going to be honest, I damn near cried in that final scene with Claire, when Morgan told her patient to thank his surgeon because she’d done all the important stuff. She wasn’t just humbled, her pain was palpable. I’ve been through a similar situation where I was extremely invested in something (both in terms of work put in and thirst for validation) and I too was forced to change roles after fighting it as long as I could, also because of a medical condition/acquired disability. And being in that different role was just so painful, because I couldn’t have the impact I wanted and no matter how much I wanted to I just didn’t feel like part of the group anymore.

I ended up leaving that situation behind because it was too painful and it was better for my mental health to invest my energies elsewhere, but Morgan is going to stay. She has to, she’s invested too much time and money into medicine and it’s really all she has. And that means we’re going to have another interesting grief storyline playing out over the course of a season. Morgan’s having an identity crisis before our eyes, folks.

With all this in mind, let’s give Morgan a bit of a break. If you need precedent for that, Claire got to be super messy while mourning her mother last year. She was, quite frankly, a jerk (which I actually loved, it was refreshing given how much emotional labor she was always being forced to do because she’s so nice all the time). In fact, that mean streak continued into her mourning Neil during the covid episodes, when she accused Morgan of being happy about elective surgeries being cancelled because now no one’s a surgeon anymore, not just her. Which, for the reasons I outlined above, was a really horrible thing to say. Morgan shrugged it off because she can take it as well as she gives it (and lbr, she has more respect for people who aren’t afraid of her, Carly proved that last season), but you could still see it stung.

That’s not to say Claire is the worse person or anything, obviously she’s a kinder and generally more considerate person than Morgan. Morgan’s a bitch, that’s her calling card and she’s proud of it. We’ve seen her show compassion and concern and go out of her way to help people lots of times (that’s why she’s in this mess, if you recall), but she doesn’t do it in a ‘nice’ way. My point is, Claire was allowed the space to be messy when she was grieving, and we should allow Morgan that space too. Not being ‘nice’ shouldn’t disqualify a person from getting to grieve in the way they need to, especially a woman (because tbh men are allowed to be hurt and angry however they want). Like obviously hold her responsible if she hurts people along the way, but let her be angry and hopeless and desperate in whatever way it comes out. She needs it.

This hurts to watch and will continue to hurt. But it is so cathartic and I’m soaking up every second of it. I haven’t seen such a compelling story about grief over an acquired disability since Raven’s arc in the early seasons of The 100.

Morgan, I know a lot of people aren’t on your side, but I am. I see you, I get you. Keep your chin up, girl, it will get better.