#put me in a YA novel

[cats-and-confusion]

If I were a pokemon trainer,

The art of the pokemon isn't mine

[guzhufuren]

There is another censored chinese wuxia BL Flying Phoenix (凤于九天) that was filmed in 2019 and hasn't aired

Started filming on August 18 of 2019

Based on a danmei novel Feng Yu Jiu Tian (Phoenix of the Nine Heavens) by Feng Nong

They kept extremely lowkey, there were no leaks of pictures or videos, no official statements of actors or any posts except for the beginning of filming and the end of filming.

From a leak the actors turned out to be Feng Ming played by Dai Jing Yao (戴景耀) and Rong Tian by Shu Ya Xin (书亚信)

Novel summary: Feng Ming was only 19 when he lost his life saving a child from death without hesitation. The grateful father of the rescued child grants Feng Ming a second chance at life. Unknown to Feng Ming, his soul is whisked away to a far away ancient land.

Upon waking up, he finds himself inhabiting the frail body of Thunder Kingdom's crowned prince who is also graced with the title of the most beautiful man across all the lands. The original Crown Prince seemed to have an unconventional relationship with King Rong. The King Regent, perceptive and cunning, quickly recognized the change in the Crown Prince’s inner self, harboring suspicion. Yet, intrigued by Feng Ming’s unconventional views, Rong Tian found himself drawn to the impostor.

[normalpeoplethiings]

i hate it when people ask me what i’m like, because i don’t even know. all i know is that i have a crippling internet addiction and can’t communicate to the vast majority of people.

[reel-fear]

Wow, so umm... This looks bad, not only is it inaccurate due to using the wrong ink demon design [unless this is confirmation BATIM Ink Demon has been outright retconned... Which would make me pissed enough to make a new post just about THAT] but from an art standpoint this is just... Confusing and poorly done.

I wouldn't care if this was fanart, of course you should support young, indie artists... But for a Graphic Novel making sure your cover doesn't look like something Butch Hartman shat out in an afternoon is kind of important. Remember they're going to be asking us to give money to them to read this. The artist likely won't see any of that money and neither do the authors most of the time, not to mention this art screams of the artist being underpaid and overworked.

Like they Had to get something on someone's desk and their boss said 'good enough'. A concept Joey Drew Studios is very familiar with considering the allegations of poor working environments that Kindly Beast. Not to mention Mike Mood admitting in a Reddit AMA that they did in fact rush projects like Showdown Bandit. [Which they sold at full price]

He also says they can in fact say no or yes to designs involving their IP. Either Mike or Meatly had to say yes to this cover, according to his own damn words.

And do you really think this company in particular would care enough about its fanbase to not sell them garbage? They have done exactly that on several occasions. It's not like they care particularly about art either, considering their previous use of AI Art. There was no apology or even posts addressing it... Instead, they just rushed out an archives update to their game to get people to stop talking about it... Even forgetting an entire character in it. Again

This company is [or at least SHOULD BE] on thin ice when it comes to being suspected of misleading their fans or rushing out crappy products to them.

So with all that context in mind, I'm gonna talk about why this cover sucks ass.

The light sources are all over the place? Why does it look like someone put maces or knight armor on his shoulders but it's just flesh?? It looks both gross and weird [not in a good way either]

To explain more I'm going on a rant below but sadly this seems to have been confirmed to not just be a rough pass but the final cover and man... I am not excited about this graphic novel just at all. This felt like it really drained any possibility of it turning out good for me and I already had expectations low.

Okay first point, the light sources?? And there is no consistency here with the shadows or lighting, it looks like there's a hundred light sources all at once but none of them are even consistent!

the arrows here represent all the different light sources I can make out and yet the the shadow clearly implies there's only one. I understand wanting to use highlights to give the character a more clear shape but then just give him one or two lights behind him or in front of him? No matter how u follow the light sources, the highlights make no sense and the shadows make even less sense.

Why are the shoulders like that? Like on the legs it's a little understandable, at least those are clearly very heavily affected by perspective, for me I think they are so exaggerated it makes it look like one of the legs is either huge or one is small but that's maybe subjective.

However, the shoulders are unjustifiable, what happened there, what did they do??

I could pick on so much more honestly, how the color choices of piss yellow with no other colors being used, and the harsh pitch black being used for every part of his body is weird. How it looks straight out of Butch Hartman's recent crappy art. But to put bluntly bad start! Also what the HELL is going on with this background??

Seems once again the Bendy team is fine with sending out stuff thinking it's "Good Enough" for Bendy fans and honestly the people trying to tell me to "Be Grateful" for this are just proving that no matter how many times you betray your audience some of em will defend you!

Which is sad tbh. If anything we should be putting MORE pressure on the Bendy team to do better. Cause we deserve better than this, honestly we do. There are amazing artists in the bendy community who could do so much better for a cover. They've employed their fan artists before... Wouldn't it be great to do that for such a lore important book? The book that gives us the identity of one of the main characters in BATIM? The character you spend the entirety of Chapter 4 fighting to save? Not to mention will give several major characters their human designs?

But I guess this is... Good enough...

[i-like-books-and-women]

Okay so I haven't listened to the book in the past couple days but there's this line from one of Zach's chapters that I can't stop thinking about cause it's like "good God that's so fucked" he says something along the lines of "I might have to work to transition from cute to hot but Rubens already there" and potentially in the same line but also maybe not cause I don't remember he says something close to "I have to make the switch from cute to hot if I want to have a career" which is like? Like it's so gross dude. Zach and Angel are barely 18 like tf- like yeah sex sells but Jesus christ what in the fuck. And then like the internalized issues?? Like it's not quite the same vein it's similar tho. I've always been "the fat kid" since I was in elementary school and let me tell you comparing your body to your friends' is literally the quickest way to start resenting them and hating yourself. Quite literally chorus was kinda pitting them against each other and started instilling body image issues in very impressionable teenagers and then was like *surprised Pikachu face* when they were all starting to show signs of depression and anxiety and started fighting and started doing dumb shit and drugs to try and cope.

[egglygreg]

Ok, so I had this dream last night right? And it was mostly nonsensical and weird and silly, but there was this moment...

[lordsardine]

.

[livvyofthelake]

booktok is so unserious you either have to be a romance girlie or a romantasy recovering ya fantasy reader. do any of you ladies want to talk about. gone girl…

[perfectlyoongi-main]

anyways changed my desk set-up <3

[welcometogrouchland]

Clocking in for another shift at the wasting my life away factory

[luxhesperus]

finally finished kaleidoscope of death and i have to say that i did not see that twist coming...

because it was absurd, to say the least? don't get me wrong, i absolutely loved the plot and characters! it's just, the twist wasn't... fitting?

[ok spoiler below]

like, if it had been qiushi who was the door god it would have made more sense considering that the whole time, the reader is kept being reminded that qiushi wasn't quite reacting like humans would... almost like it was hinting that qiushi wasn't human

hell, some of the characters even pointed out that even nanzhu, the ever cold and steady leader of obsidian, had reacted to the doors more human than qiushi (you know, the depression, the time he had to spent recovering from each door)

double hell, even qiushi himself found it quite odd how he needed less time to recover from the doors in comparison to nanzhu and the others

so the twist being that nanzhu was the door god is just so... it feels like i've been blindsided? only because no part of the narrative ever suggested, even ever so slightly, that nanzhu was anything but human, ya know? so that twist felt kinda weird

it brings up so many questions too... like where did the doors come from? when did it start? before nanzhu, a door god, found interest in qiushi, what was in the twelfth door originally?

even so, i loved the story and its characters! i actually have a lot more to say, especially about the 11th door (maybe i'll dive into that later when i've actually gotten some sleep lol)

[reenaria]

currently having a queer identity crisis on this accursed holiday

[waugh-bao]

I’m with Charlie on this. Wodehouse’s books are great, especially the Jeeves ones! I know I’ve seen him mention Graham Greene too, who I also love. As with everything else, Charlie had good taste in books! (To be fair I don’t really think it’s possible to have bad taste in books. Just read what you like.)

Charlie definitely had interesting taste in literature. Wodehouse (I knew I misspelled that when I was transcribing and I was too lazy to check) and Graham Greene, like you mention, but he was also really into poetry. Off the top of my head I can recall him mentioning Dylan Thomas and Auden, I know there were some others as well. He was hugely fond of mid-century/old school noir detective thrillers, too.

The most surprising one is definitely still this (from the same interview/article):

“He is an expert on Georgian silver, the American Civil War, Nelson memorabilia, rare books, antique firearms, 18th-century erotic literature and jazz photographs.”

I mean, I know Keith loves 18th century and Napoleonic era naval literature (bless a man who doesn’t fall asleep at the endless descriptions of ship rigging in a Patrick O’Brian novel), but that one is leagues more out of left field. Especially because the first thing that comes to mind in that genre is the Marquis de Sade.

[junigray]

I have never plotted anything in my life and have no idea how stories work and am getting stupider by the minute.

I think it is time to step away from my computer.

[orlissa]

A few weeks ago I read a YA book - it doesn't really matter which one exactly -, set in Argentina and Egypt, in the 1880s, and it included a sentence I cannot get out of my head:

[The dress] had a matching parasol, ruffled and useless save for protecting my skin from the sun.

This unassuming sentence, my friends, is one of the stupidest shit I've ever read (I honestly don't know how it slipped past the editor).

On the one hand, like, consider the word itself: parasol. It literally means "to protect against the sun." To say that a parasol is useless save for, you know, protecting you from the sun, is to say something like "a pen is useless save fro writing."

ITS FREAKING PURPOSE IS TO PROTECT YOU FROM THE SUN.

And even that is not useless - a parasol is vital, especially, you know, in Egypt, where 90% of the novel is set. You don't have sunblock in the 1880s, and, vanity put aside... you don't want to end up with a nasty sunburn - hence the parasol. It's not "useless" - it has one specific and very important function - which it fulfills! It doesn't have to do anything else!

And the most infuriating in the whole thing is that you just know that sentences and sentiments like this stem from the misconception that everything women did or wore pre-20th century is the product of the opressive patriarchy and should be condemned. Corsets are yucky. Long skirt are ewww. Parasols are USELESS.

Heaven forbid that all of these things made sense in their given context.

Honestly, I really wanna see some heroines in historical/fantasy books who go, like "no, I feel naked without my corset, it's like my armor" and "you want me to wear pants? I don't know, I'd feel so awkward." And, you know, heroines who thrive in the period specific femininity, instead of trying to dismantle it, because that's so cool.

[sburbling]

thank you alice oseman for calling me out specifically and violently. radio silence changed my life and i will never be the same again